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Episode 288
:
Eugenia Chen - Pandaloon

The Viral Content Formula: Create Content that Captivates & Converts

In this episode of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast, Eugenia Chen, founder of PandaLoon and CEO of Huxley Media Group, shares her secrets to creating viral content that can propel your brand to new heights. Discover the science behind crafting videos that captivate audiences, drive engagement, and boost your product's visibility across multiple platforms.

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Key Takeaways:

  • How PandaLoon drove 30 million organic views in just a week and 160 million organic views in the months that followed.
  • Understanding the importance of emotional hooks and how to grab viewers' attention.
  • Learning how to keep your audience engaged until the very end.
  • Exploring the differences between popular platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, and how to optimize your content for each.
  • Gaining insights into the power of organic content and how it can significantly impact your brand's success on platforms like Amazon.
  • Discovering the benefits of appearing on Shark Tank and how to capitalize on the exposure to drive sales and establish credibility.

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Tune in to hear Eugenia's incredible journey from math professor to successful entrepreneur, and learn how you can apply her proven strategies to create viral content that will skyrocket your brand's reach and engagement.

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Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction

(08:20) Eugenia’s Experience on Shark Tank

(14:17) The Science Behind Virality

(31:02) Which Platform Is Best? 

(36:09) Using Organic Content For Ads

(38:19) Conclusion

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Show Notes:

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Connect With Brett: 

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Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, Trevor Crump, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Bryan Porter and more. 

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Other episodes you might enjoy: 

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Transcript:

Brett :

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the e-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today we're talking about the science of going viral. The best brands that I know today are thinking about and investing in organic content. And so my guest today is the CEO and founder of Pandaloon, which if you're a dog lover and you're on TikTok or Instagram, you've maybe seen some Pandaloon videos. These have for sure gone viral. So we're going to dig into that. And she also runs Huxley Media Group, and so really has a unique outlook on viral content and D two C and growth. She's been on Shark Tank, all kinds of fun stuff here, and so I'm delighted to welcome to the show, miss Eugenia Chen Eugenia, how it going?

Eugenia:

It's going great. It's fun to see you after Seller Summit.

Brett :

Yeah, I got to hang at Seller Summit with our friend Steve Chu and Tony, and what a great event, man. What an awesome event in Fort Lauderdale and heard your story there and thought, got to get you on the podcast. So for those that don't know or that haven't seen the videos, which most people probably have or a lot of people have, what is Panda Loon and what was the inspiration

Eugenia:

Behind this? So Panda Loon is a viral pet apparel brand. We were on Shark Tank, so it all started when my dog Huxley, who looks like a little panda in everyday life, he's always supervising. So he's off screen right here. I decide to,

Brett :

If he does get close, I'd love for Huxley to make an appearance on the pod for those that are watching the video. So entirely up to you, but probably more up to

Eugenia:

Huxley. Yes, I will. I'll let him know. So he already looks like a panda, so I thought I'll dress him up as a panda for Halloween, and I made a homemade panda costume that looked like a walking teddy bear walking on two legs. So if you've ever seen a little panda running around the internet, that's my little guy, Huxley the panda puppy. And it went crazy viral, had no following on Facebook at the time, but on Facebook it shot up to 30 million views in about a week. That's insane. And then insane,

Brett :

30 million views in

Eugenia:

A week. It's crazy. And then through a few different uploads and reposts, it has now reached over 160 million views on that first video.

Brett :

And that's across multiple platforms or that's just the

Eugenia:

Facebook platforms? With Instagram, it's platforms, but primarily Facebook and I think, yeah, a bit of TikTok, but mostly those two. Yeah.

Brett :

Yeah, that is absolutely mind boggling and wild. I mean, you could expect mean people love dogs and your dog is very cute, and Huxley may be in the corner being like, Hey, you can talk to my agent buddy before I get on this podcast. So I accept that. So you would expect it's going to do okay, but to go to 30 billion views that quickly. Insane. And now you said 160 million views at this point and counting.

Eugenia:

It was insane. I think it was a time where something that was visually intriguing and fun to watch was just that sweet spot for the internet.

Brett :

Yeah, yeah. So cool. So you made this costume yourself, put it on Huxley, he becomes an internet sensation, an absolute star. When did you think I should start selling these and I've got potentially a real business? Yeah,

Eugenia:

Pretty much right away. I was already an online seller. I was already an Amazon seller. I thought I was kind of bootstrapping my way towards creating my own product, but I hadn't quite landed on exactly what I wanted that to be yet. So I was actually a math professor in my previous life, but it wasn't working out that great, I guess at the time.

Brett :

So what type of math did you teach? And so was at the undergrad level,

Eugenia:

Graduate level? Definitely undergrad. I would say lower undergrad. So it was a lot of basic college algebra, some calculus, and a little bit of statistics.

Brett :

So college algebra, that's when you've got a lot of begrudging students that are like, I don't want to be here, but I have

Eugenia:

To be here. Precisely. Yes. So I had to, I guess encourage would be the word, or coddle a lot of students through their math experience. But it was nice in a way because I could see that people were empowered by that, that they didn't think they could do it, but if we made it actionable and they could overcome it. So that was cool. Well,

Brett :

And now this gives even greater credence to your formula for virality because you're a math professor, so your formula is absolute

Eugenia:

Whole up.

Brett :

Yeah, I should publish something. Awesome. For sure. So you were selling this from the get go, felt like it was going to be a business. What did the video do though? So as it starts climbing into the millions of views, what is this doing for sales online?

Eugenia:

So at the time, I didn't have it ready to sell to my regret. I wasn't expecting it to happen like that. So people started emailing my online store and just asking, where is this? Can you make it? What's the deal here? And I wasn't prepared, and I always feel a little bit scared to take anyone's money before I have a timeline ready. So I just took their emails and I said, I'll work on it, let me email you and I'll update you as soon as possible. So I hit the ground running. I went and found a local seamstress in San Diego at a sewing company who could make a pattern. So I could try to turn my little homemade version, which is not the best sewing, but just kind of encapsulated a very good illusion, a very precise fit and design. And she helped me turn that into a pattern so I could try to pursue manufacturing. The local sewing company actually didn't want the project because this furry fabric, apparently they would have to shut down the entire factory just to sew my project because it would fly everywhere. Whoa.

Brett :

Because the fur goes everywhere. So

Eugenia:

I had to figure out a company that was bigger because they would have the laser cutting machine and be able to handle that kind of thing. Got it. So that's when I started finding an overseas manufacturer that handles plush fabric and refine the prototype and put in my order for my first line of panda costumes. And I started taking pre-orders at that time, which at this point it was very out of sync from the viral video. So it wasn't the biggest pre-order launch by any means, but I just had faith that this was something that could go viral again and it was worth pursuing.

Brett :

It's amazing. So let's talk a little bit about, and we're going to get into the science behind virality because you made a really great point as we're prepping and getting ready to hit record, is that of course there's an element of luck and an element of timing for virality, and you can't fully predict, no one would guess that there's going to reach 160 million views, but that's not to say that there isn't a formula, and that's not to say that there aren't some steps you can take and some planning you can do to get some viral success. We're going to dive into that, but first I want to hear about Shark Tank. So did they reach out to you? Did you reach out to them? How did that

Eugenia:

Begin? I was just a regular person who stood in line. It was a big hotel east of LA and I stood in line at 4:00 AM with hundreds and hundreds of people, maybe a thousand or so, and I had my chance to give this 62nd pitch in front of a table of casting directors. And I just thought, okay, I'm going to go for it. I've been a fan of the show for a long time, why not? This sounds fun. I've had this moment and something that's visually interesting. So my dog, Huxley and I, we went up and we gave our pitch just like the show. And then it seemed to go well because everyone started looking over and the casting director asked to take a photo of Huxley in his panda loon. So that kicked it off. And by the next week, I had gotten a call and the ball started rolling towards Shark Tank.

Brett :

It's crazy. So what was that experience like? And I think the most important question that everybody wants to know is, did you get

Eugenia:

A deal? Yes. Spoiler alert, I got a deal. I got a deal with Damon John.

Brett :

Oh man, he's

Eugenia:

The best at, yeah, he's great. So he has equity in Panda loon. People always want to know what's he like to work with, and I'd say he is very down to earth. He follows my lead. He's never ever been demanding in any sort of direction. It's always been, what do you want to do? What can we do to help? Yeah, I'd say that as the show's progressed, I think it's hard for sharks to juggle a lot of companies. So you have to kind of pick what you want to focus on with your shark. The Shark Tank process was super fun. I know that some people have kind of a traumatic experience, but totally,

Brett :

I've heard the trauma

Eugenia:

Stories. I was very fortunate, I guess, that it was a fun edit and it was made to be a fun segment, and I had a great experience. It was a bit nerve wracking, and it was a lot of work leading up to it. That's the part that I had no idea that I was spending easily 20 hours a week doing show stuff leading up to filming. And then afterwards you have this secret where you can't tell anyone, but you need to prepare for 4 million people to hear about your product. So it's an interesting experience, but I am so grateful for it.

Brett :

And what was that like then once the show aired? What did that do to website traffic into sales? And then has the show aired multiple times since

Eugenia:

Then? Yeah, when the show aired, it was a little interesting. I was a little heartbroken, but I can't be too mad that I got to air, which is great. Not everyone gets to air after they film, but I aired in January, which is very much not my season. So it was a little bit like trying to sell Christmas trees in July

Brett :

One month earlier, and it would've been

Eugenia:

Insane. Insane. So the traffic had, I think it spiked 3000% compared to the previous time of the same month. So it was a huge spike, but I knew that I had to work really hard to keep momentum going until my peak season that fall. So it was a huge traffic boost. It wasn't the ideal time for conversion, but it was still a really nice lift. And the lift actually continued for pretty much most of the year because I guess the beautiful thing with Amazon is that they love that velocity and bestseller ranking. So that lifted quite a bit. And then your question about have I aired multiple times? Yes. So I got one what I would consider a big rerun where you get to air again on A, B, C, which is great. And then I've had a lot of CNBC reruns. Sometimes they're like every other month or sometimes every quarter or so. So it's

Brett :

Awesome. That's great. And a comment you just made, I want to dive in into this a little bit. A lot of people would, one lot of people wouldn't even try to get on the show you did and you were successful in it, but then if people get on the show, they're like, well, let's see what happens, right? It's going to be in front of a lot of eyeballs. Let's just see how the Shark Tank effect impacts my business. But you understood, and part of this was because it aired a little bit past your peak season, but you knew you're going to have to do some work to keep this momentum going and to keep the lift up. And so how did you leverage the Shark Tank appearance, and what kind of work did you do to make sure that you were able drive sales lift from that? Yeah,

Eugenia:

I definitely took the Shark Tank appearance credit as a resume item to wave around wherever I could as a small person selling something that is kind of silly. There were times before I could say, so before I could say I was on Shark Tank, that people would just kind of be like, oh, yeah, that's a really cute hobby that you must do out of your garage costume for your dog. Wow, that's fun. Yeah, your parents must be so proud you left teaching math for this. But as soon as I was on Shark Tank, they understood like, oh, okay,

Brett :

Instant validity, instant street cred. You're a real business at that

Eugenia:

Point. Totally. Yeah. So when it came to wholesale orders, it was no longer trying to prove myself. It was just like, oh, okay. Yeah, you're a real business there.

Brett :

Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. Okay, so let's dive in. Let's talk about some of the science behind virality. So when you're sitting down to create content and you want this to reach as broad of an audience or as big of an audience within your niche as possible, what are some of the things you're considering and what are you looking

Eugenia:

At? Yeah, I really think hard about the concept maybe too hard at times because the concept has to be interesting enough where you can craft a hook. And the hook is actually, I would say 50% of the work of being an exceptional content creator. And you must deal with this with ads too, where you have to make, yeah, absolutely. You want to make that scroll stopping. Otherwise, no one's going to see. It's probably going to cost some incredible multiple more to get eyeballs on it. And similarly with organic, if you don't make that first even split second interesting, and then really, hopefully you get about two seconds to really bring people in. So nowadays you have to do something that's visually intriguing often, and then also supplement it with audio and sometimes a text hook as well. So that would be the first step.

Brett :

So how are you thinking about the hook and the big idea? So you're saying two seconds, maybe three seconds, and thinking about panda loon, it would've been somewhat interesting if you started the scene with you sewing or creating something that'd be somewhat interesting, but I don't think that's what you did. And so how do you come up with that concept, that big idea, and then how do you translate that into a

Eugenia:

Powerful? Yeah. So when you have something that is surprising, looks like a stuffed animal that came to life for a long time, that was an effective hook in itself. But nowadays, most of the time when we're showing products, we want to tap into some kind of emotional hook because people can read that emotion much faster than they can read a sentence or hear a sentence. So oftentimes when I'm assisting companies in their strategy, the thing I try to focus them on is figuring out what emotions happen behind the problem of their situation that their product solves. So for example, if you are the classic garlic press example, so if the problem is that most garlic presses are really hard to squeeze, then you need to show the pain, the frustration, things like that at the top of the scene in order to hook people. When you're doing something like what I have, which is very cute and fun, that may seem actually easier in some ways, but I actually believe that being able to show the pain of a problem is much better because it's way more repeatable in your content.

Brett :

Yeah, I love that emotion without emotion. People don't pay attention. People don't watch movies. They don't watch shows without some emotion being evoked. People don't pay attention to ads or remember ads or take action from ads unless there's emotion. And you got to look at your organic content in the same way. And one thing I talk about a lot when we're screening ads or showing ads to people is what are the moments of the ad when you lean in? What are the moments in the ad when you can't take your eyes off of it? Or you find yourself gasping if it's a shock or laughing out loud if it's something funny. And when you find what that is, there's some kind of emotional trigger. Move that piece to the front. Exactly. Right. That is probably your hook, rather than that being buried, kind of use some old newspaper lingo. There's this idea of burying the lead. This is the most interesting part, but we're going to bury it in the middle of the video. No, no, no. Bring that to the front. That is almost certainly, definitely your hook. So thought,

Eugenia:

Yeah, that's actually something that I've been doing more and more in my editing, and I think that it works, especially for the way that content is starting to look in 2024, where people are interested in kind of the hyperreal videos where they follow along. But because of that, you have to find that moment, that shiny moment within your video. So I'll move it to the front. So for example, I made a video with my dog where we're photocopying his paw, so this was just an organic piece of content, but there's a point where he slips his paw out at the last second, and we laugh. And so moments where there's a pop of laughter or shock, a gasp, like you said, yeah, move that right to the front, that's going to grab people, and then you can show it more linearly as far as beginning to end. Yeah,

Brett :

Bring me into that emotional moment. Help me feel something. Now I'm interested in your story. So now tell me the linear story or something close to linear, but get my attention first. So this is really important, tapping into the right emotion. So for you, for panda loon, this is whimsy. This is just the awe factor, not the shock and awe, but the awe. This is cute, this is warm and fuzzy. But if you're coaching another business, how do you find, what emotion should we tap into?

Eugenia:

Yeah, often it's more about the problem, so it tends to be more negative. So negativity is a great hook. And so I think I encourage businesses to not be afraid of it. And I think that's something that a lot of businesses, especially ones that are run by elder millennials or up, that we're a little bit afraid sometimes to show things that are negative or a little bit, but those play so well on social. So I would say don't be afraid of the negative hook of showing that I feel horrible and run down. I need to take this supplement. That's where you're going to show the transformation between the two.

Brett :

Totally. And I think, yeah, people are reluctant to lean into the negative, but we're more motivated to fix a problem or to overcome pain than we are to just lean into pleasure. And in a previous life, I did quite a bit of marketing for chiropractors. That was just kind of a niche that I had. And I remember chiropractors would always say things like, I don't want to just talk about back pain. I want to talk about wellness. I want to talk about feeling great. And here's the deal. Nobody wakes up and says, I feel fantastic today, but I'd like to feel better. So I'm going to find a chiropractor. I want to go peak wellness here. Let's go reach out to a chiropractor. That doesn't happen. Somebody wakes up their back is killing them, they can't sit, they can't think they can't do anything, and they're like, I got to find a chiropractor. Now, once someone visits the chiropractor, then they can talk them into a wellness plan and kind of go from there. But it's the pain that gets someone to take action. And so I think that applies though to a lot of products where we're motivated to fix things.

Eugenia:

Totally. And that reminds me of something I'm constantly telling brands is that people aren't thinking about you. They don't wake up and think, oh, I wonder my chiropractor is doing, especially in this TikTok atmosphere, which has then bled over to the way that we scroll through Instagram reels, or we scroll through YouTube shorts, people are scrolling through and they just saw a video about someone's pathological liar, husband. They saw some cats falling off of things, and then they see you. So we're far from top of mind, and in order to get our message heard, we really have to grab them like that.

Brett :

Yep, yep. So good. So we're thinking about emotion, we're thinking about a concept. We're hooking people. What's kind of next in the process?

Eugenia:

So the structure of a viral video, it starts with those things, and then we need people to watch to the end. And I think this has a lot of overlap with some ad metrics too, of we want that retention, we want that watch time to be as high as possible because that will signal to the platform and the algorithm that this is a video worth pushing out to more people organically. So in order to get people to watch to the end, we're going to be working our way towards a reveal. So something that happens at the end, whether it's just the resolution or maybe it's a surprise or a twist or a result. So all along the way, we want to construct it the middle to be something that builds suspense or is gradually working your way towards that ending.

Brett :

Got it. So you've got the reveal in the beginning, kind of the hook. Then you're teasing something like, Hey, stick with me, I'm going to show you this thing. And then you're building to that so that someone sticks around. What does that look like? Or do you have an example from a Pando video from

Eugenia:

Another video created? Actually, one video that I show sometimes when I am trying to get this point across is my friend's product Lion Latch. So it's a little jewelry case holder that has a carabiner that clamps it in place so it can't unscrew and fall out. So the problem is that my friend invented this because she broke her wedding ring. She was catching a softball and it broke and diamond fell out. So there's emotion, there's stakes behind this. So she shows that broken wedding ring at the beginning and it captures you, and then she's showing her product getting filled with jewelry. So there's a little bit of visual suspense where you see this little pile of rings and she's putting them into the jewelry case. So we're waiting for this process to hit completion. Yeah,

Brett :

What is this? Show me. What am I watching here? This is interesting, but what am I

Eugenia:

Watching? Yeah, so she gets all the jewelry in there, she puts the top on, and then she clamps it closed, and she shows how it locks and it's not able to come apart. So we've waited to see that reveal of what is this? How does this work? And then we get that final picture at the end of how it's going to protect the jewelry.

Brett :

Very cool. Love that. Okay, so we're concept, we're hooking, we got the emotion there, some kind of big reveal in the beginning. That's the hook. Then we're leading someone to something. We want them to watch the whole thing. And I will, just as a side note, you're 100% right. This does tie into ad metrics as well, because what platforms want is they want people to engage on the platform. They don't want to serve ads that people hate. They want to serve ads that people love. And we've seen this, we've got a pretty large outdoor brand right now, and we're doing a YouTube push to try to drive in-store sales. And they've had some videos, and these are fantastic videos, and we got great structure in our campaigns, but they're getting 60 plus percent view rates on some of these videos, which is just insane. Typical view rates are 20% or something. But if you can do that, if you can really drive up those view rates in the beginning, and then also your completion rates, platforms want to show those ads, you get a lower CPM, you get more exposure and it just all works. So totally ties into ads as well. What's kind of next in the viral process?

Eugenia:

Sorry, I think my internet just lagged.

Brett :

Oh, no worries.

Eugenia:

Could you repeat what you said just so I kind of get the gist of it?

Brett :

Yeah, yeah, sure. And so yeah, I just kind of talked about ads and how it ties into it. View rate gets people to watch longer, the platforms want to show it anyway, so I just tied that back to, Hey, what is next then in crafting this viral

Eugenia:

Content? Okay. Exactly. So all that tends to help us with retention or watch time. So then what are the other metrics that signal to an algorithm or a social media platform that this is a video that people really want to see? So the next strongest signal that I see or shares and saves, because if someone cares enough to say, Hey, hey Brett, I want you to see this video. That usually means that it's extra engaging, extra interesting. So I look for shares and saves because I notice a very strong correlation between the percentage of shares and saves as views. So if I see a 1% ratio of shares and saves or more, if it's just a little bit more, then I can usually predict that this video will do quite well. And when I look at viral videos, they tend to have a higher than average share and save ratio.

Brett :

So likes and hearts, that's one thing, but that's the baseline, that's the minimum level of, I like your content. This is kind of cute, but if I'm sharing it with a friend or family member, I love it. And if I'm saving it, then that means either I'm coming back later, I'm going to share it later, whatever. So shares and saves. And you said if you can see a 1% share or save rate, then you're

Eugenia:

Onto something. Yes, exactly. If it falls below that, then I think there's something wrong. Likes I find to be kind of the most irrelevant ratio, because if it doesn't get about five to 10% of likes, then it's not getting delivered anyways, so it doesn't really matter. So shares and saves, there are some things that we can do to improve our likelihood of that. So with saves, if you make any content that is worth reviewing later. So for example, if you created a tutorial or something that had steps in it that someone might want to refer to later, that's a good way of creating save bait in a way. And then shares that kind of ties into the concept and the hook. If this is something that really delivered a surprise, really delivered an incredible punchline, that often will motivate us to share it with a friend.

Brett :

Very cool. Good. So then what else can we say here about viral tips, viral strategies? How else are we making our content really go

Eugenia:

Nuts? So the biggest mistake I see that brands make big and small is just being, unfortunately what's very much human nature is just to be a bit self-centered, because just like that, what I said before is people aren't thinking of us, and it's so much more extreme with this discovery type of algorithm, the tiktoks, the Instagram reels, the YouTube shorts, where unlike browsing on YouTube where I might be searching and I'm curious about how to make really great Google ads, and then I find a Brett Curry video. Oh, well, that's a great thumbnail, Brett, I'm going to go ahead and click on that. By then, I've really bought in, right? I've evaluated, I've searched a question, I've seen your thumbnail, I've seen your title. I am trusting that you have something to deliver, and then I'm going to watch your video. That's so much more of a more committed viewer than someone who has just seen the cat video, the Four Seasons baby video, all the junk we see on TikTok. So we have to really think about someone who's not coming in with us at all, top of mind and quite the opposite, and someone who's coming in without any context. So we have to treat each short form video like we're introducing ourselves to a stranger all over again. It can be very hard because we're thinking about our products every day. We've done it for years, we've obsessed over it. So we really have to step outside of ourselves and think about what is it like from an audience point of view.

Brett :

Yeah, we have that what's called the curse of knowledge. So in the weeds and in the background of our product that it's impossible for us to fully be objective about it. And to think about it like someone who's never seen it or experienced it before takes a lot of work to get that perspective. My buddy, Jacque Spitzer, he runs Raindrop awesome creative agency. He talks about one of the mistakes, and this totally ties into what you said, one of the mistakes that marketers make is they sit down and think, what do I want to say? What do I want to say? When in reality, you should be thinking about what does my market want to see and what do they want to hear? And then how does that relate to my product or my offering? So really tailoring this to, it doesn't matter what I want to say, it's, it matters what you want to receive or see about this. And then, yeah, I think one of the biggest fallacies, biggest mistakes in marketing is assuming that your customers or the marketplace is thinking about you. They're not. They're thinking about themselves. And so for you to break through and to get them to think about you takes a lot of work.

Eugenia:

Totally.

Brett :

Yeah. Awesome. So let's talk about platforms just a little bit, because I know you had your initial success on Facebook and Instagram. You've done really well on TikTok as well. Do you view those platforms very differently as your crafting content, or is it mostly the same with a few differences?

Eugenia:

Yeah, I do think of them a little differently, but for the most part, TikTok has set the trend. So TikTok has dragged these platforms along to their culture and their type of algorithm. They're not quite the same algorithm, but they're following along. So I often create with TikTok in mind for the most part, because that tends to be where the other platforms are going to follow. So TikTok is sort of the trendsetter in that way. So I'll think about TikTok first where their videos are favoring over a minute long, so the delivery is crazy different. If you can just hit that one minute and one second mark. As opposed to being under. Yeah, yeah. Isn't that wild? They blew up as the 15 second video platform, and now they favor over a minute. I saw they released some news on how much longer content is being consumed, and it was a majority of it being over a minute.

So the appetite for longer videos has grown quite a bit. So this is an advantage for us. So if we know that the demand for over a minute videos is much higher, but the supply is still a lot of people favor creating short, quick videos because it's easier, we can take advantage of that. Instagram is also following suit a little bit. So I received a notification on Instagram reels when I posted a short video and it said, oh, hey, reels over 30 seconds are performing better. Wow. So there's a bit of an appetite there. So for reels, I'm aiming for somewhere between 30 seconds and a minute for YouTube shorts. They still accept short videos. And I had a short video recently that did nothing on TikTok and Instagram, but it reached, I think it's about 4 million views on YouTube shorts. Wow. Yeah. So super simple, easy. It was just my dog and his Panda loon, panda costume, just running on a dock and then posing looking happy, and that was it. So it was wonderful. I used some text to try to hook people into that, but it did great. So YouTube Shorts has more flexibility, and in some ways I believe it favors shorter content just because audience is still expecting short content from that platform. So I will create the first concept with TikTok in mind, but then create these alternate edits for the other platforms.

Brett :

And when you're editing, I love that. So you're creating for TikTok first with TikTok in mind first, then you're doing edits for Instagram reels and YouTube shorts. As you're making those edits from TikTok to the other platforms, is it more about the length of the video that you're changing or are there other elements about the video that you're changing to do well in Instagram reels?

Eugenia:

Yeah, that's a great question. So on Instagram and Facebook, so much content is actually consumed on mute. That's very different. If we want our video to do well on those platforms, we really have to figure out how do we make this consumable while it's muted,

Brett :

Visual storytelling, and maybe submit some text on screen screen

Eugenia:

Exactly, exactly thing. And then caption. So we have to also think about leaving a lot of extra space at the top so that we can include captions, although people won't know what's going on in the video. And then YouTube shorts is also more heavily visual than TikTok. TikTok tends to have a lot more storytelling these days, a lot more audio, face to camera talking. I've noticed that in 2024, there's even seemingly more favor towards natural sound. So people are less interested in the voiceover. Unfortunately, on TikTok, I miss the days of voiceover.

Brett :

Interesting. For a while, it was like the AI voiceover trend was going on.

Eugenia:

I think that there's been a increased appetite for that hyperreal stuff where instead of a day, the or old days of, Hey guys, come with, I'm going to go and do my makeup now. People just want to see the natural sounds of the makeup clinging and someone storytelling in face to camera style like FaceTime. You'll even see something interesting. If you see a video that's gone pretty viral and someone put music over it, people will comment, Hey, can you repost us with just the raw sound? I don't want to hear the music. Yeah,

Brett :

No

Eugenia:

Way. And they have no idea what the sound is. It's even interesting. But they just have that hunger for what really happened.

Brett :

Don't need music. I want to hear that. I want to hear the story. I want to hear the real sounds

Eugenia:

Of what people want to be a fly on the wall and watch what happened.

Brett :

And so how are you advising your clients? You're coaching them on creating content, you're building for TikTok. First, you're making edits for Instagram reels and YouTube shorts. How are you then advising them what to do with this content from an ads perspective? Because a lot of times great, viral, organic content can make for either an ad in and of itself, or a component or a piece or the hook

Eugenia:

Of an ad. Yeah, definitely. So I see that people talk about TikTok ads quite differently than Meta and the others where TikTok ads seem to have a much higher level of pressure on seeming like organic content. So in order to create TikTok ads, I think we really have to figure out what's playing well in organic TikTok. Otherwise, we're kind of just throwing money away. People have just such an expectation when they're scrolling through TikTok that this is going to be something that's entertaining on its own and not feel like an ad. So the moment that someone smells the ad stock music or the ad tone, they can get really turned off on TikTok. So I think for my clients, I try to encourage them to use this as an opportunity to set a higher bar for what feels like a real authentic, organic piece of content that they can then use for their ads. For Meta. I see such different results from company to company, and I'm sure way more about this than I do, just as far as what ends up working on their ad account. It's so varied, but if you make something that is organically grabbing, I think it helps you with your ad retention and all the things that could make ads hopefully a lot less expensive.

Brett :

Totally. Yeah. And sometimes we're seeing even just taking an organic content, the best piece of organic content and running them as ads, we do that on YouTube shorts quite frequently. Well, let's do this. This has been an absolute blast. I do want to talk about Panta Lo a little bit more where people can find it and buy it and stuff like that, and also your agency. But any other final tips, final takeaways, final thoughts that we didn't already talk about? Yeah,

Eugenia:

I think just as far as actionable steps for people who are trying to direct their teams or themselves trying to make content, just keep in mind that people want to hear from a person. They want to hear about your stories and your voice more so than they want to hear from a brand. So I think of actually one of the sharks that was on my Shark Tank episode, Sarah Blakely, she's such a rockstar.

Brett :

Wow. She's a legend man. Yep. Founder of Spanx, married to Jesse Itzler, Jesse Itzler, Hass, written books and marquis jets. Jesse Hitler's an awesome guy too, but Sarah, wow, what an amazing,

Eugenia:

She's a legend. Youngest self-made female billionaire. I'm going to keep her in that spot. I don't buy the Kylie Jenner thing. So if you look at her personal account, her Sarah Blakely account, people are so highly engaged. She's talking to the camera, she's bringing them along with her personal perspective and point of view, compare that with the Spanx account. People are not that interested in seeing a catalog photo hosted. So yeah, bring people into the raw story. Be willing to share the emotion and the things that are problems that your product can solve. Brainstorm on all the problems that your product can address, and just keep on hammering on that. A big mistake that brands will make is that they feel like, oh, well, I demonstrated my product a couple of times. People are tired of saying that, no, it's a totally different audience. You reached 10,000 people.

There's hundreds of millions of people still out there who need to hear about it. So you have to do that ad nauseum. So stick with it. And then really, really, when you are engaging with team members or content creators, hold them to those metrics. See where the math is pointing you on. Whether this is set up for success. I sadly see a lot of brands wasting tons of money or multiple salaries being spent on creators who are just not going to perform well. So yeah, really look at those things and if you need help, get someone who has a real clear view of viral strategy in there to help you with do that.

Brett :

Really great advice. I think one of my favorite bits of wisdom related to communication or organic content or ads is just about the time you are sick of saying something. That's the very beginning of people beginning to understand it and absorb it. And so you've got to tell the same story a thousand different times in a thousand different ways. And you've got to re-look at the same problem from every angle and use different analogies and different stories and different things to tell that. And really, yeah, when you are sick of something or when you think you've just repeated yourself over and over again, you're just getting started. And so hopefully that gives a little courage to, I'm just going to keep shouting this from the rooftops in an interesting way, and it will make a difference over time. So that's awesome. So as people are listening to this and they're like, Hey, I just got to get a visual of what a pantaloon is, or maybe they're like, Hey, my dog could be the next Huxley, maybe I need to buy a panda loon. Where can people find

Eugenia:

Your dogs? Sure. Panda loon.com is always the best place to get everything, the best and best prices. We're also on Amazon as well. If you're in a hurry and you need that prime shipping, I totally understand. And then we're also my socials. I tend to lean into my socials through Huxley's accounts, Huxley, the panda, puffy, and that goes into, actually what I just said was people want to hear from a person. So it's like me and my dog's point of view as opposed to a brand. So yeah, I lean into storytelling on those accounts.

Brett :

So how demanding is Huxley? He's a star. He's a star of the business. Does he demand certain treats or certain dog food, or how do you spoil Huxley, but also how do you keep it real

Eugenia:

With him? He lives a pretty pampered life, I will admit. Yeah, he has a pretty great life. Nothing but the best for Huxley. He really is my co-founder. I tell people that and I think they giggle. Like I might be joking sometimes, but he's been to every meeting with me, every speaking event. Yeah, every call, he's there. He's right there. So yeah,

Brett :

It's amazing. It's amazing. I forgot to mention this. I forgot to ask rather, I forgot to ask earlier, but Amazon, what's your, in just a few minutes, what is your overall Amazon approach? Are you digging into Amazon ads? Are you working on Amazon Organic? Are you mostly treating Amazon as this is a place for people to buy? It's a preferred place for some people to buy, but I'm going to focus on brand building and content and then let Amazon just close

Eugenia:

Teams? Yeah, honestly, it's a bit of both. Everyone has a love hate relationship with Amazon for sure. I have a friend who describes it as an abusive relationship sometimes.

Brett :

Yeah, not completely inaccurate for sure.

Eugenia:

Unfortunately, don't turn off the podcast. Amazon, if you're listening. Yeah, I have to use Amazon. Unfortunately, it seems to be a place that is almost impossible to get away from, in part because there's such a seasonal rush for my product that in October when you need that quick shipping, people are just going to go there. So it's a combination. I do some Amazon ads. I leaned in a bit heavy on Amazon ads last year, and I felt like it ate up my organic sales quite a bit. So regret. But I am finding that getting organic content to perform off Amazon really skyrocketed my Amazon. So I launched on Amazon and had some luck in a video going viral at the same time again. And so it went from complete zero ranking up to when the number one new releases very quickly because of that organic. And I think Amazon just really loves when you bring them traffic so much that they're willing to reward it.

Brett :

They love external traffic, absolutely take care of Amazon's traffic as well. So treat that customer right. You need to have a high conversion rate and things like that. But Amazon loves it when you bring in fresh eyeballs and people that are coming from outside of Amazon just to buy your product that is gold and really makes a difference. So Eugene, yet, this has been brilliant. This has been super, super fun. I loved it. How can people get in touch with you? What if they want to work with you on content or consulting or whatever, how

Eugenia:

Can they get in touch you? Yeah, I'd love to hear from you. You can always find me on social and send me a DM or Eugene at Huxley Media Group. If you go on huxley media group.com, you can grab my email pretty easily. Yeah, I love helping brands. I've created content for a lot of big brands, but it's actually a ton of fun to help small and medium brands with strategy so that they can learn to fish for themselves.

Brett :

Well, Gina, this has been absolutely a blast. Thank you so much. We'll link to everything in the show notes, but really appreciate the time and now I'm motivated and inspired. Got to go create some viral content. Alright, sounds good. Awesome. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. If you've not left a review of the show, please do that. If you heard this podcast and you're like, Hey, this person needs to hear this content, then share this with them, that would mean the world to me. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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Episode 287
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Dara Denney - Thesis

Crafting Ad Creative That Converts: Combining Data & Boldness

You've heard that creative is KING.

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In reality, it's probably King, Queen, and more.

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In this episode of the eCommerce Evolution podcast, I sit down with Dara Denny, a performance creative consultant who has worked with an impressive array of brands like Speedo, Laura Geller, Daily Harvest, and Condé Nast. Dara shares her wealth of knowledge on crafting ad creative that truly converts, diving into the importance of testing, iteration, and taking big swings. If you're looking to level up your ad creative game, this episode is a must-listen.

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Key topics and lessons include:

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  • The power of specificity in ad creative, from calling out exact prices to reflecting customer age demographics
  • Why UGC isn't dead, but some of it does suck, and how to garner UGC that works!
  • How to strike a balance between data-driven iteration and taking big, bold creative swings
  • Dara's creative testing methodology, including how to structure tests and identify winners
  • Five ad formats that work, including feature-benefit callouts, "golden nugget" reviews, founder stories, statistics, and educational ads

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Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction 

(04:56) Which Hook Won?

(16:48) Is UGC Dead?

(28:40) Creative Testing - Quality vs. Quantity

(36:42) Dara’s Testing Methodology

(41:35) What Is A Typical Ad Win Rate

(43:22) Five Killer Ad Formats

(53:48) Conclusion

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Show Notes:

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Connect With Brett: 

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Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, Trevor Crump, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Bryan Porter and more. 

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Other episodes you might enjoy: 

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Transcript:

Dara:

So number one, I definitely don't think that UGC is dead, but I just think that the heyday of easy UGC getting results and this idea that, oh, people want to hear from other people that are like their friends. It's just no longer that easy. You just actually have to make really good content.

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the e-Commerce Evolution podcast. On this episode, we're talking about creative that converts, and we all know creative is king. Without the right creatives, whether you're running YouTube ads or meta ads or TikTok ads or whatever, you are destined to fail. I know YouTube says that 50 to 85% of your success comes down to the creative. I believe that. And so my guest today is Dara Denney. Now you probably know her already. You may be one of her faithful subscribers on YouTube, or you may have heard her speak at an event. I got to hear her speak recently in Austin, Texas at Ezra Firestone's event. Her talk was my favorite of the show, so we connected and I said, Hey, got to come on the pod. She graciously agreed. So with that, Ms. Dara, Denney. Dara, welcome to the show and how's it going?

Dara:

Amazing. Hey Brett, thank you so much for having me on. It was really amazing to meet you back in Austin, so I'm really glad that we get to do this and talk even more about creative.

Brett:

Yeah, I can geek out about creative. It's one of my favorite topics, so it's going to be a lot of fun. But a couple things to call out. One, you are a performance creative consultant, but you're also a creator. So how does that work? How do you consult and create, because you're kind of doing both.

Dara:

Yeah, I never sleep candidly. No, I'm kidding. Well, I worked in the advertising industry for years and years. I've really spent the last seven, eight years working agency side. So I've been able to work with an amazing array of brands. Initially I was a trained media buyer, and then really as a response to how important creative was becoming over the last few years, I started focusing more and more on the creative portion of meta ads. So at my last role at the agency, I was actually overseeing the entire creative department. So I made the UGC Creator division. I also managed about 15 video editors, graphic designers, motion graphics artists, and also the creative directors. So the people who actually spearheaded the strategy. Now I am very much working to create more educational content for those type of people and for brands and people working at brands and agencies to make creative that converts. But I do still actually do the work. I think it's really, really important because how much our industry changes to really have some skin in the game. So I do actually work with a few brands right now to help them with their performance creative strategy, and that's honestly my favorite part of the week. I love making the content, but I still really, really love the

Brett:

Work. Got to be in the game. We were just talking about that. It happens so quickly that you get rusty if you're not in the game on the daily, you miss out and things change. So core fundamental principles of creative don't really change, but some of the execution does change. And so it's important to be in the game. And I believe it all comes down to creative overall strategy and then execution. So how do we do those three things and do them well? And you've worked with some impressive brands like Speedo, Laura Geller, daily Harvest, Conde Nast, and a bunch of others. And so really excited to draw from your knowledge. And also we found out not only did we share in our affinity for creative, but while we were in Austin, Texas, we did what any good Texan will do. Neither one of us are Texans, but we rode a mechanical bull. So we were at this event, there was a mechanical bull there. There were a lot of people hanging out, and we both braved it, rode the mechanical bull. What was that experience like for you?

Dara:

It didn't last very long, to be honest, but I think we were true to our nature. We were going to test it out absolutely. And we were also just there to win in Texas, so we were just taking the experience and seeing what would happen. And to be honest, the test, it didn't pan out for us, but it was a good learning experience.

Brett:

We did not miss our calling. The rodeo was not the life for us for sure. So we ended up in the right spot. But I brought several team members, several OMG team members with me. I initially said, not a chance am I getting on that mechanical bowl. Peer pressure was there, so I did get on there. Yeah, it was ugly, but it was also fun and funny. So good stuff. Well, so let's dive in. One of the things you led with in your talk, which I love this, you kind of did a witch hook won, and the beginning, the hook of an ad, I know this is true on YouTube, I believe it's true across platforms, the hook is the most important part. You don't get attention or get the right attention. Really nothing else matters. And so you showed multiple variations of a similar ad.

Visuals looked about the same. Headlines were different, voiceover was a little bit different, and you pulled the audience on which test one. And I will say, I did win this one, I picked this one, right? I don't always pick it right. And this is one of the things like this is why you always test because sometimes even someone who's been doing this forever still gets it wrong. But lemme just kind of lay out these winners and so you can play at home, you're driving in your car, listening wherever you play at home. And do you want to set this up? This was for a smoothie client. Can you talk about what the product is real quick and then I'll go through the headlines?

Dara:

Yeah, I've talked about this ad many times. So I'll just say this was an ad that I did for Daily Harvest a few years ago, and essentially we were testing some new UGC creator content and we essentially formulated this test to be a hook test. We were testing out several different headlines and questions. Really the angle to that we were taking is we were changing up the comment that was in the TikTok response bubble for each of these. So that was really the only factor here that was different. So yeah, one out by a landslide. So I'll go ahead and give it back to you so that you can go through the different headlines.

Brett:

So here it is. So headline number one, this smoothie is cheap and tasty. Double question mark. So not just one question mark, two question marks. There we go. If you have ever spent $9 on a smoothie, next one. So headline three, manifesting a healthy relationship with food this year. Any suggestions, thinking, Hey, I'm going to get healthy. What can you recommend to me? That's headline three, headline four, something sweet but healthy. Any suggestions? We got headlines 1, 2, 3, and four. What say you, dear listener, give you a second to guess, and then the big reveal, Dara, which one of those won? It

Dara:

Was B. So this is the one that said, for those of you who ever spent $9 on a smoothie, there's a few

Brett:

And we all have. Yeah,

Dara:

Right. Yes. Especially if you live in New York, which we both do. They're like $14 now, which is astounding. No,

Brett:

I actually live in Missouri, so I want to clear that up. I've stayed in Brooklyn, stay with my buddy Ezra back in the day when he lived in Brooklyn. We love New York City, but no, I live in Missouri, so it is cheaper here. I've spent lucky spent time. Yeah, I'm from the Midwest, so it's like seven here. It's way cheaper. Way cheaper. Yeah. So why, why did that one win?

Dara:

So before I dive into why this one won, I want to give some background on how we chose those

Really great. Initially, we actually went through all of the comments on recent ads and were pulling out primarily questions or comments that people had. And we looked at the ones that, or we looked at the themes that came up again and again. And we also looked at the comments that had the most engagement and we really wanted to find a variety, a big swing. We noticed that it was really important to get people who were manifesting a better, healthier relationship with themselves in the new year because this is an ad that was coming out around January. So we wanted to try and capitalize on that feeling as well. And then we also wanted to look out for the people who were like, oh, I want a sweet treat, but I want it to be healthy. That was something that kept on coming up again and again.

We actually threw in the value prop of, oh, people who spend $9 on a smoothie in there as a totally random last minute one. So it was really surprising to me that one won initially. And what's funny too is daily harvest smoothies at the time were not that much cheaper than $9. I think they were about $7 per smoothie, but I think there was something about people feeling that experience of the $9 smoothie was something that a lot of people had experienced. And when they saw that, they were like, oh yeah, that's me. That's in the morning. Because a lot of Daily Harvest customers were from New York and California, so they were accustomed to paying that higher price. But I also think it was how specific it was too. That stood out in people's minds. The specificity marketing is something that I lean into a lot right now, whether or not it's calling out a specific price range or doing some price anchoring, which is really what that strategy is, but also with people's ages. So I work with a lot of brands right now that target 40 50 plus, and we find that with these age groups particularly they like to say their age in their website reviews and their ad comments. And when reflecting that same strategy and ad creative, that's something that helps a lot. And I just think that the more specific you can be, the more that you're going to stick out in the minds of your users and differentiate yourself from the competition.

Brett:

So $9 more powerful than saying $10 for a smoothie as an example. Yeah,

Dara:

Exactly.

Brett:

Or calling out an age of 43-year-old dude versus a forties, something like that. So be specific.

Dara:

Yeah, yeah. Or even just saying, oh, these are cheaper than, these are cheaper than what you buy on the street. If you can actually just say what the price is, that tends to stick out for people.

Brett:

And I love that you were price anchoring. You were saying, Hey, if you've ever spent $9 on a smoothie, which does indicate, okay, you are serious about your smoothies if you're willing to pay $9, it also says these are less, but then it compares it to the $9 smoothie, which means that's like real ingredients. This is not just a powder, it's not just a kit. This is not like some sugar laden thing. This is a real smoothie. And so lots going on with that headline, which was really cool. Why else do you think that ad won? And we have the disadvantage of not being able to show it on the pod, but what other elements of that ad made it work?

Dara:

Yeah, there are two big elements. I want to zoom in on one, which again, we can't see the ad right now, but the visuals were wildly important. We had a lot of dynamic shots. So the first shot is actually opening up someone doing almost a flat lay looking down into the smoothie, and then the exact next frame was actually the smoothie being poured into the bowl and you are in the bowl. So immediately we have these competing visuals that are drawing people in and getting people really interested. And the frames were changed up pretty much every 1.5 to two seconds. So we were never focused on one visual long. And a lot of people, that video had a really solid hold rate. So people were watching that thing a lot longer than normal. The other thing that was really important to the storytelling of that video was we did use language that was pulled again directly from website reviews and midway through the video we actually have a part of the script that says that it tastes like a milkshake, but it's actually really healthy for you. And that was something I pulled directly from an ad comment. And even though the brand hated that line, we had people in the ad comments that'd be like, oh my god, yeah, it does taste like a smoothie, but it is really good. You need to try the mint chocolate chip. That's the one that tastes the most like a smoothie and the one that tastes most like a milkshake. And we just saw that language being echoed back to us, which showed us that, hey, yeah, this is actually really effective.

Brett:

And sometimes I think we get too cute as marketers or we have this elevated view of our brand, which isn't necessarily bad, but it's way more important to understand what resonates with the customer. And if you see a recurring theme where people say something about your product over and over again, and especially in this case where you put it in an ad and then more people comment on it, it doesn't matter at that point, if you like that phrase or not, that phrase is working and it's resonating with people, so you got to lean into it.

Dara:

Yeah, I wish I could have tested it as a hook. The brand would not let us, but at least I got it midway through the script.

Brett:

You got it in there. And that is a win. And one thing I always talk about for other agency people, agency life is difficult. I love this gig, I love what I do for sure. But when you are pitching an idea, creative idea or campaign idea, whatever, you got to please multiple people, you got to first convince the client and what convinces the client may not convince the user and you got to convince the user and then you got to get the platform on board and all that stuff too. So it's difficult, but I would call that a win for sure that you got it snuck in there in the middle, so that's awesome. I love the fast paced edits as well. This is something we've seen on the YouTube side as well, where sometimes you take the exact same script and a lot of the same visuals make the cuts snappier and or speed up the voiceover, and sometimes you can speed up the voiceover by 10 or 15% and no one notices.

It doesn't sound off at all. It's just a little bit faster. And that almost always increases retention, increases click-through increases conversion rate. And I love the way my buddy Jacque Spitzer from Raindrop talks about this. It's not so much that we have short attention spans, it's just we have short consideration spans. So we will binge watch Netflix for eight hours in a row or we'll watch a three or four minute ad if it's awesome, but if it's not, we're bailing very quickly. And so some of those things, fast edits, unique angles really keeps us considering and hanging on longer.

Dara:

I even think about my own user experience when I'm going through TikTok. I very often will put my thumb on the right side of the screen so that it'll go two x, three x and speed up. And I also hear people being like, oh, I listen podcasts at 1.5 or two x. And I think that we are very much now in, when I think about our consumption habits overall, it's like we need the information faster. So if your own paid ads content is belaboring the point, you're going to lose people if you're not getting to it quickly.

Brett:

Totally, yeah. And I've always heard, and I do the same thing with audiobooks with podcasts, I'm a 1.2 to 1.8 kind of range depending on how fast the voice is naturally. But we can process information a lot faster than most people speak. And so when you're face to face with someone, you're reading cues and you're paying attention to a lot of things and someone's there so you're being polite. But online, dude, we're ruthless. If it's not keeping us, we're failing for sure. So awesome. Let's talk about, you talked a little bit about UGC and this is something you and I talked about before we hit record, but there's kind of this popular thing going on right now where smart people that I know and respect and love are saying UGC is dead, right? Do something else, UGC, it's tired, it's played, do something else. What is your take on that? Why would someone say that and is that true?

Dara:

Yes, so I have a really interesting perspective on this. For the last three months actually, I've been tracking 20 brands, best performing creatives. So every single month I'll take a look at the same 20 brands that I have ad account access to and I'll list out their top three performing types of creatives. And what's really interesting is for the last three months, more than 50% of all of these creatives have been UGC. So number one, I definitely don't think that UGC is dead, but I just think that the heyday of easy UGC getting results and this idea that oh, people want to hear from other people that are like their friends. It's just no longer that easy. You just actually have to make really good content. Another interesting wrinkle to that is I do see UGC creators themselves not being as effective. The brands that actually succeed with this type of content are actually just working with creators.

So these are going to be your micro, not huge influencers, but they are creators that already make content about the industry that your product is in. Those are the people that I see to be the most successful. Going back to my data poll, my own little pet project that I've been doing UGC versus images, images are still wildly important. Totally. I'd say that about 70% of all the brands that I was pulling, so 15 of these 20 brands, they still have images in their top performing creative. So it's not that it's an either or. It's like how can we use all of these formats to supplement the end goal for wherever the brand is In scaling journey, what I've noticed too is that brands that spend more than 500 K per month, particularly those that are spending more than a million per month, they do tend to over index a lot more on UGC and on that creator content to actually still get customer acquisition costs that are profitable for them. And what I see them doing that's really smart is they will rapidly test a lot of messaging points using images and then take those messaging learnings and apply those to their UGC content so that they're not just putting out BS like content from creators. They're actually starting from a really good learning whether or not it's an angle or a specific messaging point, and those are the people that are seeing the most success right now.

Brett:

Super interesting. So using images to understand and the text that goes with it and understand hook to understand what angles are working, and then they're taking that and then they're specifically asking creators to create content based on that, or they're taking existing content and editing it and pulling forward hooks that line up with what they just proved in their image ads.

Dara:

Most of the time it's taking messaging point or angles that are interesting that are great learnings from images and then applying those to the creator brief essentially. And again, when you're working with creators or influencer types that are already making content about that specific industry or niche that comes a lot more naturally than your run of the mill UGC creator who's just trying to make an extra buck, which I respect it and there was definitely a good time for that. I think that time probably isn't now anymore, and we're really just looking to work with creators who love to make content for a specific industry.

Brett:

Got it. So you're not looking for a huge influencers, you're looking for influencers that are really dedicated to a specific vertical or specific topic that they've got a following, they're great at creating content, they're authentic. Anything you would add to that? What are you looking for in a creator that's going to create great UGC?

Dara:

Yeah, I'd say these creators typically have anywhere from 10 K to a hundred K to a hundred K followers on. I think TikTok is a great place to find these people because you can often amass more followers on TikTok versus Instagram, and that's kind of where I initially find really great creators who haven't hit the mainstream yet, but have a bit of a cult following within a certain niche industry. I work a lot with beauty brands right now and TikTok is bar none the best place to find those people. But it's the same thing too. When I'm working with an apparel brand or a supplements brand, TikTok is really just still the hotbed of where to find amazing creators. I've used all of the platforms to find creators and find UGC, but I think that nothing really compares to working with the creators that already have dedicated themselves to a niche in a way

Brett:

That range of followers makes sense because it's showing 10,000 followers. It still means you're doing some unique stuff and you're doing pretty well and up to a hundred K, that's great, but they're maybe not so big that they're demanding a high fee or maybe they lose touch with their audience a little bit or whatever as they get bigger, just harder to work with. I think that makes sense. But I really want to double click on your first point where you said, really the days of just doing UGC, that was the strategy, that was the unlock. We did UGC, that's done right now. It's got to be good UGC, it has to be the right influencer, right creator, the right message, the right editing, you're putting it together the right way, it's following the good principles of marketing, but still UGC at the center of that makes a ton of sense. And I think you proved it there too by those top spenders that are spending 500 KA million, a couple million a month online, UGC makes up a large part of their ad spend. And we see the same thing on YouTube. A number of our bigger clients, their top spending videos are influencer, influencer mashups, like mashups of influencers work really well. Is that something you're seeing on the meta and TikTok side, like a mashup of influencers or is it more individual influencer delivering their content?

Dara:

What's so interesting is actually when we did the talk at Blue Ribbon, so this is only a month ago, and I had done the last two data polls for the month. I had seen that single testimonials were winning across the board, everything was focused on one creator, one influencer, and my hypothesis there was, oh, okay, it seems like people get a more authentic experience when it's just from one creator and they're a little bit more suspicious or it's more like of an ad queue when it's compilations or multiple creators. But in this most recent dataset that I pulled for May, I actually found that compilations were on the rise again. Yeah, my personal belief is that the question of whether or not to go single testimonial versus compilation probably boils down more to it being a factor of how you're doing your internal tagging and your internal strategist being able to pull the right content from the right different creators and knowing when and where to make those mashups, which I find can be really hard for teams, but with some of the brands that I worked with, we've found a solution for that. So that's why I think we're seeing more of those.

Brett:

Nice. Yeah, so I think the edits are simpler. If it's one influencer, you still got to have quick cuts and it's got to be tight and it's got to be sped up. Don't let them ramble, got to get to the point and lead with a wow statement or provocative question or something. But I think it is easier to add just one. And so it takes a unique skillset to do the mashup or the compilation of UGC or influencers. But one reason why I think the compilation works so well or the mashup is as a viewer, if I'm watching an influencer, I'm conscious or subconsciously judging like, well, they're not like me, they're bigger than that person and so this clothes might not work, or I don't really work out like that, so maybe this product isn't for me or I don't like that person's tone.

What are there's reasons why someone doesn't resonate with us? But if you've got multiple people in an ad, there's likely going to be someone there that really connects with you where you're like, ah, that's my person. I see me in that person. And that allows for a much deeper connection, trust, overcoming of objections, wanting to then make that click, but it's a bit of a different art. And so getting that mashup to work is a little bit more difficult, but we like what we call the mashup explainer where it's like, Hey, we've got these three feature benefit sets or these three points we want to make about our product, so let's mash up three or four people making each of those points and kind of string it together with fast edits and B roll and stuff like that. And I think that can work.

Dara:

What I used to see with compilations versus testimonials too is compilations would work really good for more top of funnel audiences or broader audiences because of the point that you mentioned before, people are more likely to find themselves in a multiple cast of characters. And when I see compilations not working for a brand, I actually do dig into, okay, should we expand the ages? Is there more diversity we could inject to the compilation cast of characters there so that we can reach better audiences? But I also think single testimonials inherently target more of a lower funnel individual who are like, okay, I want the in-depth perspective, I want the authentic IRL review. So single testimonials again, could in theory be working inherently targeting a more bottom of funnel audience. So there really

Brett:

Good point.

Dara:

Yeah. Yeah,

Brett:

They may work a little more for mid funnel, bottom of funnel could work for remarketing as well. People want that. Yeah, I'll just sit and listen to you talk about this product. I really want to know. Yeah,

Dara:

Exactly. So it's kind of hard since Facebook is all broad now, and a lot of my brands aren't using many retargeting audiences, so it's really hard to say, yeah, this is a retargeting audience only or this is a prospecting audience only. It's all the same thing now. But when I take a step back and look at, okay, which part of the marketing funnel in theory would this be targeting? Sometimes that helps illuminate more clues for me.

Brett:

Yeah, it's really cool and I'm glad you brought that up. I know for a lot of DTC brands, meta is the biggest platform where most of the ad budget goes and not as many people are running on YouTube. Although I think people, everybody should run on YouTube if you've got the right content. We're still seeing a breakdown of top of funnel viewed video remarketing working well on YouTube, but I totally get now on Met. It's mostly just broad audiences, but you want the content there so the algorithm can do its thing and find the right match of ad to audience, but you got to have all the ads there. And so this is a good time to pivot and talk about quality and quantity of creatives. And I remember hearing someone say a long time ago, I can't remember the context, but you find quality in the quantity.

And it seems like especially on meta and TikTok, you just got to crank out a lot of content. If you don't have enough content, your chances of winning are very low. And I heard this example one time, I may butcher the context a little bit, but it was a class, like a college class. And so one group was given the assignment of create the best pot that you can create, take as much time as you want, choose your materials, whatever, but make the best pot you can make vase, that kind of pot. And then the other group was like, Hey, just make as many as you can possibly make in this timeframe. And it turns out the group that made the most actually ended up creating the best as well because they were testing, learning, trying, failing, doing the next thing. And I think that kind of applies to ad testing as well. You don't know, and so just start creating a whole bunch, but how do you ensure getting the right quantity and quality of creatives?

Dara:

So I think it all kind of backs into a budget that a brand is going to be spending on meta ads. So the way that I like to roadmap out the number of creatives to test per week really does back into that monthly budget. And so if a brand is going to be spending a hundred K per month on meta ads, I'm thinking to myself, okay, that's going to equate about three to four creative tests per week, and I'll roadmap that out for a month so that at any point in time we know what type of creative is going to come down the pipeline for the next four months. And to go to the second part of your question, which is like, okay, quantity, that's the quantity part. How do we focus on quality? Really it's a confluence of prioritizing what you can get out the fastest and what you think is going to perform the best.

So at any point in time, of course, we want to prioritize what we think is going to perform the best while what's also going to be the easiest to produce, but sometimes it's really our big swings that we have the highest confidence in and we have to roadmap those out to give us more time to actually produce that so that we are still hitting our three to four creative tests per week benchmark, because a lot of it is a numbers game. I know when I talk to a lot of my friends about dating, for instance, especially for my friends that are single in their thirties and they want to find the one, it kind of becomes a numbers game at a point. And I think it's the same for creative testing, even though we all get really attached to the creatives that we want to win and the learnings and yada yada, but especially as you begin to scale a lot, you just have to have that volume and you have to get learnings from that volume.

I think one of the biggest things that brands are in danger of though when they start pushing up their quantity and looking for that quality is they get into what I would call iteration paralysis where they only start making content based on the data and based on their learnings. And I can always tell a brand is in iteration paralysis when I look at their ad account or I look at the creative they're currently testing and if I can squint and they all kind of look the same, they're all using the same content, they're all using the same font and they're not materially different. I'm like, Ooh, you are not standing out on the feed as well as you could. Because the reality is people are swiping up pretty quickly when they're scrolling through Instagram when they're scrolling through TikTok or Facebook or whatever, they're having conversations with their partner, they're having conversations with their parents, maybe they're just looking at it while they're in a meeting, they're not really paying attention. And if you are showing up the same time every single time, you're blending in the background. So that's why I really do encourage brands to when thinking about quality, it's not just about being data-driven, it's also about taking the big swing and the brands that I see taking a few big swings every single month, those are the ones that tend to win more often than not.

Brett:

Man, it's so good and iteration will only get you so far. And if all you're doing is little tweaks, why would you expect anything other than just little improvements? Right? And I remember hearing people talk about landing page optimization is something as well where it's like, wait, let's just test every little tiny variable

This test. So let's test. Let's test the button color first and we'll get 'em like, dude, you're never going to get anywhere meaningful. But if you can use the data to then form theories about what people are liking and not liking, then take a big swing, be risky. That's where you're going to find a breakthrough is with a big swing, not with alliterations, nothing wrong with tweaking as well, but if you're never taking those big swings, why would you ever expect to get a big outcome? And so really, really good call out. I've never heard of the squint test, but I like that if you're squinting at the ad library, it all looks the same. Okay, you got to branch out. You got to be a little bolder there.

Dara:

Yeah. Yeah. I'd say too, when thinking about big tests and yeah, I just think that a lot of media buyer types, I work with a lot of growth teams and the number one thing that they tell me they're afraid of when it comes to creative is they're really afraid to give the subjective opinion as to why a creative worked. That's why they're really comfortable looking at videos and being like, oh, this brand had this video had a hook rate of X, Y, Z, and that was better than this one. That's why it worked. The hook was better. But they won't go into more of the subjective things that actually make a big difference. Like, oh, the creator was the creator looked like this or said this. That was really interesting. And the data isn't always going to reveal why a creative worked. So the more comfortable you can get with being subjective and pulling out those bigger learnings, that's where I see creative teams starting to make those much bigger unlocks.

Brett:

And really, I mean, that's what you're looking for in the data. And this is something we deal with as an agency all the time, and I know you have as well where teams can be tempted to just share with the client, here's all the data, here's the data, here's the data from creative A and creative B and creative C. You're like, okay,

Dara:

That's not an analysis.

Brett:

What do you think? What does that mean? What do we do? And so I just on a call with a big brand where we're doing this big YouTube push and seeing what's driving in-store traffic because you can actually track that with YouTube. They're a D two C brand, but also on Amazon also in retail stores. And two ads quite similar. One I actually liked better than the other, but the one I didn't like as well had quite a bit higher conversion rate as we're looking at it because it was in store and stuff. The main thing that we saw that was different was the option two, mention the brand name very quickly and for YouTube. And I don't know that that was the reason, but that was our initial hypothesis. We're like, Hey, let's test this more. But with YouTube, people can skip after five seconds, but if you mention the brand in the first five seconds, that could really trigger people looking up directions to Walmart or some of the things we were testing for this brand. And so that's where the data really matters, and that takes someone that kind knows creative and knows the game and has kind of been in it a while to look at a couple of different creatives and say, this is what the data is indicating why and what do we test now? What's our next swing?

Dara:

That subjective analysis of honestly the gravy.

Brett:

It is. It is, and it takes a little bit. You got to kind of put yourself out there and you may be wildly wrong, but you got to be willing to do it, and that's super important. Can you talk a little bit about your testing methodology? So how do we go about creative testing? So now we're getting these three to four creatives a week. If we're spending about a hundred K, or I'm assuming it just, does it just kind of double as spend doubles? Does it go up linearly with the budget? Is that how that usually goes?

Dara:

Yeah, yeah. I'd say that for every additional 25 grand that you're spending every month, that's another creative test to add per week is my really rough estimation for that. And the anatomy of a great creative test for me is when I'm making a creative test, I'm not just going to be making one asset. I am going to bake in a little bit of iterative variation testing into every single test. So if I'm going to be testing a UGC creator's content for a brand, I'm going to create ideally three unique hooks for that content. So I'm going to edit it down, have the base edit, and then I'm going to test out three really different hooks. And my secret sauce here is I do try to make these hooks fundamentally different. Maybe I'll have the creator, I'll start with a reaction point. So earlier to your point, you were talking about having creators say something about the product that's really surprising or exclamatory, I find reactions, authentic reactions from creators can do really well.

So maybe I'll do that. Maybe I'll have another one that talks about a certain value prop that they really liked about the product. So it'll be really product first and then I'll try another one that's maybe more problem oriented because I find that a lot of times when I look at the hooks that work again and again, they're either product oriented, so they're already talking about a specific product or they're problem oriented, so that is going to be targeting slightly different parts of the funnel as well. So depending on who you're trying to target, they could be different, which is why I like to test those things inside of one unique creative test. So say I have these three variations for this UGC creator's content, I'm then going to deploy that ideally in its own ad set, all three of those so that I can throttle money to that ad set.

I'm not really concerned about getting the same amount of spend between each of those variations. In fact, if I see one variation coming out heads and tails above it, I think that's a really good sign because it means that that version is probably really scalable in some cases. Yeah, I'll go ahead, scale that one up to a different campaign, try throttling money to the other ones, but if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. We've already found our messaging point that is going to be the winner for that one. And for me too, I like testing things on a broad audience that is the most scalable audience. And the idea too is if it's going to work on broad, it's going to work on all your other audiences. And you're also sort of creating a new ecosystem within that ad set too. That's its own unique targeting pool based on that creative.

So I like to scale that up within the ad set. And again, if we're seeing really good results from scaling that up 20% every three days-ish, but if I see a bang an ad, I'll double triple it overnight. It doesn't really matter. Absolutely. Just let's push it and if it continues to work, then we'll put it to the scaling campaigns and see how it compares against other winners and see how long it takes for those to scale up and compete against each other essentially. But yeah, what I do too is after we see that creative winning or losing, I do retros at the end of every month with the brands that I work with to look at a specific test in depth, this is going to go over a lot more of the subjective analysis, but it's also going to force them to pull learnings that they can then iterate on. So okay, what are we going to do in the ad account next? But also, should we take a learning here, apply it to an upcoming static test or an upcoming creator brief? How can we make sure that we're always drawing those learnings from every single test? Sometimes I'll have brands make slide decks for all of this, but oftentimes we don't have time. So it's just something that's done verbally and a meeting. Yeah,

Brett:

Just do the platform, just show the ads in the platform, talk through it, talk about what the next tests are going to be. That's what really matters. I do think sometimes we get hung up in the, are we presenting this data when every, it's just about we get the data, let's make some theories and hypotheses on that, and then let's work on our next test, which I think makes a ton of sense. What is a typical or kind of expected win rate? So we're testing three ads in an ad set, or maybe we're testing six or eight creatives across an account. How many of those are we expecting to be losers? How many are we expecting to be mild winners? How many are we expected to be maybe runaway winners? Any thoughts there? Yeah,

Dara:

I'd say that it looks really different as you start to scale more With some of the brands that I work with, they're spending more than $2 million per month on their ads. And what I'll see is there's a certain benchmark I need creatives to hit, and I'd say more than 50% of those creatives are hitting it, but they're not necessarily creative winners. They're just something that are going to add padding to your ad account, add that newness, add that juice, and then after two or three weeks we turn them off, they stop being as effective. But in terms of absolute banger winner, unicorn ads kind of rare.

Brett:

Yeah, it's rare. They go a few months right before you hit another one. I mean it

Dara:

Can time the creative that hit your benchmark should not be underestimated. And I can count on those, and I see those almost more than 50% of the time. But the real banging unicorn ad ones once a month sometimes.

Brett:

Yeah, I mean it's on

Dara:

How much creative we're putting out.

Brett:

And if it's sale period, it's like a star player, the star student, I mean they're not going to be that many. That's just by definition there's not going to be that many truly exceptional outlier type ads. So Awesome. So let's do this star. We are coming up against times. So we've got about five to seven minutes. I want to go through quickly. You have some ad formats, which I think will be really helpful. We'll lead people with this. This will be good food for thought. So I'm going to need you to give a 32nd explanation of each of these and we'll run through them. So ad format number one, feature benefit, call out. What is that and how would you advise people to execute

Dara:

Those? So essentially what this ad is, is it's a static image ad and it ideally will have your product on a plain background, and then you are pointing out certain key benefits or features of that product. I love, love, love this ad because it is so easy to create. Anyone can create it in Canva. And this is actually something that Ogilvy used to use in his print era days, which I think is really interesting. And based on his research, he actually found that people retained a lot more information about the product or service by using these callouts, which is why it still works today. And my most recent analysis of the 20 brands where I'm pulling their creative learnings, we still had featured point outs in those top performing ad formats. So it's definitely something that's really easy to execute on. And even though for performance creative types, they're like, yeah, yeah, this is not revolutionary. It's absolutely not, but it should still be used.

Brett:

Still works. And that was another reason I loved your presentation because you called out the greats, the classics. Yes, David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising Required Reading for anyone in the marketing advertising space. Yes, some of the styles and stuff don't translate, of course, but the principles and what they're doing, human nature doesn't change. Good marketing principles don't change either. And so I love that feature benefit call out number two, golden nugget reviews. What is that?

Dara:

Golden nugget reviews. Golden nugget reviews are those testimonials from your customers that are just so absurd and memorable and wild that you can't help but just have a chuckle to yourself. Those things often make amazing advertising. These testimonials are not going to be things like, this is the best shampoo, or Oh my God, I loved these shoes. Those things are really generic and honestly are probably maybe potentially faked even if feel like you do get that comment and maybe it feels good as a new business owner, it's not really memorable. So I often

Brett:

You're the only one that likes that comment. As a brand owner, other people don't care.

Dara:

Yeah, I think some tactics that brands can use though to find those golden nugget reviews are like, again, specificity here is key. So if people are bringing up their age, they're bringing up a transformation in a certain amount of time, those type of things can very well be golden nugget reviews. But I actually just had a conversation with a few founders today and I was like, yeah, do you guys ever screenshot reviews on your website and send 'em to each other and text message? Those are probably the ones that you should be using.

Brett:

Totally, totally. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. I interviewed Mickey Agrawal, founder of Tushy on the podcast, been a little over a year ago, but one of these that came up for her, which I just still stuck in my mind, it was Tushy is a bidet company, so you attach the bidet to the toilet and stuff, and really brilliant marketers, but some customer said, tushy is eye candy and butt bliss. And it was like, okay, it's just wild. It is weird. But it was like they look really good and of course your butt has never been happier. And so they borrowed that, used it in ads, it did very, very well. So golden. That's a great example. Yeah, golden nugget reviews. Love it. Number three, founder story. What is that?

Dara:

So a founder story is essentially going to be a video told from the point of view of a founder. It's essentially saying why you created your brand and why it's so important to you. I think there's a few reasons why this works really well. Number one, I think that people don't want to buy from the unknown unnamed corporations anymore. They love knowing the story and the people and the behind the scenes of their brands and their favorite brands. I think the brands that kill it on TikTok are actually just the ones that show the behind the scenes, show their office, show their warehouse. So it kind of goes back to that innate curiosity we have about the big brands that we love. But I also think that these founders are often the ones that are most well positioned to communicate the problems that they had that forced them to make the product.

Something that I talk a lot about with brands right now is the ones that are succeeding on meta ads are the ones that are solving an actual problem because it is just a little bit harder to succeed on meta right now. And if you're speaking to a specific problem that people have, that problem is often going to get people to make an action quicker if you're providing a solution for them. So I often just think founders can really twist the knife a little bit more when speaking about problems and show a little bit more of an empathetic view to people that are looking for that solution,

Brett:

Especially if the problem was very personal to them, and especially if it was embarrassing or just their life was bad. The taboo

Dara:

Helps

Brett:

For sure, taboo helps as well, but, and then I solved it and now this is what my life is like, and that really connects with people. And so yeah, love founder stories when the founder is authentic and even if they just show up halfway decent on camera, but they're authentic and real can work quite well. Number four, statistics sounds like that could be boring, but how do we make this interesting?

Dara:

Yes. So statistics, if I was giving this talk a few months ago, I probably would say something like, oh, if you use statistics and numbers in your ads, that gives people a logical reason to say yes. And sometimes people just need that logical approach instead of a more emotional based one or a buy more button, sort of like if you give people statistics, they're more likely to trust you. I also think that statistics are a different visualization of the before and after experience. So you really have to use statistics that communicate more of that end value and that transformation as opposed to one in four people have this problem. If you instead say, Hey, 97% of these people experience this outcome, that's way more impactful than a statistic about the problem or whatever. So I find that using statistics can just really unlock for people what they think they can expect.

Brett:

And I think statistics also lend to believability. We want to believe the promise of a product, we want the benefit to be true, but we're also skeptical as we've been burned in the past. And so numbers can kind of lend credibility there, but I also think numbers can be emotional as well, and sharing the right statistics can really dial up the emotion and make it a little more concrete. And kind of goes back to the specificity we were talking about. I've got a fresh in my mind just two days off of this, but we did the Murph, the workout on Memorial Day weekend with this one of my wife's family. And so if you're not familiar, you run a mile and you do a hundred pullups, 200 pushups and 300 squats, let's do with a weighted vest. I did not do with a weighted vest.

I thought I was going to die anyway. But you tell someone we did a hundred like, are you kidding me? That's insane. So that number really is more of an emotional reaction than we did a lot of pull-ups, right? And so I think looking at it that way too, does the number communicate something? Is there actually some emotion or some benefit or some believability in that statistic and use that to draw that out. But I actually love this one because it can be super boring. Nobody probably hated a class more than they hated their statistics class, a lot of us. But you pull out the right statistic, emotional connects to a benefit, it just works. So that's awesome. And then number five, last one, educational ads. What are those? So

Dara:

Educational ads back into this idea that people really are looking for content first. I also think that educational content, what's interesting about it is it can be inherently way more top of funnel. You're trying to educate people on a specific problem or a specific solution. I think it can really, really work for brands that are in the supplements industry, but it can really work for anyone because I think that if you can really showcase why you're different through a content first approach, that can be a really big unlock for brands. There's an example I like to share of a brand, and it's a supplement brand that I worked with. And in this ad, the founder is actually just going through certain ingredients that are in her supplement. And what's interesting is she never actually mentions what the product is. She never actually mentions what the brand name is. But because she was going through these different ingredients and tying them to certain problems that people might have, that ended up being a top performing ad creed for them because people were like, wow, actually this sounds a lot like me. I'm going to click more into this. And they were then able to go to the landing page to see, oh, actually there's a solution for me here. And that was a lot more scalable because they weren't just targeting people who were already looking for a specific solution.

Brett:

And I think it's one of those where if you can have this perspective of if someone just consumes this ad, they'll receive a benefit. So they'll receive a benefit from the ad itself. And I think if that's true, then someone's going to be much more likely to talk about that, to share the ad, to mention that little nugget they learned from the ad itself. And yeah, I like that approach where you're talking about, Hey, turmeric, this is what turmeric is, anti-inflammatory does these things and cortis jump into cortis right now. It creates energy, but stable energy and you feel centered and grounded. Anyway, that totally makes sense and I love that approach. Really, really good. So awesome. Dara, this has been an absolute blast. I can just keep going talking about this stuff, but we are up against it. We're running out of time. So for those that are like, I need more Dara de in my life, how can they connect with your content or connect with your company? What's the best way to take next steps?

Dara:

So the best way to figure out what I'm up to is to follow me on YouTube. I launch one long form video every single week there. That's about media buying and performance creative. So yeah, like and subscribe. And I'm also on Twitter at Denney dara. So if you ever have a question or want to see the random things that I'm thinking about marketing on that specific day, that's going to be the place to find me.

Brett:

Awesome. Dara Denney, ladies and gentlemen, Dara, thank you so much. We'll have to do it again sometime.

Dara:

Amazing. Thank you so much Brett.

Brett:

And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. What would you like to hear more of on the podcast? Have you not done? So we'd love that five star review on iTunes if you think it's worthy. And hey, if you heard this and you think, man, so-and-so has got to hear this podcast, please share it. Please share the content that would mean the world to us. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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Episode 286
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Tomer Hen - Switch Supplements

Building an Affiliate Army to Skyrocket Your Brand's Growth

In this episode of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast, Tomer Hen, CEO and co-founder of Switch Supplements, shares his secrets to leveraging affiliate marketing and influencer relationships to drive explosive growth for your brand. Discover how Tomer took Switch Supplements from zero to $30K in recurring revenue in just eight weeks and how you can apply his strategies to your own business.

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Key Takeaways:

  • Learn how to identify and build authentic relationships with high-impact influencers in your niche.
  • Discover the power of a non-transactional approach to influencer marketing and how it can lead to increased brand awareness, social proof, and sales.
  • Understand the Amazon-TikTok flywheel and how to capitalize on the spillover effect to boost your rankings and revenue.
  • Gain insights into turning your most passionate customers into a powerful army of affiliates and brand advocates.
  • Get practical tips on how to start implementing an affiliate marketing strategy, even if you're starting from scratch.

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Tune in to hear Tomer's inspiring story and actionable advice on how to harness the power of affiliate marketing to take your eCommerce brand to new heights

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Chapters: 

(00:00) Introduction

(04:37) Why Did Switch Start Influencer Marketing?

(07:55) How Do You Find the Right People?

(10:37) $0 to $30K Recurring Revenue in 6 Months

(13:15) How Do You Build an Affiliate Army?

(16:33) Advice on Turning Influencer Content into More and Better Ads

(21:07) Hacking Word of Mouth

(26:20) The Amazon/TikTok Flywheel

(33:48) Conclusion

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Show Notes:

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Connect With Brett: 

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Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, Trevor Crump, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Bryan Porter and more. 

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Other episodes you might enjoy: 

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Transcript:

Tomer:

And if they are your customers and they love you and they recommend your products either way, if you sprinkle that with some financial incentives and some guidance and tools that will make them see this as a financial opportunity for them, but also as a way to recommend a product they love to other people in their lives, then this is where you can hack word of mouth.

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the e-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today we're talking about building an affiliate army, leaning in a little bit to influencer marketing and affiliate marketing and the content that comes from that. And so I'm so excited about this topic and my guest. My guest is Tomer Hen. He's a CEO and Co-founder of Switch Supplements, and he is also the founder of Massive Influence. They provide coaching and consulting for influencer and affiliate marketing. And so I believe Tomer and I first met at Ryan Daniel Moran's Lake House, if I'm not mistaken, talking about the Capitalism Fund and some other fun stuff. And that's where we connected. And so with that intro, Tomer, welcome to the show, man. And how's it going? Hi

Tomer:

Brad. How's it going? Thanks for having me here.

Brett:

Yeah, dude, it's going great. Excited to talk about affiliate marketing Love Switch supplements. And for those that are not familiar, what is Switch supplements? Who are you gearing your products toward and what products do you offer?

Tomer:

Yeah, so we're in a mission to help high performers, entrepreneurs to crush their days, to feel at their best and sleep at their best. We have a line of natural atropic supplements. Our flagship product is called Kill Switch. It's a hot chocolate sleep supplement that knocks you out and make you feel really good in the morning.

Brett:

That's awesome. And then another product that I've tried that is coming back soon, we'll maybe tease it a little bit if you're allowed to do that on the podcast, but on Switch. Can you talk a little bit about that product?

Tomer:

Yeah. On Switch is our morning focus and flow supplement, and the reason why we are creating version three is because the product tastes really bad, but people love how it makes them feel. So many people could bear the taste because they loved how it made them feel, but now we want to create an excellent product that also tastes really good. So right now focusing on Kill Switch, growing this product, people love it. And next in line, we're going to have on Switch 3.0 and some other products in the line.

Brett:

Super exciting. And yeah, I can attest to that with On Switch. I'm one of those people though. If I know sometHeng is healthy and it's creating a desired benefit for me, I will drink Pond water. I believe we've got a pallet where I can tell if, okay, this is premium coffee or cheap coffee, or this is good quality sushi or not. I've got a refined palate a little bit, but dude, if it's healthy, I will drink anytHeng and so on. Switch does work, but I'm excited about version three that will be enjoyable to consume as well. So going to get into building an affiliate army and Influencer Marketing really leveraged this to create some impressive growth with Switch. And so we're going to dive into that. But first Teller, what's your background? Because you said sometHeng kind of crazy to me as we were getting ready for this. How long have you been doing affiliate marketing?

Tomer:

Basically since I remember. So I've been an affiliate marketer myself since I was 13, which is 17 years ago. Then I turned into helping other companies, bigger companies to build their own affiliated programs while I was promoting the good old ClickBank offers. And then I had an agency for about 11 years. And in 2020 I decided that I really want to build a physical product brand, and I decided to combine my experience with performance marketing and affiliate marketing with my new passion for physical product brands.

Brett:

Love it, man. Love it. So I want to dive into how we're going to get tactical and practical on the pod and show people how to create an affiliate army and influencer army. But first the why are you doing this and maybe even talk about specifically why did you do this for Switch?

Tomer:

Right. So for Switch, it started after we basically ran out of cash trying to make our ads profitable. And as you know better than me, that supplements are very hard to promote on. They are, many brands are crusHeng it, but many brands will pay $200 CPA to acquire a customer. So for a new brand to compete with those giants, it cost us a lot of money. And we came to a point where we had no cash, we had inventory, and we had a really good product and we knew that, and that was the frustrating part. We knew that when people try our product, they love it. We had a really good repeat buyers rate, but we had no money to get it out there. So we decided to use the inventory that we've had to send it over to influential people that our audience trusts and likes and let them try kill, switch. And if they like it, we can create a relationship with them and they might even give us a shout out. And this is how we were able to create that social proof and attract more customers and more customers to a point where we sold out completely without running a single ad just by working back then with about 40 influencers that we never paid for. By the way they were all promoting us. They love the product, some of them got some commissions right after, but we had no money to pay upfront. So we

Brett:

Did. It's amazing. And you really hit on an important point, and we've done a lot of marketing for supplements. I mentioned at the outset, I'm a believer in supplements. I take different mushrooms and of course multivitamins and all kinds of stuff. I've always been into supplements, but it's not easy to sell, right? You compare supplements to other D two C categories like apparel or accessories, you can show it, right? It's visible, it's visual. I can see the ring, I can see the pants, I can see the sweatshirt. If it's sometHeng automotive, which we've done a lot in the automotive space, I can see the before and after on the car truck or SUV, I can see it and I can say I want that, but with supplements it's like, Hey, do you want this jar of stuff that tastes terrible or do you want to swallow more pills?

No, I don't want to swallow more pills. Right? So obviously you're leaning into the benefit and you're trying to make this USP and this value prop really clear, but sometimes it's difficult. It is difficult, and it's difficult to say that in a way that's believable. And so what's great about affiliates or influencers for supplements especially is if you tor as the founder of Switch, say, I love kill switch, it allows me to have the best sleep of my life and I wake up refresh. And it also doesn't tastes like a tasty cup of hot cocoa. That means sometHeng and people will pay attention. It's not bad, but it pales in comparison to a real user talking about it, especially if they talk about it in an authentic way. And so we talked about earlier, what is it? Necessity is the mother of invention. So you needed sometHeng to work and you needed it to be free. And so you leaned into what you knew and you found affiliates and found influencers. So how did you go about doing that armed with just a great product and not a lot of cash? How did you find the right people? Right.

Tomer:

Luckily, relationships are completely free. So you can reach out to influencers if you choose the right influencers and you reach out to them the right way and offer them to try your product. If they like it and you nurture that relationship, then many of them or some of them will post about it. And that creates the first awareness to your brand. When you create a relationship with what I call the high purchase intent influencers as in not the generalist lifestyle influencer, but someone that I follow to get advice on a certain niche or topic, let's say nootropics or biohacking, and they post about a supplement that they tried and liked, and I have the same problem, I would probably at least check out your Instagram page. Maybe I will follow your page. Some of them will click the link and we'll buy the product right away.

But we created that awareness, we created a lead flow. We were able to grow our email list just by having other people saying good tHengs about us, our customers, and we got a lot of referrals from our customers and we got a lot of repeat buyers. That's another level to have person with an influence with even as little as 5,000 followers. But those followers really trust what they have to say. We are able to get more sales, able to get more sales. We get more testimonials, more testimonials, more proof for our Instagram page, our emails work, and this is just how it snowballed.

Brett:

Yeah, one of my favorite definitions or favorite quotes about marketing is it's a transfer of confidence, right? Confidence from either the founder or the brand saying, no, I know this product is amazing. It'll change your life. And I'm transferring that confidence to you so that you'll purchase. That is easier done by an influencer in a lot of ways. And I like Andrew Huberman, I tHenk he's a great, the Huberman Labs podcast is awesome. If he recommended a supplement, I would give it some serious consideration. I would immediately jump from, Hey, this is no longer just a jar of pills. This is sometHeng that is likely trusted to create this result. And that's what you created with these influencers. These are people, maybe they're micro influencers, obviously not as big as Andrew Huberman to their audience trusted. And immediately that transfer of trust is quick and it's received well. And so I really like that you talked about you kind of went from zero to, I tHenk 30 K in sales in eight weeks, and I believe that was 30 K recurring if I'm not mistaken. But what did that look like and how did that go down? I know you've already touched on it a little bit, but fill in some of the gaps there. How did you go from zero to 30 K?

Tomer:

Yeah, so that's actually a story that I'm really proud with one of my clients, and they launched the product at the end of December, and the two months prior to that, they started sending dms to influencers in that space that was the pet space, and started sharing about their upcoming launch. Those influencers, because they built their relationship in an authentic way, that person never asked them to do anytHeng, started posting about a product they'd never even received just because the communication was so well, the mission of the brand, the content they've created, and those influencers just wanted to be a part of it. So they started building hype before the product was even on Amazon. Now, once the product was live on Amazon, about 60 influencers posted about it without even an affiliate link. They just said, we tried this product, we like it. By the way, you can get it on Amazon. Guess what many people did? They went on Amazon and they bought the product, which got this brand, the number one new release badge on Amazon, and they immediately went to, I tHenk it was, I can't remember the number of sales, but that was about $1,000 a day in sales. That was just eight weeks or six weeks after their launch. Now, two or three months later, they're already pacing 60 KA month. And obviously once you get the ranking on Amazon and you're getting the reviews, it's flywheel

Brett:

Now.

Tomer:

It just snowballs. Exactly, exactly. But this was a really cool example of how building relationships with just few influencers in your space can lead to not so many posts. I mean, we have clients who are getting hundreds and hundreds of posts every month, which is 60 posts were enough to create traction on Amazon. That snowballed into becoming $60,000 a

Brett:

Month, which is great for a new product launch. I mean, even an established brand that's doing tens of millions of dollars, you launch a new product and you immediately get that to 60,000 a month in sales. That's great. And then you keep building and growing from there and really can add some nice incremental value. So how are you executing on this? So where are you finding the influencers? Are these Amazon influencers? Are you leaning mostly into TikTok? Where are you finding them? And then it sounds like you're giving them product no strings attached, maybe in some cases not even asking them to post or what does that

Tomer:

Look like? Yeah, so first we start with a non-transactional relationship, a hundred percent authentic. Our number one rule is that we do not negotiate with influencers. I don't want any influencer who starts in negotiating with us on their rate card before they even tried our product, because you could sense that they would probably promote any product that would pay the right price, and they probably lost their audience's trust. So we start by saying, Hey, this is us. That's our story. That's what we created. Would love what we have your content. Would you like to get a free product on us? No strings attached, and we really expect them to do notHeng when it comes to finding them. I get this question a lot of which is the best platform to find influencers at, I would say, is there really isn't the right platform. It's kind of like asking what is the best platform to post content on?

I would say first where your audience hangs out, that was maybe an assumption for two years ago, but nowadays on TikTok, everybody's on TikTok, your audience is on TikTok. There is less competition on the non-traditional audiences on TikTok, for example. So I would say just focus on a platform or a social platform that you can stick to that you like the content you like what they post. You can post more content yourself because obviously those influencers will tag your page. So people would need to see some content over there and just focus there. I would suggest the blanket answer would be to focus on Instagram and TikTok. People always ask me, what software do we use and what tools in ai? Honestly, I've never found a better tool than a well-trained VA to a virtual assistant to find influencers for you manually because the algorithms of TikTok and Instagram just works so well. So if you know three to five ideal influencers in your niche, you can use the algorithms that are completely free to find hundreds and thousands of them.

Brett:

That's great. That's great. And now I know you primarily, especially with Switch and sounds like with some of your clients, you're utilizing this content for organic plays, right? And I tHenk it makes all the sense in the world, the more you lean into organic, the better. Even if you're crusHeng it on ads, which we're an agency that leans into the ad space, I'm a big believer in paid because there's a lot of control there, a lot of scale there, man. You got to layer in, I believe, some organic to really kind of create stability, and it can accelerate and amplify anytHeng you do on the paid side. But then there's also this component of, Hey, I'm creating great content that's organic. Now I can grab that. I can mash that up or use it as a standalone. Now I've got almost this infinite supply of great creatives that I can use for my ads, and then I can really scale 'em to the moon. So any advice or thoughts there on taking influencer content and turning it into great ads? Yeah,

Tomer:

That's a really good point. Many of the clients that I work with, their number one goal is I just need more content for ads. I'm sick of getting fake QGC from all these platforms. They don't work well. I'm sick of creating content myself. I just want authentic a hundred percent authentic content that I can use for my ads because my ad team is driving me nuts, and I always ask for more ads. So for many brands who run ads at a large scale, that's our main goal. I always say, that's great. Use the same system drive sales to offset for the free products that you send of the operational cost, and now you're getting content completely for free, and you would probably also make money on the backend with the direct sales that you will get from those posts. What I'm saying is that this is a great way for you to also test which creatives would work well before you spend any dollars beHend.

So you can take your top 10, 20% of influencer posts that have driven the most sales or engagement and then use them for your ad campaigns. Many brands are trying everytHeng and anytHeng that they get from influencers, but they get more data when they see, oh, that post drove so many sales, it probably resonated. The other tHeng is that you could also come to an agreement with the influencer that they will whitelist your account and you'll be able to promote that content from their handle, which calls whitelisting, which would make it even more effective. And then the other tHeng, and that's also a very common question that I get is do I get to use the content? Do I get the usage rights? Because many brands are used to pay for usage rights. The beauty is that when you start with a non-transactional relationship and an influencer that could charge, let's say a thousand dollars for a post did it for you for free, in 95% of the cases, they will also give you the usage rights and allow you to use it in other areas as well. So when you follow that relationship first system and you're not trying to extract sometHeng out of them, you just get it, you get the posts, you get the usage rights, you get referrals. You really don't need to ask them for anytHeng, including users. Right?

Brett:

Yeah, it's so good, man. And I love that first point, especially where you're talking about, hey, understanding which pieces of creative from an organic standpoint did the best, and then leaning into those first for ads makes all the sense in the world. So I was just at Google Marketing Live and talking to some of the product specialists, product managers beHend YouTube shopping, and we'll see how that does. It's designed to be YouTube's answer to TikTok shops, but that's one of the tHengs they do is they say, Hey, now as you have influencers who are tagging you and talking about your products on YouTube, you can see what performs the best and then you can run ads to that directly witHen YouTube and listen, I tHenk the name of the game now with ads, especially on meta and TikTok, but to a lesser degree on YouTube shorts, you need to just test a lot of different tHengs.

You find quality in the quantity. Being able to start with, Hey, we know these 10 or 15 or 30 creatives did really well organically, let's put money beHend those first. And sometimes listen, sometimes you'll find a diamond in the rough that this one influencer just didn't take off for whatever reason. Maybe their audience wasn't big enough at what they said was gold, test that too. Start with the tHengs that had great organic reach and great organic performance and lean into those first as ads. That's just an awesome strategy to both lean into organic and paid traffic. Awesome. So you talked a little bit about this idea of hacking word of mouth, and I've always been a big believer in word of mouth. I tHenk that's kind of the tHeng that can sustain a brand and accelerate growth once you get to a certain level. It's sometHeng I got my start as just a kid doing radio advertising and talking to local business owners, local shop owners, and it was talked about, Hey, my favorite form of advertising is word of mouth, which makes sense. It's just slow and it's kind of hard to control, have a great product and great service. But you talk about hacking word of mouth, what does that mean and what does that look

Tomer:

Like? Yeah, I tHenk that many people can get caught up with definitions. They ask, what's the difference witHen an affiliate and an brand ambassador and an influencer and a partner? And I would say it doesn't really matter how you call them, this is just a person saying good tHengs about your brand and your product to other people. So this person could have an audience, but they could also have 200 followers on Instagram. They could be very active in a WhatsApp group. They could be really active in PDA or whatever it is. And if they are your customers and they love you and they recommend your products either way, if you sprinkle that with some financial incentives and some guidance and tools that will make them see this as a financial opportunity for them, but also as a way to recommend a product they love to other people in their lives, then this is where you can hack word of mouth.

You can turn someone who's a raving fan, who's already a raving fan, and you can add some financial incentives to it and with a few processes just to make them excited and reminded that it exists. And they're probably not going to get to you tens of thousands of dollars in referrals each, but some of them will have a small audience. Many of them will drive 1, 2, 3 referrals to you. And if you do that at scale, this can really add up. I work with a high eight figure supplement brand, and they have tens of thousands of their customers join their affiliate program and they have hundreds and hundreds of them. They drop hundreds of dollars each in sales, and none of them have an audience. They mostly post it on their personal accounts, they post it on different groups that they're at. Sometimes they send it on as a text message message, but it's not about those, Hey, here's take $5 coupon for every referral that you make.

We've all seen that, and all of your customers have seen that, and this is really boring. This is about creating a real opportunity for them to make some little extra money by promoting a product that they like. And since most brands have those loyalty programs or referral programs, when you treat them as your partners, when you treat them as potential as real affiliates, this is where you create contests and you celebrate their success and you send them more free products and you add them to a closed community of your VIP customer slash affiliates, and you treat them as such, you can build a group of raving fans that will become your best brand advocates. And I've seen this over and over with brands, some of them, again, high eight figures, some of them are way smaller than that.

Brett:

It's so cool. And when you do this, it makes everytHeng better. You can use this content for email marketing, SMS marketing for YouTube, for Google, for TikTok and Instagram and Meta, and so highly recommend leaning into this. Now, how does someone like your eight figure supplement brand client, how do they get such a huge army of people that are now affiliates and ambassadors? How do you go from zero to this massive army?

Tomer:

Yeah, so I would say with your customers, most of them obviously will not turn to become affiliates. And even if they are, most of them will not drive sales. But you really just want the top 5% that love your products and will recommend them either way even without getting paid. Again, when you top that with a financial incentive, now they have the incentive to keep doing that. So first you need to offer that. You need to have a very lucrative offer for them. So you need to show them that, hey, if you refer us 10 friends, you might be making $200 from it. And for someone who's not doing this for a living, this is a lot of money. This is not an influencer that does this for a living. Now, if they're also able to get perks that they are not able to get unless they become your affiliate and refer you some sales, like exclusive product drops or early access to new products or a lifetime discount for your products or even priority support. So this is how you build a community of anytHeng between 20 to 500 or a thousand of your raving customers to become your best salespeople.

Brett:

That's awesome. So I want to kind of transition, and we talked about TikTok shops a minute ago, but let's look at this, TikTok and Amazon Flywheels. So sometHeng you were kind of telling me about, and I know a lot of your brands, Amazon is a huge driver of sales for almost all OMG clients, right? Their D two C through Shopify or another platform, their marketplace, which is Amazon, and then a lot of them are also D two C in store as well. But what is this Amazon TikTok Flywheel?

Tomer:

Yeah, so I'll start with a little story. We've neglected Amazon for a very long time, ever since we started switch, and this is why our sales were really low every month. Sometimes we had really, really low sales. Then one day in January, this January, we got a post by a larger influencers in our space, and he promoted kill switch to our Shopify store on his Instagram page. We got more sales on Amazon that month than we got in the past six months, right after he posted, I'm sorry, our Shopify link on his Instagram, but we had such big spillover into Amazon, all of that awareness went straight to Amazon. People prefer to buy there, and we made six x our regular monthly run rate. Now, the interesting part is that up until now, we are getting almost the same amount of sales because that external traffic we sent over to Amazon now rewards us in the algorithm.

So we rank higher, we never touch our listing, we never run any PPC or optimize the listing, but we still get more and more sales on Amazon. So now that we see the potential like, huh, maybe we should focus on Amazon and get some more reviews and work on our listing and optimize, but we're able to get it just from that single post to, I tHenk our growth rate this year is 171% more than last year, and we did notHeng on Amazon like zero, no SEO, no leasing optimization, any of that. Now, in the past few months, we also had many more influencers, probably smaller influencers than that person who also posted about us. And every time they do that, we get more sales on Amazon. Now, if you combine that with TikTok and you know that TikTok prefers TikTok shop videos and products because they want to push TikTok shop, that means that you can get more of that exposure on TikTok.

A lot of that exposure will spill over to Amazon. So if you work, for example, with a TikTok shop affiliate and you pay them a 20% commission or 30% commission, but you are getting three X sales coming to Amazon, you pay zero commission for, you will rank up higher in the algorithm and you only pay that affiliate. The effective commission is much, much, much lower. So knowing that and tracking that, now you are able to maybe offer your next affiliates 50% or 40%. So they will promote you even more because you know that for every sale they drive directly on TikTok shop, you're getting three more on Amazon or even on Shopify. You can win when other brands are trying to negotiate between 15% to 20%. You know that if you build this flywheel correctly, then you will have all that spillover coming to Amazon.

Brett:

It's so smart, and we see this in a number of different categories. You push really hard on meta or Instagram ads, you see a lift on Amazon, even if you're sending all the traffic to your Shopify store, we see this on YouTube all the time. Once an account gets to 50,000 or a hundred thousand or 200,000 or more in monthly YouTube spend, Amazon sales really increase for that brand. And I've shared this before on the podcast, but a buddy of mine is in the infomercial space and so does a lot of TV placements for infomercials and what they expect. Now, when a new product is launched via infomercial, what they expect is that 50% of the sales from that infomercial will be on Amazon, 30% will be from the.com, so from the online store, and then 20% will be from the phone and or other outreach.

And so it's just super interesting that even if you're not mentioning Amazon, people see a product that they really want. For most people, e-commerce equals Amazon. I'm going to go to Amazon and make my purchase there. I'm at least going to check. And that's another really good reason to be on Amazon because what we found with some brands is if you're not there, but there's a product that's pretty close, some people will just end up buying that. So if you're doing any kind of top of funnel activities, influencer, affiliate, whatever, you are driving traffic to Amazon, whether you intend to or not. That's

Tomer:

Correct. And I will also add that influencers create awareness. Most people will not buy right away. And most people who would end up buying the product after they've been exposed to your product through an influencer post will buy after they sign up to your email list or they follow your page or they bought it on Amazon or their search name or Google. So you always see more organic sales once you have more influencer posts, even if the direct affiliate sales are not as high, we always see more direct sales coming right away. Now, the beauty is that if you can also add a system that we call it the DM funnel, where you can convert that awareness into leads, so you can capture leads, and then you can grow your email list, send more social proof to them until they eventually buy. Now, you can use when you see influencers as such and you have a way to convert that awareness into leads and sales, move them through the funnel.

Now it unlocks opportunities that most brands are not exposed to because again, they're calculating their affiliate commission based on their margin on the direct sale. But knowing that most of your sales will come from the spillover, whether it's Amazon or whether people will just Google your name or search your name on Instagram and follow your page and then buy a week later or a month later. So the money is really not in the direct sales. It is in how good the systems are to get more indirect sales from the free awareness that you are getting from influencers.

Brett:

It makes a ton of sense. And I tHenk one important tHeng to remind people of is if you're investing in any kind of advertising, there is a CPA there. You're paying obviously for those acquisitions. And so my thought is you should at least be willing to pay that amount to an affiliate because the nice tHeng with an affiliate is you're only paying if they actually make assailant. If they don't, you pay notHeng. But to your point, because there is that halo effect, the lift, when affiliate or an influencer really post content, we're going to see more than just the directly attributed sales be more generous there, right? Again, there's not really any risk because you're only paying if a sale happens. So really, really insightful. Tomer, this has been awesome. As we kind of wrap up, any final tips or pieces of advice, or if not, where can people connect with you?

Tomer:

Yeah, I would say first, give it a try. You don't have to start in full fledge, just reach out to a few influencers, have a few conversations and see how it goes. Just get the feedback first and build the relationships. I mean, we have a system that we follow that will attract your ideal influencers to post more content for you so you get more sales. But if you want to start it yourself, you can do that. I'm here to help brands cut the learning curve, and I do that through my newsletter. So if you want to get my free newsletter, I send daily insights on how brands grow their sales with influencers and affiliates. That's a massive influence, dot co, dot co. And you also get my Influencers checklist, which is basically daily actions that you can take witHen your brand to start getting sales from influencers and affiliates. So

Brett:

Yeah, it's a really interesting angle where it's like, Hey, with some tHengs like YouTube ads, as an example, a few others, you kind of got to go a little bit all in. I mean, you can still test obviously, but you got to do quite a bit, or else it's not even worth trying. But the nice tHeng about this is you can try it, right? You can reach out to a few affiliates, you can try to get the ball rolling a little bit and see how it does. But I do recommend, obviously, this podcast is a great starting point. Dig into some of ER's content and his newsletter to really accelerate that learning curve and get you off to the races sooner. So Tomer, this has been brilliant, man. Thank you so much for taking the time, and you got me all fired up to build an affiliate program.

Tomer:

Thank you so much, Brad. It was great. And good luck to everybody.

Brett:

Awesome. And as always, we appreciate you. We could not do this show without you. There'd be no point, right? And so I would love to get that review from you on iTunes if you've not done so already. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

Episode 285
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Savannah Knight - OMG Commerce

Proven Strategies for Profitable PMAX Growth

In this episode of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast, I sit down with Savannah Knight, one of OMG Commerce's top Google Ads specialists, to discuss the often divisive topic of Performance Max. Savannah shares her secrets to success and busts common myths surrounding this powerful campaign type, helping listeners turn their "meh" campaigns into true profit drivers.

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Key topics and lessons covered in this episode:

  • Understanding the traffic composition of your Performance Max campaigns is crucial for making informed optimization decisions.
  • Utilizing best-performing creative assets and proper segmentation can significantly impact the success of your campaigns.
  • Savannah shares real-world success stories and the strategies behind them, including how to effectively use Performance Max for new customer acquisition.
  • Common mistakes to avoid when setting up and optimizing Performance Max campaigns, such as the "set it and forget it" approach and improper asset matching.
  • Exciting upcoming features for Performance Max, like asset-level performance insights and the "Bid for Profits" option, and how they can revolutionize your Google Ads strategy.

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Whether you're a Performance Max pro or just getting started, this episode is packed with actionable insights and expert advice to help you take your campaigns to the next level.

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Chapters

(00:00) Introduction
(04:07) Why Are People Frustrated With Performance Max?
(06:16) PMAX Success Stories
(07:38) The Importance of Good Creative
(10:58) Using PMAX For New Customer Acquisition
(18:32) Using PMAX For Branded Search
(22:53) How Does PMAX Fit In With Your Other Campaigns?
(29:58) Common PMAX Mistakes
(38:47) Conclusion

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Show Notes

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Connect With Brett

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Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, Trevor Crump, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Bryan Porter and more. 

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Other episodes you might enjoy: 

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Transcript

Savannah:

The other thing goes back to getting Performance Max to focus on new customers. It seems so simple, but the bid strategy itself that you're utilizing will kind of determine where your placements are.

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the e-commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today we're talking about Performance Max, Google's flagship campaign type. It's a campaign type that really is a bit divisive. Some people love it, some people hate it, some people love to hate it. And so today we're going to be busting some myths and talking about how to make this campaign type profitable and incremental and worthwhile for your brand. And so what I wanted to do is bring on one of our top OMG commerce experts. Certainly I have experience in p max, but not like my guest today. And so I'm delighted to welcome to the show Savannah Knight. Savannah's been with OMG for over four, going on five years as a specialist. She's consistently one of our rockstar specialists. She's got a couple of internal records scaling YouTube campaigns with the lowest CPA. She's got some of the most successful performance Max campaigns that we've ever run as an agency. And so with that intro, Savannah, welcome to the show and how's it going?

Savannah:

Thank you, Brett. Going pretty good. Pretty good. Excited to be

Brett:

Here. Yeah. Yeah. This is also where you can throw in first time, long time type of thing. First time caller, long time listener. I don't know if that's actually true though.

Savannah:

This I try to listen to most of the podcast episodes you put out.

Brett:

Nice. Okay, great. Now, is this the first time you've been on or did you come on a panel one time? I think on the podcast.

Savannah:

This is the first podcast. Yeah, done some webinars. Wow. First timer,

Brett:

Maiden voyage. You've done speaking panels at Google. So we've done a number of events at the YouTube offices. You've done that before. We've done panels for the overall OMG commerce team. I know you've done several other things, but first time on the podcast, it's exciting times for short. So going to dive into pax, and as I mentioned, it's kind of divisive. A lot of people are actually frustrated with Performance Max. I know both D two C brands that are like, Hey, can we just go back to smart shopping? I know other agencies that kind of hate it. There's just been quite a bit of, it's just a divisive topic. And so what we found though is that for a lot of our accounts, performance Max is the top performing campaign type. However, you can't just turn it on and let it do its thing because there's some sneaky features.

There's some things under the surface with Performance Max that make it not a set it and forget it type of campaign, even though that's kind of what Google wants it to be. So a few things to watch out. For one, it will lean into brand and the idea behind Performance Max is it's going to find easy conversions. It's going to lean into those. And so brand is kind of the first place that it often starts, but that does not often add to true incremental new customer acquisition. And so that's something to watch out for. And so I think it's also one of those things where there's just not a lot of transparency. So seven channels rolled into one and people want more transparency, more control. We're kind of control freaks as agencies and as marketing experts. And so we'd a little more transparency. Some of that is coming, just came back from Google Marketing Live.

There's going to be some changes coming to Performance Max, which I think everyone will welcome. And then I think in some ways there's just a lack of trust in Google right now because of a few things in the news. And so we want to help you turn this from a meh campaign into a max campaign. That's what I heard someone say on online recently. As they say, it's more like performance meh instead of Performance Max. So we're going to help you dial it up a little bit, but from your perspective, Savannah, and maybe I touched on a lot of it, but why are people frustrated with Performance Max?

Savannah:

Yeah, I think the lack of visibility is one of the biggest things. So you don't know what's driving the performance, so it's hard to know what to invest in. So a video is working, you want to create more video. You can't tell in Performance Max if that's what's working the best or not. Also having lack of controls. So if you see, hey, maybe desktop is working really well, you can't make those bid adjustments to invest a little bit more into those areas. So not being able to control those kinds of things, no placement exclusions, that kind of things. And then the visibility that we do have, they're not always actionable insights. You can see, hey, this audience is working, but what can we really do with

Brett:

That? And what's really interesting, I was on a call with a large client recently and they said something really well that I think is worth repeating. The worst thing that can happen with a campaign is not that it fails whether a campaign succeeds or fails. That's not the worst thing. The worst thing is if it succeeds or fails and you don't know why. If you don't learn from it, if you can't say, okay, this is what worked and we know why. And so now we're going to duplicate that where this is what didn't work and here's our hypothesis to why. So what we're going to test next, both of those are valuable, finding what works or what didn't and understanding why sometimes the performance Max, especially right off the shelf, does not give you those insights and you need those. And so there's a few ways we can get into the weeds a little bit with Performance Max and uncover what's actually going on inside of the campaigns.

And then we can make adjustments. But yeah, natively it doesn't always provide the insights that we need. So I think to maybe set the stage because we do Performance Max if it's done properly, because we think it can scale and there's a lot of good things there. Also, Google's not going to reverse the clock. I think we can just, if anybody is hoping, Hey, let's just go back to the standard shopping days, I don't think it's going to happen. This is where Google is headed. They want more campaign types, performance Max as indicated by the launch of demand gen campaigns. So what are your favorite Max success stories, Savannah, without mentioning client names and whatnot, what are some of your favorite success stories?

Savannah:

One of my recent successes is with a jewelry client. We spent the last year or so just testing new messaging, new ad copy, getting better with images. They just really leveled up when it came to creative. And so over the last year we did tons of testing and comparing Q1 of this year to Q1 of last year, click-through rates were up about 40%. So that's one of my favorites. Just knowing that creative really does matter when it comes to p max. And then of course another one, I think we've mentioned this one before, back in the early days of max scaling to about 10,000 per day with a lawn care company with brand exclusions in place. So all that coming from new customers, I think that's one of my favorite

Brett:

Ones. That was one of the great ones. And what's really cool about that, and we'll talk about this more later, but that specific campaign leaned in pretty heavily to YouTube. So it was scaling to 10 KA day and beyond, and a large percentage of that traffic was from YouTube. And there's some specific reasons why there. And so we'll kind of dive into that as we go. But what you said about the jewelry client, brilliant, and I want to dive into that a little bit. So let's talk creative for a minute. I think the way a lot of brands approach Performance Max, and I think the way a lot of agencies approach Performance Max is they put a ton of time and creativity and brain power and human capital into good creatives for Meta because that's maybe where they're spending the most money. But then with Performance Max or with Google, they treat it search or just table stakes.

And so they throw creative assets at it and then never look again. And what is really important to understand is that you have to give Google your best. So Met Creatives, met Results. So thinking about what are my top performing image assets? What are my top performing video assets as I put them into Performance Max, am I watching performance and then dropping the losers and adding more potential winners for testing? Am I thinking about headlines and descriptions both for search but also for display and remarketing? Because again, that's another one where we audit hundreds of accounts every year and we look at sometimes, man, these headlines are boring, and these descriptions do not differentiate your product or your brand in the least. And so if you give Google Underpowered assets, the algorithm can only do so much. And so this is something we talk about a lot with our clients and we try to gain learnings frequently from images and things like that and then we can test it. But what is your approach to creative testing and how do you talk about creative assets inside of Performance Max with our clients? Yeah,

Savannah:

So I think Performance Max isn't the best place necessarily to start creative testing just because there isn't that visibility into those creative insights, see what's working. So whenever we start with Performance Max, I like to give it assets that we already know work really well, so we can kind of create that baseline and then from there we can start testing additional creatives.

Brett:

One quick note on that, Savannah, which is really important is right now basically as you upload assets or put assets into Performance Max, you can kind of see what's the best performing, what's good, what's average, what's below average, things like that kind of general stuff, but no specific metrics tied to assets, but that is coming so soon we'll be able to see performance at the asset level, which will unlock a new level of learning and then the ability to tweak and adjust and maximize.

Savannah:

Yeah, absolutely. Really, really excited to get a few more of those insights for

Brett:

Sure. So yeah, I kind of cut you off iStream there. So starting with the best performing assets, don't start with stuff that you don't have any idea if it's going to work. Start with the best and then what do you do from there?

Savannah:

Yeah, I think it's really important to give it every type of asset as well. After all its purpose is to go right place, right time. If you don't have all the creative to be eligible for all the different ad inventory, it can't accomplish what it was set out to do. So making sure you have all the aspect ratios, landscape, vertical, portrait images, giving it at least one of everything is really important as well.

Brett:

And I think that is important because the campaign type does want all the assets and certainly there are some interesting things we can do going feed only or starving the campaign of certain assets to try to push it one way or the other. It's a little more advanced strategies. We can maybe talk about that later, but I think in general that makes sense. Now let's talk a little bit about using Performance Max for new customer acquisition. I think this is one of the areas where people get frustrated with Google and Performance Max in general from the lens of, Hey, is this really incremental or is this just leaning into brand? So how do you look at Max from a new customer acquisition standpoint? And then let's get into some of the strategies and tactics we use to get the campaigns to lean more into new customer acquisition. Yeah,

Savannah:

PAXs can be a great avenue for new customer acquisition just because there are so many different options as far as settings go to make it lean into those new customers. So I know a lot of people are saying it just really focuses on brand and remarketing, but I think that's just if you have it set up incorrectly or just kind of do that, set it and forget it approach. Totally. So if you wanted to lean into new customers, I think the first thing is going to be the brand exclusions. So basically you just create a brand list and it looks at your website and it says, okay, we're not going to show up for any of these searches. Excuse. So for a haircare client that I have recently, we added in the brand exclusions and we saw using the script from Mikes, always shout out to Mikes for that. We were able to see in the search terms report for P max, about 36% of our clicks for that campaign were from branded searches After we added the brand exclusions, we see about 2% are from branded searches, so it's not completely excluding them, but we'll take 2%

Brett:

For sure. Close enough, close enough, absolutely. So let's actually pause a second and let's talk about that Mike Rhodes script because this is something that is a little more advanced or there's a free version, there's a paid version, but this script that our buddy Mike Rhodes created and shout out to Mike Rhodes, longtime friend. He and I spoke at Traffic and Conversion Summit way back in the day. We both talked about Google Shopping at the same event. We're like, Hey, we should maybe be friends. And so then been in touch with him ever since I was 16 something, but now he's got a script that runs for Performance Max to pull out some insights. But what does that script do for us?

Savannah:

So there are actually two, there's one script where it looks it can pull the spend from the different channels so we can see how much of our spend on Performance Max is actually going to display, how much is going to shopping, how much is going to video, which has been huge to be able to see what's really working inside a performance max. The second script is a search terms report. So it'll look at the last 30 days, the searches that were driving performance. So we'll see impressions, clicks, conversions, conversion value and all of that.

Brett:

Yeah, I would really not want to run Performance Max without these scripts. I think it gives a layer of insight that you just don't get otherwise and you're sort of flying blind without these. And one of the mistakes, and I've actually written some LinkedIn posts that'll be coming soon on Performance Max, but I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make is they don't understand the traffic composition of Performance Max. So okay, I'm spending a hundred dollars a day or a thousand dollars a day or $5,000 a day on Performance Max, but where is that spend going? Is it mostly going to search, mostly going to shopping, mostly going to display or YouTube? Where is that going? And you need to see that once, what makes sense to change. If a campaign is leaning into 85% search, then changing headlines, descriptions, thinking about search terms is really, really important.

If it's leaning in mostly to shopping, then that's where maybe some feed optimizations would make sense, or if it's YouTube, then thinking about creative for YouTube makes a lot of sense. And so understanding traffic composition makes a big difference. And what's interesting is since Performance Max was kind of the next evolution of smart shopping, and since shopping is at the core, it's foundational for e-commerce brands, a lot of people treat Performance Max just like, Hey, this is my new standard or my new smart shopping. And that's not a bad way to look at it, except that some campaigns lean way more into search than you might think. And we noticed that with a couple of our brands once we started running the script is that, Hey, we thought these were 60% shopping, but they were actually 70% search. And so then you know what to tweak or adjust, and then maybe I should start another campaign and maybe I should do a feed only campaign to really push it to Google shopping or whatnot. And so getting that traffic composition and that traffic breakdown is critical. Without it, you really can't make good decisions. So then how else are you getting campaigns to lean into new customers? We can exclude brand, we can see what's happening with these scripts. What else are you doing to lean into new customers?

Savannah:

Yeah, so we've got the brand exclusions. The second big one is going to be the new customer features that they have on Performance Max. So there's a couple of different options. We can bid higher for new customers or we can bid only for new customers. So I'll kind of dive in without getting too nerdy about how those work. If we bid higher for new customers, basically we say every new customer is worth a hundred dollars more than a returning customer or whatever value that we decide to give it. So whenever a new customer converts, we're feeding the algorithms more conversion value data, so then it starts going after those new customers a lot more heavily. One thing to note with that it does artificially inflate overall conversion value. So you have to keep that in mind when we look at results. And then the second option is bidding only. And

Brett:

Actually I want to just talk about that just really quickly just to make sure this is clear. So remember when we first started testing this feature a few years ago and we're like, oh, this is smart. Yeah, I'm willing to pay an extra 50 bucks or an extra a hundred bucks maybe even for a new customer. But when you give that change to Google, you put that in the settings, I'm willing to pay an extra 50, extra a hundred. Google just adds that amount to the conversion value of that purchase, and that's all just inflated. It's to kind get the algorithm to work and to show to weight that conversion higher than another conversion. And I remember when I first saw it, I remember a conversation with Greg specifically, what is going on? This is ridiculous. So then you have to get the numbers right. Then you can no longer trust the conversion value column or even conversion value over cost ROAS column if you do this. So then you got to run some custom calculations to strip out that extra fee, which really just becomes kind of cumbersome. So in theory, it's good because you're saying, Hey, go after new customers more. Then it messes up some of your data. So it kind of creates a problem there, but so you don't have to do that route, you get another option. And what is that? Yeah,

Savannah:

I typically lean towards the second one, which is bidding only for new customers. So basically you have to go into the conversion section on the account, define what your current customers are, so giving it the best info that you have going to be your customer match lists. You can create some conversion based lists based on purchasers and things like that in the account. Then it will understand who those people are and then kind of exclude them from the account. It's not technically an exclusion, but it's kind of excluding them from that campaign.

Brett:

And we have found that as we apply the new customer only to Performance Max, it does a better job of leaning into finding new customers. It does not do a perfect job. There's still going to be some repeat customers that come through there, but it does a better job. It keeps your data clean as well when you go that route. So we in general like that a little bit better. Now, an important note to make here. So let's talk brand a little bit. So now we've got a Performance Max campaign that's excluding brand. It's potentially going after new customers only. But then what are we doing for brand? Because it's still important that we show up for our brand name. And I know this is a tricky topic. I remember our friend and longtime client, Moiz Ali said, Hey, this is a tax, right? This is the Google tax that they levy, but you got to show up for your brand name.

I think it's important to note that, hey, just because someone saw your ad on YouTube or Facebook or elsewhere, someone recommended a product, it does not mean they're 100% sold on your product. So I don't think it's the same thing if someone searches for Savannah's Skincare, which has a nice ring to it and then they've never bought from you before, that's not the same thing as someone typing in Nike sneakers. If someone types in Nike sneakers, they probably know they want Nike. So if Adidas sneak in there with an ad, not likely to purchase, but if I type in Savannah's Skincare and someone else pops up, and I don't really know Savannah Skincare other than maybe just one ad that I saw, but another ad sneaks in with a good offer and it looks similar and it looks attractive, like, hey, I'm going to it out. So can't disappear from brand because otherwise we will see sales go down almost certainly. But you also don't want to overpay otherwise you're just giving all your profits to Google. So if we've got brand solutions and Performance Max, we're going to do customer only. What are we doing to make sure we're getting the right brand traffic and not overpaying for it?

Savannah:

So my favorite setup is if brand exclusions are in place on Performance Max still utilize standard shopping to pick up all of those branded searches. So we actually did a test recently on one of my clients sells haircare products. We had a Performance Max campaign with brand exclusions and then tried Performance Max to pick up that branded traffic. But we actually saw when we utilized Standard Shopping, we had a lot more control over our CPCs, so efficiency was way higher with a branded standard shopping campaign.

Brett:

I love that so much. I think branded shopping or standard shopping where you're bidding for a really high row as you're not excluding brand that allows you to show up for branded terms because with anything that's product driven, so anything e-commerce, anything D two C, you search for Savannah Skincare, you search for car accessories or you search for haircare products, whatever you're searching for, almost certainly shopping results are going to show up there. And they're almost always more enticing and more interesting to click than just a search ad. And so if you have a branded search campaign, great, you should, but without having some kind of branded shopping exposure as well, you are going to lose clicks. And that's a really powerful place for a competitor to snipe your branded traffic. And so got to have a solution for that. And we totally think that standard shopping aimed at brand is the way to go. And then any insights on, I know this about Performance Max, but any insights on search on branded search campaigns?

Savannah:

So branded search, I think they're still super important, especially if you're doing a lot of top of funnel targeting. We see that if you have those brand exclusions in place, you can still use search of course, an exact match to still have control over your CPCs on branded search. But having the combo of branded search and branded shopping is super important because a lot of times we see at the top of the search results page, there's going to be that shopping carousel. So if you're not there and on branded search, you're going to see competitors winning out on your search results

Brett:

Page. Yeah, what's really interesting is that when a brand shows up in both places, so when you've got a listing or a position or multiple positions even better in that shopping carousel, and then you have a search ad as well, the click-through rate of both increases because there's just something about that, Hey, I'm seeing now your name in multiple places want to have just more odds of clicking on one of your listings. But two, I think there's a little bit of validation there I'm seeing in multiple places, and we all know that what happens when Click-through rate increases, Google generally rewards that generally they want to show your ads more if click-through rate is high. And so you want to lift that rate for sure there. So very cool. How do you see Performance Max fitting in with other campaign types? And maybe a way to frame this is what's the ideal campaign structure? I know that's a really huge question, but for D two C brand, what's the kind of account structure look like and how does Max fit in with other campaigns?

Savannah:

So I'm still utilizing every campaign type. So even though Performance Max has placements across the board, I still like to have a little bit of that control and have search display, demand gen, all of it we see with Search, I still like to have it segmented brand and non-brand. We are utilizing Broad Match. So the best media buyers, they love Broad Match already. So definitely recommend that Performance Max.

Brett:

That's a bold statement there. There may be an explosion of activity on Twitter. Do we love Broad Match? We really, and actually let's just double click on that really quickly. So broad match, I think there was a time and place when broad match was just terrible, right? Google is almost forcing us into that path to a certain degree, but I think there's some other things behind it that actually make it worthwhile from a testing standpoint at least, but also probably from a new customer acquisition standpoint. Why are you bullish on Broad Match right now?

Savannah:

There's a few reasons. So we see Google's rewarding people with Broad Match. So you're seeing lower CPCs with Broad match than say Exact. So it kind of flip flopped as it was in the past. But they also say, I think they said 15% of searches every day are new searches they've never seen before. So we just want to make sure we're eligible for all the different ways that people could be searching.

Brett:

And this is a stat that's been around forever, but it just has not changed where you have 15% of all search queries done on Google every day by browsers, by people is the brand new. Google's never seen them before. And so it's just one of those things where I think people are just inventing new ways to search. And as we get comfortable searching, we search in different ways and we search with our voice and things like that. And so you want to be eligible for that. And then I think one of the other important distinctions is because now Google knows so much about shoppers and because they can see your previous activity leading up to the search that you just conducted, they can bid up or down, Google can bid up or down based on how likely they think you are to convert with this more broad search term.

So it's the combination of search term or keyword, and then the person behind it and their behavior, they can kind of influence where Google's like, okay, this may be a broad search, generic search, but the person making the search, we believe in them. And one just quick example is if my 19-year-old daughter who's taken a class at college, if she searched for some kind of supplement doing a research paper or something, she's not going to buy it. And so Google maybe knowing that, Hey, I just did all these research searches likely for a paper for school or something. Now I search for a specific supplement, let's not even show an ad. Or if 44-year-old Brett Curry searches for the same supplement and I've got a history of buying a lot of supplements, which I do now want to show that ad. So same search term but different person behind it. I want to bid for one, I don't want to bid for the other. That's what Google is wanting to do and that's what the smart bid algorithm can do. And so another reason that to give broad match a try, but with caution, it could still get of bounds a little bit. So okay, went to broad match search for just a second, but what else? Back to the question of structure of a D two C account and how PAX fits in, you want to continue down that path?

Savannah:

Yeah, for sure. So still utilizing Display Demand Gen campaigns, like we said before, performance Max is a little bit harder to test creative if you don't already have a baseline. So still utilizing display for remarketing campaigns to test creative, test new images, test new messaging, and then demand gen. I'm starting to adopt a lot more demand gen, it's gotten quite a bit better over the past few months. So definitely, definitely utilizing Demand Gen as well. Great for top of funnel Android marketing there. And then with YouTube performance Max, it does have a lot of YouTube placements, but it's not going to go after YouTube like a YouTube campaign on its own will. So still having all the different campaign types is important.

Brett:

And it's something that Google recommends too. Google still recommends like, Hey have specific campaigns for these channels. And at Google Marketing Live recently, they even talked about what they call the power pair, which is just Performance Max and search running together that in accounts where Performance Max and search campaigns exist, then both of them perform better and we've seen that as well. And so yeah, having specific demand gen specific YouTube specific search, maybe standard shopping for brand and stuff like that, all of that actually helps Performance Max work a little bit better. And I heard, actually, I think you were at the same event as me at the YouTube offices in LA where a product specialist was talking and she kind of used the analogy that Performance Max is sort of like the mortar. So you've got Bricks, which would be some of your other campaigns, and then PAX is kind of designed to go in and fill in the cracks.

Now I really like that analogy from one perspective, but from the other side I'm like, well, performance Max should be a brick too. If it's mostly Google shopping, like Google shopping is a brick, it's foundational for D two C brands. But I think what she meant there is as other campaigns kind of inform the algorithm, and Google gets a really nice picture of who your ideal customer is, performance Max should lean into opportunities you're missing. And that's what I believe. We saw Savannah with that outdoor products brand where they had YouTube rocking. YouTube was spending multiple six figures a month, really great ads. And so then we had Performance Max though with some of the same assets and it was leaning into YouTube well also and profitably. And I believe as we broke it down and looked at it, max was just finding opportunities we were missing in the other campaigns. So the other campaigns informed Google on who your buyer is, performance Max leans into missed opportunities. And that's in general the way it works with other campaign types. You have a really well built out search campaign structure, it's still going to get some of the traffic performance. Max isn't going to steal all of your search traffic, but having these other campaigns helps inform performance Max nicely. Anything you would add to that or any specific call outs like on Demand Gen or some of the other campaign types?

Savannah:

I kind of view Performance Max as I think two ways. It helps to pick up some of the traffic that you've, with Demand Gen and YouTube we're growing top of funnel growing awareness and performance Max kind of helps to close the deal for a lot of those sales. So we're driving that traffic performance Max is closing the deal. And then again, like you just said, it's kind of picking up where we're missing out so we can have great YouTube set up, but then maybe Max see some opportunities where with audiences we're not necessarily bidding on and it knows the right time, the right placements, all of that. So it's kind of closing the gap.

Brett:

Awesome. Let's talk about mistakes that we see people make. So you take over accounts and you're known for taking accounts and really ratcheting up performance and creating some pretty dramatic turnarounds and improvements. But what are some of the mistakes you see that either other agencies make or that D two C brands make when it comes to Performance Max?

Savannah:

I think one of the biggest things we kind of mentioned it earlier is just treating it like a set it and forget it campaign, really not Performance Max does like to get comfortable. So if you don't shake it up, don't consistently add new assets, change up your images, your copy, that kind of thing. It will kind of get comfortable and it struggle to scale. So if you set it and forget it, it is going to start going after just that easy traffic and you won't be able to see its full potential. So I always recommend changing the images every now and then adding new search themes, testing some new audience signals, that kind of thing. Another big one I see a lot of people make the mistake with is I'm going to call it just paint splattering. They just throw everything at it. No strategy, just here's everything I got, which can work. But you want to make sure you're being really strategic with who do you want your ads to be in front of? Who are you trying to talk to? Are you using really good creative or are you just throwing a bunch of random stuff at it? I think that's a big mistake I see

Brett:

Too. Yeah, and a lot of that comes down then to proper segmentation. So we could have a whole podcast about when to consolidate campaigns, when to break apart campaigns for better targeting and things like that. But at a minimum, we need to segment our asset groups, which so it kind of functions like an ad group, but in P Maxs they're called asset groups where if you throw everything together, the algorithm's going to have a hard time really matching up the right creatives to what a user is looking for. And so to give an example, we worked for years and years with Boom by Cindy Joseph, shout out to their Firestone and team, but a few of their products, they have Boom Bright, which is mascara a wildly successful product. They also have some skin moisturizers, boom, silk boom, cotton top sellers, and then they have their boom stick.

But all of those are a little bit different. Now, you could have the same headline, same description, same images to sort of sell all three, but then you just have to lean into brand and overall brand proposition. But really to sell a product to sell mascara, I've got a different headline than I've got for BoomStick, right? BoomStick is like a makeup bag replacement, cotton and silk or moisturizers, mascara bright as mascara. And so you want to kind of segment your asset group, so that same image, same headline, same descriptions, same listing inside of your feed all sell the same product. And that kind of goes into, I'm just going to throw all this in here and just let Google sort it out. Now, if you have an asset group, you have a campaign that you want to lean into shopping traffic, it's okay to have it all together, right? Because then Google does know what to do with the feed only. And so yeah, I think it's kind of lazy segmentation or not thinking about how are we pairing our different asset groups or how are we structuring our campaigns makes a big difference as well. Any other mistakes you see? Either mistakes in running it, mistakes in optimizing it, any callouts there?

Savannah:

One thing that seems like it will be really simple, but I see a lot when we take over new accounts is they'll have, you think this campaign has these certain products in it, the images, all this stuff just because of the naming convention. But then if you go actually into the listing, we see different products. So the assets and the products just aren't matching up, which is such a simple mistake. But I see it time and time again when we take over new accounts. So absolutely check your listing groups, make sure it matches your copy, your images, all that.

Brett:

Yeah, really good call out because a lot of times and someone that doesn't work in Google ads all day, they don't exactly know what's click around and what to see. And so yeah, okay, this asset group is labeled mascara, this asset group is labeled shorts and this asset group is labeled socks. And so clearly that's what they are. But when you dig in and look a little bit closer, that's not what it is. And so then you're not getting the performance you think you're getting. And I think another thing to kind of keep in mind, I'm curious you if you have a thought on this, Savannah, from an optimization standpoint, I've also seen some campaigns and hey, we've seen some P max campaigns just crush results and get to 35,000, $50,000 a day and spend on performance max, new customer acquisition focus, things like that.

One thing I've noticed though is that there are a few different Google campaign types that will do this. Performance. Max I think is one of them that does this where let's say you're rocking along at a 300% row as that's your target ROAS bid is 300%. You're getting a good performance, but you're like, you know what? I can really live with a 200% return on ad spend because there's a halo effect and other things going on here. So then you lower it to 200% and it's like, okay, well now it's getting a 200 to 2 25 we're so good. But if you dig a little bit closer, the only thing that happened is that your ROAS dropped. You didn't get more conversions, you didn't get more clicks, really, all Google did was like, oh, sweet, I've got more to play with. I'm going to lean into display and some other things that just totally crap out on you.

And so I think that's something to look at too. I'm not saying you shouldn't lower your ROAS targets to bid more aggressively. I think in a lot of cases you can and should. Then it goes back to some of the earlier points made. You've got to look at the traffic breakdown. What did that do to our traffic composition? Because the last thing you want to do is just blindly look at ROAS and say, well, we're okay, we were at 300, but yeah, we're still okay with the 2 25, but you didn't get anything additional from that. You just gave more money to Google. And so being mindful of that, as we're getting more aggressive with our bids, where is that extra traffic coming from? How is it performing? And really just having a keen eye there. So I dunno if you have any callouts there or not and no worries if not.

Savannah:

Yeah, nothing specific. I think you covered that pretty well.

Brett:

Sweet. Okay, good. Any other mistakes that you see people make or any other points of education that you make related to Performance Max that kind of create an aha moment for clients that you talk to?

Savannah:

Yeah, I've got a couple. So one is that Performance Max is going to really favor some of your top products. So if you have a huge catalog, it's probably only going to serve maybe 10, maybe a hundred if you're lucky. And so you probably have a lot of products that aren't getting any ad serves at all. So again, this goes back to just throwing it all into one campaign that can really, you're not going to be showing your whole catalog. So going back to the segmentation too little segmentation means a lot of your products aren't going to be showing too much segmentation. On the other hand, you risk not getting enough data struggling to scale, but you want to find that sweet spot of segmenting so that way all of your products are getting visibility. That's a big one. I think Micros calls it zombie products, but yeah, just making sure we break those out so that way you can really take full advantage of performance Max. The other thing,

Brett:

Yeah, and I think just to talk about that just a little bit is it's sort of the 80 20 rule where 80% of the conversions in site of performance Max and specifically the shopping portion Performance Max are going to come from 20% of your products. But we've seen that it's even more exaggerated than that most of the time inside of Performance Max inside of shopping where it's maybe like the 90 10 rule or the 95 5 rule. And so then it's like, okay, we're only selling this handful of products inside of Performance Max, but we want to get the other one some visibility too. So how do we break out campaign structure to attempt to get more visibility there? So yeah, great call out and what else are you going to say?

Savannah:

Yeah, the other thing goes back to getting Performance Max to focus on new customers. It seems so simple, but the bid strategy itself that you're utilizing will kind of determine where your placements are. So if we use Target roas, it's going to really lean into search and shopping, but we found if you switch over to a Target CPA bid strategy, it's really going to go after more new customers. You're going to see more image-based placements, more video placements, which of course are better at converting new customers.

Brett:

Yeah, super interesting. Sometimes the bid strategy mixes things up a little bit too. Target ROAS is definitely more of a shopping type bid strategy or search. It just kind of always has been. Target CPA has always been what we've scaled YouTube campaigns with and display campaigns with in the past. And so sometimes even just making that change can get a campaign to lean into one channel versus another. So that's super interesting. Savannah, this has been amazing, your first podcast, absolutely crushing it. Any parting words of wisdom, any insights related to either Performance Max or anything Google ads related or anything you're excited about that you've heard is coming down the pike related to Google Ads and Performance

Savannah:

Max? So as a marketer, of course, getting more insight and visibility into Performance Max is really exciting to me. But I guess parting words is performance Max can be a great avenue for new customers. You just have to make sure that you're on top of you just stay on top of it, whether that be the settings, the creative. So if it's only leaning into brand and remarketing traffic, there's probably something going on. You need somebody to take a little bit closer look at it. I would say,

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. I think it really boils down to understand the composition of your performance Max campaigns, make sure you're using your best assets, your best creatives, look at getting proper segmentation, and then as you optimize, really watch performance and see how all of those other things, shift traffic composition, things like that, and just keep working because yeah, I'm with you. Performance Max can be awesome. It can also be a real drain. And so the key is in doing it the right way. I know for me, getting the insights that are coming and coming pretty soon is going to be exciting. The other thing I'm excited about is bid for profits. And this is something that we're beginning to test, and I believe it's still in beta. I'm not exactly sure, but it'll be coming soon this year. Where Target ROAS was awesome as that got built up, and I think this is the next level, the next layer for Google where we can attach COGS data to shopping feeds and then bid to maximize profits. And that's awesome because some products in our catalog may have wildly different margins or different structures there. And so ROAS really only tells part of the story. Getting the machine to lean into profits I think is going to be a huge win. So if you want to learn more about that, reach out to MG Commerce. Excited to test that as well. And so with that, Savannah, thank you so much for coming on and we'll have to do round two soon.

Savannah:

Absolutely. Thank you, Brad. It's been so much fun.

Brett:

Awesome. And hey, if you're listening to this and you're like, dang, I need someone like Savannah running my Google Ads account, I know that I'm not getting what I should be getting out of Performance Max, or search or shopping or YouTube, then reach out to MG Commerce. We're happy to one, to a complimentary audit for you, a strategic review for you if you're a qualifying D two C brand. Happy to check that out. Happy to talk strategy with you and with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

‍

An eCommerce Podcast Hosted by Brett Curry

Welcome to the Spicy Curry podcast where we explore hot takes in eCommerce and Digital Marketing. We feature some of the brightest guests with the spiciest perspectives on how to grow your business online.
View all episodes
Ezra Firestone’s Top 7 eCommerce Growth Strategies for 2022
Episode 1
:
Ezra Firestone

Ezra Firestone’s Top 7 eCommerce Growth Strategies for 2022

No one knows more about eCommerce growth than my friend Ezra Firestone. Arguably, no one is a more interesting interview than Ezra either. This episode does NOT disappoint. Ezra bootstrapped growth for Boom from $0 to $40mill + per year. He also recently bought another high-profile eComm brand (more on that in the show).This episode is straight fire. Here’s a look at what we dive into:

  • How Ezra is approaching email marketing and email list growth in 2022. I’m guessing you’re missing his email strategy - even if you consider yourself an email marketing pro.
  • How BOOM is approaching front-end offers.
  • Why you should consider inventing a holiday and how BOOM has done that.
  • Growing your SMS list.
  • Plus MUCH, much more!

‍

Mentioned in this Episode:

Ezra Firestone

   - LinkedIn

   - Instagram

   - Twitter

   - Facebook


BOOM! by Cindy Joseph‍

oVertone‍

Zipify Pages‍

Smart Marketer‍

Blue Ribbon Mastermind‍

Klaviyo‍

Postscript‍

Attentive‍

Dan Kennedy‍

Jay Abraham‍

Native Deodorant‍

Northbeam‍

John Grimshaw‍

Molly Pittman‍

Train My Traffic Person

‍

Transcript:

Brett Curry:

Welcome to the Spicy Curry Podcast, where we explore hot takes in e-commerce and digital marketing. We feature some of the brightest guests with the spiciest perspectives on what it takes to grow your business online. Season one is built on the old business adage that it really takes three things to succeed. One, have something good to say. Two, say it well. And three, say it often.

Brett Curry:

Today, my guest is none other than the e-commerce legend himself, Ezra Firestone. If you're serious about growing your e-commerce business, then you have to pay attention to Ezra. And arguably, there's not a more interesting interview than Ezra Firestone. He bootstrapped Boom by Cindy Joseph from zero to now, $40 million a year in growth. He now owns and operates Overtone, a $25 million a year e-commerce brand. He also co-founded Zipify Pages, Smart Marketer, and he's the mastermind behind my favorite e-commerce mastermind, Blue Ribbon.

Brett Curry:

This is a wide ranging discussion. We talk about things like cold plunges and samurai swords. But yes of course, we spend most of our time talking about e-commerce growth strategies. We look at Ezra's really unique approach to email marketing, and how much of his ad budget he's dedicating to growing his email list. We also look at SMS marketing. And we look at how to invent a holiday, and what that looks like. And then we're also looking at how Boom is crafting and creating front end offers. You won't want to miss a minute of this show. I hope you enjoy my interview with Ezra Firestone.

Brett Curry:

The Spicy Curry Podcast is brought to you by OMG Commerce, Attentive, OneClickUpsell, Zipify Pages, and Payability. All right, I am absolutely stoked out of my mind for this next guest, and personal friend of mine. We do some work together. I always count it a joy when I get to talk to this guest. And so, to have this uninterrupted time to dive in deep on strategies, it's going to be amazing, and I'm glad you get to listen in. And so if I look at, man, if you need tactics, if you need strategies, if you need help for how to take your e-commerce business to the next level, and if you need to get a little bit spicy, you need Ezra Firestone.

Brett Curry:

And so today I've got the man, the myth, the legend. He's flexing if you're watching the video. Got Ezra Firestone on the call. We're talking about eight top strategies to just blow up your business this year in a good way. We may not get to all eight, we'll see how it goes. But with that intro, Ezra, what's up, man? How you doing? And welcome to the show.

Ezra Firestone:

Brett, the Fury Curry, I'm fresh out of the cold plunge, dog. One minute, 30 seconds, 32 degrees. My whole body is red, I'm shivering, I'm shaking, we're podcasting. Happy to be here man, thanks.

Brett Curry:

It's hilarious. You hopped on the call and I was like, "Oh no, something's wrong with Ezra. He just doesn't look right." It's like, well, you just got out of a 32 degree bathtub. Of course, your body's in shock. But I appreciate taking the time to do this. And man, it's just always, always fun to chat.

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah, man. And just watching your journey, I seen you come up in the game from back in the day, when you had an SEO agency. You know?

Brett Curry:

Yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

From way back. I don't even know if it was 2008, 2009, it was a long time ago. 2010, whatever it was. And then to watch you rise to be one of the most prominent voices in the e-commerce world, and also to have a top 2% advertising agency, maybe you guys are top 1% at this point, I mean, you run all of our stuff. So it's been fun to watch your journey and just happy to be on the podcast.

Brett Curry:

Dude, thanks. It's been so fun to grow. I credit you and your community with a lot of that growth. And your approach to having fun, and doing what's right, and being extremely successful, and that blend, is awesome. Your motto, for those that don't know, is "Serve the world unselfishly and profit." And actually before we get into tactics and strategies for this year, and there's some amazing ones, can you talk a little bit about that for those that are new to the world of Ezra Firestone?

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a description-

Brett Curry:

... Yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

I think it's a description, not a statement. It's how I have seen things work. That when you are in a role of service, unselfishly with the goal of serving, you do profit by the very nature of serving. And it may not be monetarily. Maybe it's spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically, energetically. But my goal is to serve. And I find joy in the act of service. I think there's a lot of value, and fun, and enjoyment, and good. And also in business, if you can truly serve a community, you will be profitable. And so I think that's just a description of how it goes. And also it's what I'm looking to do. I'm looking to serve the world unselfishly and also profit. I want to take care of my family. I want to take care of my community. I want to put resource towards causes in the world that I find noble. And I need fucking money to do that. Right?

Brett Curry:

Exactly. Yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

And the way going to get that money is by helping a group of people out with solutions to problems they have.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, I love that. If you look at, what is leadership, what does it mean to lead a company or to be a CEO, it's really serving. Serving your team more than commanding and dictating.

Ezra Firestone:

100%.

Brett Curry:

And how do build a brand, how do you build a business? It's serving a community. It's serving the needs and meeting the needs of buyers. And so, yeah. I love it. So it's really, really just-

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah. And then just because you're serving a group, doesn't mean you can't sell them stuff.

Brett Curry:

Exactly.

Ezra Firestone:

Selling them stuff is also serving them.

Brett Curry:

Because people want to buy stuff, right?

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah.

Brett Curry:

They want to have those needs met. And retail therapy is a thing too. So one of the greatest acts of service you can do, is sell a good product to the right person.

Ezra Firestone:

I'll tell you what dude. You and I both know that this last six months have been the most intense and stressful on the personal side of my life, with some health problems of some family members. And I done fucking discovered stress shopping, bro. I had never done that. I'm not a guy who buys shit that I just don't need or want. I'm willing to buy things. I have a lot of money, and I didn't come from money. I now have more money than basically everyone that I know, and I'm not against purchasing things. But I usually purchase things that I really like. I'll buy a nice espresso machine, or I'll buy a nice skateboard.

Brett Curry:

Which I've had espresso from that espresso machine. And you pull a mean shot of espresso, my friend.

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah. I will spend money happily on things that are enjoyable and that I will use, but I don't just buy frivolously, until now, dude. I bought six pairs of the same Chelsea boot. When I turned around, I was like, "What? I have lost my mind, dude." This is stress shopping.

Brett Curry:

Why did I buy this?

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah.

Brett Curry:

I think one time I was on a call with you and you just recently bought like a samurai sword or something. I don't think it was actually a samurai sword, but it was some kind of sword.

Ezra Firestone:

A katana. Yeah, it was a Japanese katana. I use it to chop wood for my sweat lodge. So that was actually a useful tool. It's good for chopping kindling.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. That's awesome, man. Super fun. So people are buying right now. The economy's pretty hot, and certainly there are some issues too. But people are buying stuff. So let's dive in. You recently wrote a blog post, which I'm going to link to, so you can see this in the show notes, talking about eight top growth strategies. And first of all, for those that don't know the journey, talk about Boom by Cindy Joseph and how it's grown.

Ezra Firestone:

(singing)

Brett Curry:

Because you guys are set to do about 40 million this year, right?

Ezra Firestone:

So I started this brand in 2010. Took me to 2014 to make my first million dollar a year in total revenue. By 2016, I was doing 17 million. This last year, I did 42. This year I think I'll do 47. Top line revenue at about a 25% EBIDA margin, so maybe making six or 7 million a year in profit on that.

Brett Curry:

Which is amazing. Amazing.

Ezra Firestone:

I got about 30 employees at that company. I also own Zipify Apps, about a $10 million a year software company. Also a couple million bucks in profit on that, maybe about 60 employees there. And I just bought a company called Overtone Color, which has about 20 team members. It'll do about 25, 30 million this year. And I got Smart Marketer too. And I'm just a guy. I didn't go to college, I have no special skills, other than that I'm a good communicator and I'm willing to put my foot down and do the work, and ask for help when I need it. And I think my story shows that if... I'm a complete failure in the eyes of the school system. They labeled me a dumb kid, and someone who was not going to be successful. And I think for anybody who doesn't fit into the mold, who maybe is dyslexic, or maybe has some reason why the general society is telling them that they can't be successful, the internet opens up an opportunity for us.

Ezra Firestone:

And there's skills that we can develop. Advertising, direct response marketing, landing page optimization, copywriting, product development, podcasting, social media, that can support us in taking care of our families. And I didn't come from resource, and so I wanted to create that. And I've been able to, and I've been doing it now for 17 years. I got pretty fucking good at it. I made every mistake you could make. I didn't pay my taxes, I did all the stupid you can do. But I did it when I was younger, and earlier in my... And I didn't have podcasts like yours to learn from. I had a bunch of creepy dudes on an internet forum who were shilling fucking gambling and porn. That was when I got into the game.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Online marketing was a bit of a dark place back in those early days.

Ezra Firestone:

You didn't want to say you were an internet marketer. It wasn't good.

Brett Curry:

No, no, that was not prestigious. No one looked at that highly. For sure.

Ezra Firestone:

So yeah. So I've been doing it a long time now, I'm really good at it. And I've been talking about it since about 2011. I was one of the first people to start blogging about e-commerce. And by the very nature of being one of the first, I became popular. Not that I was anything special than anyone else, but I was the first to do it, and so I got real popular. And I've stayed in that space of documenting my journey. And I got a bunch of people who think it's cool, and follow what I do. And I'm pretty good at it, you know?

Brett Curry:

Yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

And I've been able to successfully train and educate, and bring up in the game, thousands and thousands of internet entrepreneurs over the years. You being one of them who I've impacted.

Brett Curry:

Big time.

Ezra Firestone:

Not that I did anything for you, other than show you what I was doing. So yeah, so I like talking about this stuff.

Brett Curry:

It's been so amazing to watch that progression as well, and getting to see behind the scenes, seeing you operate with your team. So I've been to your house and I've hung out with the inner circle of Smart Marketer and Boom. And of course we were on calls, and our agency serves you and stuff. So I've seen you in a lot of different capacities. And man, you're the same leader behind the scenes as you are on stage. You care about people on stage or one on one. You're extremely smart and strategic, and you get marketing, and you understand human in nature, and you take massive action. All kinds of stuff we can break down. So it's been really fun to observe that and get the front row seat of that as well.

Ezra Firestone:

I can also do a cool poker chip trick. Look at this.

Brett Curry:

Is that right? Oh, look at that.

Ezra Firestone:

Wait.

Brett Curry:

Look at that.

Ezra Firestone:

Hold on. Damn, that was not cool. I dropped it. Hold on.

Brett Curry:

We're going to try this again. So if you're listening, just take my word for it. He's a great poker chip-

Ezra Firestone:

My hands are frozen. My hands are frozen. We should probably get into tactics.

Brett Curry:

Do not attempt a poker chip trick out of a cold plunge.

Ezra Firestone:

People are going to be like, "Enough of this bullshit, dude. You should talk about some tactics." We should talk about some strategies.

Brett Curry:

Exactly. So here we go. So let's dive in. One thing that we've seen you guys operate on, we're running this on YouTube for you, but you're buying more email leads. So talk about that. So this is top strategy number one, buying more email leads. What does that look like, and why?

Ezra Firestone:

Dude, nobody's talking about email. Everybody's like "SMS, video ads." This and that. Well guess what has always been since I've been in the game, about 25 to 40% of my business? Literally since '05, dude. Emails.

Brett Curry:

Email. Email.

Ezra Firestone:

I've been sending motherfucking emails since 2005. And it is to this day, it'll be 36% of Boom's total revenue this year.

Brett Curry:

It's crazy.

Ezra Firestone:

And nobody-

Brett Curry:

Email touches 36% of all purchases through Boom.

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah, it's last click, dude. It's last click for 36% of my purchases.

Brett Curry:

It's awesome.

Ezra Firestone:

So why would I not be putting so much energy in growing that list? Nobody does it. Everybody just runs top of funnel video ads, conversion ads, and they hope that when somebody comes to their website, their onsite popup, or their card abandonment, or their exit intent, are going to capture the email lead for them. Great, do that. But also, you know what I'm doing? Gated content. I'm doing giveaways. I'm doing all kinds of different straight up lead generation campaigns. One of my best ones, is we use these things called pre-sell articles, which are basically articles that are story-based, like, "Five makeup tips for older women." Or "Seven makeup tips for women who wear glasses." Or "How to overcome perfectionism in your fifties." Or whatever kind of content that our community is interested in, that leads back to our products.

Ezra Firestone:

And we use those in our email auto responders, we run ads to them, we mail them to our email list. We use them everywhere. At every stage of the sales process. What we also do, is we gate them. So we put an opt-in front of it, and it says, "Hey, enter email address here to get our five makeup tips for women over 50." We run ads to that with a conversion objective for the lead event, the lead event fires on the thank you page. They enter their email address, guess where they get dropped? On the same pre-sell that I'm running at the top of the funnel.

Ezra Firestone:

But now we have their email lead, and we put them on a automation sequence, to warm them up and try to sell them. And if they don't buy, we put them on our bucket list. I also run giveaways every six weeks. And basically those are my two main top of funnel lead gen strategies, is gated content and giveaways. But I'll do Facebook lives, and I'll do other things as well. But if you just do gated content and giveaways, you should spend about five to 10% of your total marketing budget on email lead generation. Because some people take a little longer to warm up than others. So if you're only running conversion ads, you're going to miss out on growing your audience in a way that could be beneficial for you.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. I love this so much, and it's something that we've observed you doing, and something we're talking about now with other clients. That, if you can grow that email list, and if you're properly running email marketing, you're going to be able to convert that at a really high rate. And so gated content, so information people want, and/or giveaways, great ways to drive that list. And I was looking through some of your notes here. Looks like over the last 12 months you spent about 200,000 buying email leads that have then generated 750,000 in sales. So about a 375% return on add spend. That's not bad. But that's not like-

Ezra Firestone:

And that's with excluding anybody who was already on the list, dude.

Brett Curry:

What's that?

Ezra Firestone:

That's with excluding anyone who was already on the list. So those are new leads.

Brett Curry:

Just strictly new leads. So that really changes the game, because you could be looking at those campaigns and thinking, "Well, I just drove an email sign up. I didn't make a sale there, so it's not really worth a whole lot." But then you've got to look at that whole picture. What did those email subscribers do for you over the next six to 12 months? And in your case, it's a 3.75 X ROAS, which is amazing.

Ezra Firestone:

Pretty sweet. I mean, not that everyone's going to have that result, but it's worth doing, still, nonetheless.

Brett Curry:

Exactly. So, all right, awesome. So strategy number one, buy more email leads. I'm sold on that idea. Idea number two, launch new products. So talk about how Boom is approaching launching new products.

Ezra Firestone:

So to have a successful e-commerce business, you have to get your repeat customer rate up. Ideally over 30% of total revenue comes from repeat customers, people who bought from you once before. The best way to do that is to sell them more of what they already bought, if it's consumable. Or to introduce new items that they might want from you. And by the way, if somebody knows you, likes you, trust you, you're putting out content, you're engaging them, you've delivered a good product, they're going to probably want to buy whatever else you have to offer if it's tangentially related to what they bought in the first place.

Ezra Firestone:

So what we do is we send a customer survey every six months to our two X buyers, and we give them a bunch of stuff, like "If we were going to add more colors, what colors do you want? If you could wave a magic wand, what products would you have us create?" We have a 20 question survey. We say, "Hey, five people who take this survey are going to win $100 gift certificate to the store". We get a couple thousand responses. Based on that, we figure out what products to make next, based on the desire of our community.

Brett Curry:

That creates your product roadmap.

Ezra Firestone:

As an example, 50% of people wanted a mascara, 46% of people wanted a lip gloss, and 53% of people wanted an additional color of Boomstick. We released all three of those products last year, based on that information. They were our three best product launches ever. We just released the Boomstick color last week, we sold 15,000 units in 18 hours. 650 grand in revenue in 18 hours.

Brett Curry:

Whoa. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Say that again. You sold what?

Ezra Firestone:

We sold 15,000 units in 18 hours, dude. We sold out. 650 grand in 18 hours. Now of course I've got a mature company, but the point is that this process gets better over time. So when you're developing a new product, you're doing it in desire to your past customers, in relationship to their desire. And for us, you have componentry, formulation, and secondary packaging. So componentry is like, what is the component that it's going to go in? Well, the Boomstick, we already have that. That's great, we'll reuse the component we already have. The formula is, what is it going to be, why is it going to be that way, what are the benchmarks other brands are doing that we want to meet? We go through a bunch of iterations, we send it out to our best customers to test. It takes us about six months to a year to develop a formula.

Ezra Firestone:

And then our secondary packaging, is what is the box, what's the write alongs, what are the inserts? We get all that together, we run a photo shoot for it. And then we do an early bird. "Hey, we're going to launch this new product. This is what it is. Get excited, sign up for it to hear about it first." And then what happens is, as they're signing up, and as they're posting on social about it on the thread, we're finding out what they want to know. They're asking, "Is it hypoallergenic?" And we're like, "Oh shit, we don't have hypoallergenic on the sales page. It is hypo allergenic." So we add that to the sales page. The questions they ask, they become the FAQs that we put on the... So we use the pre-launch as a way to build out the marketing material. Build out the FAQ, build out the sales page.

Ezra Firestone:

And then we launch it, run ads to it, do emails to it. And then it becomes part of our ongoing marketing. Put it in bundles. And you can do this too with products you already have. So you can reformulate them to make them better than they already are. Based on feedback, you can change the componentry or packaging, make it more sustainable. You can bundle it with other items to make a kit. So you can renew and make better products you already have, and relaunch them, as well as introducing new items. But for us, we are aiming to introduce four new items a year, which is once a quarter, which is hard to do.

Brett Curry:

That's aggressive. That's one a quarter.

Ezra Firestone:

It's hard to do when you're making them all from scratch.

Brett Curry:

It's hard to do, yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

But it's a huge, huge part of the business. So yeah, it's really important to continually making the products better.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. And it's interesting that it's also fairly risky, too, to launch a new product. Will it go well, will it not go well? But the approach you're taking, it really eliminates a lot of the risk. You know that if you deliver a good product, which you guys do, you know how to do that, you're delivering exactly what someone is requesting, and exactly what someone wants.

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah, and they also then can become a new top of funnel sales processes. So we can run top of funnel ads now. So for our mascara, I mean, that's our second best seller of all time, and we can run it at the top of the funnel because everybody's interested in mascara. And we didn't have one before. So we couldn't run ads for it at the top of the funnel. So we were missing a customer acquisition funnel there that we were able to add to the business.

Brett Curry:

Love it. And so then this actually directly ties into it. So this is strategy number three. Create more front end offers. So talk about that and how that's evolved for Boom, more front end offers.

Ezra Firestone:

I think that's mature business strategy. For Boom, we did 10 years where we had one front end offer, which was our Boomstick trio.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Boomstick.

Ezra Firestone:

And all of our social proof, all of our sales funnel optimization, all of our pre-sales, all of our video ads, all of our email sequences, everything was about that front end offer. Just make that as deep as possible. Have marketing assets for it, loyalty assets for it. Just really work on that and scale that. And that's a lot easier to go deep rather than wide. And a lot of people have a thousand skews, and they can't do that. Like with this product, this brand, I bought, Overtone, I got a hundred skews. So it's hard for me to have one front end funnel.

Ezra Firestone:

But for low skew e-commerce, it's easy. You just pick whatever your widest and best seller, and most relevant seller is, and just focus on that. But once you scale that, now you got to start introducing new front end offers. There's only so many people who are interested in a multipurpose blush stick. Some people aren't interested in blush, but they're interested in mascara, or lip gloss, or brow gel, or whatever. So we've now introduced a bunch more products to the... You're right, my voice is kind of frozen. It's funny, I sound like a frog.

Brett Curry:

You're good, dude. Hey, you're so you're bringing the fire, even though I'm feeling cold for you.

Ezra Firestone:

I usually have such a rich, deep voice, man. Anyways, it gives us the ability to have more fish hooks in the sea.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Love it. Love it. Let's go on to the next one, and this is related to number one, but this is now strategy number four.

Ezra Firestone:

By the way, another front end funnel is one of those lead gen funnels, too. Even if it's leading to the same product.

Brett Curry:

Yes.

Ezra Firestone:

It's a new top of funnel way of getting people in the mix. That's a new funnel. It doesn't have to be a new product.

Brett Curry:

Totally. And so looking at that, and what we've observed, working with Boom, working with other successful brands, is that a lot of them have one to three really successful top end funnels that they just push hard on, almost forever. And then with some tweaking and changing, and then you've got all your backend stuff as well. So, yeah. Really, really good. So let's talk then about strategy number four, growing your SMS subscribers. So diving into text based marketing. So, tips or suggestions you would give there for growing that list and utilizing SMS?

Ezra Firestone:

I mean, the 80/20 of SMS is this. Have the collection at checkout, where you're collecting people who check out from you, who click the little box to be collected. And have a two step opt in. First, get the email, second, incentivize for the SMS. So they come to your site, you say, "Hey, get 10% off, entering your email address". They enter it. "Hey, by the way, do you want an extra 5%? Give us your SMS". Klaviyo lets you do this, Postscript lets you do this, Attentive lets you do this, et cetera. Those are your two main ways to collect. And that's 85, 90% of the value. You can do other shit to collect, but it's not worth it. Just do that. And then when you send an abandoned card email and they don't open after 18 hours, slide a text in there, via Klaviyo. So connect it to your email logic, and do your-

Brett Curry:

Is that usually the way you do it, where you'll email first? And then if there's no response there, then you text?

Ezra Firestone:

Always. Yeah, because SMS is more expensive. So we'll use it as a... And you can only do this if you're using Klaviyo, because it talks to it. You can't have Attentive in Klaviyo, because they don't talk to each other. So if you're using Klaviyo, Klaviyo's a little more expensive for SMS, but if you're doing it the way I do, it doesn't matter, because you're only using it as a... You know? You're using it as a way to capture the people who aren't responding to email. Instead of just blasting them with both, and spending the money for that. So, if they don't respond to the card email, we'll slide an SMS. If we go purchase email, they don't cross-sell, we'll slide an SMS. And then once a week, you broadcast your bucket list with a piece of content or a sale. That's it. That's all you need to do. Have an opt in pre purchase, have an opt in at checkout, use it in your automation sequences, do one broadcast a week, your solid potato salad, you have 85% of the value you can get from SMS.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. You really go beyond that, it's just going to be tiny little gains. And potentially a difference-

Ezra Firestone:

It's not worth it. It's not worth it.

Brett Curry:

Not worth it. Not worth the effort.

Ezra Firestone:

Just spend your energy acquiring more customers.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, totally. And so those weekly broadcast on SMS, are you doing a mix of promotions and content?

Ezra Firestone:

So those will be content. The best piece of content from the week will drop via the SMS. And then if we're running a sale, that week, we won't send content, we'll send about the sale.

Brett Curry:

And your best piece of content pulling from the way Boom is doing it, it's based on blog, is that right? So you're writing blogs weekly or something?

Ezra Firestone:

We send three pieces of content to our list every week. Maybe it's a long form article, maybe it's a user generated content video, maybe it's a recap from a Facebook live we did. Whatever. We're sending content every week, at least three pieces, long form written articles, videos, user generated content. We've got a whole social media content engagement system. And so whatever worked the best that week, we'll drop to the SMS list. And then every six-

Brett Curry:

Nice. So you're emailing that content initially. So you're emailing-

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah, we're emailing that, we're posting it to the blog, we're posting out to social, we're amplifying it. We're doing the whole system. And then the best shit, we drop to the list, which links over to the blog. And we drop to the SMS list. And then every six weeks we're running a product launch or a sale. So that sixth week will be a promotion via SMS.

Brett Curry:

Got it. And anything you can say about response rates, metrics? How is SMS working in comparison to email? I know it's just designed to be a compliment to email, but anything you can say about stats, performance?

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah, I mean, SMS gets better response rates, but you have smaller lists. And you get way more unsubscribes. So it's-

Brett Curry:

And you got to be really careful about spam related stuff.

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah.

Brett Curry:

People get pretty hot on-

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot you got to worry about with that. But basically it works really well, and you should use it as a compliment, and not instead of... And you should do what I'm talking about, which is basically 80/20 it.

Brett Curry:

Not really standalone. You're not going to just be like, "Hey, SMS is my one strategy."

Ezra Firestone:

Some brands do. Some brands do. But I think if you ignore email, what are we doing?

Brett Curry:

Right. For most people, it's just a beautiful compliment, and a way to really increase the effectiveness of email. But it is a compliment. Awesome. So now we're going to move into strategy number five. I actually love this one. I love all of them, this is all gold. But this is something that was kind of an aha moment for me. I first heard about a strategy like this, it was made be Dan Kennedy back in the day, maybe Jay Abraham. I go way back, man, looking at marketing stuff. But you're talking about inventing a holiday. So there's this idea that people need a reason why. They need a reason why I should buy now, they need a reason why your product is better. And sometimes an invented holiday is a great reason why you should buy now. So, talk about invented holidays, and talk about what you're doing at Boom.

Ezra Firestone:

So excuses to communicate are important. And we take everyone we can. We communicate on Earth Day, we communicate on Animal Friendly Day, we communicate on National Dog Day. Because people like that kind of shit.

Brett Curry:

They do. People like it.

Ezra Firestone:

And everybody has a dog, and everybody likes the earth, and so on and so forth. And we do too. And so we are always doing emails like that. Like, "Hey, it's Earth Day. And you know what? We care a lot about sustainability. And these are our most sustainable products, for these reasons." And whatever. And so we're constantly mailing on using the fake or created holidays as a reason to communicate on social and on email. And so we made up our own. We made Pro-Age Month. We are the first people to say pro-age. Now it's a commonly known thing. Now you've got a million knock brands, but we spent 40 million over six years, popularizing the concept of pro-age, back in 2010. And now Allure is stealing it, and it's like we have penetrated the mainstream with this.

Brett Curry:

It's awesome.

Ezra Firestone:

We've entered the zeitgeist with this concept. And so now it's a thing. And so we want to claim ownership of that, because we do own it. You don't never own an idea, but we created that movement. And so we created Pro-Age Month. And the month of August is Pro-Age Month. And we tell pro-age stories, and we've got a logo for it. And we are claiming our rights to the pro-age movement. The pro-age revolution that we started in 2010. And a good way to do that, was to create a holiday around it.

Brett Curry:

Create a holiday, create a month, and people love that. And it's such a great conversation starter and connection point. And if you think about one of the big components of building a brand, is just building that connection and that community. And sometimes odd or unusual holidays do that. And inventing your own holiday, I think it's brilliant. I think more people should look at it. And I think a lot of brands lend themselves well. Maybe it's not pro-age for you, and Ezra owns that anyway, so back off, really. Seriously.

Ezra Firestone:

I mean, whatever. You could say pro-age if you believe in that. What I find, is most people say pro-age and they don't actually know what it means. Which is hilarious. They'll be like, "Pro-age..." this or that. And then they'll have anti-aging skin drops.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. "But cover your gray, and no more wrinkles." Yeah, yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

You've missed the point here.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Yeah. But inventing a holiday, pure gold, I love it. Anybody can do it. And so highly recommend that as well. So we're getting tied on time, so we're going to have to maybe move rapid fire through some of these or just save some of them for the blog. But number six is, list products on Amazon.

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah.

Brett Curry:

What are you guys doing there for your brands? Talk about that a little bit.

Ezra Firestone:

Amazon will make up 20 to 30% of a good brand's sales. And you're going to miss those customers if you're not over there. And our-

Brett Curry:

Because some people only buy on Amazon. That's just it.

Ezra Firestone:

I mean, yeah. And we waited 10 years to put our products on Amazon, because we could fill the demand that we had with... Our supply chain could barely fill the demand we had from direct to consumer. But once we beefed up our supply chain, and we realized that adding to Amazon wasn't going to cannibalize our direct to consumer platform, we added our main product on there, and it just crushed. It just added 10 to 15% of incremental sales.

Brett Curry:

Immediately. Yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

So now we're adding every one of our products, once every two months, onto Amazon. You guys are running all of our ads over there, doing all of our A plus lists. All we do is do the customer support, and create the assets for the page. You guys literally do everything else. You run all the ads, you optimize all the pages, you handle all the seller support. You do fucking everything for us. So it's great for us, because it's a channel that really works, that we don't really have the expertise for, that you just do for us. I mean, we pay you for it, but probably not what you should get paid. Because I think you give us a deal. But-

Brett Curry:

We do. We do. But, gladly. We gladly give you that deal, for sure.

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah. So it's been really good for us.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's been amazing, it's been fun to execute on our end for sure. And one thing we noticed with you, we noticed this with native ... as well, client, friends. And we don't run their Amazon, but we observe. We run their Google and YouTube. Is that there's some expectation that when you launch on Amazon, there's going to be some cannibalization of your store's sales. And certainly that happens some, but this has been mostly incremental growth for you guys, right?

Ezra Firestone:

100% incremental. There's been no cannibalization whatsoever. Which is crazy, because I was sure there was going to be. We sell it at the same price, and some people just like to buy over there. And I think what was happening was a lot of people were seeing our ads on Facebook, going to buy on Amazon, not finding it, and then buying knockoff brands. Because they only buy on Amazon.

Brett Curry:

Buying something else. Buy knockoff. Yeah, we experienced that. That'd be a topic for another podcast. The copycats and the people that were...

Ezra Firestone:

...

Brett Curry:

... really leeching off of your brand name on Amazon.

Ezra Firestone:

Nightmare.

Brett Curry:

But yeah, nightmare for sure. For sure. But we're getting there. So yeah, big believer in Amazon. And what's interesting to me, and this is where Boom and Overtone are set up perfectly for Amazon, is that success on Amazon in the long term, and I think even right now, is based on building a brand. So taking the community building aspect, the brand building aspect that you're doing off Amazon, and do that on Amazon, that's where you see long term success. It's not just hacking the titles and the keywords, and the bullet points, to try to inflate your ranking, or using super URLs, or some other strategy to hack your ranking, but building a real brand.

Brett Curry:

And that's what you guys are good at, and that's what we're helping you with. And it's working. It's working on Amazon right now. So let's talk, and this will probably be our final concept for the podcast, and I'll push the final one, people to go check out on the blog post. But the seventh strategy for growth, is advertising on television. TV? What? Come on now. So what are your thoughts on TV? And this has been fun to watch too, but what are your thoughts on advertising on television?

Ezra Firestone:

I think it's really only for very, very, very mature brands. Because the minimum that you need to do it is 350 grand. Minimum. Just to test. And that's a two month test. And you also have to produce television quality ads. Now we were able to use user generated content. We spent 50 grand on a TV commercial produced by a fancy agency, and at flopped all crazy. And then we made our own ad, based on UGC that we had. And we crushed. So we're much better direct response advertisers than these TV agencies, it turns out. Which we should've known, because we've been fucking running direct response ads for 15 years. Makes sense we would know what would work, versus what they produced. Even though what they produced, it was a whole... We could talk about that another time. It wasn't very good.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

But it's hard to tell how successful TV has been for us. We've spent about half a million dollars over the course of six months, and I think incrementally, it has been successful. But we're having Northbeam, which is a company you hooked us up with.

Brett Curry:

Shout out to Northbeam, Austin, and the folks there.

Ezra Firestone:

We just turned it off, and looks like sales are down 15K a day since we turned off TV. We'll see. I think TV is great for omnichannel presence. If you're spending three, four, 500K a month on social media ads, you should add in TV at 10, 15% of your budget, to reach more people, and reach the people that you're reaching on social in a different area. And for us, we just turned it off to see how it's going to impact whether we run it or not. And so we're still trying to figure out the attribution on it, and how well it's working. But our sense is that it worked pretty well.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. And that's a great way to test it. Turn it off, see what the impact is there. And it also helps tremendously to have a tool like Northbeam, third party attribution. Brilliant stuff, check it out. And we're seeing some similar things. So first of all, I got my start in TV, radio, print. So I still really like TV. I'm still involved in local TV just a little bit with a friend of mine. But I love this strategy. I think it is for bigger brands. But yeah, if you're spending multi six figures on Facebook ads, YouTube ads, then TV may be something that you check out. But along a similar vein, we're testing now, we tested it with Boom and with a few other clients. Creating some awareness, we call it awareness layer YouTube campaigns.

Brett Curry:

And again, you kind of need something like Northbeam in place, to really see the impact of this. But the idea there, is as well we're just going for low cost engagement, low cost views. We're seeing CPMs for some of these awareness level YouTube campaigns at six bucks, five bucks, which is crazy low. But there's something to be said, and this is marketing 101, old school stuff. If you talk to the right people enough times, with a right message, so right message, right market, right media, you're going to get results. And so obviously you got to be ready for it with budget, and you have to have the tracking in place to really make good use of it. But I love that you guys are testing TV. And I also love the fact that it wasn't the super duper polished stuff that worked. It was what we do. The UGC stuff that did well on TV, too.

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah. It was UGC. And we started doing video view advertising on Facebook, when iOS 14.5 happened, because Facebook lost all its data. So we started running video view campaigns to all the audiences that we used to run conversion campaigns to, to let Facebook build up some data of the people who watched most of our videos. And then we would follow up with those people and run conversion ads to them. And now we're doing that with YouTube as well. And I think that strategy post iOS 14.5 on both networks, where you spend a thousand bucks a day at our scale, running video views, or maybe 10% of your overall spend, is a great strategy. We're doing it at Overtone too.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, this has been amazing, Ezra. So that's seven of the eight tips. Hey, to get that eighth tip, check out the show notes, go check out Ezra's blog, smartmarketer.com, and get that final one. But Ezra, as people are listening, I know we got some super fans-

Ezra Firestone:

I'm cold, man. I'm cold. That's what's going on.

Brett Curry:

You're cold. Then yeah, you need to go warm up, dude.

Ezra Firestone:

I do. I need ...

Brett Curry:

Get your robe, get your blanket, go sit by the fire, or something like that. But for those that are listening and thinking, "I need more Ezra Firestone in my life." How can they connect with you, where should they learn more about you? Where should they do that?

Ezra Firestone:

I'm on Instagram @ezrafirestone, I'm on Twitter @ezrafirestone, I'm on Facebook, Facebook.com/MeetEzra. I'm on smartmarketer.com, which is a blog that I have, I'm on zipify.com, which are my apps for Shopify. But you can find me on social media. I'm on YouTube, all the social media networks. Whatever ones you use, I'm there. You can Google me on there or search me on there. And yeah. Thanks for hanging out, hope it's been some kind of helpful. Appreciate you, Brett. I love that you're between two ferns over there.

Brett Curry:

That's a hilarious show. And you're not the first person to say that. They're like, "Dude, are you between two ferns here? Are you Zach Galifianakis or what? What are you doing?" I'm a little more courteous to my guests and a little more on topic, but that show is hilarious.

Ezra Firestone:

It's awesome, dude.

Brett Curry:

But another plug that I'll make here as I'm sitting between two ferns, is, do check out Smart Marketer. Molly Pittman, John Grimshaw, running that with Ezra's leadership, Ezra started it. But some amazing resources there. Train My Traffic Person. So if you got in-house media buyers, you need to send them through Train My Traffic Person. You get to learn from me too, I'm a faculty member there teaching YouTube and teaching Google. But check that out, smartmarketer.com. Highly, Highly recommend it.

Ezra Firestone:

Thank y'all.

Brett Curry:

Awesome. Ezra, appreciate it, brother. This has been amazing, thank you so much. And see you next time.

Ezra Firestone:

Talk soon.




‍

Disruptive Innovation in Marketing with Miki Agrawal
2
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Miki Agrawal

Disruptive Innovation in Marketing with Miki Agrawal

I’ve never met anyone quite like Miki Agrawal.

‍

She’s incredibly creative. No really. She once hosted a “funeral for a tree” at an old cathedral in NYC hosted by comedians and actors. It drew a crowd of thousands, generated millions in free press and helped shed light on the toilet paper waste that her company TUSHY can help solve. 

‍

She understands trends in marketing. She knows how to grab attention. So much so that she was banned by the NY   transit authority from running subway ads. Which led to a PR fight that she won…and in the end, got more press and attention than if they hadn’t been banned. 

‍

She’s also warm and kind and FUN. 

‍

She’s created multiple 9-Figure businesses and has garnered some pretty incredible recognition. She was named "Fast Company's Most Creative People", “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum and INC's “Most Impressive Women Entrepreneurs”.

‍

She’s also the author of #1 best selling books Do Cool SH*T and Disrupt-HER.

‍

In this episode we unpack Miki’s wacky, impossible-to-forget and wildly successful marketing strategies and tactics.

‍

Here’s a look at what we cover:

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  • How Miki was banned from advertising on the NYC subway and turned that into a huge PR win for her brand THINX
  • How to use Accessible + Relatable language 
  • How to create ads that are both effective and “fridge worthy”
  • How iteration is perfection
  • How to start with play to create great ideas

‍

Mentioned in This Episode:

Miki Agrawal

   - Website

   - Instagram

   - Link Tree to Resources


TUSHY

   - Website

   - Instagram


Thinx

   - Website

   - Instagram


Wild

   - Website

   - Instagram


“Do Cool Sh*t” by Miki Agrawal


“Disrupt-Her” by Miki Agrawal


“Zero To $100 Million” on Mindvalley‍

Cap Con 5
Ryan Daniel Moran‍

Toto‍

“Funeral for a Tree” by TUSHY video on YouTube‍

Butt Con by TUSHY




Transcript:

Brett:

Welcome to the Spicy Curry Podcast. We explore hot topics on eCommerce and digital marketing. We feel feature some of the brightest minds, with some of the SPT perspectives on what it takes to grow your business. Season one of this podcast is built on the old business adage that, what it really takes to succeed is three things. One: have something good to say. Two: say it well. And three: say it often.

Brett:

My guest in this episode is Miki Agrawal. She's the founder of TUSHY, but she's also the entrepreneur behind several other wildly successful companies. I don't know anyone better than Miki at the, have something good to say and say it well, aspects of growth. And so just a couple of accolades. Miki was named one of Fast Company's Most Creative People. She was also named by Inc Magazine as one of the Most Impressive Women Entrepreneurs. She was also my favorite speaker, and she's also one of the favorite speakers that most of the events that she attends.

Brett:

We're going to dive into some crazy wild stories from her entrepreneur journeys. We're going to learn why she was banned by the New York subway from running ads there, and how she actually overcame that and then ran some pretty powerful ads on the New York subway system. We're going to talk about how she creates events that are just, blow your mind. Like, they had a funeral for a tree, and there's a reason why they did that and got millions of dollars in free press. And she talks about how to craft things that are both artful and fridge worthy, but also effective. And so, I think you're going to absolutely love this interview. And so, lean in, buckle up and enjoy this interview with Miki Agrawal.

Brett:

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Brett:

All right, well today I am abs absolutely thrilled that my guest is Miki Agrawal. Now, I was recently at an event, CapCon 5 in Austin, Texas. My good friend, Ryan Daniel Moran was the host. And there was a star-studded lineup of speakers. Amazing, blow your mind speakers. And I got to say, Miki was probably my favorite. And I hope that some of my other friends that were speaking don't hear this, because I don't want to hurt their feelings. It's just that Miki was amazing. And so, Miki is the founder of a number of really transformative businesses. Most recently, TUSHY. Also, THINX and WILD. She's also author of some amazing best-selling books. Do Cool Sh*t. Disrupt-Her, which I'm actually in the process, I've gone about halfway through it right now. And even though it has "her" in the title, Disrupt-Her, instead of disruptor, it's for dudes too. Right, Miki? And so, I'm actually getting a lot of value out of it. And so, we're going to talk about growth and having an amazing marketing message, and thinking differently and all kinds of great stuff. So Miki, welcome to the show, and how's it going?

Miki:

Yes. I'm so happy to be here with you. And just, the thing that I just can't, I'm just so like, I love is that you have eight children, and you're sitting at the table with 10 people every night for dinner. That just blows my mind.

Brett:

Yeah. The level of noise at the dinner table is sometimes crazy. And we do this thing called highs and lows, where everybody goes around and tells their high of the day. You have to have a high of the day, you don't have to have a low of the day if you don't want to, but it is required to have a high. And the noise level is crazy, but it's also super fun.

Miki:

I love that you do that. That's beautiful, that's amazing.

Brett:

Yeah. So, part of what attracted me to you, Miki, and why I was so thrilled to chat with you afterwards. Is one, you're a master marketer. And the way you craft messages and the way you get attention, it's mind blowing, which is awesome. But you're also like, you believe in strong women, right? And I've got six daughters and I just, I want them to conquer the world. That's probably a weird thing to say, but I want them to just do whatever they feel led and whatever they feel passionate about doing. And so, love the energy you bring and the inspiration you're bringing to young women as well.

Miki:

Six daughters. I mean, it's just, yeah. Like, I think about the food bill just for that dinner, just for those meals, just now. It's just [crosstalk 00:05:10].

Brett:

The food bill is crazy. So I'm happy to talk about that with anyone offline. Yeah. So, when you include groceries and eating out, it's a median household income. It's a lot of money, yeah. But grateful to be able to do it. I wouldn't have it any other way, but it is completely [crosstalk 00:05:28].

Miki:

I love it.

Brett:

So yeah, it's awesome. Well, let's talk about a few things. So if you would Miki, give people kind of just the quick background on you. Because we're going to dig into some of the specific messages that you use at TUSHY and things like that. But give people the background. Like, how did you become this, because not only were you my favorite speaker at CapCon, but I've seen, you were voted best speaker at Inc and Fast Company, and some of these other big events. Everybody loves what you have to say. So really, how did you get here?

Miki:

Well, I'm one of three children, and the interesting fun fact about the three of us is that we are all born within one year. So I have an identical twin sister. The third sister, who's 11 months older. So we're actually, we're Irish twins.

Brett:

Yeah, Irish twins and identical twins [crosstalk 00:06:18].

Miki:

Irish triplets.

Brett:

Okay.

Miki:

So we're twins, plus Irish triplets, yeah.

Brett:

It's insane.

Miki:

Yeah. And then we grew up to a Japanese mother and Indian father. So my mother's from Japan, speaks with a thick Japanese accent. My dad is from India, speaks with a very thick Indian accent.

Brett:

I'm doing the audio book of Disrupt-Her. And you do the Indian accent for your dad, an it's just amazing. You do such a good job, yeah.

Miki:

But yeah, his most, the thing they always say is, he says, when he meets somebody, he goes, "Very good vibes". Or, "Very bad vibes." And immediately, because yeah, he can sniff people out just by "their vibes".

Brett:

By "their vibes", okay, I love that.

Miki:

By "their vibes".

Brett:

That's awesome.

Miki:

Yeah. And I grew up in Montreal, Canada. In French Montreal, in the south shore of Montreal. In a town called [foreign language 00:07:12]. And it's like, I grew up in French, like literally, we were the token Asians in the most French neighborhood ever. And so, it was really beautiful to grow up in this true mosaic of cultures. Japan, India, French, American. And then of course, Canada attracts so many, I mean, every culture, every religion, and they're all celebrated. And so of course, growing up in a household of just diversity and then going to school with just all diverse kids, I think we just learned to question everything. And to look at things from different angles. To be like, oh, this is how the Indians look at it, this is how the Japanese look it, how the French look at it, and the Americans look at it, this is how the Canadians look at it.

Brett:

It forces a fresh perspective, rather than just everybody being the same.

Miki:

Totally. So it's a mosaic versus melting pot thinking. And I think that that mosaic thinking creates beautiful picture. When you think about a mosaic image, and it's just this, all these colors and all these textures, and all of the different historical context of things, creates a different frame than just a single pain. So I think I was very blessed in just being born where I was born, to be given the various perspectives. To not just be like, okay, this is the way it is. It's like, wait, is this, or should I question it? And is there a better way, or is there more thoughtful way? Or that kind of thing.

Brett:

When did you realize that, hey, I might be an entrepreneur? Or have you ever? Like, is that really a conscious thought? Like, when did you think, hey, I'm going to build companies? And not just companies, but wildly successful and disruptive companies.

Miki:

Yeah. I mean, I think I'm just genuinely unemployable. I think I'm just like, you're not my Indian father. That kind of vibes. Where like, anytime someone told me what to do, blood would rush to my head and I would just get really frustrated. I would, I don't know, get triggered or something. But no, I think I just always beat to my own drum. And I think because of this questioning, because of this philosophy of looking at things from different perspectives, I think I just always had different ideas that I wanted to put out in the world. That entrepreneurship, when it was introduced to me, I remember, I'll never forget. I met my very first entrepreneur, standing in line in New York City when I was 22 years old, at this Armani party.

Miki:

I was invited to my very first VIP door, or whatever. [crosstalk 00:09:47] And I was like, oh my God, I'm so cool. It was like, Armani. You know, whatever. Back when it was really cool to go to those things. And I remember standing in line, and in front of me was this gentleman who I'd met. And his name was Graham, and he's now since become one of my dearest friends. But I met him randomly, standing in line in front of me then. I was 22, and he was in his mid-thirties when I met him. And I was like, "oh". Like, "What are you up to?"

Miki:

And he's like, "I'm an entrepreneur."

Miki:

And I was like, "What do you mean?"

Miki:

And he is like, "I have my own business." And this is, by the way, in 2001, when entrepreneurship wasn't a school thing. Nobody was getting invested in, it wasn't a thing. I mean, Facebook wasn't even there until 2006.

Brett:

Now it's super trendy. Everybody wants to say entrepreneur, stamped that on their [crosstalk 00:10:33].

Miki:

Now, everyone. But back then, nobody. It was doctor, lawyer, investment banker, management consultant. Going to work for a company. Becoming a whatever at a company. Becoming a person who starts a business was just not even in the lexicon, in the zeitgeist of culture back then.

Miki:

And he was like, "I'm not in firm."

Miki:

I'm like, "What do you mean?"

Miki:

He's like, "I have my own company."

Miki:

I'm like, "Well, what do you do?"

Miki:

And he's like, "Well, I started a company called treehugger.com."

Miki:

And I was like, "Oh, that's cool."

Miki:

And he's like, "And I sold it." I think he sold it to Discovery Channel, whatever.

Miki:

And I was like, "Wow!" And then he, the next day, invited me to this brunch with a bunch of other entrepreneurs. And that's when it was my big ding, ding, ding moment. I can start my own company, I'm going to do that. And I think in life, we just get given these gifts of chance meetings. And either we kind of get opened by it or we close to it. And I was sort of just blasted open by the possibilities of that. And I think that's what really put me on the course of this new way of thinking and being, and then carrying forward.

Brett:

That's amazing. And I do want to, let's give kind of a brief overview of some of the companies. Just to give people some texture and some more context. So your mind was blown, and you're thinking, I could do my own thing. And then you have, and you've been wildly successful. Really at, essentially, everything. But can you give a quick rundown of the companies, and what they've done?

Miki:

Yeah. Well, I will first start by saying, one of the biggest stories that changed the course my life was when I was 22. After that time, 9/11 happened, and that was a huge turning point in my life.

Brett:

Yeah, because you were an investment banker, working down on Wall Street, right?

Miki:

Yes. The World Trade center was my subway stop every single morning. And it I was working at Deutsche Bank, in investment banking. I call it douche bank.

Brett:

Wow. Someone was asking for that, honestly, right? Deutche Bank, it's so close to douche, you're going to make the jokes, yeah.

Miki:

Know what I mean? Yeah. So yeah, when I was there, yeah, 9/11 happened. I was supposed to be there, and 2 World Trade Center was my subway stop every single morning. And I would walk upstairs to 2 World Trade Center, at the cafe there. And I would get tea with my girlfriend, who worked on the 100th floor. And then I would walk across the street to my office, directly across 2 World Trade Center. And then 9/11 happened, and it was the first day of my life, the only day of my life that I slept through my alarm clock.

Brett:

That is crazy and amazing.

Miki:

Yeah. And 700 people in my girlfriend's office died on that day. Two people in my office died. It was one of those, just like, you can't make this shit up. Like, this is not a real movie, that kind of level of unfathomableness.

Brett:

Unfathomable, yeah.

Miki:

Yeah. And so that single experience, again, it's those moments that I kind of really recognize as these turning points in my life. And that was a big turning point in my life. Where I was like, wow, I could die tomorrow. And when you're 22, you don't think about death. I feel like we start thinking about death after we have children, in a lot of ways. And I'm just always making sure I'm not going to die. Do you know? And I'm sure, with your eight children, I don't even know how [inaudible 00:13:50]. You know?

Brett:

Yeah.

Miki:

But death, it's just not a thing, when you're a kid, when you're 22, you're just sort of like, whatever.

Brett:

You're usually not thinking about it at all, yeah.

Miki:

Just not thinking at all. But then, because I had this near potential death experience, and people around me died, and I was just sort of like, wow, this is a real thing. And I really felt my mortality in that moment. And it was like, wow, I got to make every single day count.

Brett:

Got to do something, yeah. We're going to blink and we're going to be 70, right? And so, what are you going to fill your time with now? Yeah.

Miki:

That's right. And so yeah, for me, it was, I wrote down three things. The first was to play soccer professionally, the second was to make movies, and the third was to start a business. And that sort of set me on sort of a total path after 9/11,.I played soccer for the New York Magic, I worked in the film industry for a couple of years, and then I started my first business, which was in the restaurant space. And so, my first business was born out of a stomach ache. We know that famous thing, necessity is the mother of invention.

Brett:

Yes, so true.

Miki:

Yeah. So the first business was born out of a stomach ache, and I couldn't eat pizza anymore. It was my favorite comfort food, but I just couldn't eat anymore because it made me bloated and gassy, and just so gross feeling after I ate it. And it was full of bleached flour, processed cheese, sugar-filled sauces, processed toppings, it was all that. And so yeah, I basically started New York City's very first gluten free alternative pizza concept. And 17 and a half years later, we're still in business. Almost 18 years this year. In November, 18 years.

Brett:

Amazing. And it's called WILD, correct?

Miki:

Called WILD. Just go to @eatdrinkwild on Instagram. We have a couple locations in New York City, and one in Guatemala.

Brett:

And [crosstalk 00:15:42] for surviving the pandemic. I couldn't imagine owning a restaurant during the pandemic in New York City. That had to been just absolutely brutal. So grateful, yeah.

Miki:

It was nuts. My partner Walid is incredible, and he's such an ingenious person. He has lots of [inaudible 00:15:57]. Where actually what we did was, we opened up, on Seamless Web, three restaurants, out of our restaurants. So during the pandemic, not only did we have our regular standard fair, but we opened up two different restaurants, working out of our kitchen. So basically, we made tacos and we did burgers, or whatever, so that people could order from us multiple times a week.

Brett:

Oh, super smart, super [crosstalk 00:16:24].

Miki:

So, take away. And not just have our gluten-free pizza stuff every week, but they would have tacos one night, and different stuff. And so we just opened three different restaurants under the same roof during the pandemic. And then we got the outdoor cafe seating. And that, our business all came back. And it was actually incredible, because it felt like a bit of Europe being in New York, with all the outdoor cafes everywhere, and people walking around with the menu. It was just, it was very romantic, very beautiful. So the rest restaurants was the very first business I learned. I think I learned so much of the thesis around people and psychology in my restaurants, that then led to building Thinks and led to building TUSHY. Both now valued over nine figures, well over nine. And so I, what I learned at WILD was, when I stood outside my restaurant for almost seven years, handing out little pieces of pizza, just handing them out.

Brett:

That's how you grew the business, was samples, yeah.

Miki:

Exactly, yeah. And getting people to try. And I would also test. Like, if I said healthy pizza, people wouldn't come. But if I said, farmed fresh, healthy farm to table pizza, people would be like, oh, what does that mean?

Brett:

Yeah. Nobody wants healthy pizza. That sounds cardboard.

Miki:

Exactly.

Brett:

But farm to table pizza, interesting. And so, you were testing out those messages as people were walking by?

Miki:

AB testing, literally like email, subject heading.

Brett:

I love that.

Miki:

You know? And it was such, seven years of, it was genuinely like double PhD in human psychology and what led people to come closer to attract them, or to kind of move them back. And it was a really interesting thing. Just by standing, literally person by person, like hand to hand combat, just really getting to know people.

Brett:

Fascinating.

Miki:

And that experience led to this thesis, understanding, that again, built THINX and TUSHY. Which was having a best in class product. Like, if someone bit into it and they're like, Ugh.

Brett:

It doesn't matter, yeah.

Miki:

[crosstalk 00:18:30] my underwear. Like tight now, I'm wearing my period-proof underwear. It was so amazing because, I started my period today, I went to my bathroom. You're like, I have six daughters, don't worry about it.

Brett:

So, it does not bother me in the least. Like, yeah, this is a common conversation around my house, yeah.

Miki:

Yeah.

Brett:

Think of the podcast first, though. First to confess on the podcast, which I embrace this, I welcome, this is awesome.

Miki:

First of all, every single human being is here because of a women's period. So, you're welcome. You know?

Brett:

Yes.

Miki:

[crosstalk 00:18:59] Be more uncomfortable. Yeah. So today, this morning, I went to the bathroom and I was kind of like, there's a little bit of blood everywhere. And so I basically sat on my toilet, used my TUSHY bidet, washed myself clean, And then put my THINX underwear on. And I was just like, ah.

Brett:

You're like, this is amazing.

Miki:

I solved my own problem twice. Just now, in this moment. And that's when I was like, yeah, this is why these businesses are doing well. Because genuinely, they truly, truly, truly solve problems that we face every single day.

Brett:

Authentically solving the problem, not just identifying a problem and kind of addressing it just for a cash grab, but you authentically solve the problem.

Miki:

Needed it, yeah. Which is why in my book, Do Cool Sh*t, I talk about the three questions I always ask myself before starting any business. The first question is, what sucks in my world? That's to start with me, a problem in my world that sucks. And then question number two is, but does it suck for a lot of people? Because if it just sucks for me, then I'm kind of a diva or whatever, and who cares. [crosstalk 00:20:04].

Miki:

And then the third question, which I think is the most important. Which is, can I be passionate about this issue, cause, or community, for a really long time. We know the saying, it takes 10 years to be an overnight success. People don't want to sit in that discomfort for a really, really long time, and then they quit or decide to leave early, and they don't kind of get through it. I think about the entrepreneurs, I think about the musicians, I think about the actors, I think about all the people in my life who've made it. And they've made it because they've kind of grinded for a really long time. And they made through it, and they just stuck with their passion, they stuck with the thing they truly believed in. And so I think, yeah, what sucks in my world, has sucked for a lot of people. Can I be passionate about this issue? I think the passion piece is the most important. [crosstalk 00:20:49]

Brett:

It's super important. And this is something I think you may have shared at CapCon already with somebody else. But, tactics without the underlying passion are worthless or it's going to be short lived. Tactics only work for so long. Like, you've got to have that passion and that drive to push through all the messy and confusing and heartache and suffering that you have to go through as a business owner. And so yeah, the passion is super, super important.

Brett:

Now, why do you think you're so attracted to difficult things to sell? So we'll start with pizza first. So, selling healthy, gluten free pizza. When you started the business, gluten free wasn't trendy. Like, gluten free wasn't a selling point. It's not something you want to stick on all your labels. Because people were like, what are you even talking about?

Miki:

Yeah. And no one was talking about farm to table, no one was talking about [crosstalk 00:21:36], no one was talking about seasonal.

Brett:

None of that.

Miki:

This is in 2003-2004. I mean, it was still super nascent, all of those conversations, it was extremely different.

Brett:

Yeah. And when you started THINX, which is period-proof underwear, no one was really talking about periods. Or, not wanting to talk about it. And maybe some people don't want to talk about now. [crosstalk 00:21:50] But yeah, you just got to get over it. But then also TUSHY, a bidet. I still remember so many conversations just as stuff started to get in the news. People were like, "Oh, bidets are nasty."

Brett:

And I'm like, "How is it nasty to use water to clean yourself versus dry paper?" But anyway, you're choosing these categories that are difficult. Like, it's new to people or taboo to people. Why do you think [crosstalk 00:22:13]?

Miki:

Well, it's a culture shift that I'm interested in. I think from a creative perspective and as a creative challenge. Like, how do you change people's behavior, is the hardest change to make. And then how, how do you utilize innovation and creativity to do that? And so I think from a creative kind of person's perspective, it's like, wow, this is a really fun challenge to tackle. How do you get someone to change their behavior when it comes to food? When it comes to habits? Daily habits that they've been doing their whole lives, not even their whole lives, but for generations. To get them to try something new, and not only try it, but adopt it fully. I mean, that is why Toto hasn't made it to America yet. That is why the tampons and pads, which were invented by men, which is fine. But not that fine, cause they're made for women. So it's just, it's like, those are the most pervasive products in the world, because it's taboo. And so, how do we enter these conversations in a way that's artful? In a way that's accessible, and we're using the best in class product?

Miki:

And I think those, my thesis that I learned from the pizza, from the restaurants was that was that, was the three prong. Prong number one is best in class product. It has to be a best in class product. It has to be a big day that, when I clip to my toilet, it actually feels good, it looks good.

Brett:

It adds to the appearance of your bathroom. Like, it makes your bathroom feel better, cleaner.

Miki:

It makes it more upscale and cool. It makes people want to bring you to their bathroom when you're having a dinner party. You know like that? Or when you're wearing THINX, like when I'm wearing my underwear right now, I feel really sexy in them. I feel really taken care of in them. I know that I'm protect, I know that this product works. So, best in class product. The pizza, when I eat it, it tastes the most delicious pizza. It doesn't even taste gluten and free, it tastes the most delicious pizza you've ever tasted. So, best in class product, no question, that is baseline. Second prong, to really shift culture, is art. Using art to really challenge conversations.

Miki:

And I talked a little bit about this at CapCon. When I remember putting our first TUSHY ads up, or our first period ads up, out in the world, whether online or offline. People's first reaction were like, wow, that's so beautiful. And then their second reaction's, oh my God, they're talking about poop, they're talking about periods. Like, oh my [crosstalk 00:24:49]. But their very first reaction was leaning into the art and the beauty of that. And I think that, that opens up people's hearts and minds. Art just does that, and for everyone at every level, does that. It opens, art just gives people something to lean into. And I think when they're leaning into something, it makes them be curious. And so the first thing is, can we design from a lens of art? So, we hired all artists, we hired all creatives. I think art is such a beautiful lens to shift people's perspective. I mean, that's why people go to museums, people look at magazines, people look at nature as art. And a place to go and really open up our souls, open up our perspectives, change the way we look and see things.

Miki:

And I think that really lends itself to giving people the space to question their existing thinking. And I think that's all we need to do, is give them that space to question, and they can make the decision for themselves. And so then, that's the artfulness, the best in class innovation.

Miki:

And then the third part is the accessible, relatable language. I think we so often want to be so heady, and so clinical, and so technical, and so medical, and so academic, and sound really smart. And make everyone feel we've been and doing all this patent pending work and whatever. And it's just like, people don't care. They want to know, does it work? Does it make me feel good? Does it support me and does it support my life? Like, what's the point of this? Like, I don't care about your terminology.

Brett:

Patent pending.

Miki:

And like, I don't care about high sounding or smart. Like, whatever. And then, I tested all of that. That was all tested. I learned that, the more we speak from our space of truth, the more we speak from our place of that lit fire inside. We talked about that at CapCon as well. The more we speak from that real, true, authentic place, people respond. Because it's real, it's true. It's not coming from like, I wonder what they want me to say? And I'm just going to say it that way. That doesn't feel good, to receive that kind of inauthentic message. Like, imagine if you're receiving a text message from a best friend. And you can tell when they're being inauthentic or they're authentic. You can tell when your sister or brother is being authentic, you can tell when your wife or husband is being inauthentic or authentic.

Miki:

And so it's just that, can we write copy, can we text, can we write our messaging in the same way as we're texting our best friend? And I think that is such an important way to think about messaging to people. Because we're just being bombarded with advertisements, with so much people shouting at us. And we don't want that. We want authentic truth, we just want that juicy truth. And I think that truth is really what, that truth, coupled with art, coupled with the right beautiful aesthetic, the right innovation that you would want to use where, on a daily basis. That together, creates change, creates culture shift. And I've seen that time and time again. Across Wild, across THINX and across TUSHY. All three of them share the same philosophy of best in class product, artful aesthetic design across every touchpoint of our brand, and accessible, relatable language across every touchpoint of the brand.

Brett:

I love it so much. And really, when you combine all of that, plus you go back to the starting point from your first book, Do Cool Sh*t, it has to be addressing something that sucks for you and sucks for a lot of people. Right? So it's got to be that. And so then, when it's addressing a real issue, and then you've got the artful design and best in class, and it works. And you got the accessible, relatable language. All that comes together and it just works.

Brett:

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Brett:

What's so interesting and what was so powerful for me. And I remember talking to the guy that was sitting next to me at CapCon, and I made a couple comments about this. I've been in the ad world for a long time. So there's the brand building space of advertising, which is interesting. There's direct response, which I followed and studied for a long time. And I've worked in the infomercial space and stuff. But you have this ability to create stuff that looks beautiful. Like, you just want to look at it. It's an ad for a bidet, but you want to look at it. But, it also kind of makes you say, I'd like to try that. Like, I would like a clean butt too. I would to do...

Brett:

Because I think sometimes people, they go too far into the art. And it's abstract, and like, I don't even know what you're trying to say to me. Or I'm talking about patent pending, and all aloof, and who cares. So, how do you strike that balance and how do you create something that's fridge-worthy? As you'd say, artful and fridge worthy. But also, that connects and makes you say, I want to buy that underwear. Or, I want to buy that bidet. How do you do that?

Miki:

Yeah. Well so first, just to quickly unpack the word fridge-worthy, for those who don't know what that term means. Fridge-worthy simply means the idea that, you know when you walk into your home, and you go to your kitchen and you see your fridge? You go out, before, you go to grab a beer or whatever from your fridge. You see your fridge, and on your fridge are emblems of your life. You see pictures of your family members, of your eight children in your 10 person family.

Brett:

They take up the whole fridge, exactly.

Miki:

Yeah [inaudible 00:31:16] all over. You have invitations to weddings, you have little postcards from family members, you have little pictures of nieces and nephews. Or whatever it is, right?

Miki:

Hi, Stan.

Miki:

And my challenge to my team has always been, can you create something so beautiful, so artful and so personal, that it can make the small real estate on your fridge? That it can really make that small personal space on your fridge, that it can take up that space. That you can make something for TUSHY or THINX so beautiful, something so cool, that it can live in your home in some way. And so we design from that lens. And from that lens that, again, hits you personally and makes you feel something.

Brett:

It does cause you to shift and think differently. Now it's not just about, well, I'm going to choose blue. Like, you're thinking about everything differently.

Miki:

Yeah. Like, what is it that's going to make, how does it make me feel? And that's a different lens to creating.

Brett:

For sure.

Miki:

Yeah.

Brett:

So then, how do you blend fridge-worthy then with some true sales power, or some power to make people say, I want to buy this.

Miki:

So I always say to my team, in the art of it, I still need to know. I mean, it depends. Like you said, there's top of funnel stuff, where you want to create intrigue and mystery. And that kind of stuff is like, if you look at our TUSHY Bellagio spot that we just shot. I just shot this ad, where I finally figured out, where my friend is this genius rigging person. And he rigged 10 toilets with bidets on them, with our TUSHY Ace bidets on them. That we can play them like a piano.

Brett:

Like the Bellagio fountains?

Miki:

Bellagio fountain.

Brett:

I got to see that, then.

Miki:

I'll share, I'll text with you right after this. It's crazy. And so basically, it plays. So we made this like, (Beethoven's 5th). And just this wildly weird thing. And we don't show you very much about it, but it just says at the tagline at the end. Which makes you mysterious and makes you want to click and see what the hell this is. So there's that mystery and intrigue, which hooks you into wanting to know more.

Brett:

It's a curiosity play, yeah.

Miki:

Pure curiosity play, pure top funnel. Just stuffing people in. And then we spend the rest of the time, really converting them to the bottom, bringing them down the funnel. Educating them on the product, the value propositions and all of that. So that's the one strategy.

Miki:

The other strategy for top of funnel. I always think about prospecting. I always think about, how do you get people to both fall in love with our brand, with our ethos, with our playfulness, with our just [foreign language 00:33:56], with our love of life? They can feel it in this thing, but they're also understanding, what is the product? How does it work? Why do I need it? So it really answers those questions. And maybe like, why do I need it?

Miki:

Like, we just shot another commercial with the singing toilets, with the kind of the playing toilets. Where, it's this very Wes Anderson, weird thing. Where it's like, five people laying, they stick their heads in the toilets at once. And they're laying on these, which kind of represents the heated seat. And then all of a sudden, we start spraying. Like, I start kind of smushing ice cream on this guy's face. And then, this one woman takes a chocolate cake and squishes it in her white glove. And then she smacks it on the ass of white pants on this guy. So it kind of represents all taking a shit, basically, the chocolate looks like shit. And then the sprays go off, and then we get clean. And it's this debaucherous clean thing. And then we press the blow dryer, and then we're getting blow dried. So you're seeing the value, of how it works. Like, you're seeing, we press the remote, and then the nozzles go off and it starts spraying. It's clean. And then you press the dry, then it just blow dries it. So you see slow-mo, the hair blow dried. We walk out frame. So you're kind of, you're getting the idea of what this thing is. But you're still intrigued, tickled. You feel good vibes, you feel "very good vibes". You know?

Brett:

You're probably laughing. You're probably like, I can't believe I'm watching this. But it's also product demonstration in a really fun and creative and crazy way, which is super cool.

Miki:

Yes. And so, it's a lot of things. And I always look at, what are our best performing ads? Our best performing ads are the edutaining ones. Ones that are hilarious, and the ones that educate. Tells you, why you need it, how it works and how to use it.

Brett:

Yeah, totally makes sense.

Miki:

You know? But in a really simple, easy way. And so, yeah, it is an art and science, and they have to go hand in hand. And, creative and marketing always do sometimes have this natural tension, but I think it's a good tension if you have the right leadership.

Brett:

It's a healthy tension.

Miki:

A healthy tension, yeah.

Brett:

Love it. So one thing you talk about a lot, and I remember you showing these examples. That, you'll use actual statements from real customers. And you also talk about campfire stories, sharing campfires stories as a team or whatever, to kind of stir up creativity. So, can you talk about that a little bit? Like, how do you use customer statements in your ads? And then, what about campfire stories?

Miki:

Yeah. So, I always think like, our best advocates are our customers, our users, who love our products. It just, it makes so much sense. And so many times, companies are scared to, they don't want to bother their customers. But if customers love it, and you're asking them, hey, just fill in the blank. THINX is blank. Or, TUSHY.

Brett:

This is my favorite, yeah. Just fill in the blank. TUSHY is, fill in the blank.

Miki:

Fill in the blank. TUSHY is, blank. Just fill in the blank. And within 24 hours, we got 1000 responses. For things specifically, it was, THINX is Mary Poppins in my pants. THINX is strength, freedom and dignity for all women. TUSHY is...

Brett:

One of them was, eye candy butt bliss. I wrote it down. I got the thing.

Miki:

Yeah, eye candy butt bliss. It's like, TUSHY: you could eat off my butt hole. You know? And just like, my rusty starfish has never been so clean. Stuff like that, where it's crazy, hilarious, random.

Brett:

Especially when you know that it was a real customer that said it. It's like, okay, that's super fun. And I'm now totally entertained by reading this.

Miki:

Yeah, by real. And we always say, name of the customer, from a real pooping human. And so, we now use these campaigns, as actual campaigns and taglines for our company. Because our customers know what's best. And we don't have to oftentimes scratch our heads to ask ourselves, what creativity can we use? We can literally just reach out to our customer base, and they'll give us, and they're delighted in giving it to us. And if they see it in the world, they'll be like, oh my God, that's my line. And they now feel even more connected.

Brett:

And then they totally will put that on the fridge. They will totally put that piece, and share with everyone they know.

Miki:

And they'll share it with all their friends, tell everyone they know. And it engages people, attracts them. The same thing with PR. I talk about that a lot. Like, we do a ton of inbound marketing, inbound PR. And we've gone viral so many different times. And it's because, again, studying the psychology of people. Like, how do you create intrigue? How do you create mystery? Where, they want to complete the storyline. So often, people are like, send press releases, and hope that the press will write about them. But it just never works. It piles up on people's desks. Versus, you send these mysterious boxes where you have to assemble this thing. Or like, unscramble a riddle. So recently, we just launched our TUSHY Ace, part of our electric bidet seat with the most beautiful remote in the world.

Brett:

It's the heated seat, right? Which by the way, if you've never experienced a heated toilet seat, it is pretty magical, it really is.

Miki:

Heated seat, warm water, blow dries your butt. Best blow dryer on the market. It's not like where you have to still use toilet paper, because this is a nice strong blow dryer. And it looks an Apple product. It's the most gorgeous remote. Our design, it's just, it's the most beautiful product. And so, we were launching this. And our team, we were like, okay, we are going to create mystery around this product. And so, we put together these deck of cards. And these deck of cards that we made, we made actual TUSHY deck of cards, designed by hand, by my designers. And we had this instruction sheet for the press. And we said, pull out all the royal flushes.

Brett:

Nice. Royal flushes.

Miki:

[crosstalk 00:40:03] And so, they'd pull out the royal flushes. And they had to unscramble the royal flushes, based on the riddles that they were given. Like, for the diamond royal flushes, this is the riddle. And you had to unscramble it based on the different words. The letters that appeared on the 10, jack, queen, king, ace. There was a letter hidden, that then unscrambled based on the riddle. So then, it made the press have to work hard to actually unscramble and send the responses. And then once they get the TUSHY Ace product and install it, they're going to feel they've accomplished something. Like, they actually, they feel so much better.

Brett:

And they're so engaged, and you've delighted them.

Miki:

They're so engaged.

Brett:

You've just made their day in so many ways.

Miki:

Instead of just sending them a product, review it. You're almost like, dance monkey, dance. Versus like, let me bring you into this fun, mysterious story with us. And we're going to be surprised and delighted together. And we're going this extra mile for you, to make you just regale in the delight. And I think that, that is what people want in life. They want to be just surprised and delighted. They want to be regaled. And like, "Oh!". And giggle. They want their heart to flutter.

Brett:

They want magic, they want mystery, they want excitement, they want to be kind of caught up in something. Right? Not just reading.

Miki:

Who doesn't want to be caught up in this ,"oh', moment. And it feels so good and it just enlivens our being.

Brett:

So, how did that work out? How was the press' reaction to that?

Miki:

Well I mean, this one, we just sent them out actually last week, so we're still underway. But guess what? The fact that we had almost, I think it was like 20 press asked for these cards. Because first, we were like, we're going to send you a mysterious package. Are you willing to take it? We need your home address, because we're COVID times. And so we had, almost 20 press gave us their home addresses, to send them the mystery packages. And so that already means that they're hooked. And we did this before, for THINX. Where we had people go and smash bricks, and they had to open the bricks and look for these invitations. And 80 people showed up to our event, after they smashed the THINX. 80 press RSVPed. We had another event, where we poked a hold in eggs, and put these mystery scrolls in them. And then all 20 press showed up to our event, because they wanted to crack open the egg and look at the scroll. And we said, you can't open them until you come to the event.

Miki:

So it's just, creating the mystery, creating the intrigue. It's human nature that, when they start something, they want to finish it. They don't like incomplete story lines, they like to complete story lines. And when there's an incompletion, there's still this intrigue, this mystery that keeps you wanting more. And so, we're in that storyline right now, with the TUSHY Ace, and I'll let you know how it goes, but I feel very confident.

Brett:

Yeah. That idea of opening and closing loops. Once a loop is open, people want to close and they want to figure out. They want to solve the mystery. That's why cliffhangers work, and all of those things.

Miki:

And in relationship and romance. When you're romancing, you're seducing. It's the same kind of storyline. It's so much fun, that game.

Brett:

Yeah. And I know you've got to go, so I've got two quick things. But I also want to mention, just briefly. You talked about two stories, two events. Because you're the master of doing these just crazy, off the wall events, that also work. So, one was ButtCon, and one was the Funeral for a Tree, for TUSHY. Are those outlined in one of your books? Because even if nothing else...

Miki:

Not yet.

Brett:

They're not? Oh, dang it. Okay.

Miki:

Not yet, but my next, maybe. I might have a Do Cool Sh*t sequel, and talk about TUSHY in that.

Brett:

We'll highlight that, or I'll find the story, that I can put. Anyway, I'll let the audience [crosstalk 00:43:41].

Miki:

I'm happy to share them really quick. I can share them over the next couple minutes, no problem.

Brett:

Okay, just do it quickly over the next two minutes, yeah.

Miki:

Sure, yeah. So again, it's all about creating unorthodox events, unorthodox gatherings. That make people go, "Huh? What are you talking about? What is this?" So we held two kind of events before COVID happened. And we're going to now resume them once COVID's now finally, hopefully at bay. But one of them was called A Funeral for a Tree. And the other one was called ButtCon. The Funeral for a Tree is, we actually held a real funeral for a dead tree at the Judson Memorial Church, which is the biggest memorial church in all of New York City. In Washington square park. We had a 400 seat capacity, and we sold out. And we had a 25 part choir. We had Matthew Morrison, the actor, is one of our dear friends, playing the reverend. We had his wife, Renee, who is one of my best friends as well, who played Maple, the wife of the dead tree. It was just the most wild experience. And the people who came...

Brett:

People were reading eulogies. Which, I got to hear one. It was hilarious. Just super funny and well done.

Miki:

I mean, it was just comedy. It was sad, it was beautiful, it was inspiring. It was all of the above, and people left so inspired to save trees. [crosstalk 00:45:14] And to do it by buying TUSHY, by doing all kinds. You know? But it wasn't a marketing...

Brett:

It didn't feel like a sales pitch. It didn't feel a, "Hey, here's your coupon for TUSHY." As you walk out the doors.

Miki:

For one second. It didn't feel like. It just felt TUSHY opened my eyes to these important things. [crosstalk 00:45:31].

Brett:

We are killing a lot of trees because of toilet paper, and here's how we can help solve that.

Miki:

That's right. 50 million trees are cut down every single year because of toilet paper consumption. 30 million cases of urinary tract infections, hemorrhoids. All these health hygiene issues, not to mention planetary issues. All these things could be alleviated by just using a bidet, using TUSHY, under $100 product. You know? But we didn't even say any of that stuff at our Funeral for a Tree event. That was, we just put on this amazing event, brought to you by TUSHY. And people just were like, this was the most inspiring theatrical event I've ever been to.

Brett:

You get an insane press on it.

Miki:

[crosstalk 00:46:07] ...

‍

They said, "What are you doing?"

Miki:

What are you doing here?

Brett:

And the press you got from both those events, to pay for that kind of exposure would be almost impossible. But you got it because you did some crazy stuff.

Miki:

Yeah. It was truly, again, another reminder that just, what you put in. When you put in, like, if you build it, they will come. And you have to build spectacles. Again, things that surprise and delight. Things that make people go, I need to go and see what this is about. And that's the most important thing.

Brett:

I love that, I love it. So I know, you've got to go. So just kind of in closing. If people are listening to this and they're like, I need more Miki Agrawal in my life. And so, where can they, one, go to find your books? But also, just experience your marketing. Because hopefully, this has opened your eyes a little bit. Like, you need to pay attention to what Miki is doing from a marketing standpoint, you're going to learn a lot. So, how can people get more Miki in their life?

Miki:

Yes. Well first, you can also always come check me out on Instagram where I answer most people's questions pretty directly. Like, people have questions, I'm pretty good about responding. So Instagram, just @mikiagrawal. You can also go to mikiagrawal.com. If you subscribe to my mikiagrawal.com page, you'll actually get one disruptive move every week to do for yourself and for your business. So it's 52 disruptive moves. So that's just on mikiagrawal.com. And of course go to helloTUSHY.com. Check it out, get a TUSHY bidet. It's the best gift of all time. Holidays, it's the gift. It's just the best gift you can do for yourself. I mean, period, end of story. From a health high hygiene, confidence, feeling sexy, feeling good perspective. And then you can also, oh, if you want to learn about the strategies. I mean, definitely, Do Cool Sh*t, Disrupt-Her, check out my books. But then, if you want to actually learn about all of my tactics, of all of my strategy and building my companies from zero to $100 million plus, I built an actual course called Zero to a $100 million on Mindvalley.

Brett:

Mindvalley, I'll link to that in the show notes.

Miki:

If you go to my link in bio on my Instagram, I link to a free masterclass, a one hour masterclass which goes into a lot of these campaigns. But then, it also links to the quest, the Mindvalley quest, Zero to a $100 million. So, definitely check it.

Brett:

Beautiful. Got to check it out. I got to check that out. I got to watch that. And I'm going through Disrupt-Her right now. I absolutely love it, I highly recommend it. I like the audio version. I'm an auditory learner. And you narrate the books, so I get to listen to more Miki as I'm driving around. So that's been awesome as well. So Miki, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for doing this. I've been inspired, and got some new ideas cooking around in my head. I know other people have too. So, really, really appreciate it.

Miki:

Yay. I was happy to be here.

Brett:

Awesome, thank you so much. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. What do you think about the show? What do you want to hear more of? Less of? Let us know. And until next time, thank you for listening.

Brett:

Are you a D2C brand spending over six figures a month on paid media? If so, then listen up. My agency, OMG Commerce, and I have worked with some of the top eCommerce brands over the years. Including Boom, Native, Groove, Monan, Organifi and dozens more. And every year, we audit hundreds of Google, YouTube and Amazon ad accounts. And we always find either significant opportunities for growth, or wasted ad spend to cut, or both. For example, are you missing YouTube ads? Whatever you're spending on top of funnel Facebook, you should be able to spend 30 to 50% of that or more on YouTube, with similar returns. So if you're spending 300,000 to 400,000 a month on Facebook, you should be able to easily spend a 100,000 to 150,000 or more on YouTube. Visit omgcommerce.com to request a free strategy session, or visit our resource page and get some of our free guides loaded with some of best strategies for YouTube Ads, Google Shopping, Amazon DSP and more. Check it all out at omgcommerce.com.

‍

The Creative Process to Supercharge Your Facebook & IG Ads with Nick Shackleford
:
Nick Shackleford

The Creative Process to Supercharge Your Facebook & IG Ads with Nick Shackleford

Nick Shackelford was a pro soccer player for the LA Galaxy turned online marketing super star. You’ve probably seen him featured in FOUNDR magazine or speaking on stage of the wildly successful event he co-founded - Geek Out. 

‍

I first met him when we both spoke at Ezra Firestone’s event in Denver several years ago and I’ve been a fan ever since. Nick is a master of media buying. He knows how to build agencies. And he has a really fresh take on creatives. We go deep into his creative process in this episode. Here’s a look at what we cover:

‍

  • How a lack of diversity in your ads could be killing your results.
  • Nick’s agency’s creative process. This is pure GOLD.
  • How to use Amazon reviews to jump start your creative process - This strategy is so simple, so effective, you’ll kick yourself for not having used it.
  • How a tool called Monkey Learn can help you key in on the right words and hooks to use with your audience.
  • Why audience targeting is nearly dead and creative is KING.
  • How Nick uses Creative Strategist and why you should consider one too.
  • How to work with the algorithm rather than against it.

‍

Mentioned in This Episode:

‍

Nick Shackelford

   - LinkedIn

   - Twitter

Geek Out
   - Website

   - Events


Konstant Kreative‍

Structured Agency

Design Pickle‍

No Limit Creatives‍

Penji‍

Video Husky‍

Chubbies‍

Facebook Dynamic Creative‍

Josh Durham‍

Groove Life‍

Aligned Growth Management‍

Necklet‍

Monkey Learn Word Cloud‍

Luca + Danni‍

Northbeam‍

Triple Whale‍

James Van Elswyk



Transcript:

Brett:

Welcome to the Spicy Curry Podcast, where we explore hot takes in e-commerce and digital marketing. We feature some of the brightest guests with the spiciest perspectives on how to grow your business online.

Brett:

In this episode, we talk about the creative process that will supercharge your Facebook and Instagram ads. My guest is Nick Shackelford. You've probably seen Nick on stage at one of your favorite e-commerce events, or you've seen him featured in Foundr Magazine or in a host of other places online. More about Nick in just a minute. In this episode, we talk about the fact that audience marketing is nearly dead and why creative is almost all that matters. We talk about how Nick uses creative strategists and how you should consider using one too. We talk about how Nick use Amazon reviews to kickstart the creative process. This approach is so simple, so effective, so powerful, you'll kick yourself for not having used it before. We'll also talk about a tool that you can use to choose the right words and the right hooks for your ads. Plus, we'll unpack Nick's entire creative strategy. So lean in, buckle up, and please enjoy this interview with Nick Shackelford.

Brett:

The Spicy Curry Podcast is brought to you by OMG Commerce, attentive, One Click Upsell, Zipify Pages, and Payability.

Brett:

Well, I am absolutely geeking out about this episode and this guest. That was a little bit of a pun, you'll find out more about that in a minute. But, longtime friend of mine, absolute rockstar in the space. If you're paying attention to digital marketing at all, you've probably heard of this guy or seen this guy or you've heard the name. And so, today I'm absolutely thrilled to have Nick Shackelford, aka The Shack, on the podcast. And we're going to dive deep into really several things related to marketing. And if you've been listening to this season one of the Spicy Curry Podcast, we're really talking about three things, right? Have something good to say, say it well, say it often. Regardless of what changes in the online world, you've got to do those things. And so we're going to talk about what's working now, what's not working now, how to crush it like Shack does.

Brett:

And so a couple of interesting things about Shack for those that may not know, he was a professional soccer player for the LA Galaxy, and then decided, "You know what? I want my field to be online marketing rather than running around the soccer field." And so we actually met. We met at Ezra Firestones event, right, Shack? We both spoke at Ezra Firestone's event. I don't remember where that was or when that was. Was it maybe Denver, I don't know, three or four years ago?

Nick:

It was. It was Colorado.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah. And I just remembered two things about you. One, you had an amazing strategy for influencer marketing on Facebook, two, you were rocking a killer hoodie, and three, you just had this swagger about you. And then as I've known you over the years, you always have a killer hoodie on. So what is the secret to getting great hoodies?

Nick:

Oh man, I actually am wearing one of them right now. This is an appropriate hoodie when you're just working at home 24/7. So this is [inaudible 00:03:41], which is another e-commerce brand that if you guys are in the space, they definitely do some interesting things. You should definitely talk to Davies. He's a smart, smart guy as well.

Brett:

Would love that intro, let's talk to him. You look like you're ready for a mountain expedition and/or you're ready just to chill at home and be super cozy.

Nick:

I like options, so the fact that I'm able to do both at a will is what I want to play with. But no, what you do, it's been fun to watch the growth of this, especially with the people that are doing it for a long time, because sticking with your theme of say it often, those that are usually saying it often are able to continue to be around because they've been preaching the same thing consistently. It might change a little bit, which trust me, I think 2022 so far, I mean, we're only 19 days into it. But yeah, there are a lot of things that have changed over the times, but we haven't stopped saying the same things, right?

Nick:

We talked about this at GeekOut. You came and you were like, "Hey, this is the consistent stuff that you have to do." And it's shocking... Maybe it isn't shocking, maybe it isn't. People forget what they have to continually do, and so reminding them over and over and over, they just might not be ready to hear it. So I always say, you always start with the basis so everybody's at the same page, but then you can get really to the nitty-gritty stuff, which you do so well, so I see you, brother, on this.

Brett:

Love it, man. Love it. So let's do this, we're going to dive into all the stuff you're doing right now on Facebook and Instagram and other platforms and what your creative genius is. And got an episode in season one here with Justin Brooke, my man, talking GDN, but I know I've seen him publicly say, "If you're not paying attention to Nick Shackelford, you're missing out, because Nick or The Shack knows what he's talking about." So tell me about GeekOut, or tell the audience. I know about GeekOut. I spoke at the last one in LA, and it was fantastic. I had so much fun, so much fun connecting with your group, with your audience. I could really nerd out or geek out. But tell me about that event and kind of what's ahead for this year.

Nick:

I absolutely will. Yeah, I was very fortunate you made it out there. GeekOut started five years ago now, and it started with the fact that I couldn't go to my partner and tell her, "Oh, babe, look at these campaigns. Oh my gosh, isn't this great?" Roll her eyes, she just didn't really care as much. And then [inaudible 00:06:04] James, he felt the same way. So we were geeking and nerding on all these things. We have a different vibe about ourselves, and what I mean... I literally have to explain this. We have the ability to deliver content and aggregate a room of people that want to learn, make money, and continue to build their business, but still feel open to talk about, "Hey, my employee just sued me," or "I'm going through this issue with my partner," or "I'm going...." these really intimate things that you don't feel comfortable expressing unless you're in a room that's safe and comfortable.

Nick:

And it just started happening organically, because I'm that way, right? I'm okay with things being very public. There's a couple things that I don't want to have super public, but I'm pretty much 99% out there on every channel because I do believe building in public builds relation, and there was no better way for us to do this except doing it in person. So this started, again, five years ago, and I remember we did it in Las Vegas literally on a couch. We thought we were renting a mansion, of course. Like all things in Vegas, you thought it was, and we figured what it really was. We got there, and I remember there was a putt-putt. One of the selling propositions on Airbnb was, "Oh, use our little putting green, and it was amazing." It was two holes, and I'm like, "Oh my God, what are we're going to do?"

Nick:

So we had a good run, but the thing that we never lacked was the quality of content. And so we've ran it back. We've done Tel Aviv. We've done Barcelona. We've done LA, Miami, New York, and we're gearing up for this year. We will be the only event that will do, I think, double digits of events this year. We're planning for 10. I think we'll probably, knock on wood because of where the world is currently at, get about six. And the first one starts in Dubai right before Affiliate World, and then we'll bring it back in for San Diego and Miami. Brett, I think I told you this before, it's the one business that I have that makes me the least amount of money but brings me the most amount of happiness, because you truly get a seed connection, and it's something that we've really, really gotten away from in the world for the various reasons that all of us are experiencing together, but it's just become way more important to me.

Brett:

Yeah, it was just phenomenal. I can't wait. I've been talking to my team about it. I've been bugging you for dates, because I'm blocking these out. I'm coming to speak at as many of these as I can or attend those that I can't speak at. It was just an amazing place to be, other like-minded, super smart marketers. I know you've had this experience. You were talking about talking to your partner. You can't really talk about ROAS. She doesn't care, right? I can't talk about ROAS to my wife. She glazes over. But you become acutely aware of how many acronyms we use in this space, right? ROAS, LTV, AOV, CLV. It's never ending, but this is your people. You can geek out about any of those things, but you can also talk about deeper stuff, people stuff, preparing for exits, buying companies. It's an awesome group, testament to you and to James, but just high level people, man. I would put it on the short list. If you could only attend a couple events this year, make sure one of them-

Nick:

[inaudible 00:09:22].

Brett:

... is GeekOut. I can edit this out later if I need to. Is there a rebrand coming too? Is it going to be GeekOut, is going to be something else? Or should we talk about that?

Nick:

Yeah, absolutely, we should. It's going to be called a GeekUp for two reasons. One, we have to level up, and so adding in that geek element is something that we still want to keep. And two, there was already a trademark called GeekOut Events. So as much of the branding I want you guys to be like, "Oh wow, that's so clever," I'm like, "Well, we kind of got into a situation."

Brett:

We're geeking out and leveling up. We're geeking up. This is amazing. Yeah, that's [inaudible 00:09:58]. Well, its going to be... I don't care what you call it, but GeekUp is super cool too. So if you attend only a few events, make sure one of them is GeekUp. And so I'll link to everything in the show notes. You can google it and check it out and stuff like that too. So fantastic, man. Any other notes on the event itself?

Nick:

Well, okay, so the segue into what I'm focused on a lot right now outside of the three businesses is we started GeekUp because it was about sharing and learning and getting that feedback of what's happening, and that led me to Konstant Kreative. We have almost our first year under our belts, and it's purely content because... Dude, you're a YouTube guy. You do good YouTubes. We don't do YouTubes, but we do a lot of Facebook, and we do a lot of Instagram, and we do a lot of TikTok, and we do a lot of Snapchat. And I used to be such a big teacher and proponent of strategies and hacks and tactics. I'll raise my hand here, I was one of the biggest people talking about various hacks and strategies 2017, '18, '19. 2020, I got a little quieter. 2020, I got real quiet. In 2022, I'm on that same quiet band because it just isn't as sustainable as it once was. I don't want to say we did this on purpose, but I like to think I did or had a feeling, my spider senses, for the new Marvel movie, which is fantastic, is tingling, and I was like, "Dude-

Brett:

That is a good movie. And actually, quick side note, the new, or new-ish, depending on when you're listening to this, Spiderman movie got us into the whole Marvel series. We watched Spiderman No Way Home, and then now we're going back to the beginning. We're, I think, three movies into the... It's like 30 movies. If you do chronologically through the Marvel series, it's nuts, but my family and I, we're going through it all, so it's super fun.

Nick:

Oh my God, I am not a movie person, but I will watch though. It's culture. It's so culture. Okay. What put us into this position was understanding that content was never going to leave us, and so we put so much time and effort into building. We weren't first to do it. There's Design Pickle. There's No Limit Creatives. There's Penjee! There's Video Husky. There's so many other people that do this content on demand thing, but we had to do it ourselves, because arguably, I've never gone through a pandemic. I'm 31 years old. I didn't know what would happen if I couldn't understand how much revenue was being driven by each one of our employees across our entire company because I didn't know what I needed to go potentially [inaudible 00:12:26] so I didn't know what loans I needed to go get.

Nick:

I needed to know that I could do a dollar earned or average per each one of our employees contributing to the bottom line. Sometimes in just an agency space or sometimes in business space, you have admins or project managers that might not directly tie to bottom line. We know they impact it, but we don't really know what they drive. Designers are another one. Editors are another one. Copywriters are another one. Unless you're in this performance tower, you know each email or each thing you write, you get dollars back on. If you aren't structured that way, you're like, "Dude, I don't really know how much money's coming in from these people." So we actually built this service and fed it to ourselves. And I think the term is dog feeding ourselves.

Brett:

Yeah, so this is a Google term. So it's called eating your own dog food. They borrowed it from Purina or Puppy Chow or something like that, where literally that company, they would eat their own dog food. It's a metaphor for using your own stuff, right?

Nick:

Okay.

Brett:

You believe in your product so much, you use it. Yeah.

Nick:

Oh, so thank you. I actually didn't know where that was coming from, and I'm glad you [inaudible 00:13:29]. We built it for ourselves because content... If you're like, "Nick, what are you about right now?" it's content, and it's volume of content at a cost effective rate. Listen, before the pandemic hit, a lot of people didn't really open up their mind to the quality of support, quality of company building that you can do offshore. I'm not saying outsource. This is a complete different thing. Outsource to offshore is completely different. Offshore are full-time your employees, your people, your values, your systems, your processes. Outsource is white labeling. You don't know what's going on. They're delivering you something, you're going to wrap in a bow, you're going to deliver. So I'm going to be very clear on that.

Nick:

This was something that when we started to understand quality of talent allowed us on the agency side to operate at 35, 40, 55% margin at times on various months, you can do the same exact thing on a content iteration, say. The only issue that a lot of people don't get right when they're like, "Hey, I need a performance editor," or "I need a performance creative person," it's because they themselves don't know what they want. Here's why. There's a subjectivity in this that everybody can't get away from in the romanticism toward a brand they own or towards the content that's being shot. I'm sure you experience this, or do you?

Brett:

Absolutely. Totally. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes we are our own biggest enemy, or often the brand owner is their biggest enemy in terms of getting creatives that work, creatives that actually connect and compel and move people to take action. Yeah, sometimes we're romantic about what we think that structure should be or what we think that message should be rather than focusing on... Let's not do something that's completely off brand, of course, but let's do what works. And sometimes you have the brand, or sometimes the agency gets in the way of that.

Nick:

It's so true because we're hired to do two things. Now, if you're hiring a branding agency or hiring a shop that needs to be really up here and be oh, really meta on things, God bless. I'm not in the space to where I can afford to create something that doesn't drive revenue. You're in the same boat. We have to validate the costs that we have for a lot of our partners. And so when you have this subjective idea of what happens, and I'll get into what testing, what we're doing now, what 2022, at least the bets that I'm making in this first quarter on how we're building out our testing and how we're building out our, at least our internal content structure. And actually, I'll fucking go into all the things, because I think the more that this information gets out there, it might actually spark some interest on your side, and you might have some interesting feedback for me too, so-

Brett:

Totally, totally. We're going to talk about one thing really quickly, and then I want to dive into the specifics.

Nick:

Okay.

Brett:

Actually, two things really quickly. What'd you say the name of the company was, the content company?

Nick:

Oh, Konstant Kreatives. Sorry.

Brett:

Konstant Kreatives. Awesome. We'll link to that in the show notes as well. But I could not agree with you more, right? I think in fact, back when we first met in Denver at Ezra's event, a lot of people were talking about hacks and here's little tricks and tips and things you can do to make Facebook and YouTube and all that work. And certainly, there's always going to be some hacks, but success is way more, way more about having great creatives, sticking to the fundamentals, and just being relentless, relentless on testing, relentless on looking for new angles, and then really just being consistent in what you're doing and doubling down on what's working. And so love that you're doing that. I got to learn more about your company there too so I can refer some people to you. But yeah, so let's dive in there. What is your process then for finding the right angle and getting that... Because you talk about volume of creatives too, right? You got to be testing pretty frequently, especially on Facebook. Not as much on YouTube, but especially on Facebook and Instagram. What's your process like?

Nick:

This is something that we think is an ongoing debate, kind of ongoing analysis. Let's think of it this way, you used to go to optimize campaigns at an ad level or an ad set level or even the structure of the campaign level, and we're having to do a lot of this before we even get to the campaign launch. What I mean by this is, before the conversation of cancel culture or before the conversation of inclusion really was being had, a lot of the ads that we saw were generally white males, white females across every brand, across every company, thin, thinnish, and you didn't really think about, "What if [crosstalk 00:17:49]

Brett:

Which is really just silly. But you're right, that's just the way it was. Yes, it was crazy.

Nick:

Yeah, it was silly. Listen, I'm not ignorant to who I am and what I am, but when you look at brands that are buying this, brands don't have this data. You can't run a quiz to be like, "Hey, what do you... " I guess you could, technically, but I don't know how it would come across us. "Who do you identify with? Or what do you identify as? Or what race are you?" You can't necessarily ask that, but that's the type of [inaudible 00:18:17] that you have to get done. Say, when we give a shoot or when we give content for others to see, "Hey, what do we need?" We usually recommend, "Hey, we need two different races and two different genders, and we need sizes of those genders to be appropriate to what we actually think is our customers buying."

Nick:

It's a great example, the Team Chubbies. Chubbies makes unbelievable male board shorts. I think they get an underwear too now, but makes male board shorts. And if you watch the progression over time of who was used in their content, fit male, white or black, fit male, white or black, little thicker, white or black, little dad bod, white or black, little larger, white or black. Do you know why? Because they're looking at all the-

Brett:

That's their audience, right? How many fit dudes are out there? Right? Most of us have dad bods. Not you, you're a former soccer player, but yeah, dad bods are everywhere.

Nick:

These are the frat guys that are buying it. And they literally... I've listened and watched the progression of this, and they're like... I'm sure that some people want to aspire to look great, but there's a point where you can get turned off by this, and you're like, "That's not really who I am." So it's this progression, this conversation of the testing begins at the inclusion of what's in the content. That's just a side note. I went on a tangent. I apologize there.

Brett:

Yeah, but I love it. I'll just, I'll key in on that. And so it's a side note, but it's important. A buddy of mine runs an athleisure business and they sell a lot of leggings. And so their models are very diverse, Latinos, African Americans, whites, every race, but also normal looking people, right? These are not all 98 pound supermodel. It looks like normal people, but they're joyful and they're smiling. And they are killing it because people look at it and say, "Well, that's me. That's my body type. That's my style." And it's so needed right now, so I'm really glad you brought that up.

Nick:

It's so true. And it kind of goes down to the typical structures that we run if I were to get a little technical in this. We still launch with dynamic creative. We still launch with... Dynamic creative is probably the first step. If we don't have a full hard belief, and this is the campaign structure, if we don't have a full hard belief in any one direction, whether it's like, we know this is worked in the past, but we're just trying to iterate on the value prop, or we're just trying to iterate on the USB, the box opening, we're just trying to iterate on a specific thing, we will still let Facebook choose or dictate the direction we need to go into up into-

Brett:

So by dynamic creatives, you just mean you're... Explain that for people that don't know the Facebook platform well.

Nick:

Thank you very much. So when launching a campaign, there's DCT, dynamic creative testing, which is a tool that you let Facebook choose. Essentially, you're going, "Hey, we don't want to impose any campaign restrictions to force spend," let's say on an automatic budget campaign, an ABO. You go, "I just need you to spend all my budget on these specific creatives that I, the media buyer, have told you I want you to spend on." And CBO can do that too with a little bit of limitations, but that's easiest communication I can give you on that. The dynamic creative testing [crosstalk 00:21:11]

Brett:

You're basically saying, "Hey, here's our creatives, and Facebook, you go wild and you find the winner."

Nick:

Exactly. We are not imposing a restriction on where money can be spent. We're letting the campaign dictate that. And that is... It's basically taking away the bias that we have of letting Facebook say, "Hey, we have this algorithm, we have this info, we have these consumers, and we're going to run this type of campaign on it."

Brett:

Yeah.

Nick:

Now I will have some of my media buyers look at me and go, "Chef, I won't always run this route," but that's the baseline that we start with, because if somebody has pushback on me, say, let's say David or Scott have a conversation, they're like, "Nick, I actually believe that's not the best use of this campaign, because we're only trying to compare two main concepts." And we'll say, Bernie says, "We'll use the athleisure brand here." We want to understand which color way of these leggings are going to be the one that hits or which price point of these leggings are going to hit. That doesn't need to be dynamic creative tested. That needs to be controlled and tested equally across the board. So that to me has probably been the biggest change. Before, I would launch all with minimum campaign budgets or some sort of structure where we're going audience testing, kind of put that after the fact, because it's not as impactful unless it's going to be purely based on the content or creative and the structure when you go live with it.

Brett:

Yeah. I love that. And so really, I mean, if you look at what is our job as advertisers, whether we're agencies or in house or solopreneur, whatever the case may be, our job is to make great creatives, but to feed the algorithm, to let the algorithm, whether that's Facebook, YouTube, or Google, let... The algorithm's smart. And in the long run, the algorithm's going to do a better job than you are in a lot of ways, so how can you feed it and give it enough creative so that it finds the winners? Or how can you do a very specific test? Like you were talking about, right? I'm testing two creatives, because I'm trying to find is it black or is it pink on the leggings that are going to hit, or is it this price or that price? That type of thing, a controlled test, but either way you're trying to say, "I don't know the answer here on what creative's really going to work, but we're going to find out." And then once we find out, then we're going to go all in on that, so-

Nick:

Because you and I both have these conversations with brands that talk about, "Hey, what's your brand book? What's your stance? What do you stand for? And they have the idea of who they want their customer to be, but it's not always what Facebook will agree to be or Google will agree for it to be. You have to let the replies come in. You have to let the data speak for itself. And I'm shocked. And I don't know if this is in your portfolio, we have about 116 brands right now, 117, I believe. The amount of post-purchase surveys on where you've heard from me or what information they're gathering is probably less than 15%.

Brett:

Totally, a very few of our clients are doing them. I think you've got to do it though, because you're going to be surprised by the answers you find out.

Nick:

Exactly, especially understanding touch points now the attribution is dropping a little bit, touch points and understanding where these people are coming from or how much I should be allocating per channel. We had a very, very intelligent brand, I'll say maybe 2020s, called Rove Concepts, which are a large... It's a larger retailer. It's a furniture, so purchase path takes a lot of time. You got to include your partner. A lot of it is generated interest on Facebook, but a lot of it is actualized on Google, XYZ. And these guys were making... This is the first company or brand that came to Jake myself and goes, "You know what? I understand that we gave you these [inaudible 00:24:37] a platform. I don't know if you guys are actually impacting the bottom line because it shows Google having way more conversions than you guys." I'm like, "Heck is going on?" I'm like, "Well, okay, I get it. I'm sure there's... It's an expensive piece. There's thousands of dollars. Can we just put surveys on the back of this? Or do you have this already live, or can you share this information?"

Nick:

A lot of what we started to see was, although that might not have popped up in the platform, a lot of it was saying I heard first about you on Facebook or Instagram, yet the conversion value, all the revenue was coming from Google. And I'm going, "You can't tell me to stop or that's going to be lowered." So we did a hard test turning off paid social, top of funnel. What do you know? Numbers dropped. Yeah, we wouldn't have been able to cover [crosstalk 00:25:22]

Brett:

Yeah, it's so true. I was just talking to a buddy of mine, Josh Durham, who used to be the head of growth at Groove Life and at an agency, and he talked about the same thing, doing those post purchase surveys and realizing that, man, 70, 80% of customers are going to say, "Hey, I first heard you on social, I first heard you on YouTube," or something like that. And I love Google, right? I'm a Google guy, but search and shopping sometimes takes the credit, especially branded search. You need to run it, but branded search often takes credit for a sale that, really, Facebook or YouTube generated, right?

Nick:

Sure. Preach to the choir [inaudible 00:25:59]

Brett:

Yeah, yeah. So, hey, I want to circle back to creative really quickly, and then we can talk attribution again in a minute, because there's some important notes there. As far as creatives go, what is your process? How are you guys coming up with hooks for the actual creatives, and what types of creatives are you launching with? I just want to give people ideas on what should they be testing next or how should they go about their creative process, or how should they talk to their agency to get them to do things more like you guys? Can you talk about your creative process a little bit?

Nick:

I can, yeah. We have one baseline process that we run with or usually use outside of if someone already gives us [inaudible 00:26:39]. Say a brand was coming to us and they already really had, "Hey, we know who our girl or guy is. Here's what we've learned outside of optimizing and looking at the current campaigns," we start with this process where we begin on Amazon, we begin with Reddit, and we begin with competitors. We don't go to the own brand stuff just yet, because we don't want any biases coming in from marketing messages that consumers might be regurgitating back. If you look at Amazon, there's very honest reviews at one star, two star, and even the three star, very honest reviews that use layman's terms that are common, that they're looking for solutions or points. And a lot of it on Amazon, actually, they don't really care about the brand itself. From the experience, from the information I have, they're not necessarily going to Amazon to find Lulu Lemon, they're going to Amazon to price shop. They're going to Amazon for the efficiency and the effectiveness of getting that product as quick as possible.

Nick:

You're not going there looking for a specific brand. You're usually typing in the product in which you need. Hydration packets, coats, clothing, that's the things that you're really searching for, so you usually get people that don't really about crap about who the brand is or what, and they're not going to hold back from you, because it's pretty anonymous at that point, or what have you. So what we started to find out is, before a brand would come to us and before they're like, "I don't know what talking points or hooks or explanations that need to be in this piece of creative," we go to the Amazon reviews. We probably export between 50 to a hundred. We drop it into a word cloud.

Brett:

So you're looking at the actual reviews from those customers or from competitors and from that category as a whole?

Nick:

Correct. Thank you very much to the clarification. We do not go to the brand own yet. We go from the competitors of the same exact product. So if I'm selling leggings, I'm going to the number one competitor with the most amount of reviews, similar in the legging side. I want to know why this product is winning. I want those five stars and four stars, isolate those by themselves. And I want those one stars and two stars, isolate them by themselves. I use three as a lever if I don't have clear messages of things to say or not say based on the four and fives, and the ones and twos.

Brett:

Got it.

Nick:

Four and five might be skewed.

Brett:

Right.

Nick:

One to twos might be skewed, but the threes might you my answer if I don't find it in the two buckets tracking with me.

Brett:

Totally. And this is brilliant by the way. I absolutely love it, yeah, because you're looking for real pain points, real motivators, real things that customers care about, and you're looking for their language, which just makes all the difference in the world.

Nick:

Because we are going to do market stuff. We're going to try and be cool and cute and playful. We'll do our best to not, but we sometimes fall into these categories. And I'll use one brand for this called Necklet. Necklet created a latch system that's magnetic that allows for stacks of jewelry to not get tangled. Brilliant. For women, or men, mainly for women that are wearing necklaces that don't want it to be tangled because they want to wear multiple, it's absolutely brilliant. It's genius. And the mechanism is a magnet on the back. What is it solving? Is a magnet strong enough? Is it latching? Does it pull your hair? These things are questions that the brand might not necessarily know. But guess who's going to know? The people that are buying it and the people that are leaving those reviews on Amazon. They [inaudible 00:29:51] will tell you exactly how feeling, whether this is a dumb concept or not.

Nick:

So we found out a lot of this. No matter how beautiful it might look, no matter how the feeling of joy might be portrayed, the mechanism is still the most unique value proposition for them, so we better go speak specifically towards. That, to me, was after we got from a competitors, put it into a word cloud. I think the easiest one you guys could use is probably Monkey Learn. It's called monkeylearn/wordcloud. I think you have to potentially set up an account. It's free, but if anybody else has a word cloud generator that is better than that, please hit me up. I'm always looking for more tools.

Brett:

Monkey Learn, and you're looking for... And this is like a word cloud builder?

Nick:

Yeah. So it's called Monkey Learn, and then it's a forward slash word-cloud or wordcloud. I'm not sure exactly on [inaudible 00:30:36], but I can pull it for you right after this. And that way, I'm able to aggregate all my star reviews. I would say it's easier if you... The more, the better. The more, the more accurate. Drop it into this word cloud, and it's going to generate and pull up the most commonly used words and tones. And that way, now here's your messages. Here's your information. Here's the things that you need to use. This, Brett, I'm telling you, this thing has allowed processes. Because if you don't know where to begin, that's where you go right away.

Brett:

Yeah, because if you don't have something like this, you're just going to begin with that discussion around the boardroom. It's going to be virtual, right? But you're talking to the client, you're talking to the brand owner, you're talking to the marketing director, and you're like, "Well, hey, our customer is this, and they believe this and they want that." And that's valuable, but this is amazing, where you're saying, "Okay, let's see what the people, the real customers are actually saying, and let's aggregate that. And let's look for tone and let's look for actual words." Yeah, just absolutely brilliant. I love it.

Nick:

The next step that we take from is... Say we already have this, say somebody already has this understanding, the next step that we have here is, where are you lacking? Where do you think your brand or your audience has not been addressed? This is usually right where we get in the conversation of inclusion, usually where we get in the conversation of, it seems like we're over indexed on a certain demographic, a certain gender, certain size. That, to me, is something that we really, really spend a great amount of time. We're very fortunate. We're in LA, so we have a melting pot of people to pull from, and that's something that we know, as a unique advantage, we have to leverage. So that generally is our second conversation that we have, of like, where can we do some tests to where we're not doing something that's not on brand, we're not doing something that we have fear of isolating a consumer, but we have the ability to actually get real learnings in a direction that we never ran before. Here's an example, Luca Danni, which is [inaudible 00:32:29]. It's a bangle and accessory company, bracelet.

Brett:

It's called Luke and Danni? Did I hear that right?

Nick:

Yeah. It technically reads Luca Danni, but Luke and Danni is what it is, and they sell bangles, they sell bracelets. Well, in this test, they usually always show the wrist, and it's the wrist of the woman buying it and the various women buying it. And they actually started seeing a little bit of a performance increase on the thicker in which the wrist began to [crosstalk 00:32:59]

Brett:

Interesting.

Nick:

And I'm like, why is this? Then you look at the export of the purchasing behavior of the people buying it. You have the strong representation of the Bible bell, strong representation of the south, strong representation of a little bit of the east coast. But you're like, "Wow, okay. I think some of our demographics are not the assumed thinner audience that we once believe there to be, so how do we mix this up?" So now we have wrists of all shapes and sizes. You hear me?

Brett:

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're there. I thought I lost you for a minute. Yeah, so wrists of all shapes. This is so important. What's really interesting, I going to key in on something that Ezra Firestone mentioned to me a couple years ago, where they notice, BOOM!, their brand BOOM! and Cindy Joseph, it's really women over the age of 50, skin care, makeup, and really good stuff, but they found... They thought, "Well, what if we went a little bit younger with our models, or a little bit younger with our ambassadors that we have in the videos." And they started getting complaints. People were reaching out saying, "That's not me. This person is younger than me." Right? We sometimes forget that people really are looking for, "Can I see myself in this video? Can I see myself in this product. And is this for me?" And if it's not, then they're likely not going to buy, right? And so fascinating test, that, hey, thicker wrists, bigger wrists lead to better results. Diversifying your models leads to better results. You got to explore and got to test. That totally makes sense.

Nick:

Anybody can do this too. That's probably the biggest thing that I want to drive home, is those testing of using Amazon first and Reddit first because the natural communication, community already being built there within your competitors. It's not rocket... The way you present that information, the way you speak to it really will pull in on the expertise that you have, but this isn't rocket science, man. We have anywhere between 100 to 150 brands at any time. And if anybody's looking for analysis of their creative or performance or angles or whatever they're taking, they go this direction, because they know they can get it, they can get it quick, and they don't need to wait on other people to do it. So it's something I would definitely like to pass that forward.

Brett:

Yeah. Love it. What else? What do you see working on Facebook right now? And I know that this stuff has a tendency to be short lived, but in terms of length of videos, what are you finding that's working, or maybe, maybe there's different links, different angles for cold traffic versus remarketing? What are some of the kind of tips and ideas you're seeing there?

Nick:

Well, I'm going to caveat this [inaudible 00:35:25]. We are using two tools. So we're using North Beam and we're using Triple Whale, because we are making-

Brett:

Both fantastic tools.

Nick:

I completely agree. We have to make sure that we're looking at the correct amount of information or data and it's purely based upon a third party tool that's giving me the direction of, okay, this campaign, this ad set, this purchase path is making the most sense for us, so-

Brett:

Yeah. And just a quick note here, because I know the guys at North Beam and at Triple Whale, great platforms, but I'll talk North Beam for just a second. The way it works, it's basically first party data. So they put a first party pixel on your site, they put DNS record there where now they can have an infinity timeframe-

Nick:

Yes.

Brett:

... click attribution, right? So instead of attribution being only seven days, right? So after click happens, and after seven days, Facebook can no longer track it. With something like North Beam or Triple Whale, you track it forever, right? And you can go back and say, "Hey, this one YouTube click or this one Facebook click led to a customer who bought 20 times." Right? You can see all that data, because then these tools integrate with Facebook, Google-

Nick:

Yes.

Brett:

... Shopify, your email platform. They pull all that stuff together. So anyway, this isn't a commercial for those tools. We don't make anything from those tools, but you need that data to know what's really working and what's not.

Nick:

Well, we never used to have... We always needed this.

Brett:

We both needed it, yeah. And [crosstalk 00:36:42]

Nick:

We can get close without it. And now we can't. So now when I'm looking at campaigns, so I'm looking at what's working. Right now, let's go January 19th, 11:50 AM, Wednesday, 2022. What's working right now is images. I'm now getting images with plain background colors, bold colors. I'm saying yellow blues, pinks and purples, and big bold text. Call outs of the pain points of the consumer. And if I were to be more specific, this is primarily top of funnel, and we're having very minimal branded elements here, because all I'm trying to do is build engagement, build a little bit of direction that I'm trying to go in this place, it's just the right path for me to go down towards, and it is the quickest thing that can be launched. It is the easiest thing that can be made.

Brett:

Yeah.

Nick:

Pain points, value propositions, big, bold colored text, and maybe, if you really want to include it, what does the product look like? Is can just be a product on a white image or somewhere the left or right side of things. We're using this top of funnel aggressively for two reasons. One, if we can get the engagement, and if we can get some sort of understanding of people agreeing with it, or maybe it say other way, not agreeing with it, but that you're usually just seeing the comments, the shares or the engagement overall, I know I'm on the right path. I need to make an image or a more detailed image, shorter video or longer form video to run top of funnel. This is Facebook specifically. So our launching period right now is major callouts with the value propositions or with pain points that we believe for each brand with that color text to kind of pop off page. Second, if that is already being done or something that's already going down that path, we are going with 30 to 45 second videos.

Nick:

I was a huge proponent of sub 30, generally around 15 seconds, but I need this bigger audience for people to pull from, because things on platform, the pools of remarketing are not as quality as they once were because of the drop in reporting. So the more that we can have people engaging or watching the videos longer, I'm running all of our remarketing, or at least our reengagement middle of funnel, off of these audience and pools of creative that we're actually spending more time, that these consumers are spending more time on.

Brett:

Got it. So you're running... So yeah, I remember, and I'm not a Facebook guy, but I remember people talking about, "Hey, shorter creatives are working 15 seconds and things like that," which I'm sure is still the case to a certain degree. But what you're saying, and this totally makes a lot of sense, is 45 seconds, 30 seconds to 45 seconds to your cold traffic audiences, because then you can remarket to people that have watched half of that or all that or whatever the case may be, and now that's a much better audience than maybe the remarketing audiences you would get from someone who engages with a 15 second video. Did I understand that correctly?

Nick:

You did, because we need the... Well, for just a stronger audience. And I don't know what happened. I think the biggest thing that we've seen, if we're talking remarketing, the content, I'm not too sure. I wouldn't feel comfortable speaking about what's working across the board for our brands because it's very [inaudible 00:39:44] and very particular.

Brett:

Yeah, yeah.

Nick:

But one thing that is been a constant is, we need more periods of time. We used to be able to be very segmented, and like, "Cool. One to seven day, you're going to get this message. 8 to 14, you're going to get this message. 15 and on, you're going to get this. It's not working for us. We can't get... I hope it is for others because it was so incredible to push them down a purchase path, but we're going 30 days, 45 days, the largest pull in which we can get from, I think the largest pull is probably around 90, but the biggest pull that we can pull from, I want that to be my remarketing pull, and it's just a mixture of various engagement testimonials of videos of them reinforcing the product or the brand. That's the only thing that I know I can get some consistent benchmarks on, because other than this, there's just no consistency.

Brett:

Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. And as platforms are being more restricted on audiences they can build and how they track and how they report, I think in a lot of cases, we're just going to have to simplify, right? Some of the hyper segmentation of this seven day audience, 14 day audience, 30 day audience, some of that is going away. We're seeing that on Google too, actually, so I think that's probably pretty widespread at this point. Going simpler, going broader makes sense. How are you coming... Because I know, especially on Facebook, Facebook is hungry for new creatives, new concepts. How do you go about refreshing content so regularly and finding winning angles? Any insights there on process that you can share?

Nick:

So I don't have a... Ah, I got some stuff. So I don't have a firm one on this because it really is going to depend on budget. So I'll put a caveat there. The more money you have, the general amount of testing that you can do at higher volume. The only difference between a big budget and a little budget is that a big budget learns quicker, so it's no difference. The process is [crosstalk 00:41:37]

Brett:

You're doing the same things. It's just the speed at which you're doing them is what the budget really dictates.

Nick:

Exactly. Exactly. So I want to put, "Oh that's my brand is not spending 25,000, 50,000, whatever it is." I can't do that. You can, you just can't do as much or as quick. We did start the Konstant Kreative, why we built this is because we believe that there's an internal revision of content. There's an internal revision in planning of strategy for content. And then there's a marketing message. Generally, if it's evergreen, without talking about mother's day, father's day one-off moments, if the general process is happening, we are iterating on a seven day and a ten day window. Let me explain. Our current organization structure is, we operate in a pod system. So we have our copywriter, our senior media buyer, junior media buyer account manager, and channel specific buyers that we need to plug in.

Nick:

But the general makeup is admin, media buyers, strategist. We then started to build a new department, which is our creative strategist. Their core role is to analyze campaign performance on creative specifically. They don't care about the audience. They don't care about interests. Just the performance of the creative. Give that feedback into the client. Give that feedback into our creative director to shoot more content. And their job is to come up with the concepts of, "Here's why here's where I think the angles are going to be going towards." Now, it's various and different for all because the budget's going to be different for all, but it's usually out of two things. The increase of quality of life, that's one core concept, core understanding. Why is this product going to increase the value of my life or make my life better? Then, in the same flip side is, if I don't have this, how terrible or how poor or how unfortunate or how much struggle will my life have?

Nick:

So with those two deciding factors of how much I'm going to increase or how much I'm going to decrease, then we come into the concepts of positioning for each one of these products. So with that frame of mind, we have a seven day sprint to a ten day sprint of analysis, seven days to get the campaign running and live. First two, generally speaking, are not spending a tremendous amount of money, unless something works or unless we have... This is a commitment that the brand or us have [inaudible 00:43:48]. We are spending this money. We got to learn. I say 10 days because there's a little bit of updates attribution. You know, if you're running Facebook, data comes in very sporadically, so we want a little bit more time to run this. It's unfortunate because, at least for our team right now, gone are the days of launch a campaign on one day, slam budget on the second day, turn the campaign off on things that didn't work by the third day. That's more drawn out to a five day, seven day [crosstalk 00:44:14].

Brett:

Yeah. Totally.

Nick:

So if I sat there and go, the analysis that the creative strategy team needs to be doing is on that three day, five day, seven day, ten day window, because that's going to include a full week plus weekends and give you back on that Monday, because you're usually not going to get that launch data on that early, early day. To me, this is an ongoing iteration, it's an ongoing sequence of conversation with the brands, and I'm actually doing a pretty decent case study on what's happening on this. I'm going to unveil it live at Affiliate World, because we're working with Motion app-

Brett:

Nice.

Nick:

... which has some really good data on what's happening, where it's happening, and what insights that are having on their campaign, elements needed in creative. And then we have a large volume of assets on the constant side. So I'm trying to pull all the assets that we've seen perform before and all the assets that we've seen being requested, trying to pull a correlation between the two. And it should be some interesting stuff that we're going to find out, because a lot of this that people don't have, and I hate to hate to call it out, but they don't have a process of feedback loop. They don't have the understanding of when they need to go back and analyze and launch it. They can come up with great ideas, but how long does it take for them to make that test, or how long does it take for them to get information back to the people to create more?

Brett:

Just absolutely fantastic. So unfortunately, we're kind of running out of time, which is a bummer because I would like to continue to geek out or geek up here with you, but I want to kind of go high level for just a minute and just a few questions that I think will help anybody. And I think as people have been listening, hey, we got really technical, we got into some details, so pass this on to your media buyer. If you are a media buyer, I'm sure you're just salivating and loving every second of this. Let's talk high level, Nick. What should people be focusing more on in the coming year? And what should they be focusing less on? Meaning, kind of how are things shifting? What do we need to be really keying in on to get results? And maybe, what are some things that used to be important to pay attention to that now aren't?

Nick:

Great question. Fantastic questions. If you're media buyers or your agencies or your team is coming to you with audience insights or campaign structure insights, I would encourage them to let that go and encourage them to stop spending the time in finding structures and more spending the time on the research of what are these campaigns doing? What are the messages being said in the creative or content? And it has always been content first.

Brett:

All right, Spicy Curry listeners, here's the deal. Nick's audio cut out towards the end. Now, the good news is you heard 99% plus of what Nick had to say, but what you missed is kind of important. You missed how to get a hold of Nick. How can you follow him? How can you learn more about him? How can you get in touch with his agency? And so I'm going to tell you right now. The first thing is you have to follow Nick on Twitter. His Twitter game is an A plus. If you're in the DOC space, e-comm space at all, you got to follow him. And his handle is @iamshackelford. So letter I A-M Shackelford, so check that out. His agency is Structured. So structured.agency, check it out. They cut their teeth on paid social, but they also, Nick and Chase Dimond run an email marketing agency, so check out structured as well.

Brett:

And then one of my favorite events now. I think you should check it out. The events do get a little bit technical and nerdy, but GeekOut that Nick runs with James Van Elswyk, great event. So that's geekoutedu.com. So, check that out. You will not be disappointed. And as always, we want to hear from you. If you found this episode to be helpful, please share it with friends. Also, this is a brand new podcast, so go give it a rating on Apple iTunes, if you don't mind. It will make my day. It will allow other people to find the show. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.




‍

Crafting Irresistible Offers & Building Acquisition Funnels with Molly Pittman
Episode 4
:
Molly Pittman

Crafting Irresistible Offers & Building Acquisition Funnels with Molly Pittman

Few people understand Facebook Advertising and Direct Response Marketing like Molly Pittman. You’ve probably seen Molly on stage at events like Traffic & Conversion Summit or Social Media Marketing World or you’ve seen her and Ezra Firestone create amazing content through Smart Marketer. In this episode we dive into a subject that is often glossed over - creating great offers and building acquisition funnels. Without a great offer, your ad efforts will fall short. And great offers aren’t just about discounting. 

‍

It’s the perfect subject to help you win in a privacy-first online world. 

‍

Here's what we cover:

  • How Smart Marketer and BOOM are building and launching new acquisition funnels every month.
  • How to test offers via email before investing in ad dollars.
  • What metrics we should pay attention to in a post iOS 14 world.
  • 3 ways to get more testimonials.
  • What is likely to change in the future and what most likely won’t. 

‍
Mentioned in This Episode:

Molly Pittman

   - LinkedIn

   - Instagram


Smart Marketer‍

Smart Marketer Podcast‍

Ezra Firestone‍

Traffic & Conversion Summit‍

John Grimshaw‍

BOOM! by Cindy Joseph‍

“5 Makeup Tips For Older Women”‍

“The State Of Paid Ads In 2022”‍

“Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert

“Good to Great” by Jim Collins‍

“Turning the Flywheel” by Jim Collins



Transcript:

Brett:

Welcome to the Spicy Curry podcast, where we explore hot takes in e-commerce and digital marketing. We feature some of the brightest minds, some of the spiciest perspectives on how to grow your business online.

Brett:

Season one of this podcast is built on the old business adage that all it takes is three things to grow. One, have something good to say. Two, say it well. And three, say it often. My guest today is Molly Pittman. She's the CEO of Smart Marketer in partnership with Ezra Firestone. We're talking about crafting irresistible offers and building acquisition funnels for e-commerce.

Brett:

So, lean in, buckle up, and enjoy this episode with Molly Pittman.

Brett:

The Spicy Curry podcast is brought to you by OMG Commerce, Attentive, OneClickUpsell, Zipify Pages, and Payability.

Brett:

My guest today really needs no introduction, but I'll give a quick introduction just in case. Today, we're talking about a variety of things. We're going to talk about getting the right offers, and we're going to talk about acquisition funnels. We're going to talk about getting the right mindset as a market, as a media buyer, and as an advertiser.

Brett:

I have the one, the only, Molly Pittman joining me on the show today. Really, if you haven't had the privilege of hearing Molly Pittman, well we're about to fix that, but you've missed out. Molly is a legend, debuted at Trafficking Conversion Summit. It's been years and years ago now, I don't even know how many years. But just blew up and everyone was like, "Man, Molly Pittman is the best," and she is.

Brett:

Now she's partnered with my buddy, Ezra Firestone. Molly is the CEO of Smart Marketer, and I get to observe what she's doing there, what the team is doing there, and they're cranking out amazing content, amazing training that I get to be a part of at some level, which is super fun for me. We're going to dive into what's working now and a variety of other things.

Brett:

Molly Pittman, welcome to the show, and thanks for taking the time.

Molly:

Hey, let's do it. What's up, Brett Curry?

Brett:

What's up? What's up?

Molly:

I'm so happy to be here. I'm so happy to be here. Hello to all of you listers. You're listening to an awesome podcast, huh? When Brett reached out to do this, I was like, "Hey, it's about time." I know you've had podcasts in the past, but excited to hear you more regularly. Yes, love working with you Brett, from the agency side of things, the faculty side of things at Smart Marketer. All of our students love everything you have to share. So, thank you for having me.

Brett:

We get to collaborate on some content. Any time I can go somewhere and hang out with you, John Grimshaw, and Ezra Firestone, I am saying yes to that. Anytime I can make it happen, I'm doing that, because you guys are awesome. [crosstalk 00:03:14].

Molly:

I don't know how much work we get done, but we have a lot of fun.

Brett:

A decent amount of work.

Molly:

I'm kidding.

Brett:

Totally. When we get together, like the last time we all met at Ezra's house, Ezra just cooked some really fancy, simple... He went into full-on chef mode for everybody, and it was pretty amazing.

Molly:

Hey, Ezra is the servant leader. I think we were there-

Brett:

He really is.

Molly:

... hosting a live workshop, and Ezra was like, "Hey, my job right now is to cook and make sure you all are fed." Good example of leadership right there.

Brett:

[crosstalk 00:03:49] make some lattes, or pour some espresso shots. He had this amazing espresso machine-

Molly:

"What do you need? I got it."

Brett:

Yeah. The funny thing is, I'm like, "So Ezra, are you going to drink some espresso?" He was like, "No, I gave that up." He quit. All right, so you're just making for everybody else.

Molly:

That is something that I love about what we're doing at Smart Marketer, is its different from any culture I've ever been a part of, even if it's a day of consulting inside of a business where we really do have fun first. We get our stuff done. We meet our goals. We serve the world. I think that that fun part is what a lot of people are missing out on. It is okay to have fun, and it actually makes the rest of it way more enjoyable and profitable.

Brett:

It's stress relief. It allows you get the right mindset, like fosters creativity when you're having fun and enjoying what you do, and enjoying who you're doing it with. Yeah, you guys do such a good job with that, and Ezra kind of drives that forward where it's like to serve to the world unselfishly and profit that mantra is true. It's not just something that sounds good, or sort of feels good, or looks good on a shirt. It's the way you guys live and the way you guys operate.

Brett:

I think it's part of the reason why we get along so well. We're huge advocates of culture, and putting people first, but also letting people shine and be themselves. You should enjoy working with one another. It makes a difference.

Molly:

Have more fun, y'all.

Brett:

And have more fun.

Molly:

It also allows a lot more longevity in this business. This year, I've been doing this 10 years, which isn't as long as a lot of you, Brett, or people like Ezra, but it's still a decade.

Brett:

Wait a minute. That sounded a veiled "old person" comment there.

Molly:

Well no, I just know your story.

Brett:

It's all good.

Molly:

You have seniority.

Brett:

A little bit. A little bit, yeah. In Internet years, a decade is forever. Yeah, I started like 2004, so I'm definitely the old dude when it comes to all that.

Molly:

Yeah, but you know a lot of my story where I had the opportunity to intern, and then become the VP of Marketing at Digital Marketer, and had an awesome time at that company. But man, I was grinding then. A lot of times, I felt like crap. To be in a situation where I still get to serve the market, still get to teach, still get to be in this business, but feel really good about it, the best part of it is I know I can do it for so much longer now.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah.

Molly:

It's a long game. It's not a short game, y'all.

Brett:

I'm really glad we brought this up. It was not planned. That feel good, have fun, and it will bring out the best part of you when you work as well. You'll be able to produce better when you're doing those things.

Brett:

Let's dive in, Molly Pittman. We've got a lot of ground to cover. We're going to talk mindset. We're going to talk tactics. We're going to talk strategy. I also want to talk about your dog rescue. We'll get to that in a little bit. Let's talk about offers for a minute. Those that have been listening, and hopefully you're listening to every episode in season one of this podcast, we're talking about something good to say, saying it well, saying it often.

Brett:

One of the things you and I were chatting about, and I love this, is that you're really focusing on your offers right now, and what offers are working, and what offers are not working. It really digs into that saying things well, and also saying them often. Talk to me a little bit about... We have two angles we're going to look at. We've got Boom on the e-commerce side, Smart Marketer which is kind of on the info training side, but what offers are working right now?

Molly:

Yeah, great question. First, I want to talk about what an offer is. I realized during our Mastermind call last week that people use this word to describe a lot of different things. That causes confusion in itself. There are a few different ways to talk about an offer. Really, what I'm talking about today are acquisition offers. Essentially, what vehicles are we using to start a conversation with someone who's never heard of our brand before, and turn them into a buyer?

Molly:

A lot of times, that means a lead magnet, or a pre-sale article, or some sort of coupon. It definitely depends on the business and where you are currently. The more, especially post-iOS 14 with all the crazy stuff happening in paid media right now, the more that you can focus on your offers, the better that everything is going to go. I mean that in a few ways. Number one, putting more time into offer creation. I would say in both businesses, other than making sure our products, the things people are buying, are good. Other than that, I would say offer creation is where we spend most of our time, at least at the C level.

Molly:

When it comes to marketing strategy, offer creation is where we spend most of our time. Sometimes, we'll release an offer that John, Ezra and I have maybe spent 15 hours discussing. It looks like an opt-in page that took 30 minutes to write, but so much time and effort went into the psychology of what it is, and the delivery of what it is, and how it sets us up to sell. It's really, really spending time here. As the CEO, I'd be like this is one of my still most important duties every single day.

Molly:

The second part of it is thinking about the way you deliver it. People miss out on this part of offer creation because what we don't realize is that someone might be interested in solving a particular problem, or they might be interested in a particular topic. But they may not be interested in the way you're delivering it. Let's take Boom for example, a pre-sale article that Ezra has been using for over five years, that's the best acquisition offer ever created for that business is five makeup tips for older women. Simple pre-sale article, we optimize for purchases, there are different products on the page. It's an amazing, amazing pre-sale article.

Molly:

Well guess what? It also works really well as a lead magnet. A way we've been able to scale that business is to take that pre-sale article, turn it into a simple PDF, and put it behind an opt-in wall. There are some people that would rather give their email in exchange for an asset, and see that as higher value. There are some people that would rather read an article. So, this isn't just about the creation of new offers, but also the repackaging of assets that you already have to deliver them in a way that's going to reach more of the market that you're trying to reach based off of how they like to consume information.

Molly:

It's why videos and still images are equally as important on a paid traffic platform, because there are some people that like people. There are some people that react images. It's important to keep both of those in mind.

Brett:

I love that. So, what is the offer, and really crafting it and thinking about how do we make this offer irresistible, how do we craft this article so that someone says, "I have to have that. One, that designed just for me. Two, that's solving a real problem or it's meeting a real need. Three, I got to have it right now." [crosstalk 00:11:29] those things. Then also, how you actually deliver it.

Brett:

I want to break that down just a little bit. You had mentioned that sometimes you, John, and Ezra spend 15 hours crafting an offer where it looks like just a simple page, but you're really thinking about this. This goes way beyond the, "Oh, should we do a 10% discount? Or a 15% discount?" That's what I want to talk about here.

Molly:

Yes, but it's also different. What I would see, I would say, in 90% of students, is they spend those 15 hours on the ad, and "Oh, the offer, I'm just going to throw a page up there." It's like, no if you have to choose, it should actually be the other way around.

Brett:

The offer, yeah. Yeah, it totally makes sense. Walk us through a little bit. What is your process as you're thinking about crafting an offer? What questions are you asking? What are you thinking about? What do you want to have in front of you as you're building that irresistible offer?

Molly:

Of course. The first question is, what do we need? What need is there in the business that we are solving with this offer? So, the need might be "It's Q4 and we want to monetize, we need a sale, we need a promotion." Or the need might be, "Hey, we need more of an evergreen acquisition offer-"

Brett:

[crosstalk 00:12:48] need as business [crosstalk 00:12:49].

Molly:

As a business, exactly.

Brett:

Yep.

Molly:

So, is it more promotional? Monetization? Or do we need something more acquisition that's evergreen that's going to continue to bring new customers in? It always starts with what does the business need right now? We try to create one of these in each business once a month we're creating a new offer. A lot of times, we're using other offers that we've created in the past, but we try to create one new offer every single month. It first starts with "What do we need? What does the business need right now?"

Brett:

Awesome. Then what comes next? You understand "This is what we need. We need something evergreen. We need a quick hit in this area. This is what need as a business." What do you look at next?

Molly:

What are we going to sell? What is the true end goal of this offer? Maybe the end goal is for Smart Marketer, we're going to sell our Smart Paid Traffic course, and we want to do that on an evergreen basis. We always work backwards with offers. If you don't, you're going to end up with a funnel that doesn't really make a lot of sense, that might have a really attractive front end offer, but doesn't transition to the sale, which is the opposite of what we're looking for.

Brett:

Yeah, totally, totally makes sense.

Molly:

Then we pick-

Brett:

[crosstalk 00:14:10]. Yeah, please keep going.

Molly:

Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Then we pick the medium, so what medium do we feel is best suited for this particular scenario? That definitely comes down to business type. It comes down to what's already working in our business, what can we do more of, also what can we do that's different from what we've done in the past because maybe we have four or five evergreen acquisition offers running in our ad account. To add another, we either need to go after a different audience or we need to have a very different offer type that isn't going to compete with what we're currently doing.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Let's look at some examples here related to Boom that I think will help people a lot. You guys are working on an acquisition funnel every month, and that acquisition funnel I would assume, starts with an offer. Is that where that begins?

Molly:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Brett:

What does that look like? Can you talk about any examples there for Boom?

Molly:

A great example of this is going back to "Five Makeup Tips for Older Women", the pre-sale article. We know that that works, so we know that this audience wants makeup tips, or they want to have discussions around makeup. What is something similar but different that we could do? Last year, we launched a lead magnet. We switched the delivery. It's not a pre-sale article. It's something you're opting in for. We're collecting the email address, and then going for the sale.

Molly:

So, using what we know works, but changing the conversation a little bit. Instead of five makeup tips, it was, or is, a 10 Minute Makeup Guide. So, still speaking to makeup, but now speaking to women who are less maybe concerned about the tips, but are more interested in the fact, "Holy crap, this only takes 10 minutes." That's an awesome speed and automation hook. That would be a good example of saying-

Brett:

[crosstalk 00:16:16] how to take care of your makeup, or how to do your morning makeup routine in 10 minutes or something like that, that's kind of the angle or the thought?

Molly:

Exactly. That came from a need of we have scaled the current evergreen acquisition offers as much as we can across our paid traffic sources. We need something new to talk about. We need to be able to walk into the party and have a similar, but different, discussion. Okay, let's change the topic and let's change the vehicle in how we deliver it.

Brett:

Yeah, that's awesome. The five makeup tips, and yeah we've had the privilege of running that on YouTube for four years or five years or something, and it still works. The five makeup tips is great. It does appeal to the curiosity. People are like, "Okay, well I would like makeup tips. I'm over 50," and I should not, by the way we were talking old jokes, I'm not over 50, and I'm not a woman either, so you're thinking "I want to know what these tips are," so there's a little bit of curiosity and there's also some benefit there that you want to get, which is cool.

Brett:

But this 10 Minute Makeup Guide, that's speaking to someone who says... It really resonates well with that over 50 powerful women audience that Boom is after, is they're like, "I don't have time for makeup, and I don't want to take the time. 30 minutes getting ready for the day, no way." How did you guys land on that? Was that something that you heard consistent feedback from customers? Is there something you guys started to pick up on, because you know the customer? Where did that come from?

Molly:

In both businesses, these ideas usually come from the customer, or feedback to anything that we're doing from an organic standpoint. In our businesses, that's the benefit of social media. It's not that we're going for all this organic traffic, which is nice, but not always sustainable. We use social media as a way to test different conversations with the audience. Usually, this starts, for Smart Marketer, as a blog post, for example, and Boom, too.

Molly:

Last year, we've released a blog post about our "Love Demo Love Formula" which is a formula we teach to [crosstalk 00:18:23]-

Brett:

Formerly known as "The Testimonial Sandwich", so there was the artist formerly as "Testimonial Sandwich", that "Love Demo Love". Feels better.

Molly:

It's a formula, a template that we teach for ad creatives. We see that that does really well on the blog. The email has high open rates. People are spending a lot of time on that page. They're clicking on whatever call to action is within that blog post. Wow, this is something our audience is interested in. Can we turn this into some sort of acquisition offer? Sometimes, it also comes-

Brett:

Yeah, [crosstalk 00:18:54] clarify, just so people understand because you may be lost like, "What are you talking about? Love Demo Love, and with Testimony? What the heck?" It's Ezra's tried and true ad formula of starting with a testimonial, a real user-generated content testimonial, or maybe a couple, like one to three, product demonstration in the middle, product video demonstration in the middle of the video, and then you close with more testimonials or more love. So, "Love Demo Love", and also what used to be called the "Testimonial Sandwich".

Brett:

So, anyway, I just wanted to clarify for those that are like, "What are you talking about?" All right, go ahead.

Molly:

A lot of times, it comes from conversations with the audience, a response from the audience. Then sometimes, it comes just random inspiration. For Smart Marketer, an offer we're working on right now that's going to happen soon is the "State of Paid Advertising in 2022", which is a free four hour workshop. It will show an analysis we did of over $60 million in ad spend. That just came from a random idea I had in the shower, what would this audience be interested in, how can I help set them up for 2022? It's not always coming from the customer. Sometimes it's just a random idea that comes in when you give it space.

Molly:

Usually, it is coming from something that already exists, or that we see from competition, or other people out in the market.

Brett:

Just an interesting side note, are you an idea in the shower person? Is that where your ideas come from? I'd just be curious to know where do your good ideas come from? What's the space where disproportionately you have good ideas coming from that space?

Molly:

It's really whenever I give it space. That's the key. It's usually, in today's world where things are so busy, forced space, time away from my phone, which is the shower, which is driving in the car, or hiking. If you guys are interested in this topic, read "Big Magic" by Elizabeth Gilbert. It's one of my favorite books. I read it in 2015 or '16, but she basically explains how this works, like how does creativity actually work and how can you set yourself up to be more open to cool ideas? The cool ideas are out there. Most of us are just too shut off, too busy, too addicted to what we're doing to allow the ideas to actually come in. So yes, any time you give it-

Brett:

What was the name of that book again?

Molly:

"Big Magic".

Brett:

"Big Magic". Love that. I'm going to check that out. Just a quick note here, because I've always found this fascinating, I have zero good ideas in the shower. I really don't know that I've ever had one positive, useful, meaningful idea from the shower other than "Hey babe, we're out of shampoo." That's all I think about in the shower. However, for me, two places that I get disproportionately high amount of good ideas, one is if in the morning if I get up when it's still quiet, and I have eight kids so it needs to be early in the morning when it's quiet, but if I feel like I'm ahead of the game, if I feel like there's nothing that I have to do right that second and I can just kind of sit in the quiet, good ideas come from there.

Brett:

The other place, and this is an odd one, but on airplanes. I sit on an airplane. They shut that door. I never pay for WiFi, I just don't want to. Some of the ideas that have shaped OMG, that have shaped the agency, came from me sitting on an airplane. I don't know why. That's my shower time. I even said a few times, I'm like I should just go fly somewhere and then fly right back, and I'm going to get great ideas.

Molly:

A lot of people do that. I have a friend who took a flight to Hong Kong and back, and never even stepped into the city just to write a book. The reason for that Brett, those are different forms of meditation. It's the same thing. It's essentially cutting off stimulation that is-

Brett:

Right, there's nothing else.

Molly:

... keeping your brain busy so that your mind and your soul can be quiet, so that these ideas can really formulate. That's the key.

Brett:

I love that. I love the fact that I'm not the only one that loves... I don't even like sitting on airplanes, but I get the best ideas. Anyway, cool. That's awesome. Cool, so thank you for chasing down that rabbit trail. I think that's so useful. Where were we though?

Molly:

We were talking about offers that are working right now, and I was chatting about the 10 Minute Makeup Guide, the workshop we're doing for Smart Marketer, and just saying that lot of the ideas comes from what you guys say, what we see as a need out in the market. A lot of them are random, unique, creative ideas, which are fun too.

Brett:

So, really fostering both, so you kind of need a vehicle or a mechanism to collect that feedback from customers, and then you need to create space for yourself to have these good ideas, and then bring it together with your executive team to get the idea when you're relaxing or whatever, and then you bring it to the rest of the executive team and you hammer that out. It may be 15 hours, but at the end of that time you've got a killer offer that you can really use to grow the business.

Molly:

Yeah, Brett, and some other steps that I didn't mention there, just to sort of round out the actual tactical, how do we get it out the door. Once we have the idea and we feel good about the offer, we feel good about its ability to do what we need it to do in the business, then we go into action mode actually creating this thing. That usually looks like a brainstorm call with our copy team where we discuss what is this, and how is it going to be presented?

Molly:

We talk about the big hooks, what are the big selling points of this offer, what problems does this offer actually solve? Of course, how do we want this to be delivered? Is it a PDF? Is it a pre-sale article? Is it a simple opt-in page where we're giving a coupon, like you said? How will this be delivered. Then they're able to go and make it sound good, not only the page in which we're selling the thing, but also the delivery of the thing. Then of course, that's passed off to design, it's passed off to our ads team and everything starts to get into motion.

Brett:

It's so good to get copy involved early, because that's such an important part of everything else. You have to be able to really strike that cord and make people want it, and copy is such a huge part of that. I love that you do that fairly early on.

Molly:

Yeah, and it's not just writing the copy that is the offer. It's also the selling of the offer. Even if it's a free thing, you're still selling someone on the idea.

Brett:

Totally. Totally, yeah.

Molly:

Every new acquisition funnel is first tested through an email promotion to the list, because we don't want to go out and buy-

Brett:

Okay, so you build the product, you test the email, email to the list first.

Molly:

Yeah. Of course, it's always going to convert better to your list than it will to paid traffic. We want to test it to the list first before we start to buy ads, mainly because we want to see of course, what's the conversion rate on this thing if it's free, and does this actually generate sales? We can create offers all day, but if it's not meeting the need of the business, then it's not going to work. It's first tested to email. That also gets some good traction going on your pixel so that Facebook and Google can start to see what types of people are taking action on this page, get some momentum.

Molly:

Then we stop for a second. We look at heat maps. We look at conversion rate. We look at the performance from a data standpoint. We make any optimizations that we might need to make, and then it's ready to go to you and your team, and hand over to our media buyer for paid ads.

Brett:

I love that. I love that. So, you're testing to the email list first to understand does this convert. And hey, if it doesn't convert to your list, it's not going to convert to cold traffic.

Molly:

Exactly.

Brett:

So, does it convert, and at what level, and kind of understanding that a little bit. Then you're going to run some ads and start getting conversions, trying to pixel, finding out what's what. You pause that. You then look at heat maps, make some tweaks/optimizations to the funnel itself. Then you go ham on the advertising at that point.

Molly:

Then it's hopefully ready for scale. Probably half of these that we create don't work still to this day. That's okay. We say, "Let's put it on hold for a second." It's never that this just doesn't work, and we're not going to use it ever again. It's "Hey, let's put this to the side and try to figure out why it didn't work, and maybe we can use it later." There are a lot of times that we just can't get it to work, and that's okay.

Brett:

Right. Really, you guys are the best. You're the best in the world at some of this stuff. If you've got a 50% success rate, what's everybody else going to have? That's likely to be 50% or maybe less even. What's interesting, we just walked through that four step process you guys go through, most people it's like think for five minutes about an offer, maybe it's more than that, but think about an offer and then "All right cool, let's throw a bunch of media behind it to see how it does," where you guys are testing with your audience or email list, you're running some small tests and ads, you're getting data, you're optimizing and then you're going big. I love that so much.

Brett:

It kind of goes back to one of my favorite business principles that comes from Jim Collins, the author of "Good to Great", and a book called "Turning the Flywheel". He's an awesome... I'm sure everybody's heard of him. He talks about this concept of firing bullets and then cannonballs. He used kind of this old warship analogy. The idea is fire bullets to make sure you got something that works, and then fire a cannonball rather than a lot of people fire a cannonball and they use up all their gunpowder, and all they've got available, and they're like, "Well now I've got nothing."

Brett:

So, test small and then go big.

Molly:

Also, understanding that these offers are not channel-specific. A lot of people create an offer, which they don't spend a lot of time on. They set up a Facebook campaign. They run it for a few days, and then scrap it all. "Oh, this offer doesn't work, and Facebook ads don't work." It's like guys, no it's so much deeper than that.

Brett:

Totally. Totally. Your kind of creating these acquisition funnels then for Boom, and spoiler alert, Boom is going to be releasing new products this year, which is great. Your kind of creating one of these acquisition funnels for each product. That was another thing too with Boom, and Ezra talks about this a lot, that it was just the Boom stick trio, or just the boom stick, that's all that you really use for cold traffic. Now you're building these acquisition funnels for other products, which is huge, and which is going to be a game changer.

Molly:

Look, honestly acquisition funnels are way easier for e-commerce than info or services.

Brett:

They are. They are. No doubt.

Molly:

Info and services takes way more of relationship buildup before someone purchases. It's mainly lead generation through a workshop, or a webinar, or a lead magnet, or a challenge, or a mini series, or whatever the hell people are doing today to try to convert someone into a customer or client. It's a little bit of a different ballgame than e-commerce. A lot of the plays with e-comm can be easier. A lot of the offers that Boom runs are simple. It's direct to a product page for a lip gloss, direct to a product page for a mascara, direct to something that's a direct sale essentially. Where with info, we've got to dance around it a little bit more. The offer creation is even more intensive for that business type.

Brett:

Yeah, it is.

Molly:

Like me. Good lesson, what Ezra has been able to do with Boom I think after working with us at Smart Marketer, is realize that there is a huge hole in the e-commerce space for offer creation that isn't just a giveaway, that isn't just direct to product page, that isn't just a coupon. That is a big reason Boom is able to excel, because we do understand pre-sale articles. We do understand lead magnets.

Molly:

Boom is even doing webinars. They're called "Ladies Night". These principles work for both business types, and there's actually a much bigger opportunity in e-commerce to get more creative with your offers because other e-commerce businesses are simply lazy or don't know how to go about it.

Brett:

You nailed it a little bit ago when you said that in a lot of ways offers for e-commerce, it's simpler. It's more straightforward than it is to do info products. Info products, you really got to get to the core of what this thing, and what is it going to unlock, and what are all the emotions we're trying to tap into here, and uncover here.

Molly:

And give way more value first.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah. How do you do that? So kind of blending some of those principles, it's super powerful and it's definitely helped Boom get to where it is today without a doubt. Cool. We've got a few additional things I want to talk about, and not a whole lot of time to do it-

Molly:

Brett, hold on. I want to add one more thing. This is one of the biggest reasons that you might be failing to scale as an e-commerce business. If you are only relying on the people that are clicking from a Facebook ad, and directly converting and buying a product, you're missing out on a huge part of your market that just isn't ready to buy in the moment. If you're able to generate the lead, if you're able to nurture them via email, if you're able to set up a funnel where they get some sort of discount, especially if you add some scarcity, your scalability will increase in a way that you never understood, and it has absolutely nothing to do with your advertising. It's just that you are having a conversation with a different part of the market. That's all it is.

Molly:

So, if you are struggling to scale, it's probably not the ad platform, and B, the e-comm company that is willing to go outside of the box.

Brett:

Yeah, totally agree. It's not just I need to bid differently, I need a slightly different campaign structure in my ads manager or inside of Google Ads. Those things may be true, but often it comes down to offer and having the right funnel. Are we actually getting people to give us their email address and get a direct conversion as well? Do we have a nurture sequence? Do we have a remarketing sequence built in? All of those things really unlock the ability to scale rather than just "How do I bid differently or change my campaign structure?"

Molly:

Brett, I would say that your most successful clients, and the ones that you like working with the most are probably strong in this area. As an agency, that's a dream.

Brett:

No doubt. No doubt.

Molly:

The issue you usually have an agency is that you're great at running ads. You only have a few places to run ads to. There's only so much you can do.

Brett:

Yeah, that's one reason we love working with Boom.

Molly:

Just emphasize.

Brett:

You guys get it, and we're just able to work together and crush it. That's fantastic. Cool. Any quick insights, and I kind of designed this podcast series to have a long shelf life, but let's talk about a few trends. What's working right now, or what are some trends inside of Facebook ads that you're seeing right now?

Molly:

Good news is, as we do each year, we're seeing a huge decrease in ad cost at the beginning of the year. Almost 50% cheaper in most of our ad accounts in the analysis. We did over $60 million in spend than what we were seeing Q4, which is a huge relief with the dumpster fire that Facebook was the last six months of 2021.

Brett:

No doubt.

Molly:

That's a huge sigh of relief. We're also starting to see more accurate reporting, or at least I think we're all getting better as marketers getting our stuff together from a tracking standpoint. So, things are looking up, and we are working on offers, working on creative and copy right now so we can really take advantage of the next few months of cheap traffic, and try to do everything we can to set us up for a big Q4 again this year.

Brett:

I love it. Just one thing to keep in mind, this is going to likely always be the trend. Advertisers panic in fourth quarter because costs are going through the roof. But the costs are going to come back down in Q1, so be planning, and be thinking about that, and what's your acquisition strategy going to be in Q1 and then as you lead into and get ramped up for Q4. So, that's awesome.

Brett:

Any other specific trends you want to talk about now? I also want to dig into a mindset just a little bit, which will be fun.

Molly:

Really quick, I wouldn't say this is necessarily a new trend for right now, but it's something we've been preaching for a few years that I just literally cannot emphasize enough. I was actually just on a training call with some of our students, and one of them sells physical products. He's in the snack and wellness space. His Facebook ad results that I was looking at were incredible, $0.04 clicks, 15% click through rate, $3.00 add to cart, numbers I have not seen in years.

Molly:

Guess what he's doing from an ad perspective? It's native advertising. It's user-generated content. It is simply telling stories about people in their own words the experience that they had not even specifically with your product. This was a weight loss product. So, his best performing ad was a picture of a beach with an arrow to a certain area of the beach. The copy was telling a story from the customer's standpoint of, "Last year I went to this beach and I couldn't even walk up the stairs without getting out of breath. I felt terrible, and my health wasn't great. This year, 12 months later, I've gone back to this beach. I've lost 90 pounds. I was able to run around, and I really enjoyed myself."

Molly:

Those weren't the exact words, but that's how simple it was. It wasn't an ad about the product. It wasn't an ad about how great this product was. Absolutely nothing about features. Really, not even a lot of benefits other than the benefits that were woven into the story. This isn't necessarily new, but it's what people are still missing out on when it comes to Facebook and Instagram. These are true social platforms. People are used to engaging with stories from family and friends. Use imagery and copy that is that. It's really that simple.

Brett:

I love it. I don't really ever see that changing. We spend a lot of on YouTube and running YouTube ads, and we're seeing similar things in that videos, and usually you need slightly longer videos on YouTube than you do on Facebook in most cases, but still that user-generated content, those testimonial videos that you could weave into your YouTube ad works there too. I think it's always going to work. As long as it's an authentic, genuine testimonial that really hits on "Here's how my life has changed. Here's why I love this product. Here's my story," people eat that up. I think people will always eat that up if it rings authentic.

Molly:

Because it's a testimonial, that's not what makes it work. We chat about this and then students submit a testimonial, and the first line is "I love this product so much." It's like, guys that's words of customer, but it sounds like an ad. We need to start with things like, "As a mom of two, I didn't think I would have time to do X, Y, and Z." How much more relatable is that? It doesn't feel like you are being sold to.

Brett:

Yeah, one time we had a prospect, and we ended up not working with him. He submits these videos and you could literally read the people that are supposed to be customers. You could watch their eyes reading from a teleprompter. I'm like, "Guys, this not going to work." You want people to be sharing real emotion and their real story.

Molly:

Yeah, well sharing a life story. It's not about why the product's great. It is sharing their story and how it fit into their lives. So, we ask three important questions to get really good testimonials. If you ask these questions, it will set people up to give you really good answers. What was life like before you bought this product? That has them describe that undesirable before state, starts to tell their story. What is life like afterwards? Now they're talking about the after state, the benefits, how much better they feel. Then if you were to re-commend this to a friend, what exactly would you say? When you say it like that, they take off their "I'm a salesperson for this company" hat, and they put on their "Oh, I'm writing a message, or speaking a message to a friend. I'm going to be real about how this product helped me."

Brett:

Love that so much. Actually, since I'm such a believer in testimonials, but getting authentic ones, I created "The Ultimate Guide", I don't remember what I called it, but how to get authentic customer testimonials. It's on the OMG Commerce website. Check it out. I'm not sure if I have those exact [crosstalk 00:40:34]-

Molly:

That's sounds like a good offer for your agency, Brett.

Brett:

It's a good offer. Yeah. We can do that as an offer too for Smart Marketer. It's so true. The difference between a really good testimonial and then an average testimonial is two different planets, two different universes. Getting a good testimonial is worth it's weight in gold. Having one that's average, is really going to do nothing for you, or one that's weak. Anyway, I love that.

Brett:

What was life like before? What was life like after? What would you say to a friend? I love that so much. It's also good, you want to give someone a little bit of help as they're creating a testimonial. Otherwise, it feels like they're staring at a screen and not knowing what to say, or looking at a blank page or whatever. So, giving them some help is key, for sure. I love that. Love that.

Brett:

Let's take just a couple of minutes, and we're going to be short-changing this topic for sure, but I wanted to take a couple of minutes because this will be fun and I think it's useful. It's been a difficult road the last couple of years for e-commerce, entrepreneurs, media buyers, online advertisers, not rough [crosstalk 00:41:47]. E-commerce has grown tremendously. That's been good. E-commerce has grown, so no complaints there.

Brett:

But it's challenging times. I know you train a lot of people, you train a lot of entrepreneurs and media buyers. What are you teaching people about mindset and how mindset impacts results?

Molly:

Mindset is everything in this game. I don't think any of us are maybe even better marketers than one another. It's your willingness to stay committed, and to continue forward. It's what we talked about earlier with us being okay with half of the work we do not actually being used. Or as a media buyer, it's not even about who can set up the best ads. It's about who can continue to troubleshoot and optimize to make each piece of the campaign better so that they can move forward.

Molly:

This is personal development, a concept that most of you have heard of before, but it's really the difference between having a scarcity mindset, or having an abundance mindset. For me, I choose to be grateful. I choose to not get upset with these paid traffic platforms. I choose to look at things with the glass half full. I think that if there was anything unique about our culture at Smart Marketer, that is it. We have all chosen this mindset.

Molly:

There is going to be trouble in anything you do. I think as a human, the last few years have been hard. It's easy to get down. Of course, I still get frustrated, angry, depressed. All of those things occur. But I try to choose to bring positivity to our business, try to bring it to our employees, to our offers, to the trainings that we provide. It really is a completely different experience when you choose to do that.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. I'm a really positive person. I'm naturally upbeat. I'm a glass half full kind of guy. But I have my moments. I have moments where I want to curse Tim Cook for the latest iOS update, and why are you killing a good thing, Tim Cook? Or whoever else is making the decisions at Apple. We can get in that mindset. It's okay to be frustrated and complain a little bit, but don't stay there.

Brett:

Get to a better place, because you're right, it's not just who's the smartest, it's not just who has the best campaign structure, but who can show up consistently and do the right thing, and who can be okay with "Okay, I got one, two, three campaigns that I wrote that didn't work, but then I had an offer that hit and then it scaled to the moon." Who could handle that?

Molly:

And who-

Brett:

Yeah, please add to that.

Molly:

[inaudible 00:44:31], and who actually cares? It's why I so believe-

Brett:

Exactly.

Molly:

... in the mission of our business that Ezra initially set out, serve the world unselfishly, and profit. If you truly care about the group of people that your business serves, and you care about the way that you're changing their lives, even if you're selling a toothbrush and you're helping their mouth to be cleaner, it doesn't matter. If you truly care about that, it changes the energy of the business.

Molly:

I can tell you, if you asked me "Molly, what is the difference between students that succeed or don't succeed, or friends that I know in the industry that have done great things, or people that are struggling," it really comes back to mindset, and it comes back to an authentic, genuine, caring for the group of people that you're serving. If you have that, and you stay consistent, there's no way that you can't make this work.

Brett:

Yeah, it's so true. If you can really be passionate about your customer, and I would even say about your team, then that's way more powerful than just being passionate about your product. I think both are important, but being passionate about your customer and about your team, that's really where's it at. One thing I discovered for me, and hey I've got lofty goals, I want my business to succeed and I want to it to grow, I think entrepreneurship, and businesses, and capitalism offer a lot to the world. If it's just about money, I burn out quickly. I get to a point where I'm like, "I don't really care anymore."

Brett:

But if I think about who I'm serving, and I think about that business owner that my agency is helping accelerate growth for, if I think about team members who were helping accelerate their individual growth, and I get to see someone step and lead a call, or mail a presentation, or come up with a strategy.

Molly:

Nothing better.

Brett:

I'm like "Whoa, I never thought of that." That is so fun for me, and so rewarding. Then when you key in on that, then guess what, the profits are better too, and then the business grows better too.

Molly:

Brett, aside from the money, I saw a study last year that rated digital marketing as the most stressful job or career path out there, even above brain surgeons, or people working in the medical field.

Brett:

That's crazy, yeah.

Molly:

I believe that. Think about it, we're basically day traders.

Brett:

[crosstalk 00:46:47] so much out of your control, and that's a scary thing. There's so much out of your control, it's scary. Yeah.

Molly:

Exactly. To be able to sustain that, and the changes, and the stress, and the fact that what we do never really turns off unless you choose for it to do so your mindset and who you are as a person, and how you treat yourself and the people around you, that is will what will sustain you moving forward more than anything else.

Brett:

Love that. So good. So good, Molly Pittman. All right, so people that are listening that are like, "Holy cow, I need more Molly Pittman in my life," where do you suggest people go? Obviously, there's lots of stuff people are going to enjoy at SmartMarketer.com, but where should someone get started, or what are some cool things, what are some offers you got going on right now?

Molly:

Yeah, check out SmartMarketer.com. There are some free resources there, depending on what we have going on at the time. I know this is coming out a bit later, Brett, so we do have that State of Paid Advertising in 2022 workshop coming up. We have lots of free resources on our website. If you want to follow me, I'm most active on Instagram @MollyPittmanDigital. I also read all of my DMs, so if you have questions, thoughts about this, I love hearing from you all and I would love to hear from you on Instagram.

Brett:

Instagram, check it out. What's your handle again?

Molly:

One more quick thing, Brett.

Brett:

What's your handle again on Instagram?

Molly:

@MollyPittmanDigital.

Brett:

@MollyPittmanDigital.

Molly:

Of course, if you like this format, you like podcasts, John, and Ezra, and I do have a podcast, The Smart Marketer Podcast. So, check that out.

Brett:

It is an intact podcast, where you get to be a guest for a couple of episodes. It was tremendously fun. Check out the Smart Marketer podcast. I'll link to all of this in the show notes as well so it's easy for you to access. With that, Molly Pittman, any final words? Any final words of wisdom, re-commendations, or asks of the audience?

Molly:

Keep doing it. Just keep at it. Take care of yourself. Maintain that balance in your life. Don't get sucked into this world so that you lose who you are. Or if you do, quickly bounce back from that. Just enjoy. We're living in a really cool time as humans, and there's a lot of crazy stuff going on. When have we ever had the opportunity to do what we're doing from a business standpoint?

Molly:

It's complicated, but also the world is truly at our fingertips. Find a group of people that you align with, that you're interested in, that you want to help, and figure out how you can serve them, and figure out what you can sell to them. I just always go back to being grateful that we are able to work in this way. It's really, really cool. Hopefully, you guys enjoy it too.

Brett:

I love it. It's a super challenging industry. It's always changing. It's very stressful. But man, it's fun. It can be fun, especially if you have the right community around you. If you can find that balance man, it's an awesome place to be. Check out Smart Marketer. Check out the community. Get to know Molly Pittman. Follow her on Instagram.

Brett:

With that, thank you so much for tuning in. This show would be nothing without you who tune in and listen faithfully. If you haven't rated the show, please do that. Leave a review. It helps other people find the show. If there's somebody that you're listening to this and you're like, "Whoa, this person needs to hear this episode," then share with them. That would mean the world to me, and I know it'd make a difference in somebody else's life as well.

Brett:

With that, until next time, stay spicy.



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