An eCommerce Podcast Hosted by Brett Curry

My guest today knows a thing or two about growing DTC eCommerce brands to 8 figures and beyond.  His agency, Wavebreak, focuses on email, SMS and loyalty marketing for growing eCommerce brands.  On today’s episode we talk about how email marketing has shifted in light of the pandemic and how it will likely continue to shift.  Ready to take your email marketing game to the next level?  Listen to this episode with Wavebreak CEO Dylan Kelley.  

Here’s a quick look at what we cover:

• How to go on offense without being offensive
• How to build community and goodwill now
• How to stay true to your brand but adjust your message in light of the recent crisis
• Top email marketing mistakes to avoid
• How email, sms and loyalty programs work together

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Mentioned in this episode:

Chubbies Shorts

Jay Abraham

Retention Marketing - Wavebreak

Resources - Wavebreak

Request a Call - Wavebreak

Wavebreak Podcast - Grow Your Shopify Store

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Dylan Kelley - CEO and Founder at Wavebreak

Via LinkedIn

Via Twitter  

Via YouTube

Wavebreak - eCommerce eMail Marketing Agency

Via LinkedIn

Via Twitter

Via YouTube

Episode Transcript

Brett:

Hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today we are diving into email marketing, and specifically how to handle email marketing in a COVID-19 world. Right now we're in the thick of it as we record this. Obviously we'll be hopefully coming out of it at some point, so some things to consider there as well.

Brett:

My guest is the CEO and founder of Wavebreak, and they focus exclusively on email marketing. My guest is Dylan Kelley. He's hailing from Brooklyn but got out just before everything got crazy in the New York City metro. I'd visited just before it really got crazy in New York City. I think he's joining me from PA right now. Dylan, man, welcome to the show. Thanks for taking the time, and really excited to dive into this topic.

Dylan:

Yeah, Brett. Thanks for inviting me on. Really excited to talk.

Brett:

Yeah. So you are typically in one of my favorite cities. I absolutely love New York. I was telling you before we hit record, I was there like March 7th, 8th, and 9th, visiting clients and stuff, and then kind of got out just before things got crazy. But you got out just before things got crazy as well, right?

Dylan:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I bounce around. I'm one of those people. We're fully remote to begin with. We actually had some of our team members get caught in the digital nomad thing over, they're over in Asia doing some stuff. We had a copywriter over there and he had to get back to Canada. But luckily I didn't have to do that, but yeah, I made it out just in time back to Pennsylvania, where we've got green grass and it just kind of feels, I don't know, it's like a dream state here too, where it's like, it almost feels like everything is normal, except there is not a lot of people.

Brett:

Yeah.

Dylan:

Outside and in places.

Brett:

So interesting. We live just outside of town where we live. We got five acres, and so we can get out with the kids and go on a walk, and our neighbors have horses. So outside everything feels normal, but then you drive through a near city, Springfield, and it's empty in the evenings. It's really bizarre. You and I were just talking ahead of time before we hit record. The numbers we're seeing in e-commerce right now are very interesting and really quite encouraging. So one of the things I'll share just real quickly and then we're going to get into your background and also our topic for the day, but we built these dashboard where we can quickly see all of our clients. We serve about 85 growing e-commerce brands. We can see their day over day, week over week, month over month, and year over year sales both in terms of the channels we control, Google Ads, YouTube, Amazon Ads, then globally.

Brett:

It was interesting. Even in the early stages of this, like 67% of our clients were up, and about 16% were kind of flat, especially when you're looking year over year. Then the rest were down. Some down just slightly, some down pretty significantly, but actually the numbers have improved. I kept kind of thinking, like the pessimist in me, which I'm a pretty optimistic guy, but the pessimist in me kept thinking, as we get deeper into this, this is going to get worse for e-commerce. It's actually been the opposite for most e-commerce. There are still some areas of e-commerce that are hit pretty hard. But it sounds like you guys are seeing the same thing, right? A lot of your clients are really growing right now in the midst of this craziness.

Dylan:

Oh yeah. I mean, it's crazy. I'm like you, I'm an optimist from the start, so I have this energy, but I'm also this person that's also very anxious. I guess that's how I balance out my optimism. So a few weeks ago when kind of like mid March, when everybody started freaking out, and it almost like time slowed down, and that's when everyone I feel was on Twitter seeing what is everyone else doing, and you're checking your stats every day, multiple times a day. I was freaking out just like everybody else was, but then, just like you said, started looking into the data, and it's like well actually, there's nothing to be afraid of. Sure, sales were down, and it was really weird a few weeks ago, where it's like day by day, week by week. I mean, you wouldn't even know what was going to happen next. But I think things are pretty steady now. Like you're saying, overall, I mean, e-commerce is just going to just keep growing.

Dylan:

We're seeing the same thing on our end. I mean, nearly, we have those clients who are experiencing rapid growth and doing their monthly revenue in a week now, and they're not even selling essential products, right? Think of something that you're selling outdoor, like a rollerskate company we work with. I mean, they've tripled their sales overnight. We can get into how you can use email to do stuff like that and communicate timely, but on the other end too, I mean, even with things that are more kind of like a regular purchase that might not be essential, we still see sales growing there. The biggest problem that I actually noticed after, and I've been hopping in calls with everybody lately, especially in the thick of things. So I wanted to know what was going on. I wanted to share what I knew, and that's kind of the what was going around then.

Brett:

Which I will comment, this has been awesome in our community. I'm glad you're doing that. We've been doing that a lot too. But it does seem like the e-commerce space, it is a relatively small community, even though it's spread out all over the globe, and I love how this industry has really come together and there's just a lot of people sharing information freely, lots of free webinars. Just people getting on saying hey, how can we help? Even if you're not a client or whatever, how can we help? It's really, really cool.

Dylan:

Yeah, I know. I mean, it's amazing to see that, and everyone sharing what's working. I mean, I saw on Twitter a few weeks ago, people were like, "Hey, here's the exact funnel that's working for us right now that wasn't working a year ago or a month ago." I thought that was cool, but yeah. I mean, overall with our clients, most of them are still growing month over month. The ones that didn't, they did scale back on advertising, but usually it was inventory issues and had nothing to do with not getting returns on advertising or marketing, it's just crap, we oversold Q4 because we crushed it, and then we didn't plan for a bonus month off in China for Chinese New Year and this crazy thing happening. But besides that, I mean, now that people are starting to get that figured out, I mean, it's just like.

Dylan:

I saw one stat that was like e-commerce right now is still only 11% of all retail, but with this, based on projections on how people are shopping online, this has the potential to accelerate it to 70 to 80% of all retail in the next 12 to 18 months, or something like that. I think that was a tweet from Web Smith, but it's like holy cow. If this is only a tenth of all the retail transactions out there with the numbers we're seeing now, with the brands we're working with, it's just like, is this an obstacle or is this actually an opportunity?

Brett:

Yeah, absolutely. I think ultimately it's both because you mentioned some supply chain issues, and supply issues and things like that, or inventory issues, but I think it is a massive opportunity. What's interesting, a lot of people are talking about hey, Amazon is the winner in all of this, and I do think Amazon is going to win big, but one thing we're seeing with a lot of our clients who sell on Amazon and on their own .com is that as Amazon is starting to focus in on essentials and just delivering the things that the customers have to have, we're seeing sales that used to be going through our client's Amazon account now coming to their .com. Sometimes there's been shifts of 30, 40, 50% increases on someone's .com because Amazon has slowed down. So I think off Amazon e-comm is going to be doing exceptionally well right now also.

Brett:

Really excited to dive into this topic. We're going to get into email marketing and some dos and don'ts, and we're seeing all kinds of bad examples of what not to do, or good examples of what not do to. But before we do that let's talk a little bit about your background, Dylan. So what did you do prior to starting Wavebreak? How did you get into email marketing? Give us the 90 second rundown of how you got here.

Dylan:

Yeah. I mean, it's really crazy. I was just talking about this this morning actually to somebody. It's like, how the heck did I get in e-commerce, direct-to-consumer, focused on just email marketing of all things? But it's actually a really, it was just an evolution of what I was doing before. So grew up on the internet. I was in high school in this bedroom, slinging affiliate marketing deals, throwing up these landing pages back when you could just rank and bank and it was super easy. I think a lot of people in e-commerce have similar background. Where it's just like you're just kind of on the internet and then saw this wave around e-commerce. I started seeing these cool brands popping up on Instagram actually, like the MVMT watches, and PureVita, these companies started becoming popular, doing a lot of influencer stuff. That was around like 2015, 2016, and I was like, "Man, this looks awesome. These are cool brands." I'm reading the stories, it's growing fast. I was like, "How do I be part of this?" I have a marketing background. Wanted to create a legit company and a stable business instead of just these random affiliate things or hustles that I was kind of running online.

Dylan:

So I decided that okay, based on my design background I'm going to do conversion rate optimization for these companies, because they're spending a lot in advertising. I'm going to help them make more money. So I went and started doing that, and landed a really awesome client. They're seeling millions, one of those social brands. I can't say exactly who it is, but they, you'll see why in a second. So they hired me. They were like my will client, paying the bulk of pretty much all my bills at the time, I was just starting out, freelancer. What happened was overnight bigger brands started to enter Facebook and it just drove up the cost of ads like crazy, and they couldn't figure out how to profitably drive traffic anymore. So I remember I was in the store and I get a text from the CEO of the company. He's like, "Hey, can you talk?" And I was like, it's never good when someone is just like, "Can you talk?"

Brett:

Yeah.

Dylan:

And I call him when I get home, and he's like, "Hey, man. We don't have any traffic for you to optimize, so we're going to have to cancel. We'll send you some free product down the line." Okay, cool thanks.

Brett:

Because that's a lot.

Dylan:

Yeah, that's not going to pay the bills.

Brett:

I'll trade product for rent. Appreciate that.

Dylan:

I know, right? I think my landlord will like that. No, but that really got me thinking, I'm like, "Holy crap. This isn't cool." We're seeing now just the cost to acquire a customer keeps rising on Facebook, even in these times we are now. It's like you talk to any brand, and their return on ad spend is down year over year, year over year, unless they're working with someone like you who is really good at what they do on the advertising front. But just in general it's getting more competitive, more expensive. So I went back to the drawing board and tried everything, from SEO, to social media stuff, influencer stuff, it's like what we do, and that's when I came across email. I was like, "There's no way this is going to work." And ran it through our first client and then they ended up tripling their revenue off it because they had more profit on the backend to invest in their ads, and just fuel growth for the company, and I was like, "Well, that's crazy. I wonder if that'll happen again." And slowly but surely over the last few years we've continued to refine and hone those strategies on email, and now introducing mobile messaging, loyalty and stuff like that with our clients, and just building programs on the backend to really fuel growth.

Dylan:

What's crazy is not only do we uncover extra revenue that's already in their business, but it also gives them more opportunity to have more lifetime value to drive scale, which is super important because I mean, we're seeing VC backed companies. It's like even they can't make the numbers work, which is why these kind of, the brands that we work with, where they're kind of bootstrap. They take money here or there, but they're just smart about growth. It's like they're focusing on profit and lifetime value, and that's how you're going to build a brand that lasts.

Brett:

Absolutely.

Dylan:

And build the next great direct-to-consumer companies.

Brett:

Yeah, it is so interesting. Customer acquisition costs are going up across the board year over year. We're seeing a dip in some costs right now. So CPMs are lower on Facebook, and I'm not a Facebook Ads guy, but just I hear cost per view is definitely down on YouTube right now, but conversion rates are also down in some cases, and things will get back to normal at some point and costs will continue to rise again. So that's one of the things I love about email marketing. One, it absolutely works, and you have to do it. I don't see it going away anytime soon, but if you do it right, it allows you to spend more money on the front end doing top of funnel type marketing, and that's what we do a ton of. So I love it when there are guys like you or people like you that help optimize the email flows because then I can be more aggressive on the advertising side. So beneficial for sure.

Brett:

So let's dive in and talk about what's going on right now with email marketing, and you and I were kind of joking as we were talking about this a few days ago. We've seen just tons and tons of examples. I think every single email list that anyone ever subscribed to felt compelled to give us their COVID-19 update, whether we wanted it or not, and we didn't want it in most cases. What do you see as the ... Is that starting to slow down, and why do you think that was a bad idea, and just any thoughts on that besides the obvious?

Dylan:

Yeah. No, I mean, I'm glad you brought that up. I actually sent out an email not about it, and my subject line was, "Not an email about that." That's to our private newsletter.

Brett:

Not a COVID-19 update.

Dylan:

Yeah, exactly. We actually wrote like a manifesto on the future of e-commerce. Anyway, we can get into that later. But yeah, I mean, in general it's like nobody cares that your support team is working inside. It's just like that's not going to, I didn't ask.

Brett:

Yeah. I think that's the ultimate lesson here. Is you felt compelled to answer a question that no one was asking you, right?

Dylan:

Yeah.

Brett:

I forgot I subscribed to your software, I'm glad that you're taking care of your employees, but all you really did was remind me that I need to unsubscribe from your list.

Dylan:

Yeah, a 100%. I mean, we sent some of those email out for clients, but not to everybody. Hey, we're still shipping. It's more like an update if there was going to be a delay.

Brett:

It's very relevant in some cases.

Dylan:

We would send that out.

Brett:

For sure.

Dylan:

Yeah, yeah. But it's like so many companies were just blanketing it, and at the same time it's like, I'm still getting some emails from that. It's like listen, people aren't worried about that anymore. Like you and I were talking, I mean, two weeks ago people were freaking out. They thought it was the end of the world. Now that we've survived these few weeks, it's kind of like okay, this sucks, things are different, but we don't feel like we're going to die tomorrow, or at least most people don't.

Brett:

Yeah, for the most part. I think there are definitely, and who knows what's going to happen in the future, but it definitely seems like okay, hey, we're seeing a path back to normal, curve is flattened, things like that. So yeah, or flattening I guess would be a way to say it. So yeah, I think there's definitely this hope that normal is on the horizon, which is good.

Brett:

So let's do talk about though how have you shifted your message? Because I think these blanket COVID-19 emails, and people, companies answering questions that nobody is answering, that's not good, but how have you meaningfully shifted the messages in the emails for your clients, and let's talk a little bit. You mentioned to me a few days ago, looking at Maslow's hierarchy of needs and how that's kind of shifted. You want to speak to that just a little bit?

Dylan:

Yeah, yeah. I can start with that. I think that's the important place to start, is not, because so many people look at email and marketing as I guess tactics instead of what is actual consumer behavior, what is the actual strategy behind that, which is the most important thing. That's why Wavebreak can drive results that other people can't, because we go so deep on strategy because we're really thinking about how consumers buy, not just how do we make a great email or find the winning sequence and craft it together. We think customer by customer, product by product, brand by brand, what really makes the most sense. So people always think it's crazy when I break it down like this, but I think it's going to make a lot of sense.

Dylan:

What you were talking about with the hierarchy of needs, everybody knows the pyramid and how at the top it's just the whole, that's where we were a few weeks ago. We were at the top of the pyramid. It's like we're communicating be your best self, achieve your full potential, because everybody's basic needs were met. Especially here in America, where the majority of your customers live, we're communicating to that level, but in a matter of days, and even in hours, it's just like, I mean, things shifted fast and we jumped down that pyramid all the way down to where people are now not thinking how do I be my best self, but they're thinking more about safety, and they're thinking more about community. If you keep trying to market to the top of the pyramid, which is hey, be your best self in our leggings, or act like nothing is going on in the world, it's just not going to hit. It doesn't mean stop marketing. That's the worst thing you could do right now, because eyeballs are everywhere. We even see this with email.

Dylan:

Open rates, they're higher than they've ever been. Email conversions are up 30%, but it all comes back to what the heck should I be sending right now. We should be thinking about community and you should be thinking about just safety. Give people a break from normal, but at the same time let them know, in the beginning you wanted to kind of address it a little bit more head on, but now it's like we're noticing you need to be less direct, because we've been monitoring this very closely with our clients, and when we're more aggressive with our emails. When I say aggressive, I just mean sale offer and we're super direct and that type of thing. We noticed that people are starting to get mad at that, with certain messaging, especially among demographics that are really affected by this. So if you think younger people, you think people who work paycheck to paycheck. If you run a company that sees sales spikes around when people get paid, it's like that's something you want to take into account because these people might not be getting paid right now, so the wrong messaging could really make them mad. People are stressed out. We'll get the most responses between 12:00 AM and 3:00 AM of complaints from people.

Brett:

Interesting. Yep, yep.

Dylan:

And I've talked to people about Facebook, who run Facebook Ads and get comments like this and they say they'll even reach out the person, they'll find out the person was literally drunk. But it's like, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if some of these people replying are in that place because it is a tough time.

Brett:

It is.

Dylan:

And you want to make sure your messaging is less aggressive. So instead of like, "Hey, sale ends tonight. You're dumb for missing out." It's like hey, here's a way we're giving back to the community, so on and so forth.

Dylan:

So for example, we have a client that sales phone cases. We still ran an Earth Day sale to remind everybody hey, it's Earth Day. The planet is more beautiful than it's ever been, and in addition they have a great charity aspect to their brand, because they're donating two organizations that help towards COVID-19 stuff this month. So we made sure to put that in too, where it's like listen, we're super relevant with the messaging, and at the same time we're acknowledging it, but we're not going as aggressive as we were, where it's like, "Hey, it's Earth Day, you got 24 hours to save. Be there or be square."

Brett:

Right. Yeah, promotional stuff. Yeah.

Dylan:

Honing it back a little bit. That's kind of ... A lot to unpack there, so I'll just leave it at that.

Brett:

Yeah. No, that's fantastic, and we'll kind of dig into it a little bit, and I love that you went to Maslow's hierarchy of needs and finally getting something useful from some of the psychology classes in school. No, I liked psych. So as we look at that, I think there may be some elements of getting back to self-actualization before too long. That could happen in weeks rather than months, who knows exactly.

Dylan:

Yeah.

Brett:

But I think definitely drilling into community and how do we help one another, and safety. You can't go wrong there. So let's kind of unpack that just a little bit. So do you have other examples? So you mentioned this one, the self-owned company. They're doing some charity efforts, and so the email is kind of about that. The hey, here's the Earth Day sale and when you do that you're helping others. I've seen that work for a few clients, where one in the laundry detergent space was like, "Hey, for every item you purchase we're donating something to these local shelters or we're donating to first responders." Or things like that. Any other examples along those lines that you've seen working right now?

Dylan:

Yeah, I mean, ultimately you got to make it work for your brand, which every brand is different. If you don't have a charity aspect, you don't have to add a charity aspect to your brand. That's what we've been telling people, but there's always an angle to it. It might even mean, because the biggest thing we're noticing now is like it's really easy to get eyeballs. Conversions might be down overall, like you're seeing on Facebook or wherever. As a merchant it's easy to get these eyeballs because everybody is everywhere. People aren't buying the same, but what we're going to see is as soon as that end date is put in sight, people are just going to start spending like crazy. That's when the gates are going to open up. But if you try to market then, you're going to be too late, and that's why I love how you mention community, it's like that's really what email is about, and that's what the top brands have figured out, that a lot of the mid market merchants who have just built on the back of Facebook, and kind of built this company over the last few years. It's like that's where they need to head, and really think about how do I build community.

Dylan:

So for example, if you're normally just promoting product, product, product, what can you do to add value and what can you do to just provide some entertainment, to provide something? If you have blog posts, you can feature blog posts. If you're doing Instagram content. It's a great time to get people to ... Like I saw a great campaign, I think it was Chubbies. They ran something where it was like be the first stay influencer or something.

Brett:

Nice. I like that, yeah.

Dylan:

Really creative stuff. But yeah, stuff like that, and then obviously if your product gets people outdoors or solves a problem like that, like we were talking earlier, roller skates are crushing like crazy right now. But if your messaging is hey, get the best indoor roller skates, that's not going to work because all the roller rings are closed.

Brett:

Yep.

Dylan:

But if you think this is a great way to get outside. We know a lot of parents are on the list buying for their kids. It's like hey, get them outside, let them get their energy out, that sort of thing. Just really promoting what's our angle.

Brett:

Yeah, I think that's what you've got to look at, is how do we stay true to our brand, and I love that you mentioned that because that's something that really shouldn't change. You're maybe going to pivot a little bit in terms of what problem you're solving, or how you're solving it, or the way you're presenting things, but the core of your brand isn't going to change, right? And one of the things that's ... One great example, and I love this company even outside of the crisis, but Huckberry, men's fashion and other thing, did a great job with their email marketing. They've been doing several work from home sales, and they've been pitching, I think they created this, I don't know. They're the first ones that I've seen to mention it, but the work from home mullet, and it's basically business up top, party below.

Brett:

So it's like hey, we know you're rocking shorts or whatever, but here's how you look good from the top up, so it's like a sale on these sweaters, and it was talked about in a really fun manner. But then they also had tips for how do you brew coffee at home that's a little bit unique. So of course there's the tried and true ways, but try something different. We all are consuming coffee in mass quantities, here are some unique ways to brew your coffee. Then they had show us your work from home set up, tag us and you can get free stuff. So it's all kind of geared around hey, we understand where you are. We're trying to bring a little bit of humor to it, not making light of this situation, but just bringing a smile to your face, we're all in this together type of thing, and then giving you some bonuses and whatnot as well.

Brett:

So I think, you mentioned it, I've heard a few other people mention it as well, that now is a great time to build your list, to build that community, to get more people following you. Do you have any tips of thoughts on that? Anything you're seeing that's unique for building an email list right now, or is that even something you're focusing on right now?

Dylan:

Yeah, I mean, I definitely think now is a great time to build out your foundation to really get set, because we've never had, yes, things are crazy, but things are also kind of slower in a way. We've been talking about this for years. We did a, Klaviyo had us do a guest post last year on priming. How we get lists primed for Black Friday, Cyber Monday. So many people don't even think about that, but that's kind of what you want me to look at right now. Is like how do I get people engaged with our email? And that example that you shared about hey, coffee tips, you're getting people to open your emails.

Brett:

Love it.

Dylan:

People love to buy, but they hate being sold. But if they never open your emails because they know you're always selling something, they're never going to buy. So how do we use this time to get people to open more emails? And as far as in the list, I mean, I would say a lot of people right now are looking to save that extra money. They're looking for that free shipping, they're looking for that discount, and a lot of brands are running their sales, which is even large companies. They're just like, "Yo, here's the code." It's like well, you could get the same conversion rate off that if you gate it with an email or even like a mobile number opt-in, and then you follow up with that person. It's a great opportunity right now to take advantage of that and really build your list from that perspective, especially as people are looking for it, and to first time visitors too. You could segment that out, but yeah, I don't want to get too deep into the weeds, but that's kind of what we're seeing on our end.

Brett:

Yep. I love it. I love it. Any other tips or ideas, and maybe looking at kind of your structured email or your scheduled email. There's another term for it that I'm drawing a blank on.

Dylan:

Cadence.

Brett:

Yeah, cadence, and even thinking about abandoned cart emails, some of your auto email things. Any recommendations on how those should shift right now or should they?

Dylan:

Yeah, I mean, definitely check those out. Look at all of them just in case. I mean, you're probably too late at this point, but it would've been a good idea a few weeks ago to just run through all the emails you had set up and all of your future emails going out just to make sure there's not any messaging that people could find triggering. So we work with some brands who are really, like for example if you think of a company like Chubbies who has really fun copy. We work with a lot of brands like that who sell crazy different products, so in men skincare and stuff like that, but it's like we're kind of toning back the messaging, where we might be a little more casual and a little more fun. We just don't want people to take it the wrong way, because people are really sensitive right now. You want to look, and a big thing is with your evergreen sequences that are set up and always running, your abandoned cart, you could have that mixed in and you just want to make sure that you don't leave that bad taste in people's mouth because that's how they're feeling.

Dylan:

Then we're a little bit past this since, like I said, it's a little ... A few weeks ago people were freaking out. They what was going to happen tomorrow. They weren't sure, it was like the world was going to end and we were just waiting for it to end and we didn't know. But now we've kind of gotten over the hump it seems, as far as just people, there's more hope and there's more optimism than there was, and so with that just realizing that now you're going to be able to, you don't have to be as timely as you did a couple weeks ago. Two weeks ago really good to be talking, hey COVID-19, here's what we're doing, blah, blah, blah. Now it should just be kind of like a bullet on the email. Hey we're donating to X, Y, Z to support for this, but you're not leading with it anymore because people are kind of back to normal. I think we're going to see that as we sort of get to the end, is think about that and then also think about like, I mean, Fourth of July, Prime Day or whatever, it might even be before that, that's going to end up crushing. So just also keeping that in mind too. So if sales are down now, just thinking about oh, this could be coming later, so how do we optimize now so we can profit then?

Brett:

Yeah, interesting. So it's a really good ... This is maybe a good time to kind of transition. Let's look at email marketing in general, right? So eventually things will get back to normal, and who knows when exactly that will be. There'll be I think probably pockets of the US that get back to normal much quicker than say New York City as an example. But what are some common email marketing mistakes that you see? So just in general, and what are some of those top mistakes to avoid? And then we'll look at kind of some of your top email marketing tips as well.

Dylan:

Yeah, for sure. I love how we're starting with the mistakes. I'm going to talk about things that people don't really think about but actually make a huge impact. I mean, the first thing is actually pretty obvious, which is not having email marketing, which at this point you should know that you need email. It's the most tested and true channel. It's lasted over 20 years in e-commerce. It's still a major revenue driver, even for leading brands that are selling billions of dollars per year. So if you don't have email, you're missing out. But a lot of brands already have email, and that's actually one of the big mistakes that people do have, is you have email but it's just email to squeeze out extra revenue. There's no deeper strategy about how it fits into your brand. So you'll see-

Brett:

It's just purely a tactical play and not thinking about the strategy, yeah.

Dylan:

Exactly.

Brett:

Or community.

Dylan:

Exactly. I think it even comes back to in e-commerce, especially as you're scaling a company, it's really easy to be shortsighted on just strategy and hey, let's throw up a sale tomorrow, instead of planning. That's actually a huge mistake, because when you plan and you have a long-term strategy, you can actually move faster and get even better results. So step one I'd say is like zoom out and know where you want to go and reverse engineer it. Don't plan for tomorrow but plan for next month, next quarter. Really the smartest brands are thinking like that, because then you're able to pull more levers and really be smart about growth, and then integrate that into your email strategy where email becomes this arm of your business and the foundation of your company, and just going deeper there.

Dylan:

Another mistake is not thinking of email as this extension of your brand, which it totally is. You go, someone has their 100,000, $300,000 e-commerce website that they got the best agency to put together, they have amazing packaging, and then you go to buy and the emails look like grandma made them. No offense to grandma, but I don't think she's the best direct-to-consumer email designer in 2020. This is a huge missed opportunity because it can leave a bad taste in people's mouth, especially if you have a premium product. Then if the emails don't flow together, all of that. Email is a huge way to not just extract extra revenue for your business that's already there that you need, but also to build a real brand, which that's what's going to last. We've seen the trend over the last five years, right? Drop shipping went through the roof, it was this thing, but since it was front heavy on acquisition and there was a bad customer experience, none of those companies are around anymore, unless they were able to make the transition into being a real brand.

Dylan:

That's the future, even for this bootstrap companies. The next leading direct to consumer brands probably aren't going to be raising tons of money from venture capital, because we see that doesn't work. Warby Parker was great, the other companies not as good, right?

Brett:

Right, you're seeing. Yeah, there's definitely been some bad press about some of these venture backed EC brands, and some even ... I think I saw Casper recently that had a massive valuation at the beginning and now it's worth like a $100 million or something like that.

Dylan:

Yeah, it's less than their annual revenue.

Brett:

Yeah, it's really interesting. So yeah, the way that plays out going forward is going to be really, really interesting. So yeah, cool. Continue. Other email marketing mistakes that you see.

Dylan:

Yeah, yeah. Well it's like that's huge. Email is a big thing to build your brand, and if you don't have that cohesive experience, you're leaving a ton of growth on the table. You think of a company like Nike. I would love to see inside their ads accounts because I bet they just print money like crazy.

Brett:

Me too. I would love to manage their ads accounts.

Dylan:

I know. Dude, I don't even know anything about Facebook Ads, well that's not true, but I know very basic things about Facebook Ads, I could probably run good ads for them because they're such a powerful brand, everybody knows it, and that's where email is overlooked. It's a great place to communicate your brand, and then from there, that's how you build a $100 million e-commerce company, right? You have a solid brand, because ads can only carry you so far, until you get that word of mouth, that brand recognition, even if it's just in your space, when you see better numbers, it's just easier to grow. Really looking at email and lifetime value as one of your top numbers, because like we said in the beginning, return on ad spend, not as great as it used to be. There's more competition every year.

Dylan:

I talk to a lot of brands and CEOs who they're worried about, not the big companies anymore because they disrupted them, right? I don't like the disrupt word, but they proved that they could come in the space, and now they're worried about people coming and doing the same to them, and increasing competition in advertising and just making it less profitable. But if you focus on lifetime value, which very few brands are, that's what's going to put you ahead, because it's going to put more profit into your business and it's really the lifeblood of every e-commerce business, but I don't think many people know that. They're looking at their return on ad spend every day, but do you even know your lifetime value? That's the metric that's-

Brett:

Very, very, very few e-commerce companies do. We talk to e-commerce companies all the time, and in their defense it is pretty tricky to calculate lifetime value, but I mean, there are some variations of it and you should at least have a goal of getting close to knowing your LTV for clients, because without that it's really hard to make marketing decisions.

Dylan:

Oh, it's super hard. People don't even know their numbers, and that's the last mistake, is not knowing your numbers and then not taking your email strategies to work that, because email is the highest converting channel. Send more email, you're going to increase your conversion rate.

Brett:

Yeah.

Dylan:

Increasing repeat orders, best way to do it. It's been proven, it's amazing. Same with like we're saying, average order value, lifetime value. You do upsells really easily, bundle products, run promotions. Do all these things strategically to move those metrics, and you just increase your traffic or conversions by 25%, your average order value 25%, and your repeat orders by 25%, then you double your business. I mean, we even see this with eight figure clients who are doubling from 10 to 20 million a year and beyond. It's wild how these little numbers, little increases can make a huge impact on your business.

Brett:

Yep. It's so interesting, and it sounds like ... Are you a Jay Abraham fan? Do you know Jay Abraham?

Dylan:

Oh yeah.

Brett:

Yeah.

Dylan:

Yeah.

Brett:

He talks about the three ways to grow a business, and it really hasn't changed, even in the e-commerce world, and he talked about this a couple decades ago, but the only three ways to grow a business are more new customers, increase average order value, and increase frequency of repurchase, right? And usually though when people think grow my business, they only think about that first lever, more new customers, which I love that, I'm a traffic guy. So we like to bring in more new customers, but if you can just get modest increases in all three of those areas, then the overall impact, like you said, you got 25% increases in all three areas, you double your business and it's pretty powerful.

Dylan:

It's a cheat code. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for traffic and our most successful clients-

Brett:

Yeah, yeah.

Dylan:

Are driving as much traffic as possible, but people forget about the backend often because there's just so much going on. That's why companies hire us, because we come in and then we just execute that.

Brett:

Love it. Now some tips. Just kind of as we wrap up here or near the close of our time, what are some of your email marketing tips, suggestions, your top email tips right now?

Dylan:

Yeah, I mean, right now one of the lowest hanging fruits is community. People are really craving that. Open rates are higher than ever. Email is just cutting through the noise at unprecedented levels that it hasn't in a very long time. So if you're not emailing and you're taking your foot off the gas, that's a huge mistake. Like we talked about, it doesn't mean you have to be promoted, but the number one thing you can do is just be consistent. Be consistent. Be consistent in how often you communicate. Be consistent in your branding and your messaging. You don't want to give people design shock. You don't want people to think, "Who the heck is this?" And be consistent in adding value. These are people on the other side. It's not just hey, let's send more email, make more money. You're going to burn out your list. It's not long-term.

Dylan:

The second thing I would say is creative, it's such a low hanging fruit. I'm sure anybody who runs ads know that creative is really one of the biggest differentiators in success of your brand. Yeah, no brand has good creative on email. It's very, very rare, because it's just like an afterthought of hey, let's throw this together, we'll send an email tomorrow. You can actually use this to make more money and really build a successful brand.

Brett:

When you say creative, are you more concerned about the copy, you're more concerned about the design and the aesthetics of the email, or is it both, and any thoughts there?

Dylan:

Yeah. So it's definitely both. A lot of people listen to podcasts like this, and someone will say, "Hey, plain text sells like crazy." Everybody is like, "Oh, we should do all plain text." It's like, no. Don't do all plain text. We do a lot of stuff like that, but ultimately, I mean, you want to be really specific about when to use it, but what you want to think about is the average attention span when someone opens an email is like 10 seconds, less than 13 seconds. So how do I grab their attention? If you just have a big paragraph there it's like, next. Then they have your competitor's email.

Dylan:

Right. You want the subject line to open the email, and then you want the design and copy to get them to click, and then let the site to the rest. A lot of people try to give their whole story and give like five million different things in an email. It's like focus on one thing per email, make it look good. It doesn't all have to be fancy graphics, but make it eye catching because you only have those 10 seconds, and then make it easy for people to skim, because so many people are on mobile, you're cramming paragraphs, people aren't going to be able to read it. Then make sure there's one focused offer works really well, because otherwise people get overwhelmed and when they get overwhelmed, they do nothing. That's really the basics when it comes to creative, and then also consistency. You want to make sure everything is on brand. I see companies who, even with large companies who, they just fire an email every day, but the button colors will change every day. It's like people aren't going to know your brand then, have a style guide, get it updated. Branding is really the future of e-commerce. If you don't have a brand, you're not going to make it, and email is one of those places where it's super important.

Brett:

Cool, I love it. Actually I know you guys do more than email. So any new trends, or tips, or ideas around loyalty and some of the other things you're doing, whether it's SMS marketing or anything else like that?

Dylan:

Yeah. The biggest thing is stop looking at all these things as tactics and start thinking about how they integrate together. Because you could have an SMS program, you can have an email program, you can have a loyalty program, but if they're all fighting for each other, you might see some incremental revenue increase, but you're not going to see any massive growth. That's really what we do with our clients, is we come in and make it all comprehensive and integrated together so that if you get hit with an email and you don't buy, then you get hit with a text. If that doesn't happen or you go to the site, and maybe there's some on site messaging, or how do we drive people to loyalty. I see brands with loyalty pop-ups on my first visit. I'm like, "I'm not going to join your loyalty program."

Brett:

I'm not even loyal yet there, bud. Yeah.

Dylan:

What is a something point, it's like a Dylan point. You get a Dylan point, bonus Dylan points on these orders. It's like, I don't even know you yet. That would be much better if you're trying to capture an email, or get somebody to make that first purchase. Yeah, mobile messaging is great. It's cutting through the noise too, but you have to be careful. A lot of people don't know this, but Fashion Nova, they had a $50 million class action lawsuit against them because they didn't follow the rules around mobile. It's like email, 15, 20 years ago. They're going to be making examples of brands. Fashion Nova was one of them. You hear about a $50 million lawsuit and you're like, "Screw that. We're going to operate within your rules." They're still studying those examples now, so you got to make sure that if you're doing SMS stuff, yes, it's easy to fire on that campaign, but you got to think about am I doing this within the law? That's huge. There's hours you have to send in. There's amount of messages that you can't exceed. A lot of people don't know that, and that can end up costing you literally millions of dollars.

Dylan:

So when you're thinking about this stuff, think about how it comes together. If you want to build a long-term business, also think about instead of being aggressive for short-term wins, think about how do I build a business that lasts and really create community by just being consistent with my customers and not going too aggressive. It'll also keep you out of the court system.

Brett:

Absolutely. How can we build a community, be strategic, and yes, keep ourselves out of jail is a good thing. So I love this. Dylan, this has been fantastic. I think really just if you look at all of these tools, email, SMS, loyalty programs, it's really about delivering the right message at the right time in the right way. To build a community, to build good will, yes to drive sales and increase lifetime value, but to do it all in a way that builds the brand long-term and serves clients and does the right thing.

Brett:

As we wrap up, how can people, one, get in touch with you if they just want to chat with you or learn of Wavebreak and help them, and do you have any resources or guides or anything that people should check out?

Dylan:

Yeah, for sure. We have a ton of resources on everything I talked about. Obviously we don't have hours to get into this stuff, but we do a ton of webinars, video trainings. We just published a really in-depth guide kind of on this, retention marketing as a whole comprehensive strategy for growing an e-commerce brand. That's at Wavebreak.co/retention-marketing. I can give you the link to link it up.

Brett:

Sure. We'll put it in the show notes and so we'll there too.

Dylan:

Yeah. Wavebreak.co/resources. We also have a private newsletter there where it's not a blog post. I'm impressed with it myself. We get a ton of great feedback on it. A lot of leading brands on the list. Yeah, just giving our insider insights on what we see every day and every week. It's real time, straight from me, it's not your generic newsletter. It's a private newsletter, what's working now with our eight figure clients. Then beyond that if you are a brand who is mostly focused on the front end with advertising, and know that on the backend your email, loyalty and all that isn't working together, it might actually be hurting you and they're just more money and more potential there, you go to Wavebreak.co/call. You can request a call with us, and that's still with me. I still run all our sales and stuff. So you.. A compliment call directly with me, and we'll literally just talk like you and I are, Brett, just about your business and whether it makes sense to work together or not. I mean, I'll point you in the right direction. At this point I know a thing or two about scaling a successful D2C e-commerce company, and I'll know where you're at and what you need to do, and if we can help, then we'll go down that path, but that's Wavebreak.co/call.

Brett:

Love it, man. Phenomenal insights. I know we're in definitely interesting times, to say the least, from a marketing, and e-commerce, and D2C perspective. Appreciate you sharing your insights. Appreciate you making all those resources available, and you guys have done fantastic work for eight figure e-commerce brands. So definitely check it out. Check out, and you've got a podcast as well, right? And that's available at Wavebreak.co too. Is that where we'd find that?

Dylan:

Yeah, you check it out there or you can go to wavebreakpodcast.com. So another e-commerce podcast, top five ranked. We've interviewed a ton of great people, founder and CEO of PopSockets, their brand, all the great companies behind their company, how they've sold ... I mean, at this point we've got people ... We're probably getting close to a billion in revenue combined of all of the people we've interviewed on the show.

Brett:

Amazing.

Dylan:

So really good insights there. If you like this podcast, you'll really enjoy it as well.

Brett:

Absolutely, yeah. Wavebreak Podcast, check that out also. Dylan, man, bringing it today all the way from PA. Really appreciate you taking the time, man. Thanks for sharing your insights, and we'll have to do this again sometime.

Dylan:

Yeah, for sure. Thanks for inviting me on.

Brett:

Yep, absolutely. As always, we'd love to hear from you, our listeners. Would love that review on iTunes if you feel so inclined, and with that, until next time. Thank you for listening. And that's a wrap.

‍

‍

This is an episode a couple years in the making.  I’m a huge Ryan Daniel Moran fan.  We had dinner together after an event for speakers at an event in LA a few years ago.  Then we both got busy.  Ryan came on the show to discuss some burning topics facing all entrepreneurs right now.  

• Advice for an eCommerce company who’s struggling right now in the pandemic
• Advice for an e-commerce company who’s excelling right nowThe number 1 way to be instantly happier right now (and it leads to better business outcomes)
• How Ryan thinks about eComm companies to invest in - it’s way more about the leader and the product than anything else.
• Not playing the comparison game
• How to instantly be happier where you are right now
• The 3 phases of growing to $1 million in 12 Months. 

Connect with Guest:

Ryan Daniel Moran - Founder of Capitalism.com and The Capitalism Conference

Via LinkedIn

Via Facebook

Via Twitter

Via Instagram

Capitalism.com - Create the Change

Via Website

Via LinkedIn

Via Facebook

Via Twitter

Via Instagram

Capitalism with Ryan Daniel Moran YouTube Channel

Podcasts by Capitalism.com

“12 Months to $1 Million” Book by Ryan Daniel Moran

Mentioned in this episode:

“12 Months to $1 Million” Book by Ryan Daniel Moran

Podcasts by Capitalism.com

Capitalism.com Podcast Episode with Moiz Ali

Exit Strategy Podcast with Moiz Ali

Native Deodorant

The Capitalism Conference (CapCon)

The One Percent - Capitalism.com

“Everything Is F*cked” Book by Mark Mason - Amazon

‍

Episode Transcript:

Brett:

Well hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host Brett Curry, CEO OMG commerce. And I got to say I am beyond excited about today's episode. This is an episode that I've been dreaming about, thinking about for a couple of years probably or more.

Brett:

My guest today really doesn't need an introduction, but I'm going to do it anyway. So today I've got Ryan Daniel Moran, he's the founder of capitalism.com and the capitalism conference, which I was just sharing with him earlier, I've had several people, several entrepreneurial friends, people I trust say it's the best event they've ever been to. I shamefully have never been. So I will remedy that once we're allowed to leave our houses and do events again at some point. Ryan's also the author of a brand new book called 12 Months To 1 million. I'm a huge fan of Ryan's podcast. He's introduced me to some amazing people, financial planners and other things and so consumed a lot of his content. I love the way he thinks about business and about building brands and the way he's just super honest and relatable and fun. And so with that, Ryan, welcome to the show man. Thanks for taking the time.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Brett. Thank you so much. I'm not sure I can live up to that podcast. So thanks for listening everybody. See you later.

Brett:

And we're done. That's a wrap.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

See you. Thanks for coming.

Brett:

That's amazing. It's amazing. So we were just talking now, hopefully people will be listening to this podcast for years to come. We are though recording during the midst of quarantine and lockdown and there's potentially an end in sight. We hear people, different states talking about opening up beginning of or whatever which is a few weeks away at the time of this recording. So I want to dig into a few things. I want to talk about your mindset. I want to talk about the way you're processing this environment specifically related to e-commerce. And then we'll get into some other fun stuff, investing and other cool stuff, which I'm excited to pick your brain about. So I know you're viewing this as an opportunity, right? It's a challenge too. There's hardships, it's difficult. We don't want to downplay that. But why and how are you viewing this as an opportunity?

Ryan Daniel Moran:

True story. Yesterday I was speaking with someone that I hadn't met before and the Zoom fired up and that person said, "How are you doing Ryan?" And I said, "I'm doing really well. It's great to meet you. How are you doing?" And he said, "I'm fine all things considered." And I didn't even think about it. I said, "Oh, what's to be considered?" And he looked kind of surprised by that statement, but I was being very genuine in my question because I think in all situations and in all cases, you are whatever you're considering. That phrase, all things considered, it's just all things considered. I mean, are you considering the fact that you woke up this morning in a comfortable bed and got to spend your day structured however you chose it with people that you chose to spend it with? I mean, all things considered, the sun shone this morning and it is about to be the best time a year. I mean the fact that we're listening to a podcast right now about business and investing-

Brett:

Yeah, for free, wherever we want to listen to it.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

For free. Yes. I mean, and somebody will say that's trite. That's easy to overlook. Everything is easy to overlook. It's easy to overlook the number of deaths from a pandemic. It's easy to not think about it. It's easy to not think about the economy. It's easy to not think about how many people died of a heart attack this week. And I don't mean to be crass, I just mean that we're in control of whatever we focus on. And when we're having things beamed at us all of the time, it requires us to be more intentional about focusing on what it is that we want. And so I just made the decision about three weeks ago that I was no longer going to pay attention to the things that didn't serve me.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

A good kind of comparison to this is in college, like every good college person, I went down a bit of a conspiracy theory rabbit hole. I think most people go through that period in their life where they're like, they question what's normal, they question the narrative, they question the official story. And so I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole. And after a while, I finally just had to ask myself the question is consuming all of this information about this topic making my life better? And it wasn't. It was making my life far worse. It was making me scared to make decisions. It was making me fearful of other people. It was making me really negative. And I feel the same way-

Brett:

And conspiracy theories are kind of like junk food, right? Where they're like really tasty and really enticing. But afterwards you're like, oh.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

I've heard them described as pessimistic porn. It's like bad news. You can't stop looking at it. But if someone else walks in the room you're like, "Oh, what? No, I'm not going to conspiracy theories." And so I view the pandemic as kind of similar, not that I'm suggesting it's a conspiracy theory, but just that the idea of does consuming more and more information and making evaluations of what could or might not happen serve you? And the only way that I think it might serve us is if we evaluate how we can use this to become better business owners, to be better family members, better leaders. How if there was a way to turn this into an opportunity, what might it be? I mean for me personally, I needed some way to turn this into a positive quickly. So I just decided, you know what I'm going to do is I'm just going to get into the best shape of my life.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

I'm just going to really clean up my diet. I'm going to really focus on my mental health. I'm going to read books, I'm going to journal. Even if I get nothing productive done, I could look back and say, "You know what I did in quarantine? I spent a ton of time with my daughter and my youngest son and I read books and I journaled and I thought about what I wanted and I got into a great shape and I went for long walks and I saw nature and I listened to podcasts." And you can turn that into whatever experience you want. So that's how I'm handling quarantine.

Brett:

I love it. And I think it's really just a shift because we've all probably gone to some dark places at least momentarily during all of this. For me, I've had a couple of bouts of just kind of wrestling with anger a little bit like man, why can't we just fix this? Or why does this have to happen or why ... But I get over it pretty quickly. I think what I'm hearing you say lines up with kind of my thinking too, is that if you could go 100% into what you can control and zero or as close to 0% on the things you can't control, that puts you in a lot better space because you can't control when the lockdown ends. You can't control the spread of COVID-19 other than just your limits. And certainly you can't impact any of those so why worry about them? Spend 100% of your time on things you can control.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

That's exactly right in all cases, all the time especially right now. I mean, you know what? I've had a lot of conversations with entrepreneur friends who have expressed that for what some reason they're feeling a little bit happier than normal and I wasn't quite sure why that might be at first. And I started to process it because I could feel it when I saw the opposite happen for me. I mean I had one really bad day when it happened. And I caught it. It was when I talked to a friend and all they were talking about is how much they were killing it and how much they were selling and how they were growing. And I had this little twinge of, oh, like I'm behind. That little thought in the brain that is like I'm behind. I'm not enough. I'm not growing as fast as I should be.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

But what was interesting is all up until that point, I hadn't heard a single thing about anybody else crushing it or killing it in three weeks. And I think that's why a lot of entrepreneurs are feeling a little bit of this like I feel kind of relieved. I feel kind of at peace because we're not playing this comparison game that is constantly going on in the internet marketing world about how this person's ad is killing it while this person's product is growing. And this a hole Ryan Moran sold his business. And like all these wins that everybody else is having except for me, that thought loop that is going on in so many of our brains has quieted down because we don't see all of the wins of everyone while we're all focused on this problem. And I think that's actually then a really healthy step back for a lot of the entrepreneurial world.

Brett:

Yeah, almost like a reset, you know? And I love the fact that you mentioned reading. My wife and I, we were consuming potentially a decent amount of Netflix in the evening. I was still getting a lot of work done, still getting a lot of work done. But after a few nights I was like, "I'm like tired of this. Like I want to do something productive." So we started reading a little bit more and we've been going on walks with my kids. So I don't know if you know this but I have eight kids. But we have been yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, not Amish or Mormon, just 8 kids.

Brett:

And so we do go on walks every night. Every night after dinner we go on a walk. Our neighbors that are about a half a mile from us, they have horses. One of those horses is pregnant, due any day so we've been going and checking on the horse. It's been a really interesting reset in a lot of ways. And so I think if you can take that mindset of saying, "Okay, we're here, whether I like it or not, we're here. So how do I hit the reset button?" I love getting out of the comparison game. Like that's such a dangerous trap to be in in a lot of cases. And how do I make myself better, get in the best shape of my life? Get my head right, be ready to really excel once things are turned back on.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

And I would say that now versus two months ago, there are still an equal number of things that are good and are bad.

Brett:

100%.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

It's just which ones you're looking at. The only thing that hasn't changed is the things that you were looking at as good have shifted and now they're somewhere else. And most of the world is just waiting for them to come back and Brett I don't think they're coming. I don't think a lot of them are coming back. I don't-

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah, there's going to be a new normal for sure.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

I think we just move forward in a different direction and that is not good or bad, it is just the way of the world.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah. Really, really powerful. So let's talk specifically e-commerce. So you're an investor now, you built a company had an eight figure exit. You're now advising and you got on your back room and you're talking to smart entrepreneurs all the time. How has this pandemic, this event, how has it shifted your thinking towards the e-commerce, your outlook for e-commerce or has it shifted it?

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Yeah. So I mean from a big landscape point of view, I think what has happened is we're now officially going to digitize everything. Like all businesses that you used to go to the store to get, we're now proving that you don't have to. Now full disclosure, I love to go grocery shopping. Like right now, one of the projects I'm working on is a food company. It's a baking company. I love to browse the baking aisle and get new ideas. When I was in the supplement business, I used to love to look at the supplement lines. I love to go shopping. But we've proven that you don't have to go shopping anymore, right? I mean, Instacart is having its heyday right now. You might have delivery services that become fortune 500 companies.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

So we are now proving that you can digitize anything that you thought you couldn't in the past and that trend is going to continue. We're going to continue going down that path. I also love to go to Barnes & Noble. I have a feeling they're not going to exist after all of this plays out. So I think we are seeing an acceleration of what we've seen for the past five to 10 years, which is that big brands are giving way to small micro brands that address very specific problems for very specific groups of people. So you asked about my kind of view as an investor or as an advisor. I have someone right now who I'm coaching and we might get to the point where he talks about an investment, we'll see. But I just, I love this student's approach where she has this fairly small blog and her market is breastfeeding moms with kids that have skin issues.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

You couldn't get more micro than that, right? So her product is very specifically targeted to that group. And because of that, it's formulated specifically for that group. So whereas most people might look at that space and say, "That's a crowded space. The supplement space or the probiotic space, you can get a probiotic for nine bucks on Amazon." This is so specific to that market that she can charge three to five times the price of her competitors. And it'd be worth it because it's made to address a specific problem. But because she has an audience that is specific to that group, she can charge a higher price. She has a bigger moat in that audience and in that space and she has a more predictable launch plan for that.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Those are the types of entrepreneurs that I love to back and those are the types of businesses that I think are going to succeed no matter what happens over the next one to three years in the economy or in the world. If you have a very specific audience that you can speak to and speak their language, I think we're going to be just fine and a lot of entrepreneurs are going to wake up to the fact, especially in the e-commerce world, that the game has to be more about speaking to customers and consumers rather than figuring out what the next thing is that you're going to sell.

Brett:

Interesting. I love that. And it's so interesting that e-commerce has been growing at about 15% globally, year over year for the last however many years forever. But I think this condensed window of a couple months has accelerated that growth big time. And people that were not used to getting their groceries delivered, ordering their groceries online, buying breastfeeding equipment online, like whatever the case may be or supplements, that they're doing that now like never before. And what's interesting, reading some articles about how people buy things in a recession and how to market in a recession.

Brett:

We just did a webinar about seven ways to market in a crisis. And one of the things that we found is that people are open to new things more in times of uncertainty or in a recession than at other times. Right now, even people that are not impacted financially, they're open to new things because they have to be. Like I can't just go to the store and get this thing that I always got. So I'm open to you. I'm open to you marketer or e-commerce company. Tell me your story. And so it really is an opportunity for us I think if we capture it and approach it the right way.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Yeah. I think we're going to see more brands move into call it advertising on Facebook and Instagram because I think they're going to have to because they don't have shelf space anymore. But I think those big brands are going to struggle to communicate exactly to that target audience. . Right, right. And so I think we do have an advantage and an opportunity to move quickly right now. And if you can speak to a very specific target market, I think you are in just an absolute perfect time to be an e-commerce entrepreneur right now.

Brett:

Absolutely. Yeah. And just a quick thought on ads right now. We focus a lot on the Google ads ecosystem and Amazon ads, but Google ads are kind of on sale right now. Like YouTube, we're seeing YouTube costs 20 to 50% less depending on the audience and stuff right now, will last forever. Costs will continue to go up, like that's a certainty. But when you can combine the fact that hey as smaller e-commerce entrepreneurs, we know how to connect with people and ad costs are lower, now is a pretty good time.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Yeah, it's amazing. And I'll throw into that influencers I think are on sale too. You have fewer brand sponsorships, you have fewer-

Brett:

And they've got time. What are they doing right now? Sure, send me your product, I'll create a video this evening.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Right, right. And so man, I really do think you have to be a little bit scrappy right now, but I think that if you're willing to be scrappy and you just said something really important. You said it's fun though.

Brett:

It is. It is.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Some people would disagree with you because a lot of ... we've had such a heyday in the e-commerce world that a lot of the entrepreneurs succeeded in businesses that they don't really like. They just were pursuing the money or the results. And that's fine. Like I mean I started my first business for the money too, but at some point that has a ceiling until you really like what you're doing or you like your customer. And we're in a very interesting window right now where you could make the pivot to rolling out a business that you enjoy a lot more than the thing that you're just doing for money and that opens up a new kind of gear for you to do the scrappy things to get ahead. Doing what you like is actually a really sweet unlock to growing something even bigger than what you're doing right now.

Brett:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's one of those things, I heard a quote from Stephen King years ago where he's like, "I love where I'm at." I'm paraphrasing here, but I miss the hungry days. Like I miss the days when I was like scrapping and trying to figure things out and fighting to get ... And most of us probably aren't at that point where we're like billionaire or whatever. But I think there's something to be said about when we have to shift gears and get into that scrappy mode and kind of get after a little bit. It should awaken something in you and that's for me anyway. I love what I do. I've always loved what I've done in this space, but scrapping is kind of fun.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

It is when you enjoy what is unfolding for you. So I was just playing with this thought earlier today Brett. This isn't fully flushed out, so you're getting the raw files. Forgive me. But I was thinking about how things like everything is about to be free. Go with me for a second. Like money right now, 0% interest rates, money's free.

Brett:

Or forgiven if you get the particular part of the cares act forgiven.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Oil is free. Gasoline, cheapest in history. It's basically free. Air travel about to be the cheapest in history. Basically free. Anything that you want is about to be basically free so we don't have to do anything for money anymore. If you think about this, pretty much the whole world has opened up, prices are about to come crashing down. Starting a business Brett, basically free. You can kick start whatever you want, get pre orders, place the inventory order and fulfill. I mean like advertising this podcast, free. Almost everything that you want is actually can be done free. So you might as well just do what you want because the whole world is getting to the point. And I don't mean to be crass, I know there's ... I think there's more mental financial stress than there is actual financial stress. Like people worry about what's going to happen while they are eating a full meal on their cell phone. And I get, like I've been there, right? When the stock market fell from 30,000 to 18,000, I had those moments of fear of what am I going to do? I need to make more money.

Brett:

All going away. Yup.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

I had it too and I got lots of money. So I understand like the mental game that happens. And I don't mean to be crass, I just mean that anything that you really want to do, you can basically do for less than it has ever cost in real dollars in history and that trend is continuing. We have more abundance than ever before. So you might as well just do what you want because we just got to the point where like we've all kind of won. If you're safe and you're healthy and you don't have to go anywhere in quarantine, this is a really good time to dream. It's a really good time to be like, what do I want? Because like when life moves forward, we can do anything. And prices are going to be cheap and there's going to be lots of mobility and we can do whatever we want. So we might as well just build businesses that we like and that we get really jizzer jazzered up about.

Brett:

Yeah. And I love that you're saying it's free. I think that that adds some drama too and it opens up your eyes a little bit. I think another way to frame it as like, it's accessible, right? You can get these things, gas, air travel, business, like it's accessible and potentially getting there is easier than it's ever been before, which is really cool. So awesome. I want to kind of paint two different scenarios and I want to pick the brain of Ryan and see what you would advise for an e-commerce company in these two scenarios. And your advice may be almost identical for both. If it is, it's fine. So really seeing two groups of e-commerce companies.

Brett:

The majority of the e-commerce companies we work with and talk to are actually doing quite well right now. Yeah. In fact, so we built these, a member of my team built these COVID-19 dashboards where I can quickly go in and look at all of our clients day over day, week over week, month over month and year over year, global sales, sales from Google ads, things like that and then kind of do a comparison. At the beginning, like one weekend to this, we still had 67% of our clients were up at least year over year and month over month. Okay.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Amazing.

Brett:

I just looked this morning, so I went through all accounts. We serve about 80 accounts. 75% are up right now.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

That's great.

Brett:

And like another 5% are flat. There's a few that are like plus or minus 2%. There are some that are down though. And I'll talk to you about the categories we're seeing that are down. This may or may not be global to back this up. But apparel is down in some cases, like accessories, watches, things like that are down a little bit. We're seeing some luxury items. I have a client that sells luxury bedding, like really high end bedding although they just had a major turner. Like they got hit hard at the beginning of this, but the last April's been great.

Brett:

Anyway, so let's first take an e-commerce company that's kind of had a rough go of it. Like they're not doing so well in this COVID-19 world and maybe they're hearing from their friends or I think that the CEO of Shopify just said it's like Christmas everyday right now. And this entrepreneur is saying, "Well not for me. Like I'm not there." So what advice would you give to the struggling e-commerce brand? What should they be thinking about doing now? And then also what should they be doing as we come out of this and whatever the new normal looks like?

Ryan Daniel Moran:

So this is going to be a little bit counterintuitive. If you are not performing the way that you would like to be performing, I'd be willing to bet money, nine bucks I'll bet that you are thinking too big. Now that's counterintuitive because most people say you need to think bigger. You need to go harder, you need to move faster. I think you are overlooking all of your opportunities because you're comparing yourself to the people that you perceive to be doing bigger things. It does not take a lot of people to build a really wildly successful profitable business. You do not need a million customers to do damage. You need a few people who really give a crap.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

So the way that you can pivot from stagnant growth or from a reduction in sales to growth again is to go all in on the people who are giving a crap and go get more of them. What most people do is they ignore all of the good news that they're getting from their customers and they look for the problems and so they find more of them. And so they up being in this endless loop of trying to fix things that are broken rather than serving and going and get more people that they want to serve. So if you go after the people that are really happy, after the people who need exactly what you've got, and you communicate them in a way that they're used to being communicated to, you'll have a new audience in 90 days.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

So a lot of people and I've experienced this myself where you kind of overlook the hundred people that are showing up because you see somebody else has a thousand or a million. But if you just go all in on those hundred, like I tell people when they're launching a new business, if you can get a hundred people, a hundred people really excited to the point where they will post about you on social media and they will review your product on Amazon and they'll go on auto ship on your Shopify store and they'll subscribe on YouTube and share your videos. 100 of those people who care, you can build a six or seven figure business with those hundred people. And so I think that the entrepreneur is thinking beyond where they are and they're beating themselves up for where they're not rather than maximizing where they are. But that's the route that they have to go through if they want to get back to growth.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that. And one of the other things we're seeing, talking about maybe you're thinking too big or you're thinking beyond what you need to focus on. Sometimes we think, hey, I need some kind of complex funnel or I need some kind of new whizzbang thing when really maybe what you need to do is just put up some solid Google search ads or some shopping ads. Like get some of those now buyers, put out great content like you're talking about, connect with people, like do some really simple things. Very simple things right now are having a pretty high return.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Yeah. I mean, the way I like to look at it is just celebrate and highlight whatever you want more of. So if somebody leaves you a five star review on Amazon, screenshot that, post it on social media, responded to them publicly, and then send them a gift basket and watch them respond publicly to you and watch how many other people are like, "Well shoot, they're doing that for a five star review. I'll feel kind of bad that I haven't reviewed this guy." Or if you just email your list and say thank you. I haven't reached out in a while and we're a small business. I just want to say thank you. I know there's a lot of people that could have your attention and you gave five minutes of it to us and I just appreciate it. Thank you. The more you appreciate what you want more of, it appreciates. You get more of it. So turn your attention away from where you are not and put it towards what you want more of and you will get more of it.

Brett:

Yeah, that's awesome. Super powerful. So, okay. Let's flip it now. So let's look at ... and I don't know what the global numbers are, but for our client base, 75% are up right now. Like maybe they even feel bad that they're ... There's the news that people are being laid off and the restaurant industry is being decimated and things like that and they're like, "Whoa, I just have like a record month." So what about the e-commerce brand is doing really well right now? Any advice, any things you'd tell them, "Hey, don't get loads of sleep here," or just any words of advice for those that are doing well right now?

Ryan Daniel Moran:

For the brand that is doing really well, don't overlook the people that are making it possible for you to do really well. So you're doing something well, great. Keep doing it and double down on your appreciation for your customers. Double down on your appreciation for your best team members because I'm trying to see how to word this. We're all a little bit on eggshells because we're all a little bit ... we can all be sucker punched right now. So you'd better be extra thankful for the people who are spending the most money with you and the people who are most contributing to your success. And they should be more appreciative to you too. We're all having to step up a little bit more. So don't get soft on the people that are making it possible for you to be continuing to kill it.

Brett:

I love that advice. I actually just did an interview with a guy named David Wax and he's got a service to help you create handwritten notes. And it was just such a ... it was interesting to me because I've been kind of a marketing junkie since the early two thousands and I was a Jay Abraham fan and Dan Kennedy's fan and like looked at hand addressed mail and lumpy mail and things like that. But hearing him talk and then actually a friend of mine owns a jewelry store and I've helped them with their marketing for over a decade now. I bought something recently and he sent me a handwritten note and it had a couple of lines in it. And this is something I was just reminded, they do this with everybody. Everybody.

Brett:

They'll send a handwritten note, it'll have like a couple little nuggets in there. It's not just like, hey, thanks for purchasing. I really appreciate it, blah blah blah. It's like, hey, I really hope Britney enjoyed this because she made this comment. Like there's something personal in it, but that if I didn't already love the guy and love the company, I would now. I think there's some pieces of that that e-commerce companies could do too. Why not take an hour a day in the evening now when you're in lockdown and write a handwritten thank you note to some of your best customers and make it personal and put some meaning in it. I think that would be a huge, probably a huge return on time. So yeah, I love that.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Yeah. I think too many people try to scale before they do the grunt work at the beginning and that allows them to scale. Or said differently, I think too many people are worried about growth rather than they are about those beginning stages when they're kind of setting the landscape. And when you're at the ... especially at the beginning, going all in on the people who actually care just completely changes the trajectory of your business. I mean this is a reason why people say that your network is your net worth. It's because the people that are surrounded, those are all ... that surround you, those are your opportunities. And it takes one person to have the right audience or the right investor or the right connection or the right idea that changes everything. But people are so focused on what they're going to get out of the transaction that they ignore the kind of stuff you're talking about ..

Brett:

Love it. So I love that you've kind of transitioned to you're an investor, you're an advisor, you're doing all kinds of fun things right now. It's always interesting to hear from an advisor or an investor's perspective, what do you look for in an e-commerce company? So if you're going to invest your money or your funds money into an e-commerce store, what are you looking for? And the reason I asked that is because I think there are some clues there even for somebody that doesn't want to sell. Like someone that just wants to keep their business, they don't want investors, whatever. There's a lesson there on here's what makes for a real business. Here's what makes a successful business. So what do you look for?

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Yeah, there's two things right off the bat. The first is I am looking at the mindset of the entrepreneur. The number one, no question. You are betting on the jockey. You are betting on the person when you make an investment 100% because we have all had great ideas that sucked. We've all had them. And so you are betting on the person who is leading the ship and I am evaluating how excited are they about the process? How excited are they to build the product line? How excited are they about the mission and the story? I am not looking at projections. I am not looking at market size. I am not looking at the entrepreneurs saying how much money they're going to make. That's a turn off to me. Not because I don't like money. My company is capitalism.com I really like money. I am looking at it because the most profitable bet is on the person who is going to be operating in the service of other people. So that's the first thing I'm looking for. The next thing I'm looking for, number two, the best marketing in the world is a great fricking product.

Brett:

It's so true. It's so true. invested in marketing for years. Yeah.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

You said like you kind of quipped that somebody thinks I need like a great complex funnel and no you don't. Most billion dollar companies don't have complex funnels. They have great fricking products. And so I'm looking at what does the customer say about the buying experience and the product? What does the market say they want? How are people coming back and buying more of it? So ideas are crap. The person who is in charge and the excitedness of the customer, those are the things that matter right off the bat. If those two things pass, then we can talk business.

Brett:

Nice. Yeah, I like that. So you're looking for, does this entrepreneur have the passion, which that's maybe an overused or poorly used word, but do they love this, do they have resilience or do they have tenacity. I love your interview recently that you did on your podcast with Moiz Ali, the founder of Native Deodorant. And he talks about this too. And actually, he's got a new podcast coming out, which I don't remember the name of, but I'll link to it-

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Called Exit Strategy.

Brett:

Exit Strategy. Yeah. So Moiz, mutual friend. We actually, a client of ours as well, full disclosure. But I love their product. But Moiz like embodies and he even says like you don't have to do it the way he did it of course, but he embodies like this amazing resilient entrepreneur. So you're looking for that but is there-

Ryan Daniel Moran:

But just to piggyback on that Brett, Moiz is chapter four in my new book.

Brett:

Is that right? Okay.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

And so I open with the story of Moiz taking a stick of Native Deodorant and rubbing it on his shirt because he was in iteration mode on his product of how do we make this better? How do we make this better? How do we make this better? And that's the type of entrepreneur that has a shot. Most people, and this is, I get taken to the cleaners in the Amazon circles because people ask me like, "When you're browsing for a product on helium 10 in Jungle Scout, what do you look at?" I'm like, "I don't use it any data to tell me what product my customers want. I can look at it from market size and those tools can be really helpful for making final decisions."

Ryan Daniel Moran:

But so to try and decide what business you're going to be in based on market data is usually a sign that somebody is in it to extract money from the market rather than to create something that is unique and different for a specific group of people. One of those is a lifestyle business that you can manage and be fine, be a full time entrepreneur and worry about money a lot. The other is to be a brand that can be scaled and sold. And I like to bet on entrepreneurs who are willing to build brands.

Brett:

Awesome. And just to kind of fill out that story a little bit so that you'll go buy the book. And so you'll listen to Moiz's podcast. Started Native Deodorant in his kitchen, within two years time, was it right about two years sold to P&G for $120 million?

Ryan Daniel Moran:

He started with $500 and 18 months later he had an offer on the table.

Brett:

Insane. It's insane. So check out his podcast, check out Ryan's book and get more of the scoop. So now let me ask you this, because I love where you're coming from. I love the mindset of like you got a bet on the jockey, you have to understand the entrepreneur. But I also like data and I get the sense of you like data too because you've been very successful. Are there any data points you look at that tell you this is a successful entrepreneur. They have what it takes to be successful or is this more gut, more perception? How do you evaluate that?

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Are you talking about in the context of investing in someone?

Brett:

Yes.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Well one of the pieces of data that I'm looking at is like in the investment world we would call it return on invested capital, but it's not that fancy sounding when I'm actually looking at it. Because I'm more looking at it as is this person a good steward of the money that I'm about to give them? And have they proven that by being willing to spend a dollar and make a dollar back and consider it a win? So I'm looking at how aggressively they can acquire and are willing to acquire customers. So that's a data point that I'll look at. Is somebody willing to make the YouTube video, to run the YouTube ad, to spend in the red in the shorter term on Amazon, to go spend the money to build the audience, to create the relationships with influencers and advisors? Or are they holding onto it with this mindset of it's 100% pie. I'm going to keep as much of the pie as possible, and that's my baby.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

I run from those entrepreneurs. I run from them. And it's because if you don't believe that an outside relationship is going to make the pie bigger, then you don't get how capitalism works. Capitalism works by you and me coming together and creating new value that did not exist before. But most entrepreneurs are instead looking at it as there's this fixed pie and I'm going to carve out a little slice and I'm going to hold onto as much of it as possible. That's an entrepreneur who was going to plateau and I can't invest in that person. So if you're willing to make the pie bigger by showing that you're willing to acquire customers, even going to the red to acquire customers because you're so confident that your business has the runway to be able to make up for the loss in the longterm. If you haven't proven that, then I'm not sure you're ready to take on my money.

Brett:

Yeah. Growth mindset versus a scarcity mindset in a lot of ways that if I'm giving you something, then I lose it rather than we can all win.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

That's right.

Brett:

Totally makes sense. We'd love to get your perspective on this because this has been another interesting thing for me. Right? So we've made some good decisions I think with OMG Commerce and we've made some dumb decisions too. But I've been thinking about like, what do I invest in? What do I do right now? Because it was such a flip in mindset for me several years ago when I heard Mayford Garrett Gunderson who was on your podcast. I also heard Gary Vee and a few other people talking about, well now we're just waiting for the next recession because that's when there's going to be opportunities. That's when things are going to go on sale. There's going to be discounts. We're going to invest. A lot of money was made in the great depression as an example. So it was a difficult time obviously. I was not alive then. My kids like to make jokes. Like I was on that battle although I'm 40 years old. But so lots of opportunities here.

Brett:

I think though, going back to some points I made in the beginning, there could be some people that are saying like, I don't know what to do. Like do I go buy stocks now, do I invest in this company now? There's this fear of maybe I'm going to miss a golden opportunity in the midst of this. So how are you approaching investing right now? What advice would you give to the investor who's kind of sitting on the sidelines right now trying to wonder what the-

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Yeah. So I mean full disclosure, I'm an idiot on the internet who just enjoys talking about this stuff. So don't listen to anything that I say.

Brett:

This is not investment advice. Just don't give investment advice.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Just don't listen to anything that I say. I'm an idiot on the internet. That's the disclaimer. And I'm like, I covered everything. I'm a moron. And my last name is Moran. All right. Don't listen to anything that I have to say. But in terms of investing, if you listen to the smartest investors in the world, there's one thing that all of them say consistently, invest in what you understand. It is the same thing in business. Do not start a business that you do not have a strategic advantage in. Do not start a business that you don't know something more than the other person. Do not start a business where you don't know more about your customer, more about the marketplace or at least believe in something so much that you're willing to put your blood, sweat and tears into it. Do not do that. And the same is true in investing. In investing, invest in the companies that you know something about because that is how marketplaces price things.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

So the price is not like some illusory thing that is outside of people. It's people's perception. And so if you know something early on like how many of us were shopping on Amazon before the rest of the world? Most of us. How many people were using Zoom before the rest of the world? Most of us. How many people are buying Bitcoin knowing that there is no utility to it right now? A lot of people, and those are speculators who are hoping that it's going to go up in value. Now you get a pass if you're actually buying things in Bitcoin and you can see where it's being utilized. But that is like 1%.

Brett:

Yeah, it's like I don't think I know anybody that's doing that but it's like maybe.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

So there's no utility there. So the only reason you would buy it is because you think it's going to go up in value. And that is how most people are approaching stocks and investing. I hope this goes up in value. In reality, you're looking at companies and sectors that you know something about and you can make like a voluntary bet on it doing well versus trying to just price time things and buy low and hope that it goes up. I don't think-

Brett:

Catch the falling knife so to speak, like it's impossible to time the market. The smartest people in the world can't do it.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

I mean now to my own credit, I came out publicly to my list and I said, "Look, the dollar is probably going to break down to 22,000, then 20,000, then 18,000. Well bounce from 18,000, go back up to 24 and then we're going to go right back down to 20." And that has like happened almost exactly. So like from a marketplace perspective, like we nailed it at capitalism.com. However, the strategy with how you respond to that doesn't change that much. It's by good companies that you believe in at good prices. And the only thing that-

Brett:

That you understand when there's a value there. You understand when it's on sale.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Correct. So the only thing that knowing what the market will do or might do, the only that's going to tell you is how the broad market is responding to all of the news. It should not affect your decision to evaluate a good company. The only way that you can respond, even when the market goes from 30,000 to 20,000, the only proper way to respond is getting out ahead of that. Knowing what your shopping list of businesses are before there is a big event because otherwise you have no way to properly price that business. So we're getting into like mumbo jumbo here. Here's a real takeaway. The business you know most about is your own. And so your dollars are best deployed in your own business. I recommend not ... sorry, I shouldn't say recommend in the context of investing.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

I take 10% of take home money and put that into the market. And I put that into companies that I like, that pay a dividend or that I know a lot about, and that's my longterm investment strategy. Everything else goes into companies I know really well, which usually come from my own network and or that I own a piece of. That to me is the smartest thing that you can do.

Brett:

Nice.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

And actually, let's just look at this conversation we've had. We've talked about YouTube ads are on sale right now. Influencers are on sale right now. Guess what Brett, that's investing.

Brett:

It is investing. It is. Investing-

Ryan Daniel Moran:

By underpricing assets and reselling stuff. That's investing and guess what? We have a strategic advantage knowing that that's the case. That's where we should put our dollars. And you know what might happen next is that Google might report lower revenue because prices are down and then we'll go, "That's not going to last. Maybe it's time to buy Google."

Brett:

Yeah. Buy some google stock.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

That's smart investing. Not is the market going to go up or is going to go down? That's a fool's game.

Brett:

Yeah, I got this stock tip from my neighbor. He said this is a can't lose stock over here. But I love that. I think that's something that a lot of people aren't thinking about is you know your business, you know traffic, you know whatever, like invest in it when it's on sale. Like that's, if YouTube ads are down in cost 20 to 50%, and you know what you're doing, you have a good offer and a good ad and all that, you just made 20% on your money, like what you would have had otherwise. Right. That's a pretty good-

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Yeah, and that's a good ROI.

Brett:

That's good ROI. Yeah. Even if nothing else changes, that's pretty good ROI.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

That's right.

Brett:

That's fantastic. Let's talk a little bit about the stuff you got going on and how people can kind of get involved. So first of all, let's talk about the capitalism conference. Why did you do that? And is there any, and I don't mean to put you on the spot, but is there plans on that's going to happen at some point in the future? Any ideas when?

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Yeah, so it's so funny you should ask Brett. So you asked about the story of the capitalism conference. It's kind of an embarrassing story. A few years ago I used to fall asleep to this thought. This was like I think I had just moved to Austin. So like 2013 I used to have this thought. I used to ask myself, what's the biggest strategic risk I could take right now that if it paid off would change my life? And that was how I would approach business when I was like in my mid 20s.

Brett:

That's a bold thought, man. Yeah.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

And so I ran the numbers on an event and I discovered that it would basically require most, if not all of my retained earnings that I had up until that point. And so I said, "Okay, it'll cost that much, but I'll sell tickets. I know I'll sell some. So if I can sell some, I can offset the cost so it won't be a total loss." So I had about half a million dollars in retained earnings and I bet them, and my thought was-

Brett:

This is also probably not investment advice.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

This is not investment advice.

Brett:

Don't put all your money in a new event you're creating. But yeah.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Probably not especially right now Brett. But the thought to me was, you know what? I don't feel like I'm on the path that is going to bring me the most growth and fulfillment. So the only way I know how to hack that is to surround myself with people who are on the path that I want to be on. And so I booked right out of the gate. I paid them their crazy speaking fees. Gary Vaynerchuk, Grant Cardone-

Brett:

Dude, that's paid off because you and Gary Vee like hanging out. So I mean like that's become a relationship. Yeah.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

He wrote the endorsement on the top of my book that I'm very proud of.

Brett:

That's awesome.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Grant Cardone ended up being a great story because I thought he was a real d bag and Robert Herjavec was-

Brett:

I think there may be a decent number of people that think that. Yeah.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Oh, I've got stories Brett. But basically what happened was I basically put half a million dollars into building my network. And I was like, and I'll sell tickets and we'll see who shows up. That was the first cap con back in like 2014 or 15. And this year obviously didn't happen and we'll bring it back. We'll have cap con five. I don't know when that will be, but what we just announced, we just announced, I do a membership called the 1%. We just announced that cap con is basically going to be rolled into membership. So our members, all of their membership dues are just going to be credits for cap con and cap con's going to end up being our Superbowl. So I'm really excited about it. I don't know when it's going to happen. But we're really pumped about it.

Brett:

Cool. All links to everything is capitalism.com. Check it out and then you can be informed then when that does go live. Let's talk a little bit about the 1% and what you guys are doing there and who might be a good fit for that. And then I want to talk about your book.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Okay, cool. I mean, you know what's funny is this is me really letting my hair down with you Brett. I'm just going to hanging out for a second.

Brett:

All right. I like it.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Have you ever noticed in your business that the things that are really hard and that you think are going to be amazing don't work out as highly as like the things that are really easy and you're like, "That's too easy. That's not going to work."

Brett:

Yup. Yup.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

I just had this with the 1% where like we have, we put all our trainings in there, like tens of thousands of dollars worth of training and you want to make the most amazing can't say no offer except for the fact that no one wants more training. And then just recently we started doing this thing, we just call it like Sunday Capitalism Coffee. Like we all get together and we get on a, like we do a live and we just like somebody has an ask of the community, we bring them on live and they're like, "Look I'm really struggling with this piece. Does anybody know an investor?" And then the whole group will come in and comment and open their network. Right. And so it's just like a Sunday coffee mastermind. Was just something that I threw together because I wanted to just hang out more with my community. Huge success.

Brett:

Takes no preparation, takes no, you're not yet creating courses or anything.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Exactly. Right. So it's a community of capitalists and I mean really our bread and butter is build a business and invest the profits. That's the content we create. Those are the courses that we put in there. That's who we surround ourselves with at the event. And it's all rolled into our membership called the 1%. So it's funny because it's kind of been ... You asked me right now where we're kind of in transition of like all the stuff that we thought was going to be so hard and so valuable are the things no one pays attention to. And the things that are so easy, like creating, for me anyway, creating community for entrepreneurs and serving one another and opening our network for one another and investing in one another. And there was somebody who was like, "Hey, this is my idea. What do you think of it?" And other people were commenting like, I want one, I want one. I'll pre order. And so it's a community for capitalists and it's a community that opens up its network and its resources to help people build businesses and invest the profits.

Brett:

Yup. That's fantastic. And one thing I will say, you have a skillset for building community. Like you're naturally good at that. You're good with people, you communicate well, you're perceptive, like obviously so that plays into it. But I think the concept you just shared is true with everybody. Like the thing, probably the thing that comes the most natural and the easiest to you may also lead to the biggest wins in some cases.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Yeah. And it's taken me 32 years to learn that, that we're all unique in some way and our uniqueness is our greatest value. Now, one of the hard things for entrepreneurs, especially internet entrepreneurs at least in my experience has been that we perceive other people's big wins as the thing that we need to mimic in order to have success. But the thing that stands out to me is like my favorite baseball player of all time is named Kenny Lofton. My biggest hall of fame snub in history, like he should-

Brett:

Is that because he played for the Indians or are you just, you're just a fan?

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Well, he was an electrifying player.

Brett:

I've heard the name, I'm not a huge baseball guy, but I've heard the name.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

People might argue like the question is legitimate of am I an Indians fan because of Kenny Lofton or am I a Kenny Lofton fan because of the Indians? An electrifying player. Right. And he was a speedster and a defender and he hit a lot of singles. Well at the same time there was a player on the team named Albert Bell, biggest power hitter of the era-

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah. Know that name.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Had Kenny Lofton tried to be a power hitter like Albert Bell, he would've sucked. And yet in like the entrepreneurial world, there's a lot of Kenny Loftons who are trying to be Albert Bells. They're building businesses mimicking everybody else's funnel, everyone else's ads, everyone else's advertising strategy, everyone else's product. And the fact of the matter is you're trying to mimic someone else's game and they've already got it. And so it's taken me 32 years I think to really realize that what is naturally easily and motivating and exciting and fun for me is my greatest gift to the people around me. Do you have any idea how much fun I've had in the last hour? I will walk out of this interview with more energy than when I started. I am so proud of the book I wrote because it's me just bleeding on the paper and analyzing every word and loving every minute of it.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

And so it's going to be really easy for me to sell it because I'm going to look someone in the face and be like, "You want to start a business? If you want to hit $1 million, this is the book. Go read it. It's the best thing you ..." And I will have no conflict of like should they really do it? It's like, no, go read the book. You're an idiot if you don't read the book. And I've had the experience in the past where I've had products that I didn't feel that way about. And guess what happens? You overthink the copy and you analyze every little thing and it takes you forever to build that funnel. Whereas if you just did what was naturally easily motivating to you, the whole world would open up to you. So this is the lesson I'm learning in my career right now Brett.

Brett:

I love it. So one final thought and then I want to get into the book and the details there. I think there's something, there's this interesting balance and this challenge of saying, "Hey, I'm going to look at the Albert Bells or I'm going to look at these successful entrepreneurs. I'm going to look at the Ryan Daniel Morans of the world and say, 'Okay, there are clues in their success, right? Success leaves clues. So I want to learn from those clues, but I can't become Ryan. I'm not Ryan. I've got to be me. Right? So I've got to be Kenny Lofton not Albert Bell.'" Any tips or tricks there or is it just a matter of getting that mind right?

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Yes. Your emotions are the guide to that. That sounds woo-woo airy fairy weirdo at first, but hear me out. Your emotions are a really good sign of what you really want. Does it excite you or does it make you contract? So like we're all really driven by our emotions. Mark Manson wrote the book, Everything Is F'd and he also wrote The Subtle Art. But I really liked his follow up book, which is called Everything Is F'd. And in it he talks about the thinking brain and the feeling brain and how they're both in the car but the feeling brain is the one with its hands on the wheel. And the thinking brain is navigating saying, I think we should go this way. But the thinking brain cannot make the hands on the wheel move in a different direction. The thinking brain is subservient to the feeling brain.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Now we all, especially in the West, prioritize the thinking brain because it's rational and it's reasonable, but it ain't driving the car. We cannot out-think our emotions. Our emotions have their hand on the wheel. And it is deciding where it's going, when it's hungry, when it's angry, when it wants something, it finds ways to get it. And the thinking brain has to sit there and go, okay, I got to find a new map. And so our emotions, when we're happy, when we're excited, when we're relaxed, when we feel loving, when we feel giving, when we feel energized, when we feel at ease, when we feel playful, when we feel excited, those are all in line with the things that we want. We feel those ways because we're thinking about and practicing the things that we really want.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

And when we're not giving the feeling brain what we really want, when we're stressed, when we're thinking about money, when we're trying to predict the future, when we're thinking about strategy in a way that gets the results, not the way that makes us excited, we are now robbing our emotions of what they really want. So the way that really unlock your superpower is to pay attention to the way things make you feel rather than the strategy that is going to get you there. Man, I had to beat my head against the wall enough times to finally realize that the wall wasn't moving. I was just going to walk around it and it's led me to this conclusion. I am not smarter than my emotions.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

So I do stupid things when my emotions are out of whack. And so if I'm good with my emotions, then I'm really a clear thinker and I really get a lot of good things done. But when I'm afraid, when I am nervous, when I feel out of integrity, man I cannot think my way to success. And so finding out who we really are and what really drives us is a matter of tuning into our emotional abilities, not our mental IQ.

Brett:

Dude, that's good. That's really good. I'm going to check that book out. Deep stuff. But now let's talk about your book. So let me tell me why I would be an idiot not to buy your book, which I believe that I would be.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Because it is the playbook to building a business to seven figures in a way that is scalable and sellable, in a way to do it with minimal startup capital, almost no risk, and in a way that is predictable and has been proven over hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurs with case studies that make it fun enough for you to breeze through it. So in my career-

Brett:

And I'm assuming your writing style is like your speaking style, because this is like, this is very digestible, entertaining, fun, high energy. So do you write in similar fashion?

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Yeah, my editor took out some of the curse words but yes. So-

Brett:

Yeah, you want to ... for those that are watching the video, you want to.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is 12 months To 1 million, quote by Gary Vaynerchuk up top, foreword by Russell Brunson.

Brett:

Russell Brunson. Yeah. Which I was actually thinking of Russell Brunson's a friend. We actually did a project together in 2009 called DCS local. I felt this need to like shout out to Russell. I know we were talking negatively about complex funnels. Click funnels is still great. Russell Brunson is still great. You still may be one funnel away from something. Anyway, guys I'm just throwing that out there.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

I use click funnels too. So my strategy at capitalism.com has been very simply to help entrepreneurs align those four products that sales 25 sales a day to get to a hundred sales. At a $30 price point, that's $1 million business. So this is kind of the fast lane to getting those four products to 25 sales a day and having $1 million business. It's broken into three stages. Stage one is the grind. The grind is discovering who your target market is, what they buy, deciding what your first product is going to be, coming up with a launch plan, funding the business, those hard decisions that we need to get out of the way as quickly as possible so we can take a darn sale. Stage two I call the growth. It is about getting that product to 25 sales a day and here's how we do it. We do that by stacking the deck and stacking the deck is building up a small seed audience that wants what we've got ready on launch day.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

And then going all in on our customers, our reviewers, and the people who are watching our stuff until we're at 25 sales a day. Screenshotting every review, replying to every comment until we're doing the consistent 25 sales a day. Then stage three is called the gold. It's when we repeat that process over three more products. And so we have four products doing 25 sales a day. That's a hundred sales a day. Now, the caveat to this is once you're in stage three, things compound way faster. In my experience, when you launch that second product off the back of something doing 25 sales a day, the first product will also go way up because you have repeat sellers, you have crossover sales, you have upsells, you have word of mouth, you have subscribe and save, you have people on auto ship.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

And so the snowball starts to build. So if you're a new entrepreneur on a new journey, this is going to give you clarity and a roadmap to hitting seven figures. If you are already in business, this is a book that is going to help you build a sustainable business that you can scale and sell. So I know there's a lot of entrepreneurs who are wondering, how do I ... like I've got something that's working but I don't feel like I have something that I can scale and sell. The problem is probably that you don't know who your who is. You're not going all in on that person and you are not doing the things that allow that business to sustain it without you working all the time. So if you're working too much and you don't have a business that you can sell or you want to be more sellable, this is the book that'll give you a seven figure business you can sell.

Brett:

That's awesome. And I'm a firm believer, I know you are too that really the companies that will succeed and win in the coming years are those that build a brand, those that are focused on the customer, those that build a great product. And I'm super excited. I can't wait to dig into the book. So check it out. 12 months To 1 million, also capitalism.com. Go there, check out Ryan's podcast, come to the next event whenever that may be. Ryan, this has been a blast man. I've had so much fun getting to chat with you.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

I had a great time too. Thank you man.

Brett:

Yeah, yeah, I had a lot of fun. Any asks? Anything you want to ask from the audience?

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Well, since you said you asked, I was recording a solo podcast earlier today and I just decided to do like I on the spot while I was recording, I was like, "Hey, here's an idea," and just dropped it on my podcast. So I'm just testing this. I have over at capitalism.com/book, I put together bulk order options for the book. And the one that I put together was the top tier was to fly to Austin and we'll come up with a strategic plan to build a seven figure business for you in a day. And then I'll open up my network to help promote the business and I'll even consider investing in the business. So that's at capitalism.com/book.

Brett:

Quarantine's getting to you man.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Yeah, I guess so. So my ask is if you have an audience or if you've been just kicking around the idea of doing this for too long or if you've got a podcast and want to do something cool by your audience, I just decided to put together one of the tiers being that you can come to Austin or we can do it on Zoom if quarantine goes on for the rest of the year and we'll map out the strategic plan to build a seven figure business for you, custom tailored and then I'll consider it opening my network or even my wallet to back the business. So that was the most no brainer offer I could think of to promote.

Brett:

That is super fun. So check it out at capitalism.com/book. Ryan Daniel Moran ladies and gentlemen. Ryan, thanks again man. Would love to do it again some time.

Ryan Daniel Moran:

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It was great chatting with you all. Thank you.

Brett:

Absolutely. And as always, we appreciate you. We'd love to hear more of what you'd like us to dive into on this podcast. So give us some feedback. Give us a review on iTunes if you're so inclined. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

‍

Currently, over 77% of our eCommerce clients are either still UP in sales even during this time of extreme uncertainty or are the same (plus or minus 1-2%).  Yes, some are hurting - but for most eCommerce businesses you CAN do something about sluggish sales right now.  We’ve learned a lot in recent weeks on what messages resonate with prospects  and what falls flat.  In this episode (taken from a recent highly-popular webinar) Chris Brewer, Co-Founder of OMG Commerce and I dive into these important topics:

• Understanding the different physiological segments of shoppers right now and how to appeal to them
• People still want to buy even when stuck at home - how to provide retail therapy to your customers
• How to handle paid search on both Amazon and Google right now (search trends are shifting)
• Why this could be the perfect time to consider YouTube ads…viewership is up 100%+ on the platform and ad costs are down 20% or more
• How you can gain market share and get ahead of the competition right now

‍

Brett Curry - CEO of OMG Commerce

Via LinkedIn

Via Facebook

Via Twitter

Via Instagram

Via YouTube

Chris Brewer - Digital & eCommerce Entrepreneur and Co-Founder of OMG Commerce

Via Email

Via LinkedIn

Via Facebook

Via Twitter

Via Instagram

OMG Commerce

Via LinkedIn

Via Facebook

Via Twitter

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OMG Commerce Guides

Mentioned in this episode:

The Ultimate Guide to Google Shopping - OMG Commerce

eCommerce Evolution Podcast with Liz Germain

How to Market in a Downturn - Harvard Business Review

Huckberry

Big Blanket Co.

BOOM by Cindy Joseph

Amazon DSP‍

YouTube TrueView

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. Today's episode is a little bit different. This is actually the recording from a recent webinar that my business partner Chris Brewer and I hosted. And this webinar is all about seven ways to market in times of uncertainty. So with lockdowns in effect, and some of those will be expiring before too long at the time of this recording, but with all of the shift in consumer behavior and potential shift in consumer confidence, how should we be approaching our marketing right now? I think you'll find this content helpful because we look at this from both the strategic side, understanding kind of the psychology of shoppers right now and some new psychological segments to consider in the marketplace, but then we also get very tactical and talk about Google ads and YouTube ads and Amazon ads and even shifting your message during this time. So I hope you find this timely and helpful. Let's dive into Seven Ways to Market in a Crisis.

Brett:

I want to welcome everybody to the webinar. Really excited you could take the time, you decided to take the time to join us. We're digging into a super important topic. This is something that we're all thinking about, we're all facing right now. How do we grow our business? How do we maintain our business? How do we market? How do we advertise? Do we advertise? What do we do right now during a crisis? And so, Chris and I, we want to get very tactical, very practical with you today. We're also going to talk strategic as well and hopefully this will be inspiring and informational and you'll leave here charged up and ready to do the absolute best that you can right now. And so, primarily on the tactical side, we're going to dig into Google Ads, YouTube Ads, and Amazon Ads. But again, we're going to get strategic, so even if you're not on those platforms or you're on other platforms, this will still be useful.

Brett:

And so why are we doing this? Why are we hosting this webinar talking about seven ways to market in a crisis? And the ultimate reason is, we want to help. I love what a crisis can do in terms of bringing out the best in humanity. We've seen this with our team. Our team is rallying around our clients, coming up with creative ideas and how do we grow sales, how do we save sales, how do we make things work? And so that's really the spirit of this event today is, how do we give you actionable ideas, some good strategies, some good mindset tips, maybe even some examples of how you can succeed right now. So really this is all about giving back. We do have some specific ways we can help and a couple of offers. We even put together our own stimulus package Chris. And so we'll talk about our own stimulus package at the end. But this will be educational and hopefully extremely helpful.

Brett:

Just a couple of really quick things about our agency for those that don't know us. We're a team of 38 and growing. We're all remote now. We're usually ... The majority of us are in our offices in Springfield, Missouri or New Jersey. We're all spread out now, all remote. We are one of the top spending agencies on YouTube ads and so we'll talk a little bit about YouTube ads. Right now we're seeing some things on YouTube that we've never seen before because of this crisis that actually opens up a lot of opportunities for you. Chris mentioned the ultimate guide to Google shopping, we'll show you how to get that later if you want to take Google shopping to the next level. And then yeah, we speak at industry events where you'll find us online and in person. And so there's a quick look at our team. And the reason I point this out is because our team is day in and day out in the trenches, coming up with the marketing ideas, testing things. We're getting real time data now on what performance looks like in eCommerce during this crisis and during this time, these times of uncertainty. And so even yesterday and last night, I was polling the team and saying, "Hey, how is this working? How is that working?," so that we could report that on this webinar.

Brett:

We did recently ... This was actually one of the last, I think, big live events before things started getting shut down. This was in February. Got invited to speak at the YouTube LA offices. We did about a half day workshop there with about 140 different attendees. 100 eCommerce brands. Talking all about how to utilize YouTube ads for performance growth. So YouTube ads to directly drive sales. We'll be sharing some insights from that. We've also got some other resources that'll be free that we talked about at that event. We're going to talk about Amazon ads too, so if we've got some Amazon sellers here as well. But that's a picture on the left there of myself and our director of eCommerce, Chris Tyler. We are one of the fasted growing Amazon ad agencies and so it's about a year and a half ago ... I'm terrible with dates. I don't know. We got invited out to the Amazon HQ because of our rapid growth to meet with the Amazon ad teams and talk about new developments with Amazon advertising. And so we're going to also show you what's going on with Amazon right now. How have our clients been impacted by what's going on and what's working specifically from an Amazon ad prospective.

Brett:

And so, what do we do? What do we do right now, right? That is the question. What in the world do we do right now? Do we go quiet? There's feedback on Facebook and other places, people saying, "How dare you advertise right now?" So is that the approach we take? Or do we potentially step things up because there are tons of opportunities right now? And so a couple of things that are interesting. Right now internet usage, up 35%. So this is all online traffic. Up 35% right now. We're all at home. We're all stuck in front of our computers. We're all online. And this includes YouTube, Google, Amazon, everything. Internet usage period is up 35% right now. We have a lot of good friends that have organic YouTube channels. One's in the fitness space. I just did a podcast with her recently, Liz Germain. I highly recommend you go listen to that episode, eCommerce Revolution Podcast. But she's seeing ... And then she has some friends in the financial space, their organic view on YouTube are up 130 to 200% right now, so huge. And then a lot of big advertisers have pulled off the platform.

Brett:

And so you've got the scenario where ad costs are going down because there's so much inventory and people are paying attention. People are available. And people are still shopping. People still like to buy. There's that retail therapy that people can't get in store but they can buy online. And so what's interesting ... So talking about some of the things that have really shifted now, looking at online grocery and how in 2018 only 36% of customers bought groceries online. That shifted to 55% in the month of March. And then if you look at Google trends for online grocery and how they've exploded ... Just recently, so this is just a few days ago. Looking at how that trend has blown up. And then this was some data from Sellix. So this is specific to Amazon. So what Amazon categories have grown. And this was growth from the beginning of March to the kind of mid, end of March. So grocery, up 26%, appliances, up 14%, household items, up 13%, toys and games, up 10%. So that's even growth inside of the month of March, which is just absolutely crazy.

Brett:

We're seeing this with our sellers as well. We have clients selling crafts and toys at home. We have clients selling things like supplements. And some of those categories are just way way up on Amazon. So what we're seeing ... And these are recent numbers, so even in the midst of this crisis ... So we got some dashboards we built tracking day over day, week over week, month over month, and year over year, sales for our clients. And even in the midst of this, we're all eCommerce. 67% of our our clients are still up at least year over year, 16% are relatively flat, and then the rest are down. And really the only areas of eCom that are down are things like apparel and fashion taking a bit of hit. Luxury goods. So some high end, handmade goods are down just a little bit. But for the most part eCommerce is up and/or in a really strong position. One thing we've talked a lot about Chris, is as people shift some of their behavior to buying online ... They're doing it now out of necessity. But as they see how easy that is and as they have good experiences with retailers, some of that buying behavior is going to continue long after we've recovered from this crisis. So huge opportunities for eCom.

Brett:

All right, so let's dive right in. So seven keys to marketing in a recession or marketing in a crisis. And so let's talk about ... This is kind of the foundational area. So we talk about hey, do we pause everything? Do we press full speed ahead? Do we pretend like everything is normal? Do we change everything? So what do we do? And what's really important is to understand, what's the mindset of the shopper? What's the mindset of your prospective customer and you're existing customers? What are they thinking and feeling right now? Do they want to still buy? Do they not want to buy? And so we're going to break down ... Actually look at this article. Highly recommend this article. We can share the link but you can also just kind of google it and check it out here. But how to market in a downturn. This is from the Harvard Business Review. This what written during the great recession. But it was a study looking at previous recessions and what shifted in terms of consumer behavior? How did different products fair? And it's really some great insights. And even though this was unprecedented, what we're experiencing now with this pandemic leading to a economic shut down basically. We haven't seen that exactly. It still has some characteristics of other recessions.

Brett:

And I think people's response to this is at least in some ways very similar to other recessions. And so our response can be similar in some ways as well. Let's talk about kind of these four mindsets. These four segments with consumers now. So, these are kind of the four ways people respond to crisis. One is the slam on the breaks crew. So this was the crowd that just says, "Wait, I'm not going to do anything. I'm going to basically stop all spending except for essential products. But I'm slamming on the breaks, I'm freaked out, I'm nervous, I'm worried about the future so I'm slamming on the breaks." Then there's the pained but patient crowd. So they're feeling some pain. Maybe even now they're laid off or there's fears of being laid off, but they're patient. They're still at least somewhat optimistic. In most recessions, this is actually the largest group of people. People that are pained, but patient. So probably in our environment we're facing right now, these are people that still have their job but maybe they've lost some hours or maybe they're just uncertain if is a layoff going to come for my category, for my company soon? So they're pained but they're patient.

Brett:

Then we've got the comfortably well off. So these are folks that financially, they're doing great. They're not worried about, are they going to be economically viable at the end of all this? They're confident in that. Now they also shift their behavior. We'll talk about how in just a minute. But they're comfortably well off. We found clients that are serving comfortably well off individuals. And depending on what you're selling, you are likely doing very well right now. And then there's the live for today crowd. So this is the crowd that they're going to live like everything's normal because it's kind of the carpe diem. I'm just going to enjoy life. Whatever. I'm not going to worry about it.

Chris B:

Were those all the spring breakers that were on the news a few weeks ago Brett?

Brett:

I think so, yeah. Those are the spring breakers. What the research found is this crowd, unless they lose their job, they almost change their spending zero. They just keep living life like normal. Okay, so we kind of got to understand these segments and how we approach them. Because, except the slam on the breaks people, all of these people still buy. And one thing that's interesting that I think we got to keep in mind is that, right now like the normal ways we may slice and dice an audience, so looking at age and other psychographics, it really more comes down to this. Because age doesn't really matter here. I heard a deal recently that totally makes sense that we act more our income than we act our age. And we're going to act more accordingly to what we're experiencing and feeling right now versus some other prepackaged demographic that may have had relevance in normal times. So thinking about, how these folks behave.

Brett:

But kind of to go with that ... And then we'll break these down because they go together. Thinking about the category of the product you sell. So what is your current category and how are people, why are people buying that right now or why are they not buying that right now? And so as we look at a couple of categories of price, we got essentials. Those are doing great. Toilet paper, groceries, hand sanitizer if you find it. That all is selling great. So essentials, doing fine. Treats. These are things that people view almost as a necessity, but it's more about the enjoyment of that product rather than supporting the life, like a true essential. Then you've got postponables. These are things that people want but when push comes to shove or they get in a pinch, they could postpone it. And then expendables are areas that people say hey, I don't have to do that. So postponable right now could be travel. And expendable could be some kind of big purchase around the house. A new car, maybe it's a new sports car or something like that, where it feel like, I just don't need to do that at all right now.

Brett:

Now what's interesting about these products or these categories rather, is these are all subjective. So this is all kind of in the eye of the beholder. It's whatever the prospect perceives. So this is not like there's some predefined rule around this. This is all subjective. And so as we look at this ... And again, this was from that Harvard Business Review article. How do people in those different segments ... How do they treat different products? So let's just take that comfortably well off crowd. So if it's an essential, they're going to continue to consume it at pre crisis levels. They're going to just keep buying like normal. If it's a treat, they're probably going to keep buying, but they may be more selective about some luxuries. And one of the things we've seen and then heard with this group, is that maybe they're less conspicuous. They're not going to do anything that's showy. So if they bought a new car, they maybe wouldn't talk about it because they feel maybe a little self conscious that they're buying expensive things when other people are hurting. So the conspicuous purchases maybe have reduced.

Brett:

And so then as we look at some these ... Like as we look at postponables and expendables, those are the areas that really the slam on the breaks and the pained but patients, they shift that quite a bit. A lot of the other categories either continue like normal or continue with slight changes. So what we see with a lot of these is that, what maybe was considered essential before, now someone considers it a treat. But they still want to buy it, but they may be looking for value or something slightly different. So one of these we see is that brand loyalty shifts and price sensitivity also shifts in a crisis. Which actually is a great opportunity for us. So maybe someone was really used to this other brand of deodorant or toothpaste or whatever, now in the midst of a crisis, I can't maybe go and get the toothpaste or deodorant like I could before, so now I'm open to new ways, I'm open to new offers, I'm open to new things. And so the way people approach these types of products, the way they shop has definitely shifted. Do you have a thought there Chris?

Chris B:

Yeah. I get the pleasure of talking with usually two to four eCommerce brands every single week and it's been really interesting to watch this progression and I've actually had a couple of potential clients come back that were sold in retail outlets. And they were really nervous about going direct to consumer because they didn't want to interrupt the relationships they had with their retailers. And I always thought they were over thinking that. And so now they've got people that love their products that can't get them because the retailers are closed and now they're scrambling to find channels to get those products out there, but the challenge for them is, their cashflow has dropped. So for native eCommerce brands, which I suspect are many of you on this call, you just have to aware of, what are the kinds of products that I may have had competitive pressures, that people could buy at retial, that now they can pickup direct from me? Because like Brett said, you've got a lot better opportunity for those cheaper awareness consideration kinds of buys now than ever before.

Brett:

Yeah, without a doubt. And we're seeing this quite a bit. So to tie that into what we're seeing, just comparing kind of Amazon with off Amazon retailers is, we have some clients that sell a lot on Amazon and on their own website. As Amazon was running into some delivery issues ... First they weren't accepting items into their fulfillment centers and then they were kind of slow to ship things. They still are kind of slow to ship some things. We've seen with some clients 20, 30, 40% of those purchases shifted to their dotcoms, so off Amazon, because people still wanted that product. So you are finding this scenario where people still want certain items, they just can't get them the way they did before and so we've got to be ready. We've got to be ready to step in and fill those needs. And so we're going to talk about in quite a bit of detail, what to do to capture now buyers on both Amazon and Google. So we're going to dig into to that here in just a few.

Brett:

So then key number three. Looking at opportunities for growth that your competitors miss. So we talked about this a little bit in the lead up. Hey, do we just pull back? And there are a lot of big advertisers that are pulling back. Anybody in the travel space or anything like that. And in some ways it makes sense to pull back a little bit. Although I think there's some strategic ways you could market if you were in travel right now because everybody wants to travel. My family, we love to travel. We're still dreaming and talking about travel. We're still researching travel. We just can't do it right now. So I think almost regardless of your industry, you could still be marketing right now. And I think also serving your customer. Because there's actually joy that we take in researching an upcoming trip. Or, we're still buying stuff for around the house. There's still some joy we take in shopping for that next home décor item. We're all at home. We're all looking around. We're thinking of things that we need to buy. And so, kind of two sides of this. Seeing both the opportunity because your competitors are pulling back, and then also seeing hey, your customers still want to buy. And you're actually potentially bringing them joy if you give them the opportunity to buy. Then it should show us some areas of opportunity.

Brett:

So, what I want to do before we get in the tactical practical stuff is let's talk about some companies that grew in a recession. What was a fascinating mental shift for me several years ago where I remember talking to some really smart business people and they would say, "You know, we need a good recession. Because that's when we're going to grow." Or you hear advice from guys like Warren Buffett who says, "Hey, when everyone else is greedy, I'm fearful. But when everyone else is fearful, that's when I get greedy." So looking for opportunities when people are fearful, when businesses are fearful. And so here's some examples. So, my kids ... Chris mentioned I've got a lot of kids. I actually served multiple bowls of Rice Krispies just this morning because our kids love Rice Krispies. But in the 1920s Post dominated the cereal market. They owned the cereal market. During the great depression, especially in the early days of the great depression, they pulled back. They went into conservation mode. They really slowed down spend big time. Kellogg's seeing an opportunity said, you know what, they're going to pull back, we're going to press ahead. They doubled their advertising spend and they released the Rice Krispies, Snap, Crackle, and Pop. And so they actually grew profits by 30% during the great depression.

Brett:

And they became the dominant cereal seller and Post has never caught up. Kellogg's still dominates in the cereal market even dozens of ... However many decades later. Yeah, not dozens, but yeah.

Chris B:

Yeah, and we got a great saying out of that time as well. Because that move by Kellogg's was known then as marketing in crunch time.

Brett:

One thing you may or may not know about Chris Brewer is he is a master of puns. He's always thinking about puns, he's always trying to sneak one in there for you whether you're ready for it or not. And so, it's crunch time. I like it.

Chris B:

All about audience engagement-

Brett:

I like it. Hey I like it. That was smooth. Crunch time. Toyota. I love the Toyota brand. I drive a 4Runner. I like it. During the 1974 recession ... Actually it was kind of like 1973 to 1975, before my time. But still, when gas prices went crazy and that fueled a recession, a lot of auto makers pulled back. Toyota who was not the primary import manufacturer ... That was actually Volkswagen at the time. Toyota saw an opportunity because they were a fuel efficient car for the most part. They pushed full speed ahead and started marketing way more aggressively than they did before and touting things like fuel economy and stuff because they were one of the most fuel efficient. And by 1976 they were the top import manufacturer of automobiles. They surpassed Volkswagen because they accelerated ... Hey, you like that Chris? Accelerated in the midst of a recession. And then here we go, this is back to-

Chris B:

It was quite a shift.

Brett:

It was quite a shift. So in the '90s, man, I remember Pizza Hut in the '90s. That was like a magical place for kids. I was a chunky little kid. I enjoyed Pizza Hut probably too much. But in the early '90s, so '90, '91, that recession, McDonald's pulled back in their advertising. They went conservative. Pizza Hut and Taco Bell seeing opportunity, pushed ahead to try to gain market share. And during that time Pizza Hut sales grew 61%. Their sales grew 61% in the recession. Taco Bell grew 40%. McDonald's declined 28. So the key here really is not to use a cleaver as you're looking to cut or refine or change what you're doing, but to use a scalpel. So look at okay, we can't just go full speed ahead like nothing has ever happened. We have to be strategic but there's so many opportunities right now and we need to capitalize on them. So that's a great place to transition into, what should we do with our message right now? So if we're going to market, we can't just be tone deaf and say the same thing that we've always said prior to this crisis. We have to potentially reposition our product slightly. We're going to give you several examples here. And we have to use relevant messaging.

Brett:

So messaging that speaks to us. We're all working from home. We're all at home. We can barely leave the house. So certain messages will resonate with us right now. Certain messages will potentially offend or at least not motivate us. So how do we shift our part a little bit? How do we reposition it? How do we use relevant messaging? So Huckberry. I recommend you get on the email list for Huckberry. They're primarily a fashion brand. Kind of a hip fashion brand for men. That's kind of where they focus. But they put together this work from home sale. So the WFH sale. They also talked about the WFH mullet. So here's a quick little bit of copy that suggest ... They talked about what the WFH mullet is. The work from home mullet is business up top, party down below. So where you're maybe rocking the shorts but wearing this merino sweatshirt up top, or sweater up top. And so, they talk about how amazing this product is. It's actually on sale. And then as you scroll through the email, they've got some unexpected ways to brew coffee with a couple of little items you can buy. Antimicrobial towels, because that's something we're definitely thinking about.

Brett:

What's your work from home setup? Show us on Instagram. So getting some social engagement. So the whole message is tied into the work from home shift. So this is what we're all doing, so make the message on point. It's also fun. It's not this normal hey, here's how we're handling COVID-19, just to reassure you. We all got like five million of those emails. We hated every one of them. This at least addresses there's been a shift, here's how you can get the most out of it. We understand what you're going through. You're rocking the WFH mullet probably right now. I'm actually wearing jeans. I don't know about you Chris, but I went ahead and rocked the full setup. Are you going to show us here? I didn't know you were-

Chris B:

No, I was not ... I do have pants on, I was not going to stand. What I was going to mention, I was just curious from those that are watching the webinar ... And just put a yes into the chat if you have found yourself watching commercials. Whether it's a YouTube ad or it's a television ad. I've noticed this on local news especially. That it just strikes you that this is an ad that was pre virus.

Brett:

Yep.

Chris B:

And if it's striking you, if you're recognizing that, then you're consumers are recognizing that as well. So I've personally been very impressed. And it just shows you ... Brett'll talk about this later. But we get so many people that come to us excited because they've heard what we have done for other brands on YouTube. And they just don't have the content ready and they're making it really hard on themselves to actually create content when it doesn't have to be that difficult. I've just been very impressed with some major brands that you can tell they just took existing content, edited it slightly to change the messaging for work from home, and those were hitting the airways very quickly. So this is very doable.

Brett:

It's doable. It works. If you don't make the shift, people are going to be at worst offended and at best, probably not respond. So I love this. We actually saw this from a ... We know the guy that runs this company, but the idea that your cellphone carries a ton of germs. I've even heard people say that there are more germs on your phone than on your toilet. And so they ran a buy one, get one sale. They call it the wash one, wear one. So ideally you're going to wash a phone case one day and then wear it the next. So you want to wash them every day. So they did a hey, wash one wear one. It was timely. We're all thinking about what do I need to be sanitizing and what do I need to be cleaning right now. And so your phone case is definitely one of them. And hey, we'll give you a free case. So buy one get one, so there's a discount wrapped up here and there's a compelling reason to buy this case. So this was a brilliant move and worked very, very well. So look for something like this.

Brett:

This is also a time to strategically discount. So don't just discount for the sake of discounting, but discount in a way where you're saying, we just want to help. We want to help and so this is our way to help you be more sanitary. So wear one, wash one. Super powerful idea. This is actually a client of ours and we actually helped them come up with this idea. These are ginormous blankets. 10 by 10. They're 100 square feet. Covers like a king bed and it's still draping off the ends. Well, one of the things we're seeing ... We've got some clients that sell arts and crafts and other things for at home. The at home market for kids. And they're just exploding. And so we're thinking, hey again, you're working from home, you got kids, how are you going to entertain them? We don't want our kids just to be watching screens constantly. So we had this idea, what if we talk about building epic blanket forts. So maybe just using this as an idea for remarketing. So someone that's been thinking about a big blanket, they have not purchased yet. Let's use the epic blanket fort as a reminder of hey, you know you've been thinking about the blanket ...

Brett:

This is an idea of, people buy for emotional reasons but they back it up with logic. And so going back to those is something an essential, is it a treat, is it a postponable, is it an expendable? You can help shift your product in the mind of the customer by doing things like this. So maybe ... This was our reasoning. Maybe someone was looking at a big blanket ... Because they're not super cheap. And they thought well, I could postpone that. I can wait. I don't have to spent 140 bucks on blanket. I'll just wait. But then they get a message, "Hey, this will entertain your kids for hours. It will be the most epic blanket fort you've ever seen." And so now maybe that's enough for them to say, you know what, that was a postponable, now I'm going to consider it a treat. It's worth buying right now, I've got the money, I'm just going to do it. So looking at these ways to creatively reposition your product. This isn't diverting from the core. It's not saying hey, we were a luxury brand, now we're a cheap brand. It's not that. It's just saying I'm going to slightly reposition my product to get people to take action right now.

Brett:

Love this. This is from our buddy Ezra Firestone of BOOM By Cindy Joseph. So you know, thinking about how people are stressed right now. A lot of stress, a lot of anxiety. So again, I like this way better than if they just came up with an email, here's all the things you can do because of COVID-19. People are bombarded with that. Don't do that. But send them tips on how to turn your home into a spa. So here's skincare, makeup alternatives, things like that. And what we've seen ... We've seen this across multiple ... We have multiple brands that sell skincare and makeup and stuff. Most of them are not down. Most of them are actually up right now because people still want to feel beautiful, they want to look beautiful even though they're not going out. And so this was more about relaxing, decompressing. There's health benefit. When you're not stressed it's good for your immune system. Things like that. But three ways to turn your home into a spa. This was an email. This went very, very well. And they kind of did a sale in conjunction with this also. So think about creatively, how has consumption of my product shifted? How has the way my product is perceived or used shifted? And then shift your message accordingly and it will make a huge, huge difference.

Brett:

Cool. All right. So let's get tactical. So the rest of these keys, five, six, and seven are very tactical and practical. We're going to talk about specific ad types, what we're seeing, how things have changed and what you need to do about it. So as we talk about maximizing now buyers, we're going to look at people that are actively searching for your products on either Google or Amazon and what to do about those. So let's talk about Google first. So people searching for products on Google, we've seen this increase and as Amazon goes through fluctuations of slow delivery times for certain products and things like that, there's going to be more opportunities for off Amazon brands selling through Google shopping. So looking at Google shopping, there's product listing ads or the text ads. A couple of things you should do right now. Let's talk shopping feeds first. This is what we're doing right now for all of our clients. We're thinking okay, if shopping is increasing, meaning people that are searching online for products is increasing, we want to make sure we're putting the best foot forward. So we're optimizing images, we're testing new images, running secondary images to our feed because the picture or the product makes a huge, huge difference.

Brett:

We're maximizing things in the feed like product type, which we don't really want to get into on this webinar, but if you download the ultimate guide to Google shopping, which is free on our site, you'll see some tips there related to product type.

Chris B:

And one of the most ... When we're doing audits of people's shopping feeds, this is one of the most missed areas.

Brett:

It is. Product type is either ignored or under leveraged. And basically what product type is going to all you to do, it's going to allow you to show up for more searches, for more search queries. Even competitive search queries and things like that. So maximizing product type, now is the time to do that. And then you want to bid aggressively, but also watch your search terms. Because there's going to be some interesting things popping up in your search term report because some of the new ways people are searching are changing. We're going to give you some examples here in just a second. The other thing you want to look at is anybody that's visited your site but has not purchased, and now maybe they're going back to Google and searching, you want to make sure you capture that. So we call these remarketing lists for search ads or RLSA's. But a couple of the audiences you really want to make sure you're focusing on visited your site but haven't purchased, cart abandoners, viewed video audiences, and then also layering in in market audiences. So people that Google has identified, hey, they're in the market for skincare or they're in the market for jewelry if you sell jewelry.

Brett:

So layering in some these audiences can allow you to bid more aggressively on these audiences meaning you're more likely to show up for people that fit into these audiences and then more likely to convert.

Chris B:

And just another little bit of data. Only about 50% of the eCommerce brands we evaluate are layering in audiences.

Brett:

Yep. It's a simple thing. It can make a huge, huge difference. So it's one of the early things we did for BOOM by Cindy Joseph. We run all their Google traffic. Was layering these RLSAs. And the number of sales we get from Google shopping now, just from these audiences is massive. Massive. And so it's a huge opportunity. But think about the way things are shifting. So consider what's going on in the news. Consider what people are talking about. So let's just use elderberry as an example. I don't know if this was mentioned on TV news or online or a combination or what, but elderberry, it's very much an anti ... What am I trying to say here? Just totally lost the word. It's immune support. So it's an immune booster. So if you look at about March 15th, this is the relative number of searches for a particular thing. Look at how that shot up in March. It went from where it was, like indexing 25 to hundreds, so it peaked. Huge, huge search volume. We have several clients that sell supplements and immune support supplements. We saw this in their search query report. Everybody was looking for elderberry.

Brett:

That seems to be tapering off a little bit. I don't think people are talking about it as much. And this also maybe, hopefully, means that some people are getting a little more hopeful about the situation or maybe less concerned about buying things like elderberry. But it definitely peaked and so it's one of those things where you hear something like that on the news, prep for it, know there's going to be a peak in searches. Also things like this. This was really interesting. One of our specialists found this. People looking for things like healthcare worker discount. If you're not selling something that's specifically for healthcare workers, people are looking for that. Are you offering a discount? Are you helping the men and women that serve in healthcare, on the front lines? Are you doing something to benefit them or help them? So that's a new thing you could consider. Maybe even create an ad. Discount for healthcare workers. One, it makes you look good. I should say one, it's the right thing to do, two, it makes you look good, and three you'll make sales. So that's a new little trend. Won't be around forever but likely for the next few months, so definitely consider that.

Brett:

This was also interesting. We've seen this directly looking at search query reports for our clients. Free two day shipping, same day delivery. Searches with those in it have gone way up. Now do you have any theories as to why that might be Chris? Why are people all of a sudden now looking for these types of delivery when maybe weren't before?

Chris B:

Uh, let's see. They don't want to go out.

Brett:

Yes. That is the primary reason. But also why, think specifically about who usually guarantees these types of delivery times.

Chris B:

Of course Amazon FBA.

Brett:

And they're not. Yeah, so Amazon is not delivering now so people can't go out, they're shopping online. These are usually delivery times that Amazon has in certain cities. They can't fulfill that now unless it's essential. So people are looking for this. So if you can provide this type of shipping speed, you will make sales right now, even if you charge for it. Because that's one thing. People are price conscious more so than usual but it's sort of fluid. It's like well, but I still want this and I can't get it any other way so I'll pay for the two day shipping.

Chris B:

Yeah. The other thing I'd mention is Brett ... Before you go to the next slide. The other thing I'd recommend in addition to your search term report and your Google ads account ... You and I are both old SEO guys from long ago and in your Google analytics, if you take a look in your Google analytics ... Actually it's in webmaster-

Brett:

Webmaster tools. Now it's search console.

Chris B:

Search console. Yeah. If you look into search console, go in there and look at the search terms that people arriving at your site. You'll get a huge list. But look at how those have changed in the last 30 days. You may find some nuggets there that you can roll over and into your ads and your promotions as well. So that's just anther tip outside of Google ads to look for what people are searching for.

Brett:

Yep. Absolutely. Yep. So look in your search query report in Google ads but also look at it in search console as well. I'm looking here at some of the other categories people have mentioned, so at home gym equipment, tools and home improvement. We're seeing both of those categories way up. Home gym and home workout equipment way up. That's also an area that Amazon has really struggled with deliveries on. So if you're able to deliver on your own and ship on your own. Big opportunity. You're going to have people that are going to Amazon looking for those items, seeing that they can't get it delivered for three or four or five weeks, and they're going to go to Google and search for someone else that can maybe deliver that. Same with tools and home improvement. Before things got real crazy with the lockdown we were buying paint and supplies because we're home. Let's get some stuff done. Truth be told, I'm not painting at all. My wife likes to. I hate to paint. But she's getting a lot of painting done and she's enjoying it. And I'm enjoying not painting. Those things are definitely up. I see some people telling me skincare. Not all skincare is up. We're seeing a few categories, but a lot of skincare is up right now which is great.

Brett:

Cool. This is something too that no surprise, but just finding things like this are super interesting. So we have a client in the jewelry space, they also have a physical store. But as we look at searches for things like near me, have gone almost to zero. Before, people were searching for, hey, this kind of skincare near me or this kind of product near me. People aren't doing that. Because near me is irrelevant. I just need it shipped to me and so people are definitely looking for that delivery, which is interesting. Here's another one. Masks for nurses. So again, looking at what area of consumption, what types of things are people looking for? Masks for nurses on Google trends has shot way up. So also look at your auction insights. Here's something that our Google rep told us which we thought was actually brilliant. Looking at competitive conquesting. So most of our clients will run a competitive campaign. So bidding on your competitors names as a key word. So if someone searches for your competitor, your ad pops up, maybe you can woo them to shop for you. Here's what's interesting, some people are backing off ... Just like Post in the great depression and other companies. They're scaling back their ad spend.

Brett:

A lot of them are scaling back ad spend on their own brand name because ... What are they reasoning? They're saying, I show up organically for that keyword anyway. So I'm going to stop paying for clicks for my brand name. That gives you an opportunity to step in. So one of ... Kind of a client of a friend of ours, they were looking at their auction insights report inside Google ads and they noticed that CPCs for their competitor's brand name were down 15%. So they stepped in, they created a new campaign, they bid for it. Now they're getting a lot of clicks, a lot cheaper clicks, stealing some customers from your competitor. So look at the auction insight report, consider what of your competitors are backing off or slowing down right now, great opportunity for you to step in-

Chris B:

And another little tip that I'll give you, because we find this on virtually every Google audit that we do. That their competitive campaigns are using, not necessarily the wrong bid type, but take a look at what Brett just told you but look at hitting on a target impression share bid for those kinds of campaigns. Because your quality scores for competitor campaigns are not going to be as good as your own. So that target impression share bidding method can really help you not only on getting those a lot cheaper than you used to, but getting a lot more impressions for those terms as well.

Brett:

Yep. And something to test. Now getting a higher impression share is going to be cheaper. So now's the time to do it. So also some of you experiment with the target CPA or target ROAS. Just play with the numbers. It's one of those things where you kind of have to experiment in your own business. But I think the bottom line is now's a great time to be looking at how can we creatively do some competitive conquesting, which is a super powerful strategy.

Brett:

So let's talk about key number six, looking at remarketing aggressively. So if anybody has shopped your site, added to cart, viewed a video, whatever, but they have not purchased, now's the time to remarket to them but with a creative message. So just like we we're talking about with Big Blanket, hit them up with a message that's slightly different. Or like Huckberry was doing, or like BOOM. So remarket aggressively with a creative message. And here's what we're recommending. We recommend this all the time, but now it's really important. Hit prospects from multiple angles and on multiple channels. So we recommend GDN, YouTube, and Gmail. Running all three of those remarketing campaigns to all three. And so here's kind of what we're seeing. And one thing that's newer to the Google Display Network is discovery ads. This is kind of a preview of what it would look like. You've probably seen these when you've been on the mobile app for YouTube. They're display type ads, but they show up right there in the results, or in that opening feed for YouTube and they're highly engaging and really appealing to click on.

Brett:

There's kind of this carousel ad on the right. And then there's more static ads there. But these discovery ads are very, very powerful. We're seeing that CPAs, or cost per acquisition, cost per sale, 30 to 60% lower than standard display ads. We're actually using discovery ads for top of funnel. So reaching cold audiences as well. But I wouldn't recommend starting there. I'd recommend starting with remarketing. But just know you're going to be more efficient. You're going to have better performance with discovery ads than you will just standard display ads.

Brett:

Another thing that not a lot of people are doing is when you're running remarketing campaigns, take your top YouTube ads, if you have them, put them into a display campaign. Basically what's that's going to do, and this was an example from BOOM. We run a lot of display remarketing. Even a little bit of top of funnel display. The top performing creatives for the display network are actually their YouTube ads. So it's going to look like this, the ad unit there on the left. It's going to be a clickable, playable video. You've probably seen this on different news sites and blog sites. So basically it's your YouTube ad, but it's appearing in the Google Display Network. So it's on news sites, blog sites, things like that. We're finding a ton of engagement, lower CPCs for YouTube ads that are on the Google Display Network.

Brett:

Gmail ads. This is something that we don't see a ton of people running. Again, Chris you talked about audits. This is one we see people either missing or not doing very well. The Gmail campaigns, they show up just like emails and they're a combination of videos, images, and text. And again, we're seeing some great performance. CPAs often 30 to 50% lower than standard display. And just extremely compelling to click on.

Brett:

Let's talk Amazon. Amazon DSP. That stands for Demand Side Platform. These are display ads that you run on and off Amazon. And so basically what this allows you to do is run display ads on Amazon.com, on the mobile site, but also ads across the website on Espn.com and Yahoo.com and things like that, but sending people to your Amazon listing. And so, ads look like this. This is for Varidesk. That's actually the Varidesk that I have. I love that desk. But this is an ad that appears on Yahoo. Here are some ads that are on the bottom of an exercise machine page. So this is a StreetStrider. I'm not even sure what that is. But this was the product detail page on Amazon for the StreetStrider. At the bottom of that page, or just below the listing, there's an ad for Nordic Track and an ad for a smartwatch. So those are Amazon DSP ads. Here's a category page for some exercise equipment, and then there's an ad for Timex right next to it.

Brett:

Here's what we're recommending you do with Amazon DSP. Start with remarketing and aggressively remarket to people, starting first with people that view your products. People that have viewed your products and have not purchased. It's a great place to start with Amazon DSP. Then also consider cart abandoners. So people that have added your product to their Amazon cart, but have not purchased it. Hit them with display ads, wooing them back to your Amazon listing. Also look at cross-sell and reorders. So you can also build an audience of people that have purchased a particular product of yours, and then you can run reorder campaigns if it's a consumable. Or, maybe they bought one of your products but not another. So you can run a cross-sell ad.

Brett:

And here's where it gets kind of crazy, and these are working well right now too. You can also build an audience of people that have visited your competitor's products on Amazon but have not purchased, and you can run an ad for your product. This is one of those things that as a marketer when I first learned about it my response was like no way. This can't be possible. But it is possible and it works. And so, nobody has more shopper data than Amazon, and if you're selling on Amazon and you're not using DSP, now is an amazing time to start. Again, costs are typically lower right now. Ad costs are typically lower. So if you start with at least remarketing, then maybe consider competitive conquesting, now's a great time to be doing DSP.

Brett:

And then kind of finally, and we'll potentially open up to Q&A if we have time, but number seven, invest in top of funnel advertising. Because costs are low, and because people are at home, and because people want to shop, now's the time to invest in top of funnel. So go after those cold audiences, people that don't know about you. Try to reach them and get them to try out your product.

Brett:

I want to talk quickly about one of the hottest trends in Amazon advertising. This is an ad type that's working very, very well for us. Sponsored brand video. As I talk about it I'm actually going to play a sample here. This is what it looks like. You've probably seen this on the mobile app where you're scrolling through and then, oh, video pops up. Look at that. It's just super eye catching and powerful. It's the ultimate scroll stopper. And what we're finding is ... These ads used to be on a pretty limited beta. Now they're available in more of an open beta. So you should have access to those in your seller central. If you don't, give us a call, we may be able to help there. But what we're finding with this ad type is lowest A cost of any campaign type, and some great new to brand performance. So what happens is usually these ads show below the fold or on desktops at the bottom of the page. So most of the clicks for sponsored brand video are coming from category searches. Not brand searches, but category searches. So a lot of times the people you're reaching are new to brand. Not people just searching for your brand.

Brett:

So tremendous performance. We've actually got some cool things we're doing right now to help you with free video production for these types of videos. We'll talk about that in a minute. But sponsored brand video is super powerful. Now, we talked about that YouTube event that we did in LA a few months ago and so we're big believers in YouTube TrueView and all the ways you can use that for remarketing, but also top of funnel. So let's just talk about a couple things related to YouTube that are important to consider right now. We've seen costs on YouTube down 20 to 50%. This is not true with every audience but it is true mostly across the board that costs were down 20 to 50%. So now there's more people you can reach. A lot of people can't get out and shop. And your cost to reach them has gone down. Pretty powerful.

Brett:

We've got some proven ad formulas for top of funnel YouTube. I want to share these with you. We've actually got a free guide as kind of our top swipe file of best YouTube ads for eCommerce. We'll show you how to get that in just a minute. But we recommend if you're going to start with YouTube, start with some of these kind of bottom of funnel audiences. Audiences of in market people. So people that Google has said hey, they're in the market for grocery, or they're in the market for skincare or for jewelry or whatever the case may be. Or some of these other intent based audiences. So look for people that are actively shopping. This is another way to kind of zero in on those people that maybe their behavior has just shifted to online. So maybe they're comfortably well off or they're pained but patient. They're still buying. Using these audiences is a way to find them on YouTube. So these are two of the audiences we recommend you start with. Custom intent and/or keyword audiences.

Brett:

Because here's what's happening. This was even before the crisis started. 80% of people will switch back and forth between search and video, and 55% of people say they watch a video to learn more about a product before they buy it. I don't have updated numbers in the midst of crisis, but those numbers are growing in the midst of the stay at home orders and things like that. And this again was before the crisis, but one third of all shoppers purchase something that they discovered on YouTube, and that's only going to increase.

Brett:

So let's talk about a couple of resources here Chris, and then we'll kind of maybe open it up for Q&A. We can stick around a little bit longer. And then also want to talk about a couple of really cool offers. So first of all, some free resources, free guides. We've talked about the ultimate guide to Google shopping. If you go to our site, omgcommerce.com, click on resources and guides, you'll see these. We've got our ultimate guide to Google shopping. We've got the Amazon DSP roadmap. So if you want to learn about the ins and outs of DSP, how it works, some other ad examples, things like that, download that free DSP roadmap. I talked about our swipe files. So the top YouTube ad examples and templates. That guide's available as well. And then we also have the authentic guide to customer testimonials. Getting video testimonials is very important for YouTube ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads. So I put together a guide, I've actually done a lot of work in TV and stuff, on how to get authentic testimonials. So you can check that guide out as well.

Brett:

And then one thing I thought I'd mention. Brewer, you mentioned this at the beginning, the podcast. We've been trying to crank out episodes recently that would be helpful during the downturn. I mentioned the episode with Liz Germain. She's a YouTube influencer. She's generated over 100 million organic views on YouTube. We put together a podcast talking about how things have changed right now during the crisis. Roland Frasier, mentor of ours, friend of ours. He talked about how to market and how to get financial stability in a crisis. Then I talked to some really cool dudes at Original Grain Watches about how to build a brand, how to maintain your image, but also how to market in a crisis. So check out those podcasts as well. Also did a podcast recently with Daniel Harmon of Harmon Brothers. They're the group behind Squatty Potty and Poo-Pourri and some of those other viral YouTube ads. Did a great interview with him as well. Highly recommend you check that out.

Brett:

Now, let's talk a little bit about our stimulus package Chris. You and I were brainstorming a couple of weeks ago and we thought hey, how can we help people? We had the YouTube event and all these people excited about YouTube, then a lot of people kind of waiting and seeing what's going to happen. So we thought how do we help people take advantage of the opportunities that are there now because costs were lower, but also help them overcome any hurdles they have to creating content and things like that? How do we develop what we call our AMP plan, or accelerated marketing portfolio, which is really just a way that we look at how do your campaigns work together as a portfolio or how do they work together in concert? Rather than thinking about your campaigns as silos. Because YouTube works better when there's search and shopping and remarketing in place too, and they all kind of feed each other. So we've created these AMP plans that help you maximize your total return.

Brett:

So we want to help people now. We want to help people do that now. We want to help you take advantage of these low costs on YouTube. So we came up with kind of a stimulus package so let's kind of talk that through Chris. One of the first things you want to do is request a strategy session. You want to talk about that? Because you're the one that they're going to be talking to most likely in that initial strategy session. What do you do there usually?

Chris B:

Yeah, it's very simple. You just go to omgcommerce.com. Most all the pages have a free strategy session link. You click that link, fill out the information. That'll give us a good high level information on what we're looking at, what your challenges are. My assistant Aransa will reach out, maybe with some additional followup questions if needed. Get a time scheduled on our mutual calendars. And a lot of people are like, "Oh, so am I going to get a pitch here or whatever?" No. You're not. You're going to get a strategy session where we talk about your brand and your metrics and your data that you look at. And we primarily figure out is there an avenue where we can help you accomplish your objectives? And if so, then we'll figure out a way to move forward. So that's how you request a strategy session.

Brett:

Yep. And those are super helpful. We've gotten tremendous feedback. People love getting on strategy sessions with you Chris. And certainly we'd love to work with you, love to find a way to work with you, but when we can't we're transparent about that. And you'll walk away with good tips and good ideas regardless. If you then sign up for services in April and May ... So you decide hey, I do want to get started, I do want to run YouTube in April or May, then we want to help you with video production. So we are not a creative shop in the sense we don't have on staff videographers and editors and things like that. But we have a close relationship with multiple creative shops. And so what we're doing is we've created part of our stimulus plan, and depending on kind of the levels ... And it's going to be a minimum of $500 for you to use towards production, but it could be quite a bit more. Basically we want to eliminate that hurdle of can I get some assets that are ready for YouTube.

Brett:

And if you already have video you're running on Facebook or Instagram and you already have customer testimonials, then this package could be great for you because likely, we can take your existing products or your existing videos, we can edit that into a video that's just going to do really, really well on YouTube and we can cover the cost or at least most of the cost of production for you. So that's included right now and we want help you dominate. We want to help you take those steps to get past the competition, take advantage of the lower cost, take advantage of the increased eyeballs that are on YouTube and on Amazon and on Google. And so, we have the same offer as it pertains to Amazon. So if you're looking at ... Haven't even done YouTube but would love sponsored brand video, then we can help there as well and we can help provide some free video production credits to get that first sponsored brand video created on Amazon.

Brett:

And I'm telling you now is the time to do sponsored brand video because not very many people are doing it. Those ads are still new and they're still intriguing to people, and they just work. So we'd love to help you whether you're on Amazon, off Amazon, or both, and try to make this truly a win-win. Check it out. Go to omgcommerce.com and request that free strategy session, or download those guides.

Brett:

Why don't we do this Chris, we can stick around for a few more minutes. Or at least I can stay for another 10 minutes or so. Let's maybe open up this up to questions. What questions do people have right now that we could potentially help with?

Chris B:

Yeah, there was a question here Brett. What are some of the best practices for creating custom intent audiences on YouTube?

Brett:

Yeah. Custom intent audiences. I'll explain those for folks that don't know. Basically what you're doing is you're creating an audience, a list of people, based on what they're searching for on Google. If you think about it, I know for me, what I search for on YouTube is different than what I search for on YouTube. And so you can build an audience of people that are searching for immune support or elderberry, or whatever. Some other supplements or health related things. People that are searching for that on Google, you can build an audience of those people and then target them the next time they're on YouTube. What's interesting is, just like with a lot of things, whether it's Google or Amazon or YouTube or whatever, things are changing. Just about six months ago the advice from Google was hey, load up your audiences with tons and tons of keywords. So we need like 100 or 200 keywords in this custom intent audience. That has shifted. And we saw some of that as we were doing it. We're like man, some of these audiences just aren't working. Now the advice is more like 15. So 15 keywords and match type does not matter.

Brett:

So think about these all more like broad or phrase at least match type. But you do want to theme your audiences. So let's say that I'm selling ... Give me a product Chris. Just pick a product.

Chris B:

We'll use Canyon coolers. Dave just chimed in in the chat.

Brett:

Awesome. So let's look at coolers. We're saying hey, I want to reach people that are in the market for coolers. So the first thing I would do is I would look at, if you're running search and shopping, what are the top non-branded keywords that are converting? So people that are looking for things like high end coolers, high impact cooler ... Whatever. I don't even know all the keywords, but keywords specific to coolers. They're looking for those on Google. So we're going to build an audience of those people, target them the next time they're on YouTube. I would then look at, okay, now what if I just want to find people that are in the right category? So people that are like, best places to canoe. So think about things like that. Maybe looking at someone who's likely to buy my product. They're maybe not shopping for it, but they're likely to buy it. So then you're looking for people that are searching for activities related to my product or service. But start with those non-converting search terms. Actually the second audience I would build then would be your competitors.

Brett:

So build an audience of people that are searching for your competitors on Google, target them on YouTube as well. So those are kind of some of the first audiences I would try. And what we found with custom intent audiences, as we're kind of waiting for other questions to come in, is they often convert very well. They're not always the biggest audiences so we can't find as much scale there as we can in other places sometimes. But usually they're good converting audiences.

Brett:

Any other questions there Chris?

Chris B:

I have not seen any others pop up in the question box so I think we're good.

Brett:

Cool. All right guys, well hey, thank you so much for taking the time. I know your time is valuable. We would love to help. Please reach out for that strategy session or grab these free resources. Or if you know somebody that needs help with any of this, we're happy to chat with them as well. And so with that, Chris, thanks for hopping on man. Great to co-host with you as always. And thanks everyone for joining in.

Supply chain, lock down, store closures, falling ad costs, rising costs of sanitation…just a few of the areas impacting retail and e-commerce right now.  In my interview with Eamon Kelly of Edgewater Research we talk about the following hot topics to recent data points.

• How ad costs are impacted on Amazon, Facebook and Google during the crisis
• What categories are seeing spikes vs. dips in sales…there are a few surprising areas here plus some opportunities for companies to pivot.
• What major retailers like Dick’s sporting goods are seeing
• How retailers like Chewys are experience both growth and interesting shifts in costs and increased margin pressure
• How to think about inventory levels with more shopping shifting online

‍

Connect with Guest:

Eamon Kelly - Senior Research Analyst and Partner at Edgewater Research

Via LinkedIn

Edgewater Research

Via LinkedIn

Via YouTube

Mentioned in this episode:

Jason & Scot Show Podcast

‍

Episode Transcript

Brett:

Well,hello, and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolutionpodcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. Today,we're giving you an update on E-commerce, supply chain, Amazon, someother big retailers. And we've got a very interesting guest on, andhis company does a lot of research. They've got their finger on thepulse of what a lot of major retailers are doing and what they'reexperiencing right now. And so this is going to be kind of theCOVID-19 update. Things you need to know as it pertains to retail andE-commerce.

Brett:

Letme tell you a little bit about my guest before I welcome him on theshow. Eamon Kelly is a partner at Edgewater Research, and EdgewaterResearch is a fascinating company. They really serve the investmentcommunity. They analyze different retail companies to providedetailed analysis for the investment community. They are networkingand speaking with hundreds of different manufacturers. They'redigging into things like supply chain and inventory and sales andprofits. Really just a wealth of information.

Brett:

So,we've got some great data we're going to look at for Amazon and forsome other major retailers. I think this is all information that canhelp us and inform us, as we try to make our own decisions of howwe're going to navigate the waters of retail in a COVID-19 world.

Brett:

Sowith that, Eamon, thanks for taking the time, man. Really appreciateyou coming on the show.

Eamon:

Yeah,no, thanks for having me. Looking forward to it. You know, as youmentioned, it's certainly an interesting time with COVID and theimpacts. From our perspective, the daily and weekly changes thatwe're seeing across the landscape, an interesting perspective offollowing some of these retailers that have closed shops. Whetherit's somebody like a Dick's Sporting Goods or Bed, Bath, and Beyond,or ULTA Beauty.

Eamon:

Thensome of these other ones that have benefited in closed shops, like aBest Buy, and seeing the perspective of retailers that have bothbenefited and been negatively impacted. It's just been a fascinatinglast couple weeks.

Brett:

Itreally has. Some things, I mean, some things are kind of obvious. Youknow, hey, orders are up on Amazon. Well, that's no surprise. Peopleare at home, and they still want to shop, and they still have thingsthey have to buy. But some of the other things, like some of thebenefits of which categories are up, or the areas where there's toomuch of a good thing. Now, Amazon's shifting gears.

Brett:

So,we'll talk through some of those details. But definitely aninteresting time. It is changing on the daily. I think it's one ofthose things where we're trying to do at OMG Commerce as a digitalagency is, we're still trying to have a long term mindset andapproach, and just knowing, hey, the industry, the E-commerceindustry is going to come out ahead. You know, I think stronger thanmost other industries.

Brett:

Butwho knows what that looks like, or when, exactly? But still then,focusing a lot on the short term, because man, things can change acrazy amount from day to day. Let's dive in a little bit. Let's talk,I want to talk a little bit about a subject that is very near anddear to our heart at OMG Commerce. It's what we deal with, and that'sdigital ad costs.

Brett:

So,this is fascinating. You know, digital ad costs have been on the risefor years. You know, we're on a, we're proud of this. We're on a 10year run of economic growth, and the emergence of direct to consumerbrands, and you know, increased competition on Google and Facebookand other digital ad platforms. So the cost of digital ads has beenon the rise, year in, year out, for quite some time.

Brett:

Whathave you guys been seeing in your research? And then we'll talk aboutanecdotally what we're seeing with our clients. You know, we serveabout 84, 85 E-commerce brands. But what are you guys seeing as faras digital ad costs right now?

Eamon:

Yeah,sure. I think, and you know, we have an interesting perspective withwhat me and my team do on Amazon and some of the other retailers,along with, you know, our digital team that focuses on a lot of thosedigital ad platforms.

Eamon:

It'sbeen pretty interesting. It's consistent across both of ourverticals, where for the most part, over the last several weeks we'reseeing CGC declines in the 20, 25% range. Certainly there's some thatare higher, and some that are lower. I think on Amazon, the, youknow, one of the big drivers is a lot of the third parties havepulled back. You know, they've had their FBA buy box restricted.

Eamon:

Amazon'sreally focused on the essentials, and as a result to that, you have alot of third parties that are pulling back on advertising. You know,you also have a lot of these big essential categories that, theydon't have product to sell. Without product to sell, you're not goingto advertise. So it's just been really interesting across thesevarious categories, seeing the ebbs and flows of these dollars movingin and out.

Eamon:

ThenI look at some of the digital channels, and the benefit for somebodylike Amazon is, they're not in the travel business.

Brett:

Right.

Eamon:

..lots of these other categories, they're not in the hospitality sidethat are really seeing big falloffs. You know, they don't have a tonaround, you know, the Olympics. And March Madness, and MLB. You know,you look at a lot of sports, and there's just tons of dollars outthere that traditionally go to those guys. Amazon doesn't play inthat realm yet. They're seeing similar type declines to what we'reseeing at the Facebooks, the Twitters, the Snapchats of the world.

Brett:

Yeah,super interesting. So I'll chime in on kind of both of those areas.Let's talk Amazon first. So we have a large Amazon ad division at OMGCommerce, and we serve sellers and vendors on the platform, managingpaid search and video ads and display ads. And it is interesting, youknow. We'll talk about this in a minute. But there are somecategories on Amazon that have just gone through the roof. So,essentials, certain supplements. We have a client that sells arts andcrafts, and then things like that for kids. Just exploding. A lot ofthose categories are up two to five X, you know, right now because ofthe environment that we're in.

Brett:

So,then you run into some issues where Amazon's not taking new inventoryinto their fulfillment centers for some of these categories, so theycan focus on essentials. And they're delaying ship times, and so, orwe have clients just burning through inventory. So all of that canlead to a slowdown in ad spend. You know, we've had some clients thathave successfully pivoted to now FBM, you know, fulfill by merchant,instead of just FBA. So, that's helped.

Brett:

Butoverall, yeah, it's, you're either down in sales, and so that'scausing a little bit of a decline in ad spend. Or you may be sellingalmost too much, and so that can result in a decrease in ad spend. Westill have a few clients who are spending more, just because there'sopportunities and you know, just room to push and things like that.

Brett:

Butit does make sense globally, ad spend on Amazon has probably taken ahit. So, that's been interesting.

Brett:

We'lllook at some of the other platforms. So, Facebook, you know, Twitter,Snapchat, YouTube, Google. We focus more on the Google and theYouTube side of the equation, not as much on Facebook. We're hearingthings, though, from people that advertise on Facebook, some of thesportings good. One friend of mine who's in the sporting goodbusiness E-commerce, he's seeing his CPMs on Facebook down 43% rightnow. So that's a lot, obviously.

Brett:

We'reseeing with YouTube, you know, from reports that we hear from otherlarge advertisers to, you know, our several dozen clients on YouTube,falling in line with what you're talking about. You know, that 20 25%drop, up to 30% drop. It does depend, right? Because now we're usingGoogle and Facebook smart bid algorithm to try to optimize forconversions.

Brett:

So,there's still going to be these little pockets where there's going tobe advertise that are competitively going after the same audience,and so costs aren't dropping as much. But safe to say, costs aredown. If it makes sense for your business right now to advertise andgo after new customers, ad costs are down, so big opportunitiesthere.

Eamon:

Itwas actually interesting, you know, Chewy was kind of the firstretailer that we had that reported earnings. You know, they made acomment last night that, you know, they're certainly seeing declinesfrom an advertising side. When asked, "What are you going to dowith the savings you've seen from a marketing side?" Theircomment was, "Well, we don't know how these cohorts are."

Eamon:

Arewe going to have to spend more to keep these customers over time? Itwas something that we just hadn't, you know, we hadn't really thoughtabout a ton. It was a perfectly fair point. You're having thesecustomers shift to E-commerce, and you know, why we, while we thinkthere is going to be a big shift, their point is like, we don't knowhow sticky this customer is going to be. How much are we going tohave to spend to keep them?

Eamon:

Arewe paying to acquire this customer that's really just a one-time useon this platform, or what's the lifetime value going to be? For them,you know, they said they look at it, they won't really know forprobably six months to see what that is.

Brett:

tosee those specifics, yeah.

Eamon:

Yeah,that's the challenge, I think, that a lot of these, you know, whetherit's retailers or brands, or you know, anybody spending is, you know,just looking at these dynamics that people just have not been throughin the past.

Brett:

Right.Yeah, and what's interesting. So, I get to hear an interview with aguy from Deloitte on one of my favorite podcasts, so shout out to theJason and Scott Show. I highly recommend that podcast. But he wastalking about, you know, as we look at, as they look at recessionsover history and looking at the retail sector, consumer buying andthings like that, is that consumers will adopt new behavior during arecession that they will keep even when the economy turns.

Brett:

Soas an example, you know, after the great recession you had peoplereally go, or during the great recession, you had people shopping atdiscount retail stores. So your TJ Maxx's, your Marshall's, thingslike that.

Eamon:

Yeah.

Brett:

Lotof people stuck with that, even as the economy changed a little bit.Those retailers continue to grow. I think we're going to find, and toChewy's point, we won't really know for six months or so. But I thinka lot of the people now that are shifting their behavior right now,when they're in, you know, at the time of this recording, still inquarantine, lockdown type mode, that, some of those behaviors aregoing to stick.

Eamon:

Right.

Brett:

NowI've got my Chewy's account set up. I've got some things that I canjust automatically reorder, easily reorder. Some of those behaviorsare going to stick. I think it's smart, and of course this, you know,makes sense. I'm a digital ad guy, so I'm going to be, I'm going tothink this way. But I think you look at companies in history thathave pressed on the gas in a strategic way during a downturn, duringa recession and gained a lot of market share. And so I think thosethat are in the position to do that can really come out ahead.

Eamon:

Yeah,I think, you know, we've obviously seen no surprise to anybody, a bigshift in E-commerce the last couple years. I think as you look at theway we think about it is, yeah, it's just, it's an acceleration thatis going to accelerate even faster coming out of this. You're goingto have people that, you know, whether it's you've shopped Amazon butnot other places, you'll just get comfortable shopping. The olderdemographic probably is going to get more comfortable shopping, andgoing to try out more avenues that you hadn't before.

Eamon:

Thestruggle, I think, for a lot of the brick and mortar retailers is,you're going to see a shift from brick and mortar to E-tail, and evenif they keep those customers, it's coming at a lower margin. So, youknow, it-

Brett:

That'sinteresting.

Eamon:

Iwas going to say, as they're keeping their stores open, it's not likethey're closing stores and able to offset, you know, the lowermargin. They all have these overheads that they have to run from abrick and mortar standpoint. And coming at a significantly lowermargin, you know, is going to create challenges. That's why you'vehad somebody like Walmart, who's been a lot more focused on OGP,outlying grocery pickup, and less focused on the dot com side,because they see the margin pressure that occurs on the ... deliveryside.

Brett:

Itreally makes sense. I mean, they're, you know, you could get intotopic on grocery wars, which would be interesting. I know Amazon iswith the acquisition of Whole Foods, and some of the Amazon Go storesand things like that, they're all trying to establish a foothold inthat space.

Brett:

Ido think Walmart's going to really emerge as the winner from thissituation. I just know from our own behavior and from others, I mean,the Walmart delivery, Walmart pickup, I mean, that's just super,super convenient. Almost a necessity right now for a lot of people. Ithink that's going to shift a lot of behavior to that, which isinteresting.

Eamon:

Yeah,and I think, I was going to say, with that I think you're going toalso have, you know, let's not underestimate the number ofbankruptcies that we're going to see. You know, from the retailcommunity that occurs, and the longer this goes on, the higherlikelihood that we have, you know, a lot of those pop up.

Brett:

Yep,yep. And so, to a couple of your earlier points that I want tohighlight, it's been interesting. You know, Amazon has certainlygotten a lot of volume, and they're going to emerge a winner fromthis as well, of course. But they've almost, you know, like we talkedabout, they've gotten so much focus on essentials and things liketoilet paper and all this stuff that people can't find in retailstores, that they've had to delay incoming shipments and shipments tocustomers for other products. We've seen this ...

Brett:

I'lljust give you a quick example. One of our clients that's a supplementcompany, done very well on Amazon, primarily in Amazon Business, butthey have their own store off Amazon. We can very clearly see thenumbers, so we manage their Google ads and their Amazon ads. Butthere was a week when there was real inventory issues on Amazon, andtheir sales spiked. I mean, exploded on their own dot com.

Brett:

Ithink what you're seeing there is, while yes, there are more shopperson Amazon, as Amazon has issues with these ship times or delayed,people are also saying, "Well, I'm going to search for thoseproducts on Google now." So maybe a product search that I wasgoing to, would have began on Amazon, I'm going to start on Googlenow. And I'm going to find a retailer that will ship it to me direct.

Eamon:

Yeah,I think you're absolutely right. I just had a conversation earlierthis afternoon with somebody who made exactly that point. Amazon'sput their stuff on, you know, over a month delivery times. Let's behonest, at this time right now, nobody's searching for something thatthey want to wait for a month. There's a reason buying somethingright now. So, you know, yeah. You started on Amazon, and you wentoff. That example, you know, seeing huge, huge, huge increases at notonly Walmart but all of the other, you know, all of the otherretailers that they deal with that have, you know, that are stillopen or that have even just dot com sides of the business there.

Brett:

Yup.And I think this has been one of those things where we'rerecommending to people, hey, maximize your search efforts, whetherthat's with search ads and Google shopping ads, or SCO for organicsearch. But there will be people that ... I have a client in theexercise, the home workout space. They've been doing well. As you canimagine, nobody's going to the gym, everybody's got to work out athome. They were selling a lot on Amazon, but again, now Amazon'sdelaying shipments four to six weeks. Well, I want to work out now.

Brett:

So,fortunately, they've been doing FBM and some other things. They wereable to kind of pivot. But yeah, I think there's going to be peoplethat are forced to buy online, and Amazon isn't going to be the onlyone that's going to go, you're going to go to some individualretailers as well, which is exciting.

Eamon:

Sure.

Brett:

Now,one thing I want to talk about is, you know, what are you guys seeingin terms of what categories on Amazon are we seeing the biggest liftsin? And some of these are going to be not surprising at all. Let'slook at that, and then I want to circle back to something, the coststructure. Kind of the unforeseen costs that are popping into this.We'll get into that in a minute.

Brett:

Whatcategories are you guys seeing exploding on Amazon right now?

Eamon:

Yeah,I think you said it. I mean, it's the obvious , right? I think as welook through this, there's been an evolution of, you know, the firstones of the masks and the sanitizers are kind of the no-brainers.Quickly evolved to the, to anything in the cleaning side.

Eamon:

Ithink you mentioned earlier, supplements. Perfect example. So, as welook, it's certainly a lot of the ... consumables and anythingfood-related. Seeing huge spikes in that. Prime Now is past a week, aweek out, in many cases two weeks. You can't even set anything up.

Eamon:

So,they're seeing huge increases there.

Brett:

We'vegot some friends in the prepackaged snack space, and it's like,that's a great time to be in the prepackaged snacks space. Even ifyour snack's not popular, people are probably going to buy it.

Eamon:

Yeah.

Brett:

Youknow, protein bars, whatever they can get their hands on. People arebuying.

Eamon:

Right.Yup. Then I think the other one is, you've seen a big one here in thelast two, three weeks, as businesses have been forced to have peoplework from home. It's all of the traditional work from homecategories, whether it's, you know, we're seeing it in officefurniture, laptops, PCs, and all the PC related accessories. Thoseare seeing big spikes.

Eamon:

Thehealth and beauty side, to the point before, supplements, cough,cold, things like that. Also seeing in storage containers, as peoplepantry load. Adding it there, you know. The one that I was surprisedat first, but when I started to see improvements in appliances, thatsomebody like, somewhere like a Best Buy, I kind of question myself.Like, what do you mean, why are people buying appliances? You know,as I went in to a local store, I kind of got a quick reason whyeverybody was buying spare refrigerators to put in their garage, orbuying deep freezers.

Eamon:

Youknow, I think what you're seeing now over the last, call it twoweeks, you're starting to see some of the more Midwest, northeastregions getting a little bit warmer, you're seeing tools, lawn andgarden, and some of the outdoor categories.

Eamon:

Ithink arts and crafts and toys, and those sort of categories areseeing some nice improvement, as people look to keep their kids busyand give them something to do. So, those are some of the examples ofones where we've seen some nice acceleration.

Eamon:

Ithink that the flip side of that has been, you know, what is reallystruggling. There's probably a couple where we've seen the biggestdeclines. I would say soft lines are probably by far the biggeststruggle. You know, whether you're talking apparel-

Brett:

Clothingand accessories and things like that.

Eamon:

Yeah,apparel and footwear. You know, from a business perspective, nobody'shaving meetings anymore.

Brett:

goto meetings in my slippers. Or barefoot.

Eamon:

Exactly.So, you know, it's that. Then, the other part is sporting goods. Abig piece of sporting goods, and what Dick's Sporting Goods does, forinstance, is team sports. Without team sports, I can go out and throwthe ball around with my kids, but you know, there's no team sportsgoing on. Those are some of the examples of ones where we've seenfalloffs.

Eamon:

We'vealso seen a big falloff in the automotive aftermarket category. So,we follow Advance Auto and Auto Zone and O'Reilly, and the lastcouple weeks there we're seeing probably 40 to 50% type declines,because it's no shocker. Nobody's on the road. You're not driving, soyou're not having breakage to your car.

Eamon:

So,those are some of the categories where we're seeing kind of thewinners and losers, if you will.

Brett:

Really,really interesting. I think what's fascinating about this is asE-commerce business owners, we need to think about, how could myproduct potentially be consumed more in this work from home, stay athome economy for however much longer this will last? At the time ofour recording, at least 30 days, maybe 60 days or more for parts ofthe country.

Brett:

So,how can my product be used in those areas? I'll touch on, I want totouch on both sporting goods and auto, for a second. Because this isinteresting. On the sporting goods side of things, totally makessense. Anybody that relies on team sports, hurting right now. Becauseteam sports are doing nothing, right? I coach my son's basketballteam. This was my last year to coach, and then the season endedabruptly. Now all spring and summer sports are either on hold orpostponed, or canceled.

Brett:

Butwe have a few clients that are in the training space, and so one's inthe baseball space. At-home training equipment. They're actuallydoing good, because now it's like, hey, Junior still wants to develophis swing, or Suzie wants to develop her fast pitch softball pitchingstyle, and stuff like that.

Brett:

So,some of those at-home things are working. We had an at-homebasketball training company. They're doing really well. But yeah,your traditional retailers that rely on team sports, definitelyhurting.

Brett:

Theautomotive side, it is interesting. I think there are certain pocketswhere, let's take a more affluent customer. We have a client in theauto space that sells a non-essential for auto, but they kind ofcater to a slightly more affluent. Like, you wouldn't buy thisproduct unless you had a classic car, sports car, a nice car typething.

Brett:

They'redoing really well right now. I think what's driving this is, peopleare at home, thinking about their nice car. Right? They're maybe notout driving, but they're tinkering with it or whatever. But I think,yeah, you look at brake pads, oil change stuff. Your standardO'Reilly, Auto Zone type of thing. We happened to get out last night,just to drive around with the kids and go to a drive-thru because wehadn't been out of the house in so long. Seven pm, it was like it wasmidnight. Just weren't many people out, so it was really weird. Itwas really weird.

Brett:

So,makes sense that auto would be down.

Brett:

Let'stalk about somebody, I think this was a fascinating thing you broughtup earlier. So, you know, E-commerce is seeing an influx of orders.But then there's also some of these, I don't know if unforeseen isthe right word, but these costs that aren't necessarily normallyassociated with E-commerce. Or costs that are normally associatedwith E-commerce, but they're just exaggerated right now.

Brett:

Whatare some of the cost pressures that people are dealing with now, thatthey weren't dealing with before?

Eamon:

Yeah,I think there's a couple things. I think the first one would be theobvious one that I touched on a little bit for the brick and mortars.It's just the shift from brick and mortars to dot com, and there'sobviously an added shipping cost. That's the obvious one.

Eamon:

Buttake somebody like Amazon, and you have the amount of and cleaningthat's needed to be done in these warehouses and facilities, to keeppeople safe. That's certainly a higher cost that they never had inthe past.

Eamon:

You'rehaving to see more hiring of workers. Both Amazon and Chewy both haveadded, or are adding lots of employees to help on the fulfillmentside. So, added costs from that perspective. I think with a lot ofthis, a lot of the fulfillment centers are full. Shipping, you'rehaving some higher shipping costs from trying to expedite and getthings to customers, to hit your promised deadlines.

Eamon:

Ithink that's the biggest thing I see for a lot of these retailers. Idon't care if something shows up in five days. Amazon kind of did itto themselves, right? They've strained people to focus on two dayshipping, to one day.

Brett:

Right,right.

Eamon:

Now,yeah, I go and there's a lot of stuff, like, I don't care if it comesin five days. I think what consumers want is transparency of, tell mewhen it's going to come.

Brett:

Right.

Eamon:

Atleast get that date, you know. If it's seven days, I'm at leastcomfortable. But I'm going to buy that product, knowing it's going toshow up in seven days. But it better show up there in seven days.Don't come in 10. 10, just quote me 10 days, and I'll be happy.

Brett:

Yup.Yeah, exactly. Yes, really, really interesting times now for sure.Other things you're seeing from large retailers right now, andanything interesting in your research that could be helpful for theE-commerce community to be aware of?

Eamon:

Yeah,I just think it's, I think the biggest challenge and the biggestquestion that I've had from manufacturers is, how do I go aboutfiguring out when my products going to slow? When ... are theretailers going to open? When are all of a sudden people going tostop buying certain products?

Eamon:

Youknow, you look, and pantry load is slowing. Some of that is hard togauge. Is it slowing because there's no toilet paper listed on Amazonanymore? But trying to figure out when that change is going to occuris going to be a very challenging one. I had a conversation lastnight with somebody looking in the consumer electronics space, andsaid, "Hey, I have all these people calling me, looking for thisproduct or that product. How do I figure out how much to pull in, andI don't want to be the last person shipping stuff, because I might beselling ... My normal run rate might be a hundred widgets a day. Now,I'm doing 500 widgets a day. Well, if I bring in a couple weeks ofinventory, that's a couple months of inventory in a normalizedenvironment."

Brett:

Right,right.

Eamon:

makesure and take advantage of the situation and these opportunities, yetreduce my risk on the back end? So, I think that's the biggeststruggle. I don't know that I have an answer of trying to predictwhen these certain categories are.

Eamon:

ButI think it's, the majority of people are taking a somewhat cautiousapproach of making sure that they're not pulling in too much. I thinkthe other challenge is, you know, an interesting conversation I hadwith somebody today said, "I'm seeing orders, because one of mybigger competitors is in a state where they're not allowed toproduce."

Brett:

Wow.

Eamon:

Asthat competitor, or as those competitors get back on board at somepoint in time, I know that my business is going to see a significantstep down. predict that? Very challenging.

Brett:

Yup.Yup. Yeah, it's super interesting. I mean, you know, when you, it'sboth a blessing and a curse, right, when more orders come online. Andnow you're selling at a much higher run rate. It's exciting, makespredicting inventory levels super challenging.

Brett:

You'vegot, we'll just take toilet paper as an example because it's kind ofan interesting and a fun one. You know, that's going to slow down,right? There's only so much toilet paper you can stockpile. It's notlike our consumption is actually going up. We're not using moretoilet ... Maybe we're using more toilet paper at home than we do atthe office or whatever.

Brett:

Butglobally, the use of toilet ... We're not eating it. same, so that'sgoing to slow down. Eventually there's going to be a real slow down.It's just kind of a shifting in demand of toilet paper. There areother things that are increasing. So now maybe we are buying morepackaged foods and snacks, and we're sitting around eating oursupplies or whatever.

Brett:

Butpredicting that is super tricky. I think, but I think a couple thingsthat do work in the favor of retail, and you mentioned this. I thinkfor the most part, people are going to be a little bit moreunderstanding about slightly longer ship times. You know, what choicedo we have? We're all kind of being understanding. We're all kind ofin this together type of thing.

Brett:

So,I think maybe being slightly more conservative with inventory levelsis pretty smart. I think, but the other thing you've got to keep inmind is, being opportunistic, right? We've got some really strongbrands that we work with, that are going to run out of inventory in afew areas. There may be a few weeks' gap where they're out ofinventory. I'm not going to mention who they are, because I don'twant the competitors to swoop in. But you got to be watching yourcompetitor levels, seeing when your competitor may run out ofinventory of something. You'd be able to pounce on that and take thatopportunity.

Brett:

So,with that, you got to have inventory to be able to do that. Right?So, it's a tricky game right now. I think the best we can do is lookat managed costs as wisely as we can. But don't slow down, becausethere is a shift in buyers to E-commerce. Try to capture as much ofthat as you can, reasonably. Have those long term goals, but thenalso be willing to pivot, because you're going to have to pivot a lotand pretty quickly.

Eamon:

Yeah,I think the other thing, too, as you think about it, is coming out ofthis, there's, one may think, "Well, as soon as my localrestaurant opens up, I want to get out of my house."

Brett:

Absolutely.

Eamon:

Thechallenge is, you think about is, if this lasts for three months, alot of restaurants aren't going to have any usable food. The supply,you think about all the issues that we've seen at the retail level,right? People went to Costco and grocers, and all the shelves wereempty. Well, the same thing's going to happen for the restaurantcommunity and food service when that gets back online. There's goingto be a massive flow of orders that are wanting to go that way, andis there going to be the availability? We're probably going to have asimilar to what we're seeing at the consumer side, right? We'reprobably going to have a couple month window where it takes time fora lot of that stuff to get back in stock from a restaurantperspective.

Brett:

Yeah,supply chains are kind of wonky everywhere, right? So it's going tocause some disruptions. Maybe you're going to be at your favoriterestaurant, one of these days, right? If, hard to even imagine thatright now.

Eamon:

Yeah.

Brett:

Butwe're going to be there one day, and yeah, maybe they won't havecertain dishes because they're having supply chain issues as well.So, super interesting.

Brett:

Well,Eamon, this has been really interesting, very fascinating. I'mthankful for companies like you that have your finger on the pulse ofwhat's going on and can provide this meaningful data that can atleast get us thinking and processing and looking for opportunities,and looking for ways we can improve our business.

Brett:

Ifsomeone wants to plug in more and maybe kind of dig into someEdgewater Research, how can they get in touch? How can they learnmore about you guys?

Eamon:

Sure.Our website is Edgewater Research dot com. If anybody wants to emailme, it's Eamon at Edgewater RC dot com. E-A-M-O-N at Edgewater RC dotcom. Happy to have a conversation with anybody, and plug in withanybody looking for some support and help on, whether it's Amazon orjust kind of retail in general.

Brett:

Awesome.Really appreciate it. I will link to your site and share your email,if you're cool with it, on the show notes. So, we'll allow people toconnect with you as they'd like to. But been super interesting,Eamon. Thanks for the time. Thanks for coming on. Really enjoyed it.

Eamon:

Thanksa lot, Brett.

Brett:

Yup,absolutely. And as always, we would love to hear from you, ourlisteners. We would love that review on iTunes. That helps out theshow. It helps other people discover the show. So, if you feel soinclined, leave that five star review. Leave some feedback. We'd loveto hear from you.

Brett:

Withthat, until next time, thank you for listening.

Brett:

Allright, man, that's a wrap. That was perfect.

‍

Original Grain has an origin story that’s as cool as it’s products…and as cool as it’s founders. In this interview we tackle some critically important topics for all DTC brands.  We discuss building a product that has an authentic story that resonates.  We look at the Original Grain approach to sourcing and designing that next winning product. We hear the Original Grain example of launching successful kickstarter campaigns, and we talk about marketing during a crisis and much more.   

Brother’s Ryan and Andrew Beltran grew up playing basketball together and starting businesses together from painting houses to mowing lawns. In 2013 while living in Hong Kong, Ryan had the idea for wood and steel watches.  The brothers took that inspiration and started what is now a leader in the watch and accessories space.  

Here’s a look at what you’ll learn in this episode:

• How a chance meeting at a nearly failed event lead to their most successful watch line to date
• How wooing an investor (I love this story - and it embodies the entrepreneur’s spirit) led to some of their most popular collector’s edition watches
• How Original Grain is going up-stream while strengthening it’s core watch offerings
• How they plan to market and stay strong during the COVID-19 storm 
• How to build an authentic voice and truly connect with customers even when being together physically is impossible
• What’s ahead for Original Grain

‍

Connect with Guests:

Ryan Beltran - Co-Founder at Original Grain, Inc.

Via LinkedIn

Andrew Beltran - Co-Founder at Original Grain, Inc.

Via LinkedIn

Original Grain - The Premier Maker of Wood & Steel Watches

Via LinkedIn

Via Facebook

Via Twitter

Via Instagram

Via YouTube

‍

Mention in this episode:

Everlane - Modern Basics. Radical Transparency.

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. Today, I have a treat for you. We are going to hear just a fantastic eCommerce brand story. I've got two co-founders of an amazing company on the show today. These are guys that I know. I know their product and their company intimately. We actually help the with some of their marketing, so I've gotten to know them over the years. I'm just delighted that you'll get to hear behind the scenes of their story. Lots of lessons that you can learn. I think you'll be inspired for maybe your next evolution as a company. So, all kinds of good stuff.

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'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:

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? So, we started building this little guy. This little guy that we use internally. We started categorizing ads and giving them fun names like The Manifesto and the UGC Mashup, and the Have It All. We started breaking down what elements in these videos make them work?

Brett:

I was speaking at a recent event, and I just happened to mention that this resource existed, and people started clamoring for it. Everybody was like, "Hey, I want to see what we got. I want to see that resource. I want to see all these successful ads." So, that's what we've done. We put together this resource first time ever. We're going to share it with a broader audience. It's free. 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.

Brett:

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. Now, back to the show. I would like to welcome to the show co-founders of Original Grain Watches, Andrew and Ryan Beltran. Ryan and Andrew, how's it going fellas?

Andrew:

Hey.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Andrew:

Hell of an introduction. I like it.

Brett:

Yeah. I'm really excited to have you guys. In all sincerity, I am a fanboy of the watches. We can talk about specifics later. I own a watch, my son owns a watch. We are big, big fans. So, lots we can dive into. I think it would be interesting to hear the story of how you guy got started, and we'll also talk about what's going on in the world today. Because as we record this, I think we're all in Coronavirus lockdown.

Ryan:

Yeah. We're in the thick of it here. Yeah.

Brett:

This is interesting times, so I there's some things we can talk about to help folks navigate the waters right now. If you would guys, tell us the origin story. Why start a watch company? You guys started in 2013, correct?

Ryan:

Yeah, 2013. We actually launched with a kick-starter through crowdfunding but well, we're brothers, so I guess the story starts back in 1991, when Andrew was born. We're two years apart.

Brett:

Two years. So you're the older, wiser brother. Is that right Ryan?

Ryan:

Yeah, I'm the older, wiser. Andrew got the looks and the height, so I don't know. You've got to get something here.

Brett:

Andrew's showing the profile, showing the beard. That's amazing. So, seriously though, but as you guys were growing up, did you talk about being in business together? Did you guys have a lemonade stand or something like that?

Andrew:

Yeah. I was talking about this last night. We had a few of those small businesses as kids, whether it was mowing lawns or even power washing houses.

Brett:

business. The lawn mowing business.

Andrew:

Every summer we were painting houses and working together. We were a tandem. We always did everything together. Ryan always led the charge. I was always hanging out with the older kids so I felt cool. But yeah, we would play ball together. Grew up playing sports. Coming from a small town in Oregon, there wasn't this whole, "Okay, we're going to launch a global watch company." We did envision, growing up, raising families together, so it was a natural evolution, I think, as we grew up.

Brett:

It's amazing. I love the service based industry. It's a great business to get started on, mowing lawns as a kid. My son did, to build some revenue. Pure cash business. You said you played ball together. I'm just curious. I'm into sports as well. What kind of ball did you play?

Andrew:

It was basketball growing up. Our step dad coached us and then I played on Ryan's team all the way till high school, and then we had some glory days there. High School. Some good news articles, Beltran brothers lead the way.

Brett:

Is that right?

Andrew:

Yeah.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Brett:

state appearances and stuff like that?

Ryan:

Yeah.

Andrew:

Yeah. Yeah.

Brett:

No kidding. I did not know this about you. I've got to watch myself because if I'm not careful, we'll do just a basketball podcast.

Ryan:

Xs and Os, and we're talking about and back cuts.

Brett:

Exactly. I played in high school. I was at your level, I don't think, but I played and then I actually coach my son's basketball team.

Ryan:

That's nice.

Brett:

Varsity team. It was really intense. Last two years I coached. It was a lot of fun. Basketball is a huge part of our life as well.

Ryan:

That's awesome.

Brett:

Cool. You guys mowed lawns, painted houses, wanted to raise a family together. Walk us through, where did this idea for a global watch company, where did that come from?

Ryan:

Yeah. That one, fast forward to like 20 years actually, on the dot ... I never start with the 1991 thing. That was a new thing for this show, but I like it.

Brett:

I like it.

Ryan:

I'm going to use it.

Brett:

You heard it here first. Okay.

Ryan:

Yeah. Actually, in 2011, I moved to Hong Kong, Southern China, really actually Mainland after I graduated college. Went to University of Oregon in our hometown, we did, and decided that I wanted to try this entrepreneurial thing for real, start a brand, and I knew that majority of products were made in China. I felt like it was like a scene from Blow, go to the source, but not for that, for product. I'm like, "Let's just see what happens." I spent three years on the ground there, and about a year into that stay, I came across a product, which was a wood watch, and I thought, "Oh, this is really cool. It's different." It reminded me of home, growing up in the Northwest, the wood thing. But, "This can be a lot better. How can I innovate on this a little better?" Thought, "Why not just incorporate wood as a material, rather than just get ... " Felt a little gimmicky to me, a wood watch-

Brett:

A fully wood watch. Yeah. I've felt some fully wood watches and they do feel a little gimmicky. They don't feel very weight or very real.

Ryan:

Yeah. A trendy product more so, than something there to stay. That's how the idea sparked. Andrew, I'll let you take the next part of it because it was really interesting how it happened. He was coming through on a deployment and ..

Andrew:

Okay. It's like a little bit acts of fate launched this whole thing. After high school, I joined marine corps. I was actually on the way home from a deployment, and we had two days to stop in Hong Kong. At that time, Ryan had just been to the Canton Fair, which is one of the biggest trade shows in the world.

Brett:

I would love to go. It's on my bucket list. I've not been but I definitely will at some point.

Ryan:

Got to go.

Andrew:

Yeah. When I showed up, he was really excited. He has showed me a prototype of something that we could do, and right away I was initially just totally attracted to the watch. It definitely reminded me of home in the Northwest where we grew up. Just that wood heritage and craftsmanship, and I knew right away that was something I loved and he loved it as well. But he needed some cash to get started. Ryan, you might want to jump in. You tell that story pretty-

Ryan:

I was like, "Hey little brother. You've got some extra cash?" He actually did, he was in the marines. He had been on deployment. You don't spend any money.

Brett:

You don't have to pay taxes. Cool stuff like that.

Ryan:

We were both back home that summer. I think he stopped in May and June and July, that summer, 2012, so out there. I came home. We met up. We were out on the lake. We were talking, "Let's do this thing. Can I get eight or 10 grand? I think it was eight grand actually. That was what it was." We bought a first load round of ... We were going to place a PO and a few months later I go, "What if we were to launch a Kickstarter?" He's like, "What's a Kickstarter?" He's like, "What's a kick starter?" I go, "It's this new platform, it's crowd-funding. People back your project." It was new. It was becoming a thing. It was a little bit of right time, right place there. We decided that's how we were going to launch. So we threw it up on Kickstarter and 30 days later, we had raised 390 grand.

Brett:

That's crazy.

Ryan:

It was like, "It looks like we got a business."

Brett:

Yeah. So, two quick things. One, describe the watches. I know we talked about it a little bit, but describe the watch and/or show one if you have one, for those that are watching the video. Okay. Andrew, which one is that? Is that the

Andrew:

This is our new Whiskey Barrel Line actually.

Brett:

Whiskey Barrel, yeah.

Andrew:

We redesigned this collection, integrating wood in steel, as always. Reclaimed materials is our best selling collections, which has that heritage. Whether it's Whiskey Barrels, reclaimed craft beer. We do some military ammunition crates. We also have a line of MLB watches reclaimed from old baseball bats, or even stadium surplus, where we've taken wood from the 1923 Yankee Stadium chairs.

Brett:

Amazing. So cool.

Andrew:

A lot of limited edition batch runs, and then we're able to price accordingly, to a limited edition, or just the mechanics of the watch.

Brett:

Love it. Ryan, what are you wearing right now?

Ryan:

I'm rocking one of our automatics. This our game master line.

Brett:

That's the new design.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Brett:

Inspired by Italian sports cars? Do I have that right?

Ryan:

It's the DT40. Our recent hire, well, he's been with us for about a year now. He's our lead watch designer. He's from Detroit. He's working on our first line. We want it to be a little higher end. This one starts at like 600, and this automatic version goes for like 850. We wanted to do something that was inspired by automotive. He's from Detroit, right? Was inspired from the GT40, which is an iconic race car. Ford versus Ferrari, that movie that just came out based on that.

Brett:

Amazing movie. Amazing movie. Yeah.

Ryan:

Great. I love it. Actually, the real watch is so good, but, yeah.

Brett:

I wanted to say as a side not now, obviously no one can visit now because of lockdown, but you guys have an amazing little showroom. Obviously an online business, but amazing little showroom, and your offices there in San Diego are fantastic. The coolest vibe. You've got nitro brewed coffee on tap, you've got the watches out. I don't know if it's your motorcycle, or somebody on the team's motorcycle, but is there a story behind that motorcycle that's in the office? Because that is just rad.

Andrew:

That motorcycle is now being crashed, but-

Ryan:

It actually has.

Andrew:

It's try on. It's a beautiful bike. It looks vintage, but it's fairly new actually, but it's

Brett:

Okay, yeah. I thought it was vintage.

Ryan:

It's pretty rad, yeah.

Andrew:

We have a few paintings. Louis Vuitton's board and . It's that new age office space. Very open and a little warehouse, so definitely a lot of wood accents. It definitely represents our brand really well and everyone enjoys coming into work, which is what we want.

Brett:

Yeah. Awesome. So, people have a picture of the watch, and if they're watching the videos, they've seen the watches. So, the Kickstarter, what did you do? Because you started with, "Hey, let's see if we can figure out how to make this work with $8,000, then you pivoted to Kickstarter and you got $390,000. Why did you get so much? Why did it work?

Ryan:

I think, and Andrew, chime in after I go, but I think a lot of it, and I've always said this, was just the uniqueness of the product. It was a right time, right place moment, in terms of the platform, and the fact that we were actually featured on the home page for the entirety of the campaign, more or less, which in this day and age, doesn't happen. Actually, I don't even think Kickstarter would allow that. But the way ours had worked, and the way that our campaign was trending, it was just there. We got a lot of organic traffic, but look, there's always a little element of luck, if you will. But I think a lot of it's just our ability to take that risk and build something that was new.

Ryan:

The authenticity, I know that's a buzz word, but of the story was there, and I think Andrew and I did a good job of explaining why this product ... What's inspiration. The design, like I said, was definitely unique, and we're selling a quality product, for a decent amount of price at the time on Kickstarter. So, I think that had a lot to do with what led to the success of the campaign.

Andrew:

For sure. I'll try to add to it because that was our first campaign, and then we followed it up with a second campaign that actually did a little bit better. During the campaign, we struggled a little bit to ... Being competitive, we needed to beat the first campaign, even though , but we had to. We really started understanding digital advertising and driving traffic to the campaign, because we weren't getting that organic traffic from the home page. We were getting certain features. We have little spikes, but how are we going to contain consistent flow of traffic?

Andrew:

Which I do recommend a lot of first time entrepreneurs. It's nice to start on a platform like that because you really can cover your bases and your model without going out and blowing a ton of money. It allows you operationally, getting control of everything that's happening. All the customer service, all the flows and the macros that you need to build about, bouncing around a little bit. But that was what was unique about the second campaign. It felt like we really had something that we could sustain outside of this Kickstarter platform-

Ryan:

Yeah, through paid traffic.

Brett:

Primarily Facebook ads, at that time, I would assume?

Ryan:

Yeah.

Brett:

Did you guys rely heavily on a video telling the story of the product? Was that the main piece on Kickstarter?

Andrew:

Yeah.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Andrew:

It's funny because our first video, Ryan actually shot, cut, and edited the whole thing.

Ryan:

Beautiful.

Andrew:

And then second time around, we had a professional come in and do their thing. That's when really, we took our content to the next level as well. Started hiring out some creatives on the team. One of our first hires took the brand to the next level, visually.

Brett:

Nice. You hinted at this a little bit, Andrew. You talked about a few things. But let's talk about the reclaimed wood aspect of the watch. Was that an idea from the very beginning? Ryan, you talked about wood and steel, and mixing these, and not just this gimmicky feeling, just all wood watch, but wood and steel. Was the idea, from the beginning, to use reclaimed wood, or did that evolve later?

Andrew:

You want to take that up Ryan?

Ryan:

Sure. Yeah. To be totally honest, I don't think we had thought about reclaimed wood. I think initially, we were thinking exotic, unique, rare, hard woods. Obviously sustainable woods. There's a lot of woods that we figured out through the process that they can't find because they're so rare, or you can't source because they're the endangered species, like a Brazilian Rosewood for example. Extremely endangered. You can't get it, nor would we. But with anything, once you start, and you start to go down the path, and you start looking at different materials, Andrew and I think, pretty early on, I would say about six to eight months into it, we started looking at what would be other cool wood materials be?

Ryan:

We're actually starting to expand into other non wood natural materials, grain. It doesn't have to be just wood. We're going to look at that, so we can dive into that a little bit as well. The first one, we've been thinking about reclaimed Whiskey Barrels. I actually was at this trade show, It's Magic, in Las Vegas. I always tell the story for a couple of reasons. But one of the biggest reasons is because you never know what's going to come of an opportunity. So, for all the entrepreneurs out there, myself included, sometimes you put yourselves in these positions where you're like, "Man, this sucks."

Ryan:

We were at this trade show for three days. We got like two retail ... This is year one, right? We got a lot of our posters on the wall and a handful of walk-in boxes of watches. We didn't know what we were doing. Levis meanwhile's across the way and they've got like $100,000 billed out in lucky jeans. We were like, "Okay. This is how you do it." We didn't know. We got a few clients , and it was day three, and Andrew and I were like, "This is a waste of time and money. What was the deal?" This guy walks buy and he represented Jim Beam Whiskey, and he was like, "I really think we should do something together, because this is cool. Have you ever thought about reclaiming whiskey barrels?" We were like, "Well, actually, we have." And he goes, "Let's do something." That gave us that push to, "Well, if Jim Beam is interested in this, then that's pretty cool."

Brett:

brand is coming to us and saying, "Let's do a deal," that's a real proof of concept there. Yeah.

Ryan:

Yeah. That's how initially it was catalyst for the reclaim thing, and then ... I don't know Andrew, if you've got anything more to add, but it's definitely just sparked this whole wave of unique cool, interesting reclaimed material.

Andrew:

Yeah. It's the most fun to market. It's the most fun to go out and find as well, and gather up your resources, and get behind. The whole team gets really stoked when we're ... Recently, we were working on a new pilot. Not that this was going to be the source that we use, but we had to find some materials, just to even work with our suppliers. Our design is driving up to LA on this dirt road. It's an experience in itself, to find some of these materials. It's what gets you out of the bed in the morning. It's like, "Okay, what can we create?"

Brett:

Yeah. It's really what gets people excited about the product as well. I want to talk about some of the other reclaimed wood aspects in a minute. But I want to touch on something you just said Ryan. I think this applies to any business, right? Whether it's eCommerce, or we run a service based business, an agency. I can't underscore enough live events or just being with your customer, or with other people in the industry. Because if we look at some of the breakthroughs we've had as an agency, they've always almost come at events, because of people we've met, ideas that were sparked, something we saw. There's something about that physical event. When you're there, you see things. The rest of the world is shut out. It's just magical. Even if you show up at an event and you're being outdone by Levis and lucky jeans, if you're open, you'll still probably get an idea or two, that can be absolute gold for your business.

Ryan:

I love that. I've always been a huge believer in just showing up. I think that's a Mark Twain quote or something about it, because 90% of life is just..

Brett:

Just showing up. Showing up and having an open mind. Yeah. Cool. The whiskey barrel collection, which Andrew's sporting right now, right? You've got the Whiskey Barrel?

Andrew:

Yeah.

Brett:

So cool. There's something raw ad powerful about a whiskey barrel. It's something you'd want to wear and then tell people about. You know, there are some watches you wear and you're like, "It's just a watch." But that, you want to talk about. I actually own the Koa wood watch. It's black. That's why I got it, because I wanted a black watch. I didn't have one. Talk through some of the woods, and what's been successful, and any lesson there. And anything that you tried, that wasn't successful. I think sometimes there are lessons there. But then I also want to talk about your collectors pieces in a minute too.

Ryan:

For sure. Andrew, you want to take it?

Andrew:

Yeah, I can jump in regards to some of the best sellers. We touched on it before, but definitely the reclaimed materials. Things that have unique stories. The whole Hawaiian Koa, that's our tribute piece to Hawaii. We've done some unique things with the wood, but as well with the steel. That's a stone wash steel, which that's new to the market. That's something we essentially created. That's supposed to embody the lava rocks of Hawaii. So it's got that stone accent on the steel.

Andrew:

The different other materials, whether it be the military, I would say that's been a fun collection. Obviously I'm really tied to that one, considering my service, but that was something we learned on, I would say. Although a very unique collection, we offered a ton of styles. There was five styles when we originally launched with different leather bands. One was gold, one was stone wash. One was reclaimed from a pilot jacket.

Brett:

Interesting. The leather band was from a bomber jacket?

Andrew:

Yeah. It came with the watch. With the steel band, we had additional leather band. It was just a lot to communicate to the customer, rather than just triggering in, "This is our pilot jacket. We're going to reclaim series." This is a lot of communication. Everything deserves a spot in the sun, and it was too much to describe. That was a big learning lesson. Narrowing down.

Brett:

So, the pilot watch. The reclaimed bomber jacket, that didn't do as well, maybe, as others, because of the story which maybe didn't land? It was a little too complicated?

Andrew:

I would say we learned that a few styles didn't land, but we were pretty broad.

Brett:

Got it.

Ryan:

Yeah. I think from a marketing perspective, what Andrew's saying is don't over-complicate it. Maybe hone in on ... Because consumers really can only take so much at a time.

Brett:

For sure.

Ryan:

And I totally get that. I'm that same way. It's like, "Whoa," decision paralysis or whatever. I'm like, "I just need to understand what this is." We've still been successful. We still have it in the lineup. We figured out which colorways and which stories resonated. But reclaimed, I wouldn't say obviously, but has been the most successful. Whiskey, to date, is our number one seller. It's also been around the longest. We're trying to find that next whiskey barrel. It's something we talk about in the office a lot, and something else that can even scale, from a business perspective, that maybe isn't so rare, that it just ...

Ryan:

Because the cool thing about the whiskey barrel thing, other than the fact that I do genuinely believe that it's a cool story that a lot of people resonate, but it's a relatively endless supply of the material, and it's sustainable, because we're not having to go out and cut down trees or anything. I'm not saying that we do that anyway, but the whiskey barrels, they're reclaimed from Missouri and Kentucky. They're done with the barrels, they've already aged the bourbons for four years, and they don't know what to do with them because bourbon can't go back into a used barrel. Actually, the American law says that. I think it's an old, old law from 100 years ago. So they just don't know what to do with it. They're just like, "We could sell them to France for," which is what they do a lot of the time, "or we just dispose them."

Brett:

Wow. It's sustainable. It's amazing story and it's a super cool product. Let's talk a little bit about when I was there ar your office and I saw the watch made from, and you mentioned it Andrew, the 1923 Yankee Stadium seats, and one I think from Fenway Park, potentially. Where did the idea for that come, and how did you market those? How did you make those successful?

Andrew:

I'll jump in. That's actually a beautiful story. It actually ties back to an investor relationship that we're trying to build. We actually just made him a one-off sample the Yankees. We had ordered a chair on eBay, made him a one-off sample for his birthday.

Brett:

What inspired you guys to order a chair off of eBay?

Andrew:

He was wearing Panorize every time we'd see him. He would never wear a original grain watch. But he was from New York, and so we were like, "Hey"

Brett:

So you bought the chair for this reason?

Andrew:

For this watch.

Brett:

There are some lessons there. You're going after an investor, do something crazy. Go buy a chair on eBay, from Yankee Stadium. Okay. Awesome. I'm super intrigued now.

Andrew:

We bought it, made him a one-off sample. I remember meeting him at the airport. He was literally flying to New York. Met him in the airport and gave him the watch. He was like, "What the hell?" Went home. But I think when he was sitting on the airplane, he was like, "Wow." He wrote an email and he was like, "I can't wait to hand this down to my son." I've already picked this out for my youngest. It's like, "This is-"

Brett:

For his favorite son?

Andrew:

Yeah. Time pieces are heritage. They're meant to be passed down, generationally. The fact that we could create something that had that sentimental value, it was like, "Wow, how do we tap into the emotions of the customer?" That goes along with the reclaim stories that we've created. But that's how the MLB thing had kicked off as a whole. We were just making a one-off sample and then sooner or later, now it's like a whole MLB licensing program that we have, that drops as MLB starts, and then as soon as the champion's crowned, we drop another watch. Those are those seasonal spikes we're also able to market and get in front of people at the right time.

Brett:

So were you able to get more Yankee Stadium chairs after that?

Andrew:

Actually, we found with the Cubs, but the Cubs was really hard to get more. The Yankees weren't too bad. But the sources are crazy. It requires certificate authenticity and you'll find a lot of construction guys will have them. It's interesting sourcing some of that wood. Yeah. It's always-

Ryan:

The Yankee Stadium was rebuilt in 2009 or whatever it was, so the guys who worked on the demolition would have a lot of those chairs.

Brett:

Grab a chair on your way out, on your way home man.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Brett:

That's crazy. So smart. So you took the idea. What a good entrepreneurial lesson. You're trying to find a way. How do break through the clutter? How do we get this potential investor to wear our watch and to think it's cool? You buy a chair. You make this watch. And his response is, "Holy cow. This is amazing. I'm going to give it to my son. It's so meaningful." Then you think, "Business opportunity. Let's capitalize on this one."

Ryan:

Let's scale it a little bit. Yeah.

Brett:

Yeah. And so, you guys did one for Fenway Park as well, right? Or was it-

Andrew:

It was Wrigley, and now Yankee Stadium, and then Fenway came next. Then we ended up doing reclaimed baseball bats, so that we could touch the whole MLB. So, we did a bunch of different teams. I think 14 teams last year. We have another collection coming out this year, where we're actually using Rawlings Leather. They're going to be a Leather based watch.

Brett:

For the face of the watch, we'll have the reclaimed baseball bat and then the band will be Rawlings Leather? That is freaking cool.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Brett:

Okay. That's awesome.

Andrew:

Yeah. And a collector's piece at this point, yeah.

Brett:

Yeah, cool. Any other ideas or iterations that will come from that? That seems like a great next evolution. One of the things that we talked about is we're working with your company and helping to grow it and market it, there are some people, and I would count myself in this crowd, I like watches. I would be happy to own lots and lots of watches. Is part of the motivation here, "How can we potentially sell more than one item to an individual customer?" So you have some of these collector items where, "Okay, not, maybe I've got my Whiskey Barrel watch, which is my daily watch, but I'm a huge Kansas City Royals fan, so I'm going to buy the Royals watches. Is that the motivation there, or is it more MLB is a totally different market for you?

Ryan:

Yeah. If I could take that, it's twofold. I definitely feel like the opportunity was for us to expand on the success of those three teams, the Cubs, Yankees, and the Red Sox.

Brett:

Which is the perfect ones to start with by the way. Those are the ones with the most rabid fan bases and huge markets. That was super smart.

Ryan:

We've seen, and I think if you look at licensing industry, trend reports and stuff, you see that the majority of the merchandise is sold in the big market teams. Dodgers, things like. LA. You know what I mean? And it starts to trickle down beyond that. We learned that lesson too, when we rolled out , so there are going to be a few less teams actually on this 2020 version, with..

Ryan:

I think additionally, to your point about retention and lifetime value on customers, 100%, I think that's something in the watch category that's a tougher code to crack because unlike apparel or other categories, beauty, consumable products, things like that, where they go from a t-shirt to jeans, or another color, it's a little more affordable to begin with, the beauty, the consumable. A lot of people like to collect watches from multiple different brands. But if we can suck them into our brand, and we have a pretty good ... We're above 20%, I think, on repeat purchase.

Brett:

Which for your category, is outstanding.

Ryan:

I think it's pretty good. Yeah. Finding more ways, to your point Brett, on how to increase LTV, is I think something we're looking pretty hard at right now, because we've got a pretty good base. Right now in particular, with the COVID, that seems like probably the best place to go right now, honestly.

Brett:

I 100% agree. I'm in a couple of different mastermind groups. Shout out to Ezra Firestone and Blue Ribbon, and also the guys at War Room, Ryan , and Ronald Fraser, but we've had several meetings lately just talking about how do we handle the COVID-19 scare? How are we marketing? A couple of things for people to keep in mind. One, there's still a lot of consumers out there that are doing just fine financially, and they want to buy something. So, shopping is therapeutic.

Brett:

Buying something, and in your case, your product is a great gift item. Buying a gift for my spouse, that makes me feel good. Don't just be quiet because you think you should be. People want to buy stuff. You want to feel normal as much as they can right now, to a larger degree. Reach out to your customers. Do something unique. Do something special. Offer discounts to help people out. Stuff like that. Do you want to talk about anything you guys are doing now, that's relevant?

Ryan:

Andrew, do you want to take that? We actually just had our leadership call with out team right before this, at 11:00. Yeah, Andrew.

Andrew:

Yeah. We've been coming up with a lot of creative ways on how to connect with the audience, and it starts with customer care at this point. That's top of mind. How you're going to represent yourself during COVID is what people are going to, and this isn't factual, but I believe it's how people are potentially going to remember you beyond COVID. I'm not trying to take advantage of people by any means. We're going to start inviting people into our own house. We're going to be doing live interactions here, product demonstrations, potentially Zoom meetings as well, similar to this. Bringing people closer, Bringing in the family. Customer care. Setting expectations through emails, handwritten letters, all that's so important.

Andrew:

There's a lot of confusion out there. Are people shipping? Are they not? Am I going to get my watch? Setting the expectation I think is probably one of the most important things, and then just relating on a real level. Humanizing has always been important. I think now more than ever. Just being comfortable with uncertain times. It's crazy. We went through this as a nation, but it's important. I love seeing people get creative by doing Instagram lives and inviting people in, so we're going to be doing a ton of that for the next few weeks.

Brett:

I'm really excited about a lot of that and I want to hear a little more about it. I think it's really important, if you can keep in mind that one, people need that connection now more than ever, they want it from a brand too. If you've got this authentic, cool, brand, you can still connect with someone in a meaningful way. As we approach as marketers, as business people, as leaders, as entrepreneurs, if we're confident in the face of crisis, that does spill over. That creates a net positive impact. Yes, it's scary. Yes, there's bad things going on, but we will make it through, right? I think eCommerce will be better for it in the long run, and then some other things that are positive. So, you want to talk any more about the events and stuff that you're doing Ryan? That sounded really cool. Like Instagram lives and ... So you're going to do that from your houses obviously?

Ryan:

Yeah. Like I said, we were both at the opposite, six feet away, yesterday.

Brett:

You're brothers.

Ryan:

We're brothers. Taylor, our VP, you know Taylor, she was like, "I want you guys to do these lives, but you guys can't be together." I go, "Well, actually, we're together right now." She's like, "Okay, well, that worked." We'll see. I mean, whether we are or not, I'm super excited about doing that. I've seen a lot of brands that I consider leaders in the industry for eCommerce, like an Everlane for example, they just do such a good job as a whole. Their whole thing is about transparency.

Ryan:

They want to be transparent through this. We've been seeing what people are doing and we're like, "Man, we were already planning to," but it's been really cool to see those brands do that. So, yeah, I'm excited about it. I think it's a good reminder, this whole thing, to not get back to basics, but remember some of those things that sometimes just start to fade. I'm not saying that our customers ever did, but yeah, I'm excited about tapping into that, for sure.

Brett:

It's interesting, there's also been this ... I've heard a few people mention this. We've come off of so many great years in a row. Some of us can get fat and happy. I don't think it was happening a lot. You guys were hungry, where hungry, but you can get comfortable with things. This is really forcing us to say, "Okay, we got our game. We've got to connect in a way we've never connected before." I think that's leading to some good changes.

Brett:

One thing I will mention, this is advice that I give all the time, is if you want to see what people are doing right now, and good markers, you mentioned Everlane, Ezra Firestone, that's another good one, you know those email lists. Go follow them on Instagram. Follow them on Facebook. See what they do. Do the same with you guys. If you guys are getting ready to do some cool stuff, go to originalgrain.com. Sign up on the email list so you can get notified of stuff they're doing. Follow these guys on Instagram. Actually, do you want to talk about some of the ways people can connect with you?

Andrew:

Yeah. Our social is @originalgrain. Our website, originalgrain.com. As you mentioned, we're sending out emails every couple of days and providing updates, whether on new products, as well as just the virtual live demonstrations that we're going to be doing, so you can sign up for those and be in the know.

Brett:

I think you guys do so many things well. Your video content is great. We're running some of your videos on YouTube and they're doing well. There's a lot that someone can learn by checking out what you guys are doing. Maybe a couple of things here, as we're running up against time a little bit. But Ryan, you're showing the automatic watch, and that's a higher price point. Your standard watches are in the $300-$400 ranger. The collectors watches I know are more. You said the automatic you have there is 850. Was that strategic in ... Obviously I know everything you do has a strategy behind it, but were you thinking, again, just raising the LTV? Expanding into new markets? What was the thought process behind that?

Ryan:

Yeah. I think one thing we've always played in that $250-$400 range since we launched. What we didn't want to do was race to the bottom, where it feels like a lot of the GTC or ... I want to say BTC. That's not right. But the more entry level products, regardless of being direct consumer or , or whatever, are doing. We want to stick to our guns, which is hard to do sometimes. I mean, let me tell you. We run promotions and discounts, and all that, but I think, at least on a MSRP level, we didn't want to just start rolling out watches at 150 bucks, and put ourselves down there. I think it was strategic to move up a little bit.

Ryan:

We have a lot of watches coming out in that $250 to $400 range this year, right where our bread and butter is. But when we hired Scott a year ago, he helped us map out and created this little matrix of where we are in terms of style. We didn't have a pilot watch. Andrew talked about that. We wanted to do a pilot, but where it is that fit in terms of price point ... If you chart it out, you see where there are some holes to fill. I think from a merchandising perspective, it rounds you out and it allows the customer to see a little more breadth. As all marketers know, sometimes seeing a $400 watch paired against an $800 watch makes that $400 watch look more affordable.

Brett:

Absolutely.

Ryan:

There's some strategy there for sure. I mean, our $850 automatic is the same value in terms of the build and the movement, it being a Swiss automatic, so we price that right. Yeah. I think that's how we've looked at our product roadmap.

Brett:

I love that. There is definitely something to be said, I think. I know some of the merchants that do this, where they create some really high prices offerings almost with the primary goal of creating less resistance for their core offer, right?

Ryan:

Sure.

Brett:

For you guys, it sounds like digital watches, it's a great offer. It's a fantastic watch, but it's also, and you mentioned it, it's going to make your core product feel more and be perceived more as more valuable. That's awesome.

Ryan:

Yeah. 100%. Yeah.

Brett:

Cool.

Ryan:

We're doing a lot in terms of refreshing watches this year too, so taking some of our own bestsellers, which is a little scary. and I laugh sometimes. We're like, "Because you've got this good thing going, you don't want to ... If it isn't broke, don't fix it." But we just believe in product at the end of the day. I've always been a product is king guy, and I just want our product to always get better. If we can do that, we're going to do it. Andrew and I are aligned on that. So, we want to raise the tide on that new barrel line that he's wearing. Number one selling watch. We changed it. It still pays homage to the original design but it's a better product. It's risky. Yeah.

Brett:

Given the insights on what you do, any time you're innovating and creating, and making something brand new, it's risky. It's risky like, "Will the market embrace this?" You guys talked about in the military line, where something was maybe to complex and in land, and others did. How do you guys approach that product design piece? Do you get a lot of feedback along the way, from a lot of different people, or is it more like you're just bringing in your artists, like your version of Johnny I've from Apple, like you guys are making him doing it? What does that look like?

Andrew:

I'll jump in a little bit. I know Ryan's super involved as well, with the product design. Ryan and I had our own method about two years ago, and then as soon as we hired on Scott or head designer now, the process has changed so much, and it's been beautiful to next to him, to really understand how someone approaches a design. He doesn't just jump in and start drawing. He's pulling in so much inspiration amongst the community. What is the reason for this watch? Whether it fits in certain buckets, and bringing in examples of different collections that embody that.

Andrew:

It's a 3D printing different sizes. 3D print in four different sizes, check before it even goes to the supplier. That's sped up some of our production lead time. The amount of back and forth between samples. To really work side by side with a real designer has definitely changed the came for us because our approach before was fairly ... Ryan and I designed a watch on a train ride, on the way to a supplier, and that's a real story.

Ryan:

That's a real thing.

Andrew:

That's really .. We have that finished sample. It actually just showed up a few months ago and everyone was like, "Why don't we make this watch?

Ryan:

Ryan was like, "There's no way." It's a really retro watch that we had designed literally on-

Brett:

On a train. That's awesome.

Andrew:

It was a mess. Our process has changed a lot over the years, because we've brought in really good people around us. That goes towards our marketing process, all the way to design. That's my bid on that.

Brett:

Love it. Love it. How much are you looking for? Whatever wood, whatever design we use, the automatic is inspired by the GT iconic race car, you've got the NLB connection, Military Connection, Whiskey Barrel. How much is the potential story? How much is that influencing what you decide to build the next, did you start with story or did story evolve as you go, or what does that look like?

Ryan:

That's a good questions. I think sometimes it does vary. At times, we just look at incorporating a cool material or reclaimed material into an existing platform or silhouette. Maybe for an existing watch silhouette, we just take the material and we integrate it into that design. The design lives and it breaths and it's there. At other times, if it's a completely new ... Let's say take the pilot for example. It's a new product that's rolling out in July. We knew we wanted ... That's an aesthetic. Scott, to Andrew's point, is pulling it an inspiration. It's what he does. He's been doing it for a decade, so he understands how to approach that project, but with an OG twist on it.

Ryan:

He's looking at that first, and then how he can incorporate some sort of material element into that. For us, there's two versions. There's a one story version, and that's using the type of material, the type that planes actually were made. I mean, it was at a really cool aerospace museum here in San Diego, and we went and toured it, and it's phenomenally where all the planes were made out of wood in the 20s and 30s, and 40s I think. Imagine flying in that.

Brett:

Just sneaking part of a wing, put it in your pocket once you head out.

Ryan:

Yeah. Cut a little off. He'll find ways to incorporate that into the design, and he's looking at tolerances, because we're talking about small, thin, pieces of wood. That's a challenge, from a manufacturing perspective. He's looking at that and how thin he can go, and how ... Yeah. I think there's two ways to go about it and it all varies based on the project and what the goal is from the start.

Brett:

It seems like one thing you guys have done really well, and then maybe this will be our final topic as we wrap up, it seems like you guys are really bright dudes, and you are innovative, and you have that entrepreneurial spirit. It seems like you do something on your own, and you learn and do it, and do it well, but then at some point, you bring on somebody, like a professional designer like Scott, or you brought on some internal teams like James. Guys and girls that are awesome. Any thoughts there? Any advice that you would give to other eCommerce stores? When does it make sense to do something yourself, versus hiring expert, versus outsourcing to an expert? Any insights on that?

Andrew:

I mean, I speak for myself in this. Ryan does an amazing job managing the team on the day to day. I really love setting the foundation and expectation for wherever that task may be. Tat comes from being a founder and a little bit of founderitis, that Ryan and I both probably carry. But setting expectation, setting the platform, the SOPs and then allowing people to jump in. The challenge for myself has really just been continuing to forge forward and not managing that person ... Getting the reporting correctly. That's been something that we've had to learn along the way. It's my first business. But also just forging forward and continuing to bring in newer business or new ideas, rather than sitting back and helicoptering over somebody you've already tasked out, to do what the foundational job is.

Andrew:

That's something that I definitely struggled with, over the last year, as we built our team out, was letting go and being able to ... But Ryan and I just had this conversation, like, "Wow, we should probably have our team produce these reports for us, because we're not getting those reports unless we flog in, which you've got to let go." There's been a lot of learning lessons, I think, over this business. Understanding how to manage people, what type of reporting you want presented to you, so you can really make a fine decision. You're doing it. You're still maintaining the weeds a little bit, but you need someone to produce those reports for you. I know that's something that has been big for me the last two months.

Brett:

I love it. I love it. Any thoughts on that Ryan, in terms of managing team, bringing on experts? That evolutions?

Ryan:

I think Andrew hit the nail on the head. We were both doing different things. I think that's why it worked so well. We're looking at starting other businesses and we want to partner on those as well because we both have different strengths. Andrew's a really good operator, and he knows how to set the foundation and get shit done. He's really good at that. I can't really do a ton on ... I mean, I can, but I struggle to get that initial task stuff done. I'm thinking more like longterm, big picture. So it's a really good balance that we bring in. I think we're both good people persons, but Andrew does a really good job of that as well. But, yeah, I love to do everything, and it's a double edged sword. You laughed Brett, because it's so hard to let go. I mean, Oh my gosh.

Brett:

It is. It is, but you have to. To reach new levels, you have to let go of certain things. Learning that balance of, "How do I coach and manage, and inspect what I expect?" and things like that. It's a goal. Those are transitions, for sure, we could do a whole podcast on that.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Brett:

But I've seen your team in action. Compliments to you. You guys have built a great team, and they're operating at a high level, so that's really cool. One of the things that I'll just wrap up on my final comment about you guys is I love that you're always on a quest to make the watches better. How do we do something new? Let's not just leave the Whiskey Barrel collection as it is. How do we make the next iteration and make it better? That drive to create the next better thing. Not everything is going to work, but you're going to find things that do work, and that do resonate, and that's going to lead to long term success. So, it's so exciting.

Ryan:

No doubt.

Brett:

Cool fellas. Any other asks or anything else you'd share with people? Check out the website, sign up on social, follow these guys, see what they're doing. Any other asks or any final thoughts or comments here as we wrap up?

Ryan:

I don't think so.

Brett:

Buy a watch guys. Seriously, you'll be way cooler. Buy one for yourself, buy one for your significant other. Go get a watch. I recommend it.

Ryan:

That's a perfect plug for our next month sale. It's our seven year anniversary next month, which is crazy. We're going to be doing our founder anniversary sale. We're actually going to do some sort of buy one get one in this time, so you hit the nail on the head for that.

Brett:

Cool. Perfect. We;'ll link to the show notes.

Ryan:

Thanks man.

Brett:

Yeah. Ryan, Andrew, thanks fellas. This was a blast. I really enjoyed it.

Andrew:

Thank you man. It was awesome.

Ryan:

Yeah, thank you Brett.

Brett:

All right. Very good. Well, as always, we would love to hear from you. We would love to get that review on iTunes, if you feel so inclined. With that, until next time, thank you for listening.

‍

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

Via LinkedIn

Via Facebook

Via Twitter

Via Instagram

Via YouTube

War Room Mastermind

Via LinkedIn

Via Facebook

Via Instagram

ViaYouTube

Business Lunch with Roland Frasier Podcast

Mentioned in this episode:

Traffic & Conversion Summit

DigitalMarketer

Jay Abraham’s Covid-19 Strategies: Live Q&A - Business Lunch with Roland Frasier Podcast - Episode 147

Strategic Alliances

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”

Pathmatics

SimilarWeb

Adbeat

“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.

‍

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

Via Facebook

Via Instagram

Via YouTube

Super Sister Fitness YouTube Channel‍

Vidfluence - YouTube Marketing Made Easy!

Via LinkedIn

Via Facebook

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

Business Lunch with Roland Frasier Podcast - Episode 138 - How to Develop, Market, and Go Global with You Game-Changing Product, Josh Snow

“Side Effects of Birth Control | Every Woman Needs to Watch This!” - Super Sister Fitness YouTube Video

Natural Cycles App

“How To Do The Splits FAST - In 3 Easy Steps!” - Super Sister Fitness YouTube Video‍

Google Trends

YouTube Growth Course - Vidfluence

TubeBuddy - #1 Rated YouTube Channel Management and Optimization Toolkit‍

vidIQ - How to Get More View and Subscribers on YouTube‍

Keywords Everywhere‍

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.

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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“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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

‍

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

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

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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

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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:

via LinkedIn
via Twitter

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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

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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

Free Up Facebook

Connect with Nathan Hirsch:
via LinkedIn
via Twitter

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