An eCommerce Podcast Hosted by Brett Curry
Tune in for fresh interviews with the merchants, vendors, and experts shaping the eCommerce industry.
Episode 113
:
Roland Frasier
How to Market and Build Financial Stability During Economic Crisis
On this show investor, entrepreneur Roland Frasier and I talk about what you need to do to survive and thrive right now.
Economic Crisis - time to panic or time to press ahead? While challenging and painful, there are huge opportunities right now. Some of the world’s most successful companies grew leaps and bounds during recessions (Toyota, Kellogs and many others). On this show investor, mentor and brilliant marketer and entrepreneur Roland Frasier and I talk about what you need to do to survive and thrive right now. From getting your head right, to ensuring financial stability to how to market your product - right now. The market has shifted but money is still up for grabs. Here’s what we cover:
- Understanding the physiological segments of the market and how to reach customers that are still actively buying now
- How your product positioning should pivot during times of extreme uncertainty
- How companies like Toyota and Kellogg’s crushed their competitors during a recession
- How to secure financing right now
- What to measure and how to measure to keep your head above water
Roland Frasier - CEO at War Room Mastermind
Business Lunch with Roland Frasier Podcast
Mentioned in this episode:
Roland Frasier’s Facebook Page (This is where you can find the live videos)
Consumer Segmentation Study and Matrix - Harvard Business Review - “How to Market in a Downturn”
“To Be or Not to Be Intimidated?” Book by Robert Ringer - Amazon
Forbes article Roland Frasier referred to
Episode 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 I am super excited about today's guest and I'm really looking forward to the topic today. It's going to be timely, it's going to be helpful, it's going to be motivational. And so my guest is really truly a legend in this space, kind of needs no introduction, but I will intro him for good measure.
Brett:
Hey, Brett Curry here. Before we dive into today's topic, I want to talk quickly about YouTube ads. People ask me all the time, what makes for a great YouTube ad? And it's true, the ad is the hardest part for getting YouTube to work. Now, I love the campaign structure. I love audience targeting and I love tinkering with bids and using the smart bid algorithm. And I even like budget management, I like all that behind the scenes stuff, but I've seen it time and time again where the exact same campaign structure just limps along with a mediocre video, but you get the right video with the right message that resonates with people and that same campaign structure just takes off, it scales.
Brett:
And so over the last couple of years, my team and I, we've been collecting good YouTube ads. We've been watching, we've been paying attention and looking at our own clients, looking at the numbers, finding what are ads that resonate and work on YouTube. And so we started building this little guide, this little guide that we use internally and we started categorizing ads and giving them fun names like the manifesto and the UGC mash up and the have it all. And so we start kind of breaking down what elements in these videos make them work.
Brett:
And so I was speaking at a recent event and I just happened to mention that this resource existed and people sort of clamored for it. Like everyone's like, "Hey, I want to see the guide, I want to see that resource, I want to see all these successful ads." And so, that's what we've done. So we put together this resource kind of first time ever, get to share it with a broader audience. It's free. So check it out and get our list of winning YouTube ad formulas with lots of examples. Let this be your inspiration for your next killer YouTube ad. So it's a free resource, we'll link to it in the show notes to this show, but you can also go to omgcommerce.com, click on resources and then guides and it's the YouTube ad templates and guide. Check it out and I hope it inspires your next killer YouTube ad campaign. And now back to the show.
Brett:
I've got the Roland Frasier on the podcast today. I was just telling Roland before the call started, he's the host of one of my favorite podcasts right now, the Business Lunch podcast. I highly recommend it. Great guests, great topics. It comes up multiple times a week. It's fantastic. You also probably know Roland from the Traffic and Conversion Summit. He's a partner in that and with Brandeis and digital marketer, also CEO of War Room, a fantastic mastermind, which is actually the reason we're doing this podcasts. This all came because of a War Room call I was on and I was like, well, we got to do an episode for eCommerce Evolution and Roland agreed to come on. And Roland is just one of those guys, just super smart and has his hand in a lot of things, knows a whole lot of things and so thrilled to have him on. And so with that Roland, man, welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time.
Roland:
Yeah man. Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.
Brett:
Yeah. So we were on, I was listening in as you and Perry Belcher were going through a War Room call, which by the way, it's times like this, he knows we're all kind of going through this crisis and figuring out what to do that things like masterminds become even more valuable, because a few weeks ago like, you could get kind of fat and lazy, things are going really well and now it's like, hey, we need these communities, like mastermind groups, so kudos.
Roland:
It is funny that in good times they're great because everybody's kind of sharing what's working and all. But then when things go a little bit the other way, it's nice to have people that you can count on and say, hey man, I'm a little concerned about this. What can I do?
Brett:
Yeah. I mean, they're good in the good times, are almost necessary in the bad times if you can swing it. So I particularly liked what you and Perry were talking about on the call. And so I think to kind of set the stage, so we're going to be talking about how do we market, how do we grow in a downturn, in a crisis? How do we navigate these waters? We'll get into a couple of different subjects that you know a lot about. But I think to start with, let's talk about mindset. So how are you approaching this crisis and how are you instructing War Room members and clients and friends? How are you instructing them to look at this crisis from a business perspective?
Roland:
I mean, it's everybody has their own reaction to things. So we can't ever instruct. We can only say, here's some things to think about, right? So the way I like to approach that is just to say, here's some things to think about. This is not an unusual thing to happen other than the way that it was precipitated, right? We're not generally big on pandemics here in the States, I don't think we've had any. But over the history of our country, I was talking to Jay Abraham the other day and he said, this has happened 48 times, in terms of recessions in the history of our country.
Roland:
And I know that for me personally, I saw as a kid, I saw the one in the 70s and then there was one in 1982s and bad things happen then. And in the 90s and then in 2000. And then the big, where they call it, the great recession, not the great depression, the recession, in 2008, 2009. So like the fact that business is cyclical is no surprise.
Brett:
It's always going to be that way. It's always been that way, it will always be that way. Really the only thing that's novel about this is the pandemic.
Roland:
Correct, right? So if we take that out and say, okay, we're going to just look at things have changed, but this is really unusual because this has been a change that probably wasn't going to happen. And I think probably won't continue once we get to open our doors again, because it's 3.2 million, I think, people filed for unemployment last week, which they said the highest before that was a 695,000 people in 1982 and 665,000 people in I think 2015. So do you remember having like giant trouble in 2015? You know, probably not. But the thing to think about is that, that's only because, it's not because like people, like business stopped. It's not because business stopped organically anyway.
Brett:
Right.
Roland:
It's because we're literally telling people you can't open your business right now, which we all know-
Brett:
Yes, stalking it around. Yeah.
Roland:
Yeah. And we all know that that can't last, but that eventually the public is going to say, you know what? If we're going to die, we're going to die. And I'm not saying that to tell people to go out and about, I'm just saying, we are not as human beings inclined to live in confinement. And if you look at all of the flatten the curve studies and all of that kind of stuff, they say, we really, if we can just, on the average I would say is three or four months of this on a bad kind of side, on a, not a worst case, but on a probable, most likely bad case as far as how long we have to stay in this kind of environment.
Roland:
Well, that's going to just ... That means that all of the demand is pent up. It didn't go away is to just, hey, we can't travel right now. We can't go into our office right now because we'll die. So I guess the first thing that I tell people is look, this is an artificial situation. And so the reality that you're in right now is not a reality that's likely to continue for any extended period of time. So the first thing then that you might think about is, can I survive from the date of today through the date when things start to return to normal, because when they start to return to normal, then you can start doing whatever it was that you were doing before. That was feeding your family and making you rich or getting you by.
Roland:
And so then if you think about that, it's like, okay, well this is kind of like, it's a weird combination of a startup, a turnaround, and a recession. In a startup we have runway, right? You say, okay, we're going to start a business, I need to fund it.
Brett:
Yep. me a long hand.
Roland:
Yeah. And I can fund it. What's my burn rate? Well, my burn rate is $10,000 a month or whatever your burn rate is, right? In a startup, my burn rate is $10,000 a month. I've got $120,000, I have a 12 month runway before I run out of capital and somewhere along that way, ideally before I hit the end of the runway, which is a brick wall for most of those startups, right? Where I don't get to continue my business anymore, I either have to make enough profit to get additional runway or I need to raise capital or borrow capital to get additional runway.
Roland:
Well, it's nothing different here in terms of your survival of your business is you have to look right now and say, what's my burn rate? What is the amount of money that's going out of my company? What is the probability of money continuing to come in, at what rate? And then you say, how much money do I have currently divided by my burn rate, my net burn rate, meaning my revenue, less my expenses. And then that tells you how many months you got. Now, if you do that and I've walked through that like ... Actually Perry too was telling me he went through this with one of our War Room members that was freaking out. They were like, "Man, everything's going to crap. I don't know what to do." And well, it turns out that they had 108 months of runway.
Brett:
That's probably going to do it. I think we will safely be out of quarantine by then.
Roland:
If we're not out of quarantine by then, we're all going back to caves and it doesn't matter.
Brett:
We're all screwed at that point and you don't have to land.
Roland:
Yeah, we're all screwed.
Brett:
It's on mad max at that point.
Roland:
Yes. So I think it's like, that's the very first thing. And then you say, okay, well what are the things that I can do to extend that runway? Well, one of the things that we talked about is can I get additional money? And the easiest way to do that right now, and particularly in the short term, if you need more money, is to go borrow it. And there are companies that will do multiple credit card applications at the same time. It's like, if you need money in the next couple of weeks, then go to one of those companies and get yourself $150,000 or so.
Roland:
Typically you can get 50 to 150, depending on your credit and that's cash. Like you just do cash advances. Now the SBA has been funded and depending on which version of the bill gets enacted, there's like, I think last time I read it was 357 billion that's going into funding small businesses and 50 billion-
Brett:
Are you going to read all versions, Roland, just so that you're ready, like all 880 pages?
Roland:
Never, no, no. I'm going to look and see what they're saying, but yeah, I never ... It's really funny how people don't understand how law works is a bill is something that is not a law until it's voted on and approved by both houses of Congress here in the United States. If you're watching from the United States or listening, and then signed by the president, and so a lot of people get all, okay, well this bill says this and this. But the chances are it's going to change quite a bit before it finally gets through.
Roland:
Now let's say that it goes through or doesn't, no matter what, there is money in the United States, in the small business administration, and they have a loan called a 7a loan that will allow you to get $350,000, that's an accelerated procedure, typically 30 to 60 days versus the four to six months it takes to get one of the bigger loans. But those bigger loans right now that they funded, the terms are two to 3% interest with a crazy year payback, right? So all of that and however that shakes out, doesn't matter. All that you need to know is the principle is go get some money, right? Go get some money and people are saying, "Well, but I don't know if I'm going to need it." You're going to need it, right? Assume that you're going to need it.
Brett:
Assume that you are going to need it so that it's available. Absolutely.
Roland:
Wouldn't it be better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. And even if you don't need it for your current operations or to extend your current runway, it will be helpful to acquire other businesses because not everybody is going to make this, right?
Brett:
Absolutely.
Roland:
Not everybody listens to your podcast. So I think that's the very first thing. And then the second thing that I tell people is, if you need money that is ... If you need more runway then the other way to get it is to think about your current expenses. And so this is where the startup looking at runway goes to turnaround. And in a turnaround situation, like if I go into a business to turn around, the very first thing we do is we go and we say, okay, we need a 14 day inflow outflow of cash forecast and we need to know everything that's coming in and everything that's going out. And are we net positive or negative? And then what do we have to work with? Right? So it's a kind of a proactive version of the runway.
Roland:
Now, I know that at our company, and I'm talking about one of our companies that we go through at Digital Marketer, we'll find every quarter, 20, $30,000 a month of stuff that we're not using anymore. That we either got and said yeah, this is super cool tool. We're going to do this at some point, we never did. This is super cool, we're going to use it. It doesn't work. It's like ... So there's just so much fat that is typically, that has kind of built up when times are good, you're not motivated to get around to it. You've got other things you'd rather go out and make $100,000 than save 15, right? And that's actually smart. So that's the next thing is doing that cashflow analysis. Do a 14 day cash analysis and then do a 90 day week by week. So your 14 days is day by day. Your 12 weeks is week by week after that, and that probably is going to get you through what we're looking at right now.
Brett:
I don't think so.
Roland:
Yeah. And then you go-
Brett:
Especially for eCommerce, because I think one thing to keep in mind, and I know that the degree to which people are experiencing pain in the eCommerce industry does vary pretty wildly based on what they're selling. But we have a lot of clients right now. I ran a report a couple of days ago, like 60% of the clients in OMG are actually growing, even through this downturn because some consume, consumer shopping is shifting online and there's still some goods and in categories that are down, no doubt about it. But I would agree with you, I think if you have that 12 week plan, hopefully things will kind of begin to turn. And I think eCommerce is going to come out better than most from things experienced.
Roland:
It should. Yeah. I think the only, like your biggest risk is somebody like Amazon, if you're really dependent on Amazon and they say yeah, we're not taking that anymore.
Brett:
Right.
Roland:
It's like, really, you're just not taking it anymore?
Brett:
And that's been crazy. We've been dealing, so we have kind of our Google and YouTube side of our business, and then the Amazon side of our business. And our top sellers, almost all of them have been scrambling as of late because either, well, Amazon's not taking their shipments into the Amazon fulfillment centers, but now Amazon's saying, we won't even ship your goods. If we have it, if we have it on hand, we're not shipping it to customers until end of April or May, and it keeps getting delayed. So it's forcing Amazon sellers to say, well, I'll just do fulfilled by merchant then. And that's actually a good move in a lot of ways. So again, it's like painful. It's causing people to scramble. They're losing some sales right now, but it's forcing them to diversify and it's actually could be a good thing in the long run.
Roland:
Yeah. Now what I don't know, and you probably do is, is Amazon moving? If you've got goods there, will they move that to your other ... I mean, you're just locked. They've locked down. They've got your property, right?
Brett:
Yep. That kind of sucks. Yeah. So if you've got your access to anything, at least that's my understanding.
Roland:
They're probably going to be some lawsuits that they're going to have to deal with then, because-
Brett:
It could be.
Roland:
... If they cannot give you access to your property and they can claim force majeure, but like to get actual access to it, would be interesting to see what happens with that. I bet there's going to be some, there probably some attorneys right now going yeah, keep it.
Brett:
Exactly. Coming for you Bezos, coming after you. Yeah, exactly. So the 12 week plan, I think that's going to get a lot of people through. I'll let you continue there.
Roland:
Oh yeah. So then you look and say, okay, well what can I do to accelerate the inflows of income and it's been fun to watch all of the different things that people are doing on the marketing side. Right now, I'm just talking about the finance side. And on the finance side it's okay, can I, if I've got accounts receivable, which a lot of people that are selling online don't have accounts receivable, but if you do, then can you offer people a discount to pay sooner? Are there things that you can do to accelerate payments in any way? Can you do bulk or discount or bundle or anything else that encourages people to pay sooner as opposed to paying later or, to dis-incentivize people or to incentivize people to act now as opposed to putting off. And so you see a lot of people doing that. And even Warren Buffet said, "One of my favorite things during the time of recession is to buy durable goods because you've got risk."
Brett:
I love that, so smart.
Roland:
Yeah, right? He's like, look, if a couch that I was thinking about buying is 50% off right now, and I save $1,000 on it, and then I invest that at 12% for 40 years, that's worth $50,000 or something ridiculous to that.
Brett:
Yeah, exactly.
Roland:
I love the way that guy thinks. And so if we think like that, and I'd probably be using that if I was selling durable goods, I'd probably say, why don't you follow the Warren Buffet sale or something like that.
Brett:
That's brilliant, it's brilliant. I love it, yeah.
Roland:
So that, like all of those things with finance to me are the things that will help us stay because it's the people who have the cash to be able to survive pass what we call the survival line, right? Whenever this phenomenon ends, are the people who are going to be positioned to grow the fastest and get ahead the most. So that's, like that's finance advice and I can go through the other stuff, but it's kind of long. So I don't know if you want to do that.
Brett:
No, that's perfect. And then let's talk about a few elements of what we just covered and then get into some marketing topics as well. But I love this because, and we always want to be sensitive to what's going on and there's a lot of pain, there's anxiety, there's fear. All those things I think are perfectly normal and justifiable, but I think as leaders and entrepreneurs, we have to pull ourselves together and get our heads right and see this for what it is. And I had a call with a friend of mine today, he's an eCommerce merchant, sells on Amazon, but sells through his on websites and stuff. He's like, "I don't know, man. I'm just, I'm seeing this as an opportunity." Like it's just, it's an opportunity.
Roland:
It's an opportunity.
Brett:
My sales are up, because he sells an item that people can use at home and especially kids that are bored can use at home. And so he's selling like gangbusters. He'd already started some of his fulfilled by merchant activities, so he's able to pivot and use that. So he's seeing it as an opportunity. And I remember hearing several people even just a few months ago saying, right now the best advice is sit on cash because the economy's so good and then you're looking for opportunities when the next recession comes. I don't think anybody thought it would be like as soon as it is or happened the way it did.
Roland:
Next to me.
Brett:
Yeah. But if you do have a good cash position and you can make it through that survival line, like you talked about, there's big opportunities, like there's huge opportunities. Yeah.
Roland:
Absolutely.
Brett:
And so let's maybe ... I want to mention something else too, just because I'm a huge fan of this guy. You mentioned Jay Abraham. You guys did a ... Did you guys do a Facebook live together recently?
Roland:
We did, yeah.
Brett:
Is that available globally or is that like to a select group?
Roland:
No, it is. We're doing everything right now that we have that would normally be part of a group or something like that, we're doing open to the public. As a matter of fact, Jay and I just started a thing called the Strategic Alliance where we are basically providing question and answer type stuff for entrepreneurs. And so that, we bought everybody that was on that call, the first month of it.
Brett:
Nice.
Roland:
And it's kind of fun. Yeah.
Brett:
Awesome.
Roland:
So we're just answering questions and it's kind of fun to have him who, I remember when Tony Robbins was a client of mine, when I was practicing law, I got a letter from Tony that was a Jay Abraham letter about this, it might've even been a Mr. X thing.
Brett:
I remember that, yeah.
Roland:
And it was $500 for the book. And I was like, "Oh man, $500." And I bought it, I was like, "Ooh, this is great." So it's kind of fun to have the opportunity to work with Jay now and do stuff together.
Brett:
It's very cool.
Roland:
Yeah, and if anybody goes to ... You can go to my Facebook feed and just search for Jay Abraham and it should come up in there. I think it was Monday. Right?
Brett:
Okay. And I'll link to it in the show notes as well so people can access it. But it's so interesting. When I was in college, my uncle kind of stumbled on the Jay Abraham. And so believe it or not, he bought a bunch of Jay Abraham stuff and sent me these cassette tapes. Now, I was in college in the early 2000s, so cassettes were old at that time. But I was like, I just devoured it. And you mentioned Strategic Alliances, like that was the part of marketing where I was like, this makes sense. I like this a lot. And so we've actually utilized that mindset to grow OMG Commerce. I've used it to grow other businesses, like it's so smart and I'm a huge Jay Abraham fan. So I'll link to that in the show notes.
Roland:
Great, yeah.
Brett:
But check out that business and that offering, it's really cool.
Roland:
And what's cool about that for everybody that's listening is we talk about, like it was just open Q and A. And so we had people from eCommerce and everything else just asking questions about, what should they do? And it was fun just giving, here's what we see working and all the different things that we have access to and here's some ideas and things like that. So it's a good place to get inspired for what you can do if you're feeling like you don't have anything that, any options right now.
Brett:
Yeah. Awesome. So let's talk about marketing a little bit, in the warm call from a week ago or early in the week whenever it was, I don't know, it's so hard to like ... My concept of time has shifted.
Roland:
It's weird when your home for like a week. Yeah, it's been, this is the second week for me, cause I know only because last Monday and Tuesday a week ago, I was supposed to have an event and on Sunday night I was sitting in the restaurant of the hotel where we were going to have the event. There was only 25 people. And was really wrestling with, I had a few people who had flown in and this was all getting ready to happen. And that was the night that they announced we're closing all the restaurants, we're closing ... Here in California. So yeah, so this is, we're coming up I think on Monday on this, the next Monday that comes after this, it will have been two weeks and it feels like it's been four.
Brett:
I know, I know. It's so funny. And I'm in Missouri and so we just went on lockdown recently and I think everything is fine in our area, but still probably smart. But it's funny, like I'll see TV commercials with large groups or people like driving down the street, like normal. I'm like, "Oh, I remember those days. I remember what life was like." It wasn't that long ago, but it just, it feels like it was.
Roland:
And now you see it, sometimes you'll see people like a press announcement or something like that and there are people all together and you're like, are you crazy? You're all going to die.
Brett:
It's funny how the new normal shifts pretty quickly. But so on this warm call, you were talking about looking at different segments of buyers and how, well, yes, there's some consumers who have freaked out. There's a lot who have not, and there's a lot of people out there that have money, that have resources and they want to still buy things. In fact, buying things is therapeutic and it makes you feel normal and people crave that right now.
Roland:
Retail therapy.
Brett:
Retail therapy, yeah. What was it that Ryan Deiss said that consumerism is like the number one hobby in America or something like that. I don't know if he just made that up or if that's like a real thing, I think it's real. Yeah. So talk a little bit about that, what is your approach and what are your thoughts about how do we continue to market in this time of uncertainty and crisis?
Roland:
Yeah, I think it's really good. I did a zoom with Rachel Miller the other day who's just a bundle of energy. I don't know if you've got to see it or not, but she was saying like when she's talking to people, she asked first, she said, "Can you sell what you sell now?" Because if you can't, like if you're a restaurant and it's closed or if you're an office and the office was closed and you couldn't go remote and you can't sell the thing because you have to deliver it in person, then that's a different kind of situation. So I liked that as an initial filter to say, can you sell what you used to be able to sell? And if you can, then can you pivot? Is it in demand? If it's not in demand, then can you pivot? And to help with that, I think that this, and I don't know the issue that I found it and I still have to go back and find it, but there was a really good consumer segmentation, study and matrix that came out in Harvard Business review.
Brett:
Yeah. I've got a link to it so I'll put it in the show notes. It came out around the great recession, so it was like 2008, 2009.
Roland:
Yeah, exactly. And so what they did was they said, let's look at consumer behavior in a recession. And they said it depends on the what type of customer, what type of consumer it is, and there were four categories you could fall into. And one was slam the brakes, which is, oh, I'm freaking out. No, I can't do anything. I've got to stop, I'm not doing anything, I'm not spending anything. And I was like, that doesn't last very long, by the way. But you've got that group of people and then they said there's a patient group of people. And these are, this is the largest swath of people who are, like they're feeling it, but they're like, okay, this is going to hurt but we're going to get through this. I'm not freaking out, I'm not hitting the panic button. Then, there were-
Brett:
I saw a quote today, it's kind of funny, maybe ties to that, that said this will pass. It may pass like a kidney stone, but it will pass.
Roland:
I like that.
Brett:
That's probably that group, yeah.
Roland:
And then there's the comfortably well-off and then the carpe diem people, the basically live for the day. Right? And depending on which of those categories you're in, you're going to have different behaviors for four different types of products. One type of product that is doing well and they did a, like a green, yellow and red shading. Green meant business as usual, no change at all. Yellow meant probably looking for deals or substitute products or to pay the same that they would have paid for more inferior product, but for a better products, effectively a discount. And then there's red. And in the 16 quadrants, if you took those four types of people down the left and the four types of products on the right at the top, there would be 16 boxes and only three of those boxes were red.
Roland:
Two of them, and red was declining sales and they were declining only in the two categories. The four categories were essentials, things that we basically need to live like toilet paper. And then there was treats and then postponables and expendables. And treats are things that we do for ourselves. Just some little reward or big reward that we'd do for ourselves, those kinds of products. Then the postponables would be like a new water heater or a car or something you don't have to have. And then expendables basically just kind of stuff you buy and probably shouldn't in the first place. And it was really funny because when you read the definition in the study between expendables and postponables, you're like, why do you have that fourth category? I think it's so that they had a four by four.
Brett:
Yeah, visually.
Roland:
But the encouraging thing is, is that the study which was based on actual buying behavior showed that the only people who were really going to hurt sales or the only areas that sales were going to decline were in expendables if you had a slam on the brakes people and pain, but patient people, they're kind of saying, one saying, hell no, we're not buying that. The other one's saying, probably not going to buy that now because it's expendable. I mean, we don't need it or want it. It's just kind of like an impulse buy. And then, the only other area for declining sales was postponables for slam on the brakes people. So that means that if you're selling essentials, that was all green, no changes, you're still going to sell it. No discount, no need to panic. No need to freak out.
Roland:
If you're selling treats, then people are looking, like I said, they're looking to substitute. So in your marketing you say, okay, what is my product a substitute for that's a more expensive product? And then lean into that, lean into the people who used to be buying. You should be knowing, like if your product is a substitute for some other product, you should identify what products is your product a substitute for and is your product less expensive than that? And then go after all the places those people are advertising, use Pathmatics or a similar web or Adbeat or any of those tools to say, okay, this is where those people are selling. And then go take their business away from them.
Roland:
If you are discounting, then lean into the discount and advertise the discount and if you're bundling or something like that, do that as well. And then also leaning into the messaging because if you're selling something that's essential, it's essential, no problem. But if you get into the next category of treats, then you're saying, okay, well this is what a lot of people want to do right now. This is the retail therapy. This is the, you know what? You're at home and you've cut back, but you deserve this.
Brett:
That's right.
Roland:
Right?
Brett:
Yeah. As for Firestone with Boom by Cindy Joseph, he sent out a fantastic email recently and it did really well. And then the whole premise was create a spa day at home, right? So one of the most helpful things, and this was legitimate that you can do right now is battle stress, right? So how do you reduce stress? Well, here's a way to get a little spa day at home, actually good for your health, good for your immune system, all that. And here's a little bundle on a discount to go with it. It was brilliant and it worked.
Roland:
And that's exactly what you would do. And that actually would be something that would appeal to all four classes of those consumers, right? So that's kind of exciting to know that that's there. Then if you have the postponables, you lean into, well, the only people who are really postponing like that, the only red in that category was the slam on the breaks people. So those people, that's just going to be a matter of time. But the rest of the people, then you go with the Warren Buffet thing, right? Now, there's never been a better time to buy.
Brett:
Right.
Roland:
This is to go with the deal, but tell them why, don't just knock it off 50%, say this is why, and this is why it makes sense to buy.
Brett:
Yeah. There's got to be a reason why. Right?
Roland:
Yes.
Brett:
I remember the old marketing lesson, there's always got to be a reason why. And it can be a really weird reason. You're like Saint Patty's day, that's the reason why or in this case it's, we're creating ... This is our own stimulus package, right? We're creating our own stimulus package for you, to help you, to ease the pain and let's go. What's interesting too, so as you look at that segment of buyers, right? And I like how the article talked about, it's no longer just like the age and gender and income because those categories you just described are really more psychological. There could be some really well off people that are still in that slam on the brakes, because that's just their nature.
Roland:
For sure. And broke people who are in the carpe diem.
Brett:
Like, screw it, man, I'm just going to have fun and I'm going to buy whatever and it's therapy and who cares? I'll fall bankrupt if I have to. So yeah, just understanding that psychology. But what's interesting, so we have a client and I can't reveal too much, but they're in the automotive space and it's really not a necessity what they sell, right? But they've got a large segment of comfortable but well off and they're still, but they're also positioned in their marketplace as more of a value. They've been doing super well. Like this is not something that's ... You do not need this right now if you're at home fighting the COVID pandemic, but they are up and they're up in quite a nice way. And I think part of it is like we're sitting at home, I'm looking at the car and the garage and I got a nice car and I'm just going to buy this thing that they sell and it's going really well.
Brett:
So I think also understanding that, like what's the mindset. If I appeal to a segment of the market that's comfortably well off and maybe I am a bit of a value, so I think that lines up with what you said before, where now maybe I'm looking for a value but I still want something that's good. It can be a great time to buy and I think it's been so interesting. I've heard from a few other merchants who are either on the War Room call or have been talking to Ezra lately that have said, I was kind of just hunkered down. Right? Because there's just some people that's their nature. Things go crazy and it's just, I'm going to hunker down.
Roland:
Worst thing you can do.
Brett:
But now they're realizing, no, I got to go for it.
Roland:
Yeah. And I think the other thing too is that, that struck me about the categories of product is can you reposition your product from expendable to essential, from postponable to treat, right? How do you ... Like the couch is a postponable. I need a new couch, but the couch is postponable, I can wait for, I'm just going to sit on my old couch. Right? But if it's, you know you're spending a lot of time at home right now and isn't it a time? Isn't that couch kind of not ... Like you've been thinking it's not really that comfortable and you're able to sit there and spend time with your kids or watch TV, catch up on Netflix and all, but the whole time you're thinking, I kind of deserve a new couch, right?
Brett:
Yeah.
Roland:
And you move it into treat or you move it into essential, well then you've opened yourself up to those other psychological categories of buyer in a recession. And that messaging alone can be a repositioning element. I think that's kind of exciting to play with.
Brett:
I love it. It's super fun. And I'll give you another example. The credit on this goes to a couple of members of my team, Jessica Muddrer and Sarah Edwards that we have a client and they sell big blankets and actually are called Big Blanket companies. So these are 10 foot by 10 foot ginormous blankets, so it's a hundred square feet.
Roland:
Nice.
Brett:
They have like Sumo wrestlers that are spokespeople and like the tallest guy in the NBA as a spokesperson. Anyways, so we were brainstorming or like, hey kids are home all over the country, extended spring break and school's going to start at some point, but how do you entertain these kids? And actually we have another client that sells the arts and crafts and stuff like that. And they're just exploded because again, trying to keep kids entertained. And so we had the idea of, hey, let's do like build the most epic blanket fort. So ads showing the big blanket as an epic blanket fort, so now it's, okay, you may have one of this blanket anyway, but now here's how it can be put to use right now. Keep your kids entertained, keep them happy. It's not just putting them in front of the screen, but it's this kick ass blanket for it. And so it's things like that, thinking about how do we reposition this to fit the time?
Roland:
Absolutely. Yeah. And if you think about it, like the messaging there is you've got a bunch of kids, you show a bunch of kids running around, what are we going to do? I'm bored. What are we going to do? I'm bored, you know? And then it's like, what am I going to do? I need, I have an essential, I need something to help these guys be entertained.
Brett:
It's now an essential.
Roland:
Oh, a big blanket, that sounds great.
Brett:
Big blanket comes on.
Roland:
So I love that. Absolutely. Really, really smart.
Brett:
Yup, very cool. So really good stuff. I know there's so much here we can talk about, I guess one thing I made just touch on because this is something that I'm interested in. What about for those people that they're in a good spot, maybe they've been responsible and they're sitting on some cash and they're thinking, I may be looking for my next opportunity or looking for something to buy. I know this is an area that you are a master enemy and I would even like for you to talk about your LEGS Intensives a little bit, but what advice would you give to somebody that is sitting on cash and maybe is looking for an opportunity? What should they be thinking now, what should they be looking for? And I know this can be like a huge topic, so we'll just do kind of a teaser. Yeah.
Roland:
Yeah. I think I would probably sit on it for another 30 days because I don't believe this is going to stop in 30 days. And I believe a lot of people are going to really, who are living hand to mouth in their businesses, that there's going to be some tremendous opportunities. I know already like restaurants, I've got buddies calling me saying, "These restaurants are selling their best wine at like what they paid for it 30 years ago, are you interested?" I'm like, "Yes, I'm interested. Absolutely." And the same thing is going to happen with events. I think like the opportunity to buy events, there's so many people who just got their lunch handed to them. On the event side, there's going to be opportunities there and in terms of products, people that maybe got their stuff frozen at Amazon and can't do anything right now, but they're freaking out. They need some cash, the ability to buy equipment, machines, inventory, blogs, media of all types.
Brett:
Yeah, media coats are way down, we're seeing that on YouTube. And I hear it's the same on Facebook. The cost for media is that a major low right now and everybody is at home, like in front of their computer. So everybody's watching YouTube or on Facebook or something like that.
Roland:
Yeah, that's the two things I say is like when somebody says, what do you think of gambling? I'm like, I think that if I came to you and you were a rational person and I said, "Let's play a game. It's going to be with your money and the odds are incredibly in my favor, but I'm going to entertain you while you're doing it. Would you like to do it?" Most people would say no, but then they go to Las Vegas and it's like, hey, and it's the same thing right now. Okay. So if there was no pandemic, then there was no recession and things were where they were two months ago and I came to you and I said, "Hey, I've got some advertising to sell you on Facebook and Google. It's half priced. And by the way, all of your competition, they're dialing back their advertising right now."
Brett:
Right, they're dialing back or they've left.
Roland:
You'd be like, I am so in, triple my ad spend, but now just because there's this situation, if people are thinking emotionally, not logically, they're like, no, I need to cut back too, I need to hunker down. Don't do that, that's crazy. This is the time absolutely to do that. So what's cool is that while it's ... I mean, I guess you can buy Google and Facebook at a discount now too in the stock market, but to actually acquire your own media right now, to acquire other people's blogs and videos and listings and all of those kinds of things. Podcasts, right? People are freaking out, if you've got the cash, and I don't think it's yet, I think it's about 30 days from now when it'll be, we'll have all been confined probably for that amount of time. Everybody's going nuts anyway.
Roland:
People are like, even if it's like ... It's kind of like there's traffic on the freeway and you know that if you get on the freeway, it'll take you 45 minutes to get where you're going. But if you take the back roads, it'll take you 45 minutes too, but you'll be moving the whole time.
Brett:
Yes.
Roland:
You feel like, I'm going to take the back road. So there are people that will feel like that with their assets and there'll be like, I can't do anything with my podcast. I can't do anything with my product right now, maybe I should just sell it because that's a motion, right?
Brett:
Yeah.
Roland:
That's motion. And so I think that you'll see highly motivated sellers and lots of opportunities to buy things. And of course, as you know, I'd typically buy those for no cash at all so not that you don't pay anything, it's just don't come out of pocket any cash. So I think it's possible to actually buy those assets, improve your media, buy additional products or services and at the same time not deplete the cash that you've got. So that if some other once in a lifetime deal comes along, and I say the once in a lifetime deal comes along three or four times a year. I think this year the once in a lifetime deal is probably going to come along five or six times. And you just want to conserve your cash, even if you've got it, when you're doing a buy like that so that you have the cash for the next dealing-
Brett:
For the next dealing.
Roland:
... In case it really does require.
Brett:
Yeah, I heard that and I'm trying to remember, oh, it was a Robert Ringer, the guy that wrote-
Roland:
Winning Through Intimidation.
Brett:
Yeah, exactly. Or he changed the title later to, to be, or not to be intimidated, but the original was ... Yeah.
Roland:
I like that first one.
Brett:
But he talked about, he quoted somebody else, I don't remember who it was, but he talked about the effective non use of cash. Right?
Roland:
Yes.
Brett:
Where you keep the cash, but you use it so you have enough net worth and whatever to be able to go and acquire deals. And so I think that would fall into this category. One of the marketing thing I want to talk about just real quickly as we wrap up. But before that, eventually we'll be able to do events in person together and all that stuff again, but talk about your LEGS Intensive just really quickly and if you've got plans for any more of those or maybe that's all yet to be determined, but you want to just speak to that real quickly?
Roland:
Yeah. And the answer is that for all of our events, we don't ... I follow my own advice. I'm not sitting on my hands or hunkering down. So we've pivoted, all of our events have moved virtual until this is over. So I have LEGS as leverage, exit, grow and scale. And we're doing our first virtual one, April 21st, 22nd and 23rd. And rather than get people ... Like I think it's really hard to sit in front of a computer for eight hours. And so I think the people who are doing events like that are going to find that it's really tough to maintain engagement, after about an hour and a half, we see drop-off on anything that we do no matter how-
Brett:
Totally makes sense. It's not nearly the same as being in a big room full of people.
Roland:
No. So we're going to do it a little differently. We're going to do it as over three days instead of two, and it'll be six, 90 minute sessions. And I'm actually doing that with Jay Abraham this time.
Brett:
Fantastic. Looking forward to it.
Roland:
And so we're going to do like 9:00 to 10:30, and then we're going to give an assignment for people to work on and then take a break and then come back at 2:00 and then go from 2:00 to 3:30, three days in a row instead of, we would normally do it over two days and it'd be like a day and a half. So it'll be the same amount of material, but way more interactivity. And you won't get bored if you need to take care of the kids or go build a fort with their big blanket or whatever to keep them from driving us crazy, you can do it. And because zoom offers the ability to do breakouts, we'll be able to actually break the group out into groups of four or five people with the assignment to work on the assignment and then hit the button and suck them back in to the main room. So it'll be really fun.
Brett:
Super cool.
Roland:
I mean, it's exactly like we do it except you're not literally able to touch the other person. Right? And we typically frown on that, we tell people not to touch each other, generally in this. But so yeah.
Brett:
The timing of that'd be perfect because, so as we're recording this on March 26 you're talking about, hey, waiting another 30 days or so to maybe look for your opportunity. This Intensive is going to be just before that and going to give you those tools, those resources and that mindset to say, okay, how can I acquire something maybe without cash down initially. And so yeah, sounds phenomenal.
Roland:
Yeah, it's going to be really fun. I'm excited about, we've had, it's really funny, the last class that we did was about two months ago and it's fun. I think there have been 17 businesses purchased probably by that class. And so it's really fun to watch people take the thing and then go, you can now ... Number one, it's a big change of mindset to say, I can buy a five million, eight million, $10 million business without having to come out of pocket, can't buy it for nothing. You're just buying it for nothing out of pocket. Right?
Roland:
And all of the, I have 159 different places to find the, or I call it the deal stack, right? 159 different levels or layers of the deal stack to be able to do it with no money out of pocket. And so we just kind of go through that and we go through hypotheticals and say, here's the company, your mission now is, I want you to buy it. I want you to buy it for no money out of pocket, I want you to put cash actually in your pocket and I want you to do it within the next 60 days. It's really, really a fun project. I think we're going to run a challenge on that too, that we're launching on Thursday.
Brett:
Ooh, sweet.
Roland:
So it's-
Brett:
Super cool.
Roland:
Yeah.
Brett:
So where can people, and I can link to this in the show notes as well, but where can people find more about that LEGS Intensive?
Roland:
That would be LEGS, L-E-G-S, legsintensive.com. So that's pretty easy to remember. And then, just generally, I am pretty much everywhere. Roland Frasier, anything /RolandFrasier, you'll find me. And I answer all my own messages and try to help as many people as I can.
Brett:
Yeah. Your kind of wicked fast, like shockingly fast at some of those things too. I don't know how you keep up with so many things going on at one time.
Roland:
Oh, and then of course I have Business Lunch where we're ... I've taken a lot of those lives, even the War Room ones that we were on and putting them on Business Lunch to try to help people and we're publishing more frequently right now just so while people are kind of in that ... My goal and I know why you're doing these too, our goal I believe is to give without any expectation.
Brett:
Yes.
Roland:
Particularly in this time and to be there, to show people that it's going to be okay, this has an end date and you don't want to hunker down. You want to engage, you want to pivot, you want to do all of the things now because the people that take action now are the people that are going to be the survivors and the thrivers when it's past that survival line.
Brett:
Absolutely
Roland:
So it's awesome that you're doing these things too.
Brett:
Yeah. I'm really, really, glad to be doing it, grateful to be doing it and appreciate guys like you that are inspiring everybody. So I think this will maybe be a good place to wrap up. We kind of leave with some positivity.
Roland:
Okay.
Brett:
And going back to that, that Harvard Business review article, talking about a couple of companies that took this advice in previous recessions and instead of hunkering down, they've leaned in and they accelerated. Let's maybe share those stories if you don't mind. I think one was Kellogg's and one was Toyota.
Roland:
Yeah. And that was in a Forbes article I found.
Brett:
Oh was it? Okay.
Roland:
Yeah. That was basically going back over the last hundred years through all the different recessions. And so in the great depression, the leading cereal company back then was Post and there was a kind of an upstart company called Kellogg's and Kellogg's leaned in, Post cut their spending by half. Kellogg's doubled their spending and Kellogg's launched a new product, also called rice Krispies with these little characters called snap, crackle and pop. And basically Post was never able to recover. And so Kellogg's just kind of took the lead. And then in the 70s, it was, back when they were rationing gasoline at gas stations and having the even odd days with license plates and all that, that was the first time that they published those EPA mileage estimate statements where this is what the, how many miles per gallon each of these cars get.
Roland:
And two of the winners were Volkswagen and Toyota, and Volkswagen cut back because of the recession. They were like, well, it's an oil crisis and there's not enough gasoline so we should make less cars and we should advertise less. And Toyota was like, screw that man. We're one of the most mileage efficient, we're leaning in. And Toyota was able to displace Volkswagen. And then in the 90s, it was McDonald's and Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. And when the recession hit, McDonald's cut their spending, their sales fell by 28%. Pizza Hut, Taco Bell said, this is awesome. Our biggest competitor has left the field, we're doubling down. Pizza Hut grew sales 60% and Taco Bell 40%.
Roland:
And then even in the great recession in the 2008, 2009, Amazon leaned in and was able to grow sales 28% and so like throughout history, and there's probably 50 examples of that, that are readily accessible and it's fun right now too, to watch even in terms of hiring, with Walmart hiring 150,000 people-
Brett:
Amazon's trying to do the same thing.
Roland:
And 100,000 people in Amazon and CVS is 50,000 and who is it? Domino's I think is 30,000, and 7-Eleven is 10,000. It's like that alone, just that information, getting that out to people to say, there's so much opportunity in prices and the opportunity isn't let's buy all the toilet paper and sell it for 500% more. The opportunity is let's look at that consumer matrix and say where is the demand and how do we pivot into it? How do we pivot into that demand?
Brett:
Yeah, I just absolutely love it and it's that simple mind shift to where this can be a time where you are excited and looking at, hey, this can be good. One, I can help people through this process. And two, I can grow my own business and my own future ventures and things like that. But I think just underscoring, hey, what all those companies that you just referenced, what they all saw during the recession was cheap media, lower competition, I'm going for it. We had a good message. And also I think people want to see ads. They want to buy stuff, it's comforting in tough times.
Roland:
We like to buy things, we've been trained all our lives to buy things, right? That's not, you can only bottle that up for so long before you're like, ooh.
Brett:
Pent up demand. Yeah. People have been saving a lot of money lately by being forced to be at home and they're ready to spend. So, Roland, man, this was fantastic. I know you're super busy, you're in high demand, you do Facebook lives, and all kinds of crazy stuff. But I really appreciate you taking the time and joining me.
Roland:
Thank you for having me. I'm happy to help in any way I can. And again, I really love what you're doing in helping people out in this time, it's so awesome to see so.
Brett:
Good.
Roland:
Thanks for doing that.
Brett:
Yup, absolutely. So I will link to everything, but Roland Frasier, everywhere online. Just Google him, facebook.com/, you'll find him as well. So thanks again to Roland and thank you for tuning in. As always, I would love to hear your feedback. What topics do you need right now? What information do you need? What would you like to see more of or less of? And if you feel so inclined with love, that five star review on iTunes helps more people find the show. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening. My man, it's a wrap, Roland.
Episode 112
:
Liz Germain - vidfluence
Lessons from 100 Million Organic YouTube Views with Liz Germain of VidFluence
Liz Germain is a YouTube Marketing legend.
Liz Germain is a YouTube Marketing legend. We met when I was speaking at an event for eCommerce brands at the YouTube LA Offices. Between her own fitness channel and her client’s channels, she’s helped rack up over 100 million organic video views on YouTube. Wow! In this interview, we deep dive into how she does it. From the content, she creates to the research that inspires it. We also discuss where you should start and how to take your YouTube channel to the next level.
Here’s what we cover
- Liz’s killer YouTube Influencer structure that leverages evergreen content for years of leads
- How Liz created a video and blog post for a natural birth control method that is still generating leads and sales 4 years after it was created. Compare that to an Instagram story that has a shelf life of just 24 hours.
- The 3 types of YouTube content and where you should start
- The fundamentals of building a great YouTube Channel
- Plus more
Liz Germain - CEO & Founder at Vidfluence
Super Sister Fitness YouTube Channel
Vidfluence - YouTube Marketing Made Easy!
Ready to Grow & Monetize YouTube? - Vidfluence
YouTube Marketing Mastery - Facebook Group by Liz Germain
YouTube Growth Course - Vidfluence
Mentioned in this episode:
T Harv Eker YouTube Channel
Business Lunch with Roland Frasier Podcast
“How To Do The Splits FAST - In 3 Easy Steps!” - Super Sister Fitness YouTube Video
YouTube Growth Course - Vidfluence
TubeBuddy - #1 Rated YouTube Channel Management and Optimization Toolkit
vidIQ - How to Get More View and Subscribers on YouTube
Ready to Grow & Monetize YouTube? - Vidfluence
YouTube Marketing Mastery - Facebook Group by Liz Germain
Episode 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 I am just absolutely pumped about today's content. We're talking about a topic that will seem like it would be super familiar for me, but it's actually not. We're talking about YouTube marketing, but YouTube on the organic side, I do almost all YouTube ads and so this is new to me and it's going to be a ton of fun.
Brett:
Hey, Brett Curry here. Before we dive into today's topic, I want to talk quickly about YouTube ads. People ask me all the time, what makes for a great YouTube ad? It is true, the ad is the hardest part for getting YouTube to work. Now, I love the campaign structure. I love audience targeting and I love tinkering with bids and using the smart bid algorithm and I even like budget management. I like all that behind the scenes stuff. But I've seen it time and time again where the exact same campaign structure just limps along with a mediocre video, but you get the right video with the right message that resonates with people, and that same campaign structure just takes off, it scales.
Brett:
So over the last couple of years, my team and I, we've been collecting good YouTube ads. We've been watching, we've been paying attention, looking at our own clients, looking at the numbers, finding what are ads that resonate and work on YouTube. So we started building this little guide, this little guide that we use internally and we started categorizing ads and giving them fun names like the manifesto and the UGC mashup and the have it all. So we started kind of breaking down what elements in these videos make them work. So I was speaking at a recent event and I just happened to mention that this resource existed and people sort of clamored for it.
Brett:
Everyone's like, "Hey, I want to see the guy. I want to see that resource. I want to see all these successful ads," and so that's what we've done. So we put together this resource kind of first time ever, going to share it with a broader audience. It's free. So check it out and get our list of winning YouTube ad formulas with lots of examples. Let this be your inspiration for your next killer YouTube ad. So this is a free resource. We'll link to it in the show notes to this show, but you can also go to omgcommerce.com. Click on resources and then guides and it's the YouTube ad templates and guide. Check it out and I hope it inspires your next killer YouTube ad campaign. And now back to the show.
Brett:
My guest today is Miss Liz Germain. Liz is a YouTube marketing expert. She's a rock star at this stuff. She's the founder of Vidfluence and her own YouTube channel along with her clients have racked up over 100 million organic views, that's just straight gangster. So with that Liz, welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time.
Liz:
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm super excited to talk about this and share some of the organic and SEO strategies that we have seen working for us and our clients.
Brett:
Yeah. So a quick story about how we met. So OMG, we did an event at the YouTube LA office, Google YouTube offices in LA. This was before all events were shut down and/or postponed. So during one of the Q and A sessions Liz stood up in the back and asked a really smart question. Sometimes someone goes in the microphone and ask a question, you think yeah, I don't think you thought that through before you voiced that question, but your question was like super intelligent. Then you said something about organic video views, and I was like, I don't know that. This was a really smart person.
Brett:
So anyway, we connected afterwards, found out she's a rock star with organic YouTube, and so here we are and I think will be kind of fun or maybe fun's not the right word, interesting, given the current state of things and I know with this being a podcast, you guys may be listening to this and the world is back to normal, but as at the time of recording, the world is not very normal. We're all in quarantine or lockdown or at home or whatever. So Liz, what have you seen in terms of viewership and how that's shifted and changed here in the last few weeks?
Liz:
Yeah, so it's interesting times for sure and obviously as everyone's in quarantine, I started to get really curious with people being laid off and people being at home and people looking for online information, not just for your physical health and safety, but also for mental health, emotional health, spiritual health, getting updates and news and being able to work out from home, being able to start generating income from home.
Liz:
So I started getting really curious, how is this affecting YouTube viewership? I went in and I looked at my channel when this first started hitting, like when it first started breaching in the USA and we were up 43% in viewership that week, that very first week before the quarantine was enforced. Then the following week, the channel went up to 153% on my own personal channel, which is a health and fitness channel for women, and I just checked it last night and we were at 248% increase.
Liz:
So they're continuing to climb and obviously as people are more and more locked up in quarantine, a health and fitness channel makes sense because people need home workouts, they are trying to stay healthy while they're in quarantine. And also I got curious, how is this affecting my other clients and are their views also going up? I went and looked a physical therapy client who does a lot of mobility trainings and stuff online who had just started her YouTube channel. In the past week she's now at 8.1000 more views than usual, which was awesome. She also gained 1.4000 subscribers in the last week.
Liz:
One of our clients who is a business and finance expert, Harv Eker, he's at 19.6000 more views than usual, which is insane. That's a really, really, really awesome. A self-publishing channel is up almost 2,000 more views than usual. Then a gaming addiction and mental health channel is also up 2.4000 more views than usual, and that's just a handful of some of the client results that we're seeing. Obviously all of their metrics are up across the board. Their watch time is up. Their subscribers are going up, some more than others. So it's really interesting times and I think regardless of when someone's listening to this episode, if you're still in quarantine, awesome. Take this as a sign that YouTube is the way to go.
Brett:
Absolutely.
Liz:
And also even beyond that, into the future. I mean, if this isn't a loud and clear sign that everybody is moving towards having more online assets, building up their online business, increasing their viewership, increasing their brand credibility and their visibility across the board online to provide more safety, more efficient ways to deliver information for leads and prospects, then I don't know what it is.
Brett:
Yeah. The time was right before all of this happened to build a YouTube channel, to build a following, to start cranking out great content for a lot of the reasons that we'll get into on this show. But now, I mean it's just imperative and it has been interesting. So I have been watching things on Facebook too of people were talking about their ... you're talking about fitness, people are talking about their fitness goals, right? So like, hey, I'm stuck at home may as well lose some weight and get my beach body ready if I ever get to go to the beach again and stuff like that. So that's definitely happening.
Brett:
But also you're right, the mental health, spiritual health, all those things are being talked about a lot right now as well. So on the ad side of the equation, just want to throw this out there, because I'm a YouTube ad guy, there's more inventory now than ever before because there are more eyes on YouTube. So it's also a good time to be thinking YouTube ads as well. So I want to get your background just really quickly, Liz. So you mentioned the health and fitness channel for women. If you can give us kind of a quick rundown of what that channel is, why it started, you guys have just done phenomenally well with that. So give us a story about that and then kind of talk about what you're doing now and then we'll dive into the content.
Liz:
Yeah, sure. So eight years ago my sister and I were ... my actual real life sister and I were fitness instructors and personal trainers. At the time we were living in Los Angeles, which everybody knows is a very expensive place to live on a personal trainer salary. We were working four or five different jobs and I was teaching and running all over the city to try to get to my classes and help support people. Originally we started a WordPress blog and the intention for that was because we were getting the same questions over and over from classes of up to 50, 60 people at a time.
Liz:
So we created this resource online because one of the biggest questions we were getting was, what do I eat or what did we do in this week's work out, I want to practice it at home on my own. So we started posting workouts, recipes, and just general information so that we didn't have to repeat the same thing over and over and so that people could refer back to it even when we weren't there. When we started that blog, we also opened up an Instagram account. This was back when Instagram was just getting started. We set up all the things. We set up a Facebook page. We set up a YouTube channel, but we didn't really touch it yet.
Liz:
Over time, over the next like three, four months, we started growing really, really quickly. Our email list started growing. The Instagram account started growing super-fast and we were getting women from not just LA and California area, but we started getting women from Australia, South America, Europe, even parts of the middle East. So we had the idea one day to launch a group challenge and see if ... we were hoping to get 10 women signed up for it online.
Liz:
It was like our first ever launch. We were hoping to get 10 people. We were like, "That would be so cool," and because of the power of the internet, we actually enrolled with no background in marketing, no understanding of ads, no understanding of really ever having done this before. I was 24 years old when we started this business. I had no idea what I was doing online, but we ended up getting over 350 women enrolled in that very first launch for the program.
Brett:
Wow, so you guys were totally shocked, totally floored.
Liz:
Totally floored. I mean, it was insane watching the numbers go up and up and up and this was before we'd ever done anything with paid ad campaigns. So this was all completely organically by building a community around a common cause and creating valuable content that was resonating with the audience that we were building. So that was really awesome. We made our first chunk of money and then we realized that there was a big opportunity and we said, why not us?
Liz:
So we went all in. Within the next six months, we were both able to leave all of our jobs and switch to doing this full-time, which was really, really cool. Then a couple, two, three years ago, my sister got married and she decided to leave the business to start a new business with her new husband. So that was an interesting time and transition ...
Brett:
That until you get trumped. I feel that was not cool of your sister.
Liz:
I mean we went through a moment. We got a moment for sure.
Brett:
Are you kidding me? Please.
Liz:
But prior to that, basically I had kind of seen it coming. The writing was on the wall. They were building up their own new platforms and things like that. They started a new YouTube channel. So the writing was on the wall and in the transition I had to get really smart because she was half of the leadership team obviously. She was the other person in the business that knew how to do everything in the business, right? And so losing half of the leadership in that transition, I had to get really smart about where should I be putting the effort now and where are we getting the highest ROI from all of the marketing efforts?
Liz:
Because at that point we were doing everything, was like Instagram, Facebook, we had ad campaigns running, we were doing YouTube videos every now and then, we were posting on Pinterest, we did all the things, right? With that, that's a lot of work and it's a lot of management even having assistance and having a team to support us, it was still a lot of work. So what I noticed in that transition when we did that company audit to find out where the highest ROI was coming from, I was shocked to find the results because we were posting every single day on Instagram. We were putting so much time and energy into it. We had the Facebook ad campaigns running like I said.
Liz:
What I found shocked me because most of the revenue that was not just for that year but the entirety of the business was coming from YouTube and Pinterest. Those were the platforms that we kind of just like brushed off. We were solely focused on Facebook and Instagram and just really going all in with that, and when I actually sat down and crunched the numbers, YouTube and Pinterest had a higher return on investment. They had higher conversion rates for us and basically took the least amount of time for us to produce the content for us. I was like, "Oh my God, why didn't we know this before? We should have learnt this three years ago." And the reason for it is because YouTube and Pinterest specifically are search engine based. So the way I see it and the way that I've experienced it ...
Brett:
A good asset will build over time rather than just being a flush in the pan, yeah.
Liz:
Exactly, you do the work once and as long as it's good and it's targeted and it's converting, it will pay off forever, pretty much. So yeah, at that point I transitioned all the efforts over into just focusing on YouTube and for the next year I just did YouTube, turned it into an affiliate network where we started promoting other influencers instead of just having me do it all, which is really awesome because those still are paying us, the channel is still roaring. It was an interesting transition.
Liz:
By that point I was kind of like over the health and fitness industry in general. I mean, I've been in that business for five, almost six years and so I took some time off because now everything that we've done has been automated for the most part.
Brett:
That's awesome.
Liz:
I'm a really big fan of video marketing automation and so took some time off, traveled around and I was really waiting for the next thing that I was supposed to do, and in that time off a bunch of people asked me, because I was like traveling all over the world, this was before COVID-19 obviously. But I was traveling all over the world and had probably two dozen people ask me over that period of time, what do you do? How are you traveling? How are you doing all this cool stuff? My answer was YouTube. YouTube and video marketing automation. The follow up question to that is, well how do you monetize YouTube? How did you do that?
Liz:
It was a very clear sign to me like this is a market need and this is something that people don't understand that there's a huge opportunity there by creating evergreen video content from an organic perspective, you're essentially creating the equity. You are basically building assets for your company and if you do it right, it works on autopilot, which is super, super cool.
Brett:
Yeah. I love this topic so much and you were sharing your stats. You shared it once we hit record, but you were also talking to me before we hit record and your channel just to get anything that I missed, is a super sister fitness, which is awesome channel. But you said you've gained what, like 10, 15,000 subscribers, something crazy like that, and maybe I may be exaggerated, but you've gained thousands of subscribers in the last few weeks, right? Even though you're not shooting new content at this point?
Liz:
Yeah. I haven't uploaded a new video over there for at least eight months, which was shocking, but yeah, this month I think it wasn't 10K but it was a few, it was like two or 3000 new subscribers.
Brett:
Exactly.
Liz:
That's pretty cool. We're at least getting one or 2000 subscribers every month without even touching it, but right now there is definitely a spike .
Brett:
It's amazing. So I was listening to a podcast recently, it was actually Roland Frasier's podcast called Business Lunch, which I highly recommend, and Josh Snow was on it. He's the founder of Snow Teeth Whitening. So the question came up, if you're doing influencer marketing and you can only pick one way to do influencer marketing, what would you choose? He said, he didn't hesitate. He said, "Oh, YouTube for sure, because you have an influencer create a YouTube ad endorsing you, and then it just like builds and grows over time and it's evergreen and it can be super valuable where you do an Instagram story or something which they do all of it, but you do an Instagram story or something, it's just a quick shout out and it's gone within 24 hours type of thing."
Brett:
So with the idea that we're talking to an eCommerce audience, right? Let's talk about how you've used influencer marketing and how you would recommend eCommerce companies use influencer marketing. So kind of walk us through that. Maybe give us some examples. How do you leverage influencer marketing with YouTube? What does that look like?
Liz:
Yeah, this is a great question because that was one of our specialties in that business. At least a third of our revenue from the company was coming in through brand deals and sponsorships specifically with usually some sort of an eCommerce product or a women's lifestyle type of product. What I usually recommend is what we learned over the five years that we were doing brand deals and sponsorships with companies like that, and we got to a point where ... I mean we're like, we're looking at all the analytics from the Instagram posts, from the Facebook posts, from the Pinterest shares, from the blog posts, from the emails that we send out and from the YouTube videos that we were creating or creating for these companies.
Liz:
What we started to notice that for the first year was that the ones that performed the best long term were the YouTube videos and the reason why is because we would SEO them and we would make them compelling for people in our audience to watch. That's a very big difference from just posting a 24-hour post on Instagram. A lot of those too, it's hard to quantify because people aren't necessarily there to learn or to solve the problems that they're having or the challenges they're facing in their life. YouTube is very different.
Liz:
So what we ended up starting to recommend for partners that wanted to work with us is YouTube and embedding a YouTube video into the blog post was the base package. That's where we started because we knew that it was going to get them the best results and obviously when we win they win and the audience wins. So what we ended up recommending is finding a topic that not only we could target for an SEO based keyword strategy but also provide that compelling reason to watch.
Liz:
The reason that YouTube is so different than time-bound platforms like Facebook and Instagram is because it's evergreen and it stays up there forever. I'll give you an example. We did one brand deal with a natural non-hormonal birth control company. It was like a little app and comes with good temperature because women can read their temperatures instead of taking hormonal birth control pills and we support that. We support being educated around your fertility and your natural cycles, and so we partnered up with this company, and this was four years ago, we created a video called the side ...
Liz:
So here's the keyword formula for it. If you're going to do a brand deal or some sort of a sponsored video on YouTube, you want to have a target keyword in the beginning of the title and then a compelling reason to watch, that's the formula. So you have your target keyword-
Brett:
Nice.
Liz:
... compelling reason to watch. So the video title is called side effects of birth control. That was our target keyword and the compelling reason to watch was every woman needs to watch this.
Brett:
Nice.
Liz:
So obviously that worked very, very well. That was over four years ago and they're still generating leads from an organic perspective. So I think that was like a six or $7,000 deal to produce the video, they're still getting a payoff from it four years later. It reached over 94,000 views and every single month they're still generating leads from that sponsored video. So what we also did was then we took that video, embedded it onto our blog in a permanent blog post that we also SEO-ed and then added additional features to that, like a Pinterest infographic. We basically created a whole spread for them. So it's also ranking on Pinterest as well. So basically ...
Brett:
So that infographic is ranking on Pinterest as well?
Liz:
Yeah, so that went viral. It got shared a ton of times. So it creates this cyclone of organic traffic that continues to build up over time. Sometimes it was challenging to communicate this to people, especially in eComm space, they were just looking for a shout out on Instagram or an Instagram story where we promoted an affiliate link or something like that. But first of all, the quality of that is very, very low. The conversion on that is also a very, very low, at least that's what we saw.
Liz:
These people don't want to be spammed with affiliate links. The thing about affiliate links too like a 10% off or 20% off with XYZ code, it's easy for the eComm company to track because based on code usage and whatever, they can see how many people actually use the code. However, the influencer on those time-bound platforms like Facebook and Instagram, they have to continually promote it, so they would have to continually basically spam their audience with that link from.
Liz:
YouTube is not like that at all. You do the work once and you have the ability to create an educational piece, so it's content marketing by educating and providing value beyond just saying, "Hey, go buy this product and save 20% off." It's a very different animal and like I said, it has the capacity to create a cyclone of long term evergreen organic traffic for your business.
Brett:
So this is fantastic. I want to break this down a little bit because I don't think most people are considering YouTube this way. So you mentioned you would SEO the videos, right? And then you'd SEO the blog post as well, but let's talk about the video first. What do you mean by that and why do we SEO a video? And by the way, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, I think most people know that, but just in case you're scratching your head SEO, Search Engine Optimization.
Liz:
Yeah, totally. So Google owns YouTube. Google is the largest search engine in the world and YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. It's also the second most visited site in the world. So when we're talking about SEO in a video, we're talking about doing keyword research to find keywords that have high search volume and relatively low competition that you have a chance to rank your videos on the search engine platform.
Liz:
The cool part about YouTube too is because it's owned by Google if you do a really good job of ranking your videos on YouTube, you'll also end up taking over those top video slots in Google as well and on Google, there's that extra videos tab too and they prioritize YouTube videos there obviously because it's their partner company that they own. So when we're talking about SEO-ing a video specifically, we need to identify those high traffic keywords that have low enough competition that you stand a chance to rank on the first page of YouTube search results.
Liz:
There's a couple of different places that you need to make sure that you're putting your keyword in that really, really matter. Number one is in the title. So you want to get it as close to the beginning of the title as possible. And remember, the title formula is target keyword plus compelling reason to watch. That's it. Don't over complicate it. Don't make it too fancy. Just keep it simple.
Brett:
I love that. I've never heard it explained that way, but it makes all the sense in the world because also part of Google's and part of YouTube's ranking arithmetic is viewership, right? And how many people actually click something to view it and how long they view it and stuff like that, so that compelling reason to view, that's a really important part of that formula.
Liz:
Yeah, totally. Another video that we had on YouTube went totally viral, 6.2 million organic views is how to do the splits fast in three easy steps. So how to do the split was target keyword, fast in three easy steps, that's what people want to know, right? They want it easy, they want it fast, they want to know. So we've used that formula over and over and over again. The second place where keywords really matter is in your description. So the first two to three lines of your YouTube video description are, you need to have your target keyword again in that first sentence, and then a couple of two or three relevant related keywords within that.
Liz:
YouTube truncates, I think it's after 150 characters or something of the video description. So anything below that or anything that they need to click to show more, you don't want to necessarily have all of the stuff down there. You want to get it up at the top so that it can categorize, because YouTube's job organically is to be able to identify what video content needs to go where within the archives, right? And then be able to call upon it easily when somebody is searching for that in a query.
Liz:
So yeah, you want to make sure you have your target keyword in your video description as well with a couple of variations, but don't do keyword stuffing, which is basically sounding like a robot and just copy pasting a bunch of keywords in there, make it sound still human, and make sure especially for eComm companies that you're including whatever links or promotions that you have above that fold. You don't want that to be buried in the show more either.
Liz:
Then the last place that they ... Well, there's actually two more places they especially matter is in the tags of the videos. So you want that target keyword right in the beginning of the tags and then whatever relevant variations there are. Again, don't keyword stuff because you get penalized for that. Then last but not least, saying your target keyword within the first five seconds of your hook because YouTube can hear what your videos are saying.
Brett:
YouTube is transcribing your videos, right? And they're looking at the actual spoken content of the video.
Liz:
Right, exactly. So those are the four main places that keywords matter. Obviously there's a bunch of other stuff like metadata and stuff when you're uploading the video, but we don't need to get into that. It's a little techie and a little nerdy.
Brett:
Yeah. So let's talk about this and just a little bit of my background. I mentioned on the show before, but we used to do a ton of SEOs. We actually started as an SEO company but rarely if ever doing anything with YouTube and I haven't touched SEO in quite a while now, but what are your recommendations for keyword research? So you're trying to identify what are these high volume keywords and specifically high volume keywords on YouTube.
Brett:
I think it's really important to underscore, and you mentioned it's second most popular search engine, but that's what people do when they go to YouTube. They go to YouTube and they discover videos by typing in queries. Occasionally you're going to watch the recommended videos and stuff like that, but still it's largely driven by my search queries. What tools, what are you using for keyword research and how do you identify those high volume, low competition keywords?
Liz:
Yeah, so we have a step by step process that's outlined in our YouTube growth course. So we won't have time to go into all the nitty gritty things, not today, but my recommendations are, and this is actually, I've been wondering about this for the last year at least. So at your event, I was really pleased to hear the Google guy that you had there when I got to ask like, "Hey, what's the accuracy of the YouTube search tools that we're using? Are those accurate?" He basically confirmed what I was already thinking is that YouTube doesn't share its search metrics with anybody, and that's something that a lot of YouTube organic and SEO people are not talking about, but I think it's really important to understand.
Liz:
So the keyword tools that I'm about to recommend just know that if the numbers aren't matching up, because this is a question we used to get all the time, if the numbers aren't matching up, is because those keywords tools are pulling data from aggregate sites not directly from YouTube itself. So what we ended up having to do is we're looking at estimated averages over a period of time, usually it's taken from the last 12 months. So they're not always great for up-to-date information.
Liz:
If you're looking for like if there's something happening in the world, a world event or something happening in your industry, a big tent pole event or a conference coming up and you want to create a video around that organically, you're better off using trends.google.com to get up-to-date accurate information around searches. But when you are just generally putting together your YouTube organic strategy, there are three keyword plugins that I use all the time and highly recommend. Number one and my favorite one is TubeBuddy. So T-U-B-E-B-U-D-D-Y. The second one that we use all the time is BidIQ, and the third one is called Keywords Everywhere. Now, Keywords Everywhere applies to the whole internet, so it's not just YouTube specific, but those first two are YouTube specific.
Brett:
Awesome, and we'll link to those in the show notes. We'll link to your course as well, which we'll talk about in a minute which I highly recommend people check out. So this has just been phenomenal so far. I want to dive in. When you and I were kind of prepping for this show, you were teaching me about three types of content to create on YouTube. So I think this is a large question that people have. I get it that, hey, you want to find content that's related to a keyword that's getting some volume, but not super competitive and all that. But what are the three types of content, and kind of walk us through what those could look like?
Liz:
Yes, so first let me give you a quick background on where this idea comes from. It doesn't come from me directly, but we use this practice all the time and this is what we recommend in our programs and working with our clients. This information comes straight from YouTube. A couple of years ago, I won something called the YouTube Next Step contest for that health and fitness channel, which is basically a way that YouTube ...
Brett:
Nice.
Liz:
... gives back to its creators.
Brett:
Is that like an Oscar? Is that almost as prestigious as an Oscar?
Liz:
Well, I would say the YouTube Oscar ...
Brett:
You have to give an acceptance speech or anything?
Liz:
Those were like the creator awards, but this is a contest that anyone over, I believe it's 10 case subscribers can apply for and it's a way of you to ...
Brett:
That is a lead status, anything over 10,000 subscribers, that is definitely, what? Top couple percent of YouTubers I would assume.
Liz:
Oh, really?
Brett:
I don't know. I just made that up on the spot. It sounds impressive. Anyway it's cool, we'll just leave it ...
Liz:
You've made it. If you're over 10K.
Brett:
Exactly, yeah.
Liz:
Up there, you're done. So yeah. As part of winning that contest, I got to go into the YouTube space in Los Angeles right across the street from where we met. They basically took us through an accelerated film school for the week called Creator Camp and we also got to work with a YouTube channel manager who was a Google employee as well as the YouTube employee for an entire year. Through that year they taught us all the analytics and stuff we needed to look for, how the search engines work.
Liz:
Part of what we learned there was that they did, I think the year prior they had done a cross section analysis of the fastest growing and highest engaged YouTube channels that ever were. They were looking and studying the channels and the types of content they were putting out to figure out and identify patterns and that's where this concept comes from. So we just want to be really clear. There are three types of videos that they found on these fastest growing highest engaged channels.
Liz:
Number one is, what most people do when they start out on the YouTube organic side is called hub content, like the hub of a wheel. This is what most people do when they are repurposing their podcast episodes or they're re-purposing Facebook lives and just uploading content that was made for another platform. It's not to say you shouldn't do that, but when you are brand new and if you're trying to grow your channel organically, we don't recommend starting with hub content. But I'm going to give you a little bit of background about, okay, what is that kind of content besides just podcasts and Facebook lives?
Liz:
Hub content is essentially, if you were to think about your YouTube channel as having a TV show and you were having a new episode come out every week, that's your hub content. It's like what your known for, is the meat and potatoes of your channel but you don't want to start there unless your somebody like a Marie Forleo or Brendon Burchard who already has an audience, who already has influence. The reason why is because it's not very searchable and it's not discoverable and if people don't already know, like and trust you and love your content, your hub content can actually end up hurting your watch time and watch time is super, super important on YouTube when it comes to organic rankings.
Liz:
So the second type of video and then we're going to get into the third and best type of video content that you should have, but before we go there, the second type is hero content. So this is like I was asking you guys like you talk about hero ads all the time and I'm like, are you talking about the same type of hero organic content that we talk about? So hero content is really only designed to be produced and published on your channel one or two times per year.
Liz:
We think about these as like if your hub content is how people who already know you get to continue to interact with you, hero content is what makes them become absolute raving lifetime fans. Typically, it's content that is designed to create and spark an emotional reaction within them. A lot of times it will be more polarized type of content. Taking a stance on something or providing an antagonist journey that the viewer can relate to and really identify with. These hero type videos often have the propensity to go very viral. They use a lot more story boarding and the antagonist journey within them. But again, these are only designed to be once or twice a year. Typically, put a little bit of higher budget into it, hire a professional video production team and really create the story, the mission for why your company is doing what it's doing, right?
Brett:
Did you guys do something like that for Super Sisters’ Fitness?
Liz:
Yeah, so we produced a story, a hero piece that was called Why Your Health Matters and I believe it was like a five or six-minute video. The first half of the video was like super like sad piano music. When you're using the hook for a video like this, what we noticed is the videos that went totally viral, they always started with the same three things. We studied Jay Shetty and Prince EA and a bunch of these other big viral storyteller type creators, and what we found is that starting the video with a hook on a hero piece, they always started with either an interesting question, a compelling fact or a bold statement. So we started our hero piece called Why Health Matters with a stat about heart disease and how it kills more people in the United States than anything else.
Brett:
Interesting. So did you still, with this hero piece, just really quick, did you still put a keyword in the front, we're you still thinking keyword with this or this was not keyword based? Okay.
Liz:
Hero videos are not keyword based. They're the story and the mission of your company.
Brett:
Yup.
Liz:
So when we shared that startling talk, I think it was something like every five seconds somebody in the world has a heart attack and when I was in third grade, one of those people was my dad because we do have a history of it, that's why we started our company.
Brett:
Really? Crazy.
Liz:
Yeah.
Brett:
That's that emotional story that people watch and they're like, wow, they connect with you on a deeper level than they ever did before.
Liz:
Totally. They got to see like who is this? This isn't just another fitness company out there. We have a real reason, a real vision for transforming this issue in our country, right? So it goes through, some of the emotional aspects of it and the charge polarized content that people really got behind. We went into the prescription drug industry, we went into our healthcare system, we touched on some really, really polarized topics. Then midway through the video transition into hope and vision.
Liz:
So then it's like, here's what we're doing. Here's how we can start to shift this, not just for us, but for our kids and for the future generations and all of this and went into health and fitness and exercise and eating right and being the example for your community and that video went absolutely bananas, especially on Facebook. We posted it natively on Facebook and it hit over a million views organically on Facebook alone because people were commenting on it, sharing it, they could identify with it. So we got to create raving fans with that video, and that was the hero video.
Liz:
But really you only need to produce those once or twice a year. That's the general recommendation of best practice. Don't spend all your time doing hero videos because even though they have the propensity to go viral because they have the identity piece in it, it's not always a guarantee this thing with the SEO and keywords are. So that brings us to the last and final type of content that you need. This is where every YouTube channel should start if they want to grow organically and take advantage of the search engine capabilities of YouTube, and that is help content.
Liz:
So help content is where everyone should start. You want to have as much help content as you can, and this is where you can really break down, look at the data and identify those keywords to bring in that organic traffic. Well, we typically recommend for new channels that have a goal to bring in organic traffic is to develop anywhere from five to 10 help videos before you do anything else, and those should all be keyword researched ...
Brett:
Meaning create five or 10 help videos before you launch your channel, or just five help videos before you look at hub or hero content?
Liz:
Five help videos before you do any hub or hero content.
Brett:
Got it, okay.
Liz:
That way you'll have a ... because think of it this way too. If you have a library of help content that's designed for your target viewer customer, when they land on your channel, you only get one chance to make a first impression. So if they land on your channel and these are intelligently designed strategic videos that are not only pulling in organic traffic, no matter where somebody lands on your channel from, if they see a bunch of helpful content that's solving their problems and challenges, the likelihood that they're going to subscribe goes way up as well.
Liz:
So help content is the bulk of what we help support people in figuring out as far as planning the strategy, deciding what your channel pillars are going to be, breaking those down and then doing the individual keyword research to figure out what videos you need to go produce, and then being able to train teams and stuff like that if people have teams, we help support training teams so that you don't have to hire a full time YouTube expert. So help content is by far the best. That's where everybody should start. You can post help content as often as you want, but definitely start there. Help content is once a week posting once people already know who you are, it's a way to connect with your audience and continue to provide value, and then hero content really hits the ball out of the park and creates raving fans for life.
Brett:
It's amazing. So we got hub, hero, and help content, start with help content, just phenomenal stuff. As we kind of wrap up this, there's a few things I want to ask and then we'll talk about how people can connect with you and harness your genius. What are some of the misconceptions or the mistakes that people make that are common as they're trying to get started with YouTube organic that you would want to help them avoid?
Liz:
I would say the biggest misconception is that it's going to be an overnight success. YouTube organic is really not ... like if you want overnight success, do YouTube ads, hands down. You'll be able to get the data faster. You can see if it's converting faster, but once you're to the point in your business where you're ready to transition and start building assets for the business that work on autopilot without actually requiring an ad budget behind it, because we all know you turn the ad budget off, the traffic goes away.
Brett:
Just stop, yep for sure.
Liz:
I recommend that every business has at least a baseline organic strategy just to provide security for the business if and when your ad accounts get shut down or something changes in the platform or your ad budgets shift or something stops converting. I recommend that every business have that foundation of organic strategy and be able to pull in traffic organically, right? So not depending on ads, however, if you want fast results, you want quick data, YouTube ads is great for that. And also I would say the biggest misconception is that this organic strategy and SEO is going to basically produce wild results overnight. It doesn't, it can sometimes, but don't put all your eggs in that basket. YouTube organic and SEO strategies are more when you're to the point in your company where you want to build assets.
Brett:
I love that, and I think yeah, don't expect that your first video or your second video or maybe even your 10th video is going to be a viral success. Maybe none of them will be viral. If you're really good at creating help content, they may be each moderately successful but added together can be really impactful for your business and I 100% agree with your assessment. I love ads. I like the control and the scalability and the immediate feedback that we get by running ads. But you shut those ads off and it's over, right? It's done.
Brett:
Where if you're building these ongoing assets, like the example you gave with the natural birth control, four years in and they're still getting a ton of leads because of that work that you did, that's remarkable. We all should put together a plan and a strategy to try to harness that for sure. So I've been very motivated by you as we had our prep call and then this call, like I got to get after, man, I actually enjoy creating content, but OMG, we got to get after it on the organic YouTube site because we have been guilty of potentially just taking a podcast and throwing it up on YouTube. I've been kind of lazy man, with our YouTube strategy. So we're going to get after it, but really good stuff, Liz.
Brett:
For those that are listening and say, okay, I've got to hear more of Liz's tips and insights, where can they connect with you? And maybe you have some courses or some guides, so talk about that. Then what if someone just says, "I just want to hire Liz to like come and help me." Maybe you're not for hire right now, but let us know how can we connect more with you?
Liz:
Yeah, so one of the best places to start if you're interested in growing YouTube on the organic side is to go to YouTube growthhacks.com. We put together a five step process for making sure that you're set up for success from the organic perspective. Another thing that I would love to mention here is that we have a Facebook group called YouTube Marketing Mastery. It's a free group, open to anybody who is interested in growing and monetizing their YouTube channel. You can find that at facebook.com/groups/youtubevips. Last but not least, if you're interested in the YouTube growth course, you can check that out at gethelpwithyoutube.com.
Liz:
If you want to reach out directly to me, the best place to do that is inside that Facebook group. We can hop on a quick 15-minute call and talk about what's happening with your channel, what your goals are, what your challenges are, and you'll be able to walk away with a customized strategy plan for you to move forward and figure out what the best way is to whether we work together, whether you do a channel audit, whether you take our 90 day consulting program. We have many, many different options that people can work with us, and I'm excited to connect with you all.
Brett:
Awesome, Liz Germain, ladies and gentlemen, that was awesome. And we will link to everything in the show notes, so if you were not taking notes or if you're driving and you can't remember all that, check it out at omgcommerce.com or ecommerceevolution.com. We'll have the links to all of Liz's resources in the Facebook group and all of that. But man, that was straight fire Liz. We appreciate the time. Thanks for taking your quarantine time and spending it here, we so greatly appreciate it.
Liz:
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.
Brett:
Yup. Awesome. Tons of fun. So again, check out the resources online, and we would love to hear from you. We'd love to hear feedback from you, what you'd like to hear more of, what you'd like to hear less of. If you feel so inclined, we would love that review on iTunes and with that, until next time, thank you for listening.
Episode 1
:
Ezra Firestone - Smart Marketer
Creating eCommerce Landing Pages that Convert
In today’s episode, we talk about Ezra’s initial claim to fame: landing pages.
Today’s guest is Ezra Firestone. Ezra is the founder and CEO of Smart Marketer, and a serial entrepreneur with over $18 Million in projected revenue from just two of his eCommerce lines. He is truly a wizard when it comes to traffic generation, email marketing, and really anything eCommerce related.
In today’s episode, we talk about Ezra’s initial claim to fame: landing pages. We’ll spend most of our time talking about the ‘money pages’ on your site: product detail pages. Every conversion path passes through these pages, making them crucial to optimizing conversions. Ezra will share some of his favorite layouts, must-have elements, mistakes to avoid, as well as companies to learn from.
Mentioned in this Episode:
zipify.com
Boom by Cindy Joseph
BeeFriendly Skincare
Connect with Ezra Firestone:
facebook.com/MeetEzra
twitter.com/ezrafirestone
smartmarketer.com
help@smartmarketer.com
Episode 2
:
Russ Henneberry - Digital Marketer
Creating Impactful Content Marketing for eCommerce
In today’s episode, we talk about content marketing for eCommerce.
Today’s guest is Russ Henneberry. Russ is a content marketing rockstar who has worked with the likes of Neil Patel & Crazy Egg, Salesforce.com, Network Solutions, and many others. He is the Editorial Director for Digital Marketer, the company behind the ever-popular Traffic and Conversion Summit. Russ is also author of the new book “Digital Marketing for Dummies”, which he wrote alongside digital marketing superstar Ryan Deiss.
In today’s episode, we talk about content marketing for eCommerce. A lot of merchants just flat get this wrong, and Russ digs into important topics like frequency, strategy, and how to create content that actually helps with conversion.
Mentioned in this Episode:
salesforce.com
Digital Marketing for Dummies
nordstrom.com
vanwinkles.com
Digitalmarketer.com
Perpetual Traffic with Molly Pittman, Keith Krance and Ralph Burns
Traffic & Conversion Summit
Connect with Russ Henneberry:
digitalmarketer.com/blog
digitalmarketer.com/author/russ-henneberry
linkedin.com/in/russhenneberry
twitter.com/russhenneberry
Episode 3
:
Frederick Vallaeys - Optmyzr
Success with Adwords and Google Shopping
Whether you are a seasoned Adwords veteran or you hire an agency to handle your campaigns, expect to gain some insights from this interview.
Today’s guest is Frederick Vallaeys. Frederick was one of the first 500 employees at Google. He spent 10 years working on Adwords, was part of the original quality score team, and helped small businesses all over the country with their Adwords accounts as an “Adwords evangelist”. Frederick has since co-founded the Adwords tool Optmyzr, a robust tool that makes working with Adwords easier by providing unique data insights, one-click optimizations, and advanced reporting. Frederick is also one of the top speakers in the paid search and adwords space.
In today’s episode, we get into some fun stories about the early days with Google, mistakes merchants make with Adwords, Google Shopping strategies, little known features of Adwords that you or your agency should be using, and more. Whether you are a seasoned Adwords veteran or you hire an agency to handle your campaigns, you can expect to gain some insights from today’s interview.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Google Adwords
Optmyzr.com
Search Engine Land
Connect with Frederick Vallaeys:
twitter.com/siliconVallaeys
Episode 4
:
Mike Ugino - Sellbrite
Success with Marketplaces and Multichannel Selling
In this episode, we talk about the fast-growing world of online marketplaces.
Today’s guest is Mike Ugino. Mike is the Co-Founder and CMO at Sellbrite, an L.A. based multi-channel listing and inventory management platform. Prior to Sellbrite, Mike was an IR300 Merchant responsible for top and bottom line growth across a portfolio of 20 websites. With a background in product marketing, with a focus on ecommerce and branding, Ugino is one of the top minds in online marketplace selling.
In today’s episode, we talk about the fast growing world of online marketplaces. We talk about selling on giants like Amazon, Walmart.com, Jet.com, and some you may not expect. We talk pros and cons of marketplace selling, fulfillment by Amazon, the importance of diversification, and how to grow your brand in a sustainable way. If you sell products online, if you’ve been thinking about selling on Amazon, Walmart, Jet, or other marketplaces, this episode will provide valuable insight.
Mentioned in this Episode:
sellbrite.com
amazon.com
walmart.com
jet.com
Connect with Mike Ugino:
sellbrite.com/blog/author/mike/
linkedin.com/in/mikeugino
twitter.com/michaelugino
facebook.com/michael.ugino
Episode 5
:
Zak Stambor - Internet Retailer
The IR HOT 100 List
In today’s episode, we highlight our 10 favorite e-commerce companies from the IR Hot 100 list.
Today’s guest is Zak Stambor. Zak is the Managing Editor at Vertical Web Media, the largest publisher in the e-commerce field, and famed founders of the ever-popular Internet Retailer magazine. Zak has a large role in putting out one of the most widely celebrated editions of IR Magazine: the IR Hot 100.
In today’s episode, we highlight our 10 favorite e-commerce companies from the IR Hot 100 list. We talk about what makes these companies stand out, covering everything from business models to innovative marketing strategies. Get insight into growing trends in e-commerce, discover companies to watch and learn from, and enjoy a bonus 11th company spotlight!
Mentioned in this Episode:
awaytravel.com
boxed.com
crutchfield.com
crownandcaliber.com
purplecarrot.com
footcardigan.com
amazon.com
kidbox.com
herschelsupply.com
nike.com
blacksocks.com
Connect with Zak Stambor:
twitter.com/ZakStamborIR
zak@verticalwebmedia.com
Episode 6
:
Kurt Elster - Ethercycle
Mastering Conversion Rate Optimization
In today’s episode, we talk about Conversion Rate Optimization.
Today’s guest is Kurt Elster. Kurt is a conversion rate optimization expert, and the Senior Ecommerce Consultant with CRO Company Ethercycle. He is also an accomplished speaker, the host of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, and co-author of Ecommerce Bootcamp. Kurt has worked with brands such as Verizon, NFL, Hilton, Everest Bands, and Shopify.
In today’s episode, we talk about Conversion Rate Optimization. We get into where to begin with CRO, design mistakes, things to think about for mobile, and we even look at a couple of the clients Kurt has worked with and the difference Conversion Rate Optimization made for their business. If you have a website of any kind, especially an ecommerce store, this episode is a virtual gold mine.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Ethercycle.com
Shopify.com
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
TheUserIsDrunk.com
Paypal.com
Amazon.com
EverestBands.com
MontaWatch.com
RecycledFireFighter.com
Ecommerce Bootcamp (Save 40% with Coupon Code: BRETT)
Ethercycle Resources
Connect with Kurt Elster:
Sign up for Kurt’s Newsletter and reply to his emails!
LinkedIn.com/KurtElster
Twitter.com/KurtInc
Medium.com/@KurtElster
Episode 7
:
Brett Curry - OMG Commerce
Getting the Right Inputs
This episode is about getting the right information to feed your brain and better yourself.
“The difference between who you are now and who you are five years from now, comes down to the people you meet and the books you read.”
– Charlie “Tremendous” Jones
“The book you don’t read won’t help.” – Jim Rohn
This episode is about getting the right information to feed your brain and better yourself. Brett talks about some of his favorite podcasts and his favorite books, and why you should be monitoring your inputs.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Podcasts:
Ecommerce Fuel – Andrew Youderian
Ecommerce Influence – Austin Brawner & Greg Vayner
Nerd Marketing – Drew Sanocki
The Jason & Scott Show – Jason Goldberg (Razorfish) & Scott Wengo (Channel Advisor)
The Tim Ferriss Show – Tim Ferriss
Books:
Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday
Amazon: The Everything Store by Brad Stone
Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
In The Plex by Steven Levy
How Google Works by Eric Schmidt & Johnathan Rosenberg
Made To Stick by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller of StoryBrand
Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
Love Does by Bob Goff
Connect with Brett Curry:
twitter.com/brettcurry
via omgcommerce.com
Episode 8
:
Chris Brewer - OMG Commerce
Traffic and Conversion 2017 Takeaways
Chris is my long time business partner and a veritable powerhouse of knowledge and experience when it comes to sales and marketing.
Today’s guest is Chris Brewer. Chris is my long time business partner at OMG Commerce, and a veritable powerhouse of knowledge and experience when it comes to sales and marketing. Always looking for new ways to succeed and grow the agency, Chris has played a huge role in making OMG Commerce the agency it is today.
Today’s episode was recorded on location from the 2017 Traffic and Conversion Summit in San Diego. With so many great insights from all of so many great speakers, we chose to highlight our top 10 takeaways from the whole event. Whether you have an ecommerce store, an agency, or if you’re a solo-preneur these takeaways will provide you with valuable ways to succeed.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Traffic & Conversion Summit 2017
Facebook
Facebook Messenger
Mike Rhodes
Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords
Ezra Firestone
Checklist Manifesto
Roland Frasier
Austin Brawner
Drew Sanocki
Klaviyo
Connect with Chris Brewer:
via OMG Commerce
Linkedin.com/in/momarketer
Facebook.com/momarketer
Twitter.com/momarketer
Episode 9
:
Justin Christianson - Conversion Fanatics
How to See an 1,892% lift in Conversions with A/B Testing
Today’s guest is Justin Christianson. Justin is President and Co-Founder of Conversion Fanatics.
Today’s guest is Justin Christianson. Justin is President and Co-Founder of Conversion Fanatics, a top rated Conversion Rate Optimization company. Justin is also author of the best selling book “Conversion Fanatic: How to Double Your Customers, Sales and Profits with A/B Testing”. He also hosts the CMO Roundtable podcast.
In today’s episode, we discuss the differences between split testing vs multivariate testing, little tweaks that can make a big difference, great split testing tools to use, common mistakes ecommerce sites make that lower their conversion rate, and look at a couple of case studies (one that led to an 1,892% boost in conversions!). Split testing is a must in marketing, and Justin shares some insight that could lead to more conversions for you.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Conversion Fanatics
CMO Roundtable
Conversion Fanatic: How to Double Your Conversions, Sales, and Profits with A/B Testing
HotJar
Crazy Egg
TruConversion
Optimizely
Convert.com
VWO (Visual Website Optimizer)
Connect with Justin Christianson:
ConversionFanatics.com
Clyxo.com/justinchristianson
Episode 10
:
Brett Curry - OMG Commerce
Shoppable TrueView: Combining Google Shopping With YouTube Ads
Brett answers several frequently asked questions about this marketing platform.
Today’s episode is about Shoppable Trueview, the dynamic of Google Shopping and YouTube video ads. In this solo episode of eCommerce Evolution, Brett answers several frequently asked questions about this marketing platform including:
• The 5 best remarketing audiences to target,
• How to structure your campaigns
• What Return on Ad Spend and CPA performance should you expect
• How to use Shoppable TrueView ads for top of funnel targeting,
• 5 Keys to an effective video ad
• & more!
If you’re new to Shoppable Trueview ads, or if you’re using them already, this episode can help answer your questions and help you get the most from your campaigns.
Mentioned in this Episode:
YouTube.com
Boom! By Cindy Joseph
Connect with Brett Curry:
twitter.com/brettcurry
via omgcommerce.com
Episode 11
:
Austin Brawner - eCommerce Influence Podcast
Uncovering Hidden Profits using Email Marketing & Automated Marketing
Austin is the host of the Ecommerce Influence podcast and the Chief Fixer at Brand Growth Experts.
Today’s guest is Austin Brawner. Austin is the host of the Ecommerce Influence podcast and the Chief Fixer at Brand Growth Experts. Austin is a true expert at building marketing automation and triggered email marketing campaigns that deliver results.
On this episode we cover some really important topics including:
- 3 metrics to help you turn interested visitors into loyal customers
- The difference between automated marketing and traditional email marketing
- The top triggered email sequences every eCommerce store owner needs
- Identifying and targeting the top 20% of your top 20% (your whales)
- Customer life cycle marketing
- Top email mistakes
- & much more!
Mentioned in this Episode:
Stamped.io
Justuno
Really Good Emails
Brand Growth Experts
Ecommerce Influence
Connect with Austin Brawner:
Brand Growth Experts Intensive
Ecommerce Influence
Episode 12
:
Mike Rhodes - WebSavvy & AgencySavvy
Cracking the Google Display Network Code
This podcast reveals the method behind the madness that produces GDN campaigns that work and scale.
When you talk to eCommerce merchants about the Google Display Network (GDN) or display ads, in general, they usually fall into one of 3 camps:
1. They feel it’s only effective as a remarketing vehicle.
2. They feel like people are more likely to get struck by lightning than click a display ad (had a guy say that to me once).
3. They’re intrigued but apprehensive because they’ve heard so many display campaign horror stories.
I’ve always been in camp 3. Very intrigued and knowing it could work, but also knowing that the road to success with display ads (outside of remarketing) is more than a little bit tricky.
I first met Mike when we both spoke at Traffic & Conversion Summit in San Diego this March. Mike has officially cracked the code for creating profitable GDN campaigns. He is the co-author of The Ultimate Guide to AdWords and the owner of AgencySavvy.com. He’s been actively managing AdWords campaigns since 2004. Mike is the real deal as you will soon witness. This podcast reveals the method behind the madness that produces GDN campaigns that work and scale.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Google Display Network (GDN)
The Display Grid
The Display Grid Setup
Topics + Keyword Training
Web Savvy
The Ultimate Guide to AdWords
Dale Beaumont
Dean Jackson
DeepMind
Connect with Mike Rhodes:
Via Agency Savvy
Via Web Savvy
Via Facebook
Episode 13
:
Brett Curry - OMG Commerce
Google & Amazon News
As an eCommerce merchant you have to pay attention to Amazon and Google. Google is likely one of your top traffic channels.
As an eCommerce merchant you have to pay attention to Amazon and Google. Google is likely one of your top traffic channels. Amazon is either enemy or partner #1 or perhaps they’re your top frenemy. In this episode we dive into recent Google and Amazon news and what it means for your business. Here are some of the highlights:
Google:
– Google Shopping – Google will roll this out on the display network, calling it Retail Shopping on Display.
– Google Shopping Q1 2017 year over year growth outpaced Q4 Year over year 21% vs. 19%.
– Google Shopping/PLAs now 75% of non-branded retail clicks.
– Google shopping spend grew 32% in Q1 for year over year
– Google AdWords phone and desktop spend increased 51% and 12%, respectively, while tablet spend fell 23%.
– Similar Audiences for Search & Shopping
– Demographics for Search
– YouTube TV – similar to sling box.
– Original content via YouTube Red. 6 Shows including shows feature Ellen, Kevin Hart, and Ryan Seacrest.
– 18-49 year olds spend more time on YouTube in prime time than watch the top 10 TV shows combined.
– YouTube Scandal – big brand ads placed next to neo nazi and jihadist content. 5% of top advertisers pulled ads.
Amazon:
– Q1 earnings – Sales grew 23%. $35.7 billion in sales, $8billion in growth.
– AWS grew 42% to $3.66B
– Subscription services $1.94 Billion mainly Amazon Prime – 49% YoY
– Making prime sticky with original content – Manchester by the Sea won two oscars. Best actor – Casey Affleck and Best Director.
– Purchased the rights to Thursday night football
– Amazon Prime is closing in on Costco in terms of members. Now roughly 80 million prime users in the US. 37% growth since last year. In March of 2017 costco has 88.1 million members.
– Amazon Fresh pickup
– Amazon Go Store
Mentioned in this Episode:
OMG Commerce
http://omgcommerce.com/
Zipify
http://zipify.com/
Camp Chef
http://www.campchef.com/
Camp Chef – Woodwind Pellet Grill
https://www.campchef.com/camp-chef-woodwind-pellet-grill.html
Ad Week – The “Grill God”
http://www.adweek.com/creativity/the-grill-god-preaches-better-barbecuing-in-this-unholy-ad-for-a-fancy-new-grill/
Harmon Brothers
http://harmonbrothers.com/
Google Shopping on the Display Network
http://searchengineland.com/google-shopping-ads-display-pilot-274251
Google Search & Shopping with Similar Audiences
http://searchengineland.com/google-rolls-similar-audiences-search-shopping-274210
Google Shopping – Product Listing Ads Growth
http://searchengineland.com/google-shopping-ads-so-hot-right-now-the-meteoric-rise-of-plas-248055
Google – Local Inventory Ads Information
http://searchengineland.com/google-local-inventory-ad-maps-knowledge-panel-live-253899
Merkle Statistics – Local Inventory Ads (LIAs) Growth
https://www.merkleinc.com/blog/merkle-q1-2017-digital-marketing-report-released
Demographics for Search Information
http://searchengineland.com/connecting-demographics-search-queries-243440
YOUTUBE
YouTube TV
https://tv.youtube.com/welcome/
YouTube Prime Time Statistics
https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/6/11608036/youtube-bigger-than-tv-brandcast-sia
YouTube Advertising Scandal
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/25/google-youtube-advertising-extremist-content-att-verizon
YouTube Security (https) Information & Statistics
http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-overcoming-hurdles-to-secure-youtube/
Side Note
Google on Securing your Website
http://searchengineland.com/google-starts-giving-ranking-boost-secure-httpsssl-sites-199446
AMAZON
Amazon’s Q1 Earnings Press Release
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2266665
Amazon Prime vs Costco vs Sam’s Club Membership Statistics
http://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-prime-membership-hurting-costco-and-sams-clubs-2016-9
Amazon Prime Members Spending Double
http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-members-may-spend-more-than-double-what-non-members-do-2015-1
Amazon Web Servies (AWS)
https://aws.amazon.com/
Amazon Press Release – Manchester By The Sea
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=RssLanding&cat=news&id=2268323
Amazon Echo
https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Echo-Bluetooth-Speaker-with-WiFi-Alexa/dp/B00X4WHP5E
Amazon Go Store
https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16008589011
AmazonFresh Pickup
https://www.amazon.com/afx/nc/aboutpickup
Amazon Prime – Thursday Night Football
http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/amazon-wins-huge-bidding-war-to-stream-thursday-night-football-games-in-2017/
Connect with Brett Curry:
twitter.com/brettcurry
via omgcommerce.com
Episode 14
:
Chris Lynch - Everyday California
How to Build a Lifestyle eCommerce Brand
The story of Everyday California is a great one chock full of entrepreneurial insights.
It’s one thing to build a site, drive some traffic and close a few sales. It’s another thing entirely to build a lifestyle brand that resonates with your audience.
The story of Everyday California is a great one chock full of entrepreneurial insights. My friend and long time client Chris Lynch and his business partner Michael Sammer started their business with just a couple of Kayaks and a beat up truck in La Jolla Shore near San Diego, CA. Fast forward 9 years and they have a super cool apparel line that’s growing at 10x year-over-year online. They have a license deal with Cherokee – the company that owns Tony Hawk’s brand. They’re driving traffic through search and social and there’s no slowing down in sight.
Here are some of the lessons we cover in this episode:
– Keys to great design and building a brand that endures
– Top traffic sources for their ecommerce store
– Why they switched from Magento to Shopify Plus
– A crazy Facebook/Instagram post that is raking in the sales
– How to successfully diversify your business
– When to pull the plug on a new initiative
– Plus more!
Mentioned in this Episode:
IRCE (Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition)
Everyday California
Blenders Eyewear
Pura Vida Bracelets
Entrepreneur’s Organization
Larry Page on 10x
Grant Cardone on the 10x Rule
Phil Knight (Creator of Nike) – Shoe Dog
– Book
– Audiobook Cherokee Global Brands
Brooklyn Bridge Everyday California Marine Layer Hat Image
Flip Flop Shops
Everyday California – Flip Flops
Cobian Footwear
MVMT Watches
Marine Layer
Aviator Nation
Connect with Chris Lynch:
via LinkedIn
via Email
Follow Everyday California:
on Facebook
on Twitter
on Instagram
on YouTube
Episode 15
:
Ryan Stewman - hardcorecloser.com
Closing More eCommerce Sales
We uncover some gold on this episode to help you craft better closing product pages, videos, online ads, and social media posts.
There is an art and a science to selling. Boring doesn’t sell. Neither does average. Ryan Stewman is neither. He’s a 4x best-selling author and the host of the very successful Hardcore Closer podcast.
You don’t have to necessarily match Ryan’s style to appreciate and benefit from the principles he teaches. We uncover some gold on this episode to help you craft better closing product pages, videos, online ads, and social media posts.
Here’s a quick rundown of what we cover:
– 3 things you need to sell more today
– The benefits of building a persona
– Tips to sell more via video
– How to craft emails that close deals and leave people wanting to see your next email
– How to get into the sales state of mind
– His recent weekend speaking to a group of MMA fighters
– Plus more!
Warning – This episode does contain profanity. Not necessarily excessive, but there is some. Just a heads up. The content is excellent.
Enjoy!
Mentioned in this Episode:
Hardcore Closer
Harmon Brothers
Austin Brawner at eCommerce Influence
Ben Settle – World Leader in Email Copywriting Education
Email Players
Connect with Ryan Stewman:
Episode 16
:
Russell Brunson
Leveraging Funnels and Building a Movement
Few entrepreneurs achieve what Russell Brunson has.
Few entrepreneurs achieve what Russell Brunson has. From selling “how to make potato gun” information in his college dorm to 40,000 paid monthly subscribers on Clickfunnels, his current SaaS platform, Russell knows how to make stuff happen. That’s why leaders like Tony Robbins and The Profit’s Marcus Lemonis speak at Russell’s events and even go to him for marketing advice.
In today’s episode we cover:
– What a successful ecomm funnels look like
– Top ecommerce funnel mistakes
– Why building a movement and building a brand should go together
– How expert status can help combat the “race to the bottom”
– Russell’s incredible story of selling how to make potato gun information online in college to huge SaaS Business and events with Tony Robbins, Marcus Lemonis, etc.
– Traffic sources Russell is most excited about
Mentioned in this Episode:
Russell Brunson
ClickFunnels
“Expert Secrets” book by Russell Brunson
Funnel Hacking Live 2017 Overview
Dave Asprey – Founder and CEO of Bulletproof – Blog
Dave Asprey Podcast – Bulletproof Radio
“Why We Buy” by Paco Underhill (Revised) – Amazon
The J. Peterman Company
“Made to Stick” book by Chip & Dan Heath
IRCE – Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition
OBS – Open Broadcaster Software – Using It for Facebook LIVE Videos
ClickFunnels Community on Facebook (Over 60,000 Members)
Connect with Russell Brunson:
via RussellBrunson.com
via LinkedIn
Episode 17
:
Nathan Hirsch - freeeup.com
Scaling Amazon Sales and Scaling Your Team
My guest on the podcast today has a unique perspective on both Amazon and on building your eCommerce team.
My guest on the podcast today has a unique perspective on both Amazon and on building your ecommerce team.
Nathan Hirsch build a wildly successful drop shipping business on Amazon in 2009. He’s since scaled that to multi-million dollar per year business. in 2015 he launched freeeup.com to help online merchants find vetted outsourcers with eCommerce experience.
In this episode we dig into some Amazon news and trends to pay attention to and we provide some specific insights for building your ecommerce team.
Here’s a quick snapshot.
– How Amazon has changed since 2009
– Biggest mistakes he sees merchants making on Amazon
– What Amazon changes should resellers be preparing for
– Top hiring mistakes
– Killer interview questions
– Processes for properly vetting and hiring eCommerce rock stars
Mentioned in this Episode:
FreeeUp
Portlight @ Amazon.com
Upwork
“Delivering Happiness” book by Tony Hsieh of Zappos
Appeagle
FreeeUp Blog
“Free Up Your Business” book by Nathan Hirsch
Connect with Nathan Hirsch:
via LinkedIn
via Twitter
Episode 18
:
Julie Boswell - AskaCopyExpert.com
Copywriting Secrets for eCommerce
Without good copy, you’re sunk….or at best fighting an uphill battle.
Without good copy, you’re sunk….or at best fighting an uphill battle.
I love all the new tools for eCommerce that we have at our disposal. From AI tools, to automation, to personalization, augmented reality etc. But here’s the deal. None of that matters if you can’t tell a good story or produce copy that compels people to buy. Often, she who tells the best story wins…
I review dozens of eCommerce sites each week and it’s very clear to me that good copywriting is a lost art.
My guest on this week’s episode is Julie Boswell, co-founder of AskaCopyExpert.com. Julie was the director of marketing for Bill Glazer and Dan Kennedy at GKIC for 4 years. Her copy helped fill seats at the famous Super Conference and Info Summit back in their heyday.
In this session we dive into the power of strong copy to boost eCommerce sales.
Here’s what we dive into:
– How to write emotional copy that elicits a response
– Common copy mistakes to avoid
– Copy tips for better product detail pages
– Email copy tips
– eCommerce companies to emulate who understand good copy
– Plus more
Mentioned in this Episode:
Glazer Kennedy Insider’s Circle (GKIC)
GKIC – 2017 Info-Summit & 2018 SuperConference
Ask A Copy Expert
Rebel Enterprises
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – The Beginners Guide to SEO by Moz
Huckberry
Athleta
Title Nine
J. Peterman Catalogues Unique Product Descriptions
Duluth Trading Co. Men’s & Women’s Workwear & Clothing
Ask A Copy Expert – Headline Generator
“Tested Advertising Methods” book by John Caples
“My Life in Advertising” & “Scientific Advertising” all-in-one book by Claude Hopkins
RoomDividersNow
Ask A Copy Expert – Review Service
“Made to Stick” book by Chip & Dan Heath
The Tim Ferriss Show Podcast
Ask A Copy Expert – Ultimate Sales Generator
“The Ultimate Sales Letter” book by Dan Kennedy
“No. B.S. Direct Marketing: The Ultimate No Holds Barred Kick Butt Take No Prisoners Direct Marketing for Non-Direct Marketing Businesses” book by Dan Kennedy
Connect with Julie Boswell:
Episode 19
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Nick Disabato - Make Money Online
Conversion Boosters
If you’re not continually tweaking and testing for better conversion rates, you’re leaving money on the table.
If you’re not continually tweaking and testing for better conversion rates, you’re leaving money on the table.
Nick Disabato is a guy that I never heard of until all of a sudden I saw him everywhere. From working on BOOM with Ezra Firestone to speaking at eCommerce events to being interviewed on multiple podcasts. All of a sudden I couldn’t escape this guy. 🙂
Nick is incredibly bright and has a great process for finding and fixing conversion rate problems for eCommerce sites.
In this episode we cover:
– Top conversion tools
– Where to begin with conversion rate optimization
– Simple improvements Nick helped Ezra create for BOOM that created a big conversion lift
– What big ecommerce stores fail at over and over again and how you can capitalize on it.
– How to get real answers out of your customers and turn that into conversion gold
– Top conversion resources
– Plus more!
Mentioned in this Episode:
Nick Disabato Podcast – Make Money Online
Guetzli by Google
ImageOptim
Hotjar
VWO (Visual Website Optimizer)
Optimizely
Google Optimize
Google Forms
Wufoo
MailChimp
Mandrill
Typeform
“The Innovator’s Dilemma” by Clayton Christensen
UserTesting
QuickView+
Evan Miller’s Blog
ConversionXL’s Blog
WiderFunnel’s Blog
Annielytic’s Blog
Avinash Kaushik – Occam’s Razor
Ezra Firestone – Smart Marketer
Kurt Elster – Ethercycle
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
Baymard Institute
Connect with Nick Disabato:
Episode 20
:
Steve Deckert - Smile.io
Better Customer Loyalty Programs
Steve Deckert and his company Smile.io (formerly Sweet Tooth) are veterans in the rewards space for eCommerce.
What are you doing to delight your best shoppers? How are you encouraging or incentivizing your best customers to come back and tell a friend? How are you consistently growing repeat purchases?
If your answer is “I’m not sure,” or “I could do more,” or even “we’re doing pretty good there,” this episode is for you.
I’ve seen different studies, but I think it’s safe to say that driving a new customer is 5 to 25 times more expensive than keeping an existing one.
With that in mind, it makes sense to put plenty of effort and energy into keeping and delighting existing customers. Also, the best new customers are often those who are referred by your existing customers.
Steve Deckert and his company Smile.io (formerly Sweet Tooth) are veterans in the rewards space for eCommerce. Here’s a quick look at what we cover on this episode:
– How to build a powerful referral program
– How to build a successful VIP program
– Loyalty campaign mistakes to avoid
– How InkBox saw an 80% lift in repeat purchases with these strategies
– How to properly get the word out about your new program and ensure participation
– Plus more!
Mentioned in this Episode:
Smile.io
InkBox
BottleKeeper
Connect with Steve Deckert:
via Twitter
via LinkedIn
Episode 21
:
Bart Mroz - SUMO Heavy
Emerging Trends, New Technology & The State of Omnichannel
Bart Mroz has his finger on the pulse of the eCommerce industry.
Bart Mroz has his finger on the pulse of the eCommerce industry. He’s the co-host of the Register Podcast and writes for Entrepreneur, Retail Dive, Social Media Today and more.
This episode is all about emerging trends, what’s next, and how we should approach (our least favorite term) omnichannel.
Bart moved to the US as a boy who spoke no English. We talk some about being an immigrant entrepreneur and then dive into some pretty compelling questions such as:
– What technologies will disrupt eCommerce in the next 1-5 years?
– What are the most common problems you’re solving for larger eCommerce clients right now? How do you think those will differ in 2-5 years?
– What platforms and payment systems are you most impressed with?
– How is omnichannel changing and where is retail in general headed?
– Are there any legitimate contenders for Amazon – who could give them a run for their money?
– Plus more!
Bart is a fascinating guy, and I think you’ll love the interview. Enjoy!
Mentioned in this Episode:
SUMO Heavy Digital Commerce Strategy Firm
Why You Should Move to Magento 2 – CreativeMinds Blog
How Will iMessage Payments Stack Up to Square Cast and Venmo? – The Verge
What is a Google Premier Partner?
SUMO Heavy’s “eCommerce Minute” on Anchor
Connect with Bart Mroz:
via Facebook
via Twitter
via Email
Episode 22
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Ezra Firestone - Smart Marketer
Facebook Ads: What’s Working Now for eCommerce
Part of achieving success on Facebook is keeping up to date on what’s working now.….And it’s a moving target.
Facebook ads are one of the hottest paid channels for online merchants right now. FB ads played a huge part in Ezra Firestone’s growth from under $10million in revenue to over $22.5 million in a single year.
Part of achieving success on Facebook is keeping up to date on what’s working now.….And it’s a moving target.
Ezra spends upwards of $15,000 per day on Facebook Ads and he’s tracking his performance carefully.
Here’s a glimpse of what we cover on the show:
– How Ezra is currently building his Facebook Sales Funnels
– The 4 types of ads you should be testing
– Why you should consider video ads for FB
– Landing page tips for converting more FB ad traffic
– New audience targeting techniques that are different than what Ezra was teaching & testing just a few months ago.
– Bonus! We get a little bit “deep” at the beginning and end of this episode. We talk about being a mission-driven business and sticking to your values even as you experience rapid growth and have opportunities coming at you from every angle. Learn from Ezra’s wisdom and his story here…
Plus, more!
Mentioned in this Episode:
BeeFriendly Skincare
BOOM by Cindy Joseph
Traffic & Conversion Summit 2017
IRCE
Jon Loomer’s Blog
DigitalMarketer’s Blog
Smart Marketer
Free Facebook Video Ad Training
Kickstarter
IndieGoGo
How to Use Facebook Messenger Ads
Facebook Messenger Ads – Digital Marketer Episode
eCommerce All-Stars 2017
Connect with Ezra Firestone:
via Facebook
via Twitter
via LinkedIn
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