Andrew Foxwell and I go way back. We recorded our first podcast together over 6 years ago!

Andrew is a seasoned expert in the advertising industry and the driving force behind a remarkable Meta agency that collaborates with renowned brands like Trek.

He also runs an amazing community of brand owners, agency owners and marketing professionals called Foxwell Founders. (Over 400 members strong and collectively spending 250 million plus per month on ads.)

Join us as Andrew shares his invaluable insights on the ever-evolving advertising landscape.

Here's a glimpse of what we cover in this episode:

• What creatives are working best right now on Meta and Google, and are TikTok-style ads worth testing on multiple platforms?
• How answering questions is essential on more platforms than just Google search.
• What strategies are working right now with different Meta campaign types.
• Why having great creatives is only valuable with proper creative testing.
• How to focus on what's really unique about your product in your ads.
• Andrew's approach of "scaling in place" and how it applies to Meta and YouTube.
• Operational AI vs. Platform AI.
• What Andrew's "not, not excited" about AI means (I tend to share his perspective).

Mentioned In This Episode:

• Founders Community
• Foxwell Digital
• GLG Insights
• Northbeam Newsletter
• Andrew Foxwell (LinkedIn)
• Andrew Foxwell (Twitter)
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and I am absolutely thrilled about today's episode and today's guest. I go way, way back with this guest. We used to do podcasts together five years ago, six years ago. Feels like an eternity now. My guest is Andrew Foxwell and he is the co-founder of Foxwell Digital, which is a leading Facebook social agency and more also Foxwell Founders, which is really the reason we reconnected. I could started hearing all this buzz about the Foxwell founders community and everybody's raving about it. I was like, oh dude, I got to reach out to Andrew, see what's going on. And he's doing even more than that. So we'll dive in. We're going to talk about what's working right now in terms of Facebook and Instagram. We're going to talk AI a little bit. We're going to talk about what is Andrew's connections with Wall Street, which I think will be super fun. And so really looking forward to it. Andrew, thanks for taking the time, man, and welcome to the show. How you doing?

Andrew:

Yeah, man, thank you so much. I'm doing well. Glad to be here.

Brett:

When do you think was the last time we were on a podcast together? I think it was five years ago. Six years ago. Easily

Andrew:

Six years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Crazy. It's been a hot man. But you know what? We're here now and we're better. We're back and better than ever, baby.

Brett:

We're here now. We still got lots of energy. We got more wisdom. I got more gray hair. We're just doing it. Oh, absolutely. We're out there

Andrew:

Doing it. Absolutely.

Brett:

So we're going to Bo share our perspectives on kind of what's working on now and what's, we're going to talk about AI a little bit, which is fun. And what's cool, Andrew, you've got this perspective. You run an agency, I run an agency over G Commerce, but you've got a bigger perspective even than that. I mean, your agency is amazing, but you've got this community of 400 people in this community. So if you would, Andrew, talk about what is the community? Cause I think this will set the context for your perspective and some of the things you share on the podcast, but what is the community? Why'd you start it and give us the low down? Yeah,

Andrew:

Definitely. I mean, a couple of years ago, our daughter was born in three years ago and was really coming in pandemic times, feeling lonely and feeling like, am I the only one seeing this? And I felt like Twitter wasn't the best place for my mental health.

Brett:

Not always a positive place to hang. That is for sure.

Andrew:

Yeah, and I'm not saying it's all negative, but it wasn't the greatest place for me and I was feeling really down. And so I decided, Gracie and I talked about it and I decided we, let's figure out a way to get our v I P course customers who've bought more than three courses in one place talking and let's see if we launch a community. And that was just the idea was can we build something that helps people feel less alone and more supported? Yeah. Now it's 445 members from 25 countries spending over 250 million a month just on meta. It's brand owners, agencies, in-house, people at brands. We have, I think five or six agencies. Our whole staff is in the membership. That's how valuable it is. And we talk about everything under the sun, meta adds, creative, creative testing, cro, Google Ads, TikTok, all that. And running an agency, big or small, we have places for both. So my perspective is not just my own, but is here's what we see across the landscape. And primarily these people are in the United States, Canada and in Europe. So we do have members in South America as well, and Eastern Europe and Thailand and places like that. But it's primarily focused in the uk, or excuse me, in the EU and the United States and Canada.

That's really a good barometer of where performance is a lot of times on things and obviously still have the New Zealand and Australia members because they always get new features first. So that's always good to have too.

Brett:

They're living in the future as we'd like.

Andrew:

That's right. Nice. Yeah, so a lot of it, the things that I talk about, it's not just me and here's what I'm seeing across this breadth of people, and these are primarily direct response D to C people. We need to spend money to make money, and that's what we're hired to do.

Brett:

Love that. Well, so this will be fantastic. You obviously want your perspective too, but I know you'll be able to pull some examples and you've got this influence of this amazing community behind you. And so as we dive into what's working now primarily on meta, but we can talk a little bit about Google and YouTube as well, but what are you seeing, and we'll try not to get too nerdy or too technical here, but let's just talk creatives for a minute. What are you seeing that's working now from a creative standpoint?

Andrew:

Yeah, I mean I think from a creative standpoint, a couple different things. One is building creatives that look sort of TikTok centric or answering a question or have a good hook at the beginning from a video ad standpoint is helpful. So the more that you're answering questions and instead of thinking about, here's what I want to tell you about this service. Somebody the other day that was there, remember brought to me an ad and it was for a conference and it was talking about the conference and all the things that were going to be happening at this conference and he's selling tickets to this conference. And I was like, well, what are you ultimately trying to solve with people? Come to this conference? What are the issues that they have? And it's for business owners. So it was, are you missing quarterly sales goals? You're identifying the problems and you're having ads that address those particular problems with the hook at the beginning and an explainer of what it does and making that ad more informative.

So that's the kind of thing that we look at. And you're looking at it generally in a four to five aspect ratio. So it's more of a tall video format and you can also have static images that mirror that kind of idea too. So from a creative standpoint, that's part of it. And having at least somewhere in your mix creators or influencers or people on your own staff creating these ads with you and understanding how quickly the cuts need to be cut up in the video. So two seconds, two seconds, that kind of thing. And keeping an ad moving is as long as those kind of elements are integrated, that's some of the best performing creative that you see across the board right now.

Brett:

I love that so much. And I would echo that and I remember a quote from Google years ago as they were talking about their very first product, Google AdWord, and they said, Hey, what if a good ad was just an answer to a question, right? And I think that's still true, and it doesn't just have to be true for search. It makes sense with search because people are typing in a query and they're asking a direct question and you're giving an answer. But I think it's true in other platforms as well. We've all got these questions and these thoughts and these concerns that are banging around in our head. And so maybe the greatest add or the best ads are just answers to those questions and hitting those point blank. And so a couple things we're seeing, and we do not run traffic on Meta or TikTok or any of those places.

We do a lot on YouTube, one of the top spenders on YouTube, we're finding now YouTube shorts. Those are working fantastically well for remarketing working in other areas as well. And we've been able to successfully pull content from TikTok ads and from Instagram reels and use those almost unchanged on YouTube shorts. And that's a bit of a new first for us because if we look at what YouTube ads typically work for standard pre-roll TrueView YouTube ads, it's usually ads that are minute and a half to three and a half minutes. It's more of a direct response field, is what we run anyway. Almost feels more like an infomercial, but it doesn't have to look like an infomercial. Exactly. And so you've never really been able to take videos directly from Meta and run them on YouTube. But now I think you can with YouTube shorts depending on a few things. And I think one of the things that we'll continue to focus on here is just like how can we continue to write better headlines and better descriptions even in search? Cause I think a lot of times you forget about search or forget about your headline in Google shopping or some of these things, but making little tweaks there, looking to constantly improve there makes a big, big difference. So creatives mean as machine learning and AI improves, I think more of our job is going to be related to creatives, but we'll see. Yeah,

Andrew:

I agree with you. The question the creatives is a really interesting piece. There's actually an incredible YouTube series by one of the agencies two two a couple members of our community, Jess Bachman from Fire team runs a show called Autopsy on YouTube and you can just check it out. Barry Hata a regular contributor as well, and they go through and dissect ads and we have some of this in the membership and it's really amazing how much it can be broken down and how little tweaks can make a major difference. Another thing that's interesting about it is how much Jess is the one that told me this, which is I always think about is what can you say that others uniquely that others cannot, that you can uniquely say? And that is a real, that's an interesting question to start to go after as part of the ad because a lot of people can talk about reviews, you can talk about it's the best window cleaner out there, whatever it is, but what is the uniqueness of it and how is it being pitched?

Because if it's a hundred percent compostable, whatever, even if other people share those, but they're not using that as something that you feel like you can uniquely say because it represents your brand, then that's a big deal. So yeah, the creative thing is such a nuance to gain, but once you start thinking in that framework, your whole thinking changes. And I've had to really learn this over the last two years because one of the big shifts obviously that we've gone through from the med ads standpoint is we are no longer just pulling levers on Facebook ads. You used to be able to launch something with a white t-shirt and a white background and launch it to a PDP and it would convert. I mean not all the time and not create, but it wouldn't do bad. Now we're in this place where we've had to become marketers really we're have to think of the whole funnel and it's made us better, I think ultimately is where it leaves us. And creatives is part of that too. The ads are better and we're better at describing and pitching people on why they even should care in two or three seconds.

Brett:

Yeah, it's so interesting. So I want key on a couple of those points. The first one, looking at what makes your ad unique or your product unique, just do the talk at Ezra Firestones Blur and Mastermind on seven ad tests to evaluate your ads on before you run them. And one of them, the first one was actually called the scratch out write-in test where if you could take your ad and remove your brand, remove your logo, put in a competitor, if the ad still works, it's not a good ad. The ad needs to be unique to you and only, it doesn't mean that every element has to be unique to you, but the story as a whole, what you're saying with the ad needs to only fit for you. So what's unique, what's different is someone going to look at this and say, I don't know that I've seen anything quite like that before.

And that's not always easy to do, but I think it's really, really important. And so that's something to keep in mind. And what's also interesting to me, and we'll talk about AI more in just a minute, but I think as things progress and there's more machine learning and ai and yes, AI can into creating images and headlines and descriptions and write you whole novels and stuff like that, I still think that there's this great need for strategy and someone who can understand marketing and understand product market fit and what does a customer want and if this thing worked, why did it work and what should we test next? And so there there's going to need this to be this strategic component from really smart marketers that partner with the machine so to speak. And so any thoughts on that before? I want to hear your thoughts on overall strategy and what's working right now.

Andrew:

Yeah, I mean I think that you're right in reference strata strategic part of it and where that comes into mind is we have a lot of meetings of agency honors and it's a big, big group in our community and one of the things is trying to help them get more leads. And I really am a big believer right now that if you're an agency or even you're somebody, the DNA of how we were brought up, it was on this foundation of pulling levers. And like I said, yes. And now if you can be someone where you're pitching your services and you're talking about being an outsource CMO for example, or thinking more strategically and being a true growth partner, that is a very different pitch and ultimately will benefit you in the long run more than this other guy over here that's Jimmy who can run Facebook ads.

And I think that we know this, but that's really what we actually need and what the client needs to be successful and why I think a lot of us, sometimes you feel stuck and I certainly back myself into this corner where I feel stuck because I'm only thinking in one dimension and I'm not thinking about, well wait a minute, what's even the bundle that we're trying to sell? And I mean of course, what are the economics behind all of this? And really what is the understanding of it? So I think it's that strategy and how you think about it not only and work with clients on it is helpful and useful, but it's also how you're pitching it to the client to win your agency and yourself more business because it's underutilized in my opinion. And there's very few people that I can turn to know that I'm going to get a true strategic read on it all.

Brett:

And I think in a lot of ways things have gotten as this things have gotten more advanced, it's more complex, it's maybe more difficult to approach some of these platforms than it was before, even though it was more automation and to the subject of pulling levers. That was hard for some of our specialists internally. Like, hey, I've always pulled that lever that that's what I do. I'm really good at pulling that lever. But now you got to kind of raise up a level and think I'm moving bigger pieces now. I'm moving platforms or entire channel types, or now I'm looking at performance match, which is all Google channels rolled into one and I'm still manipulating things, but at a bigger level. And I like the analogy of an offensive coordinator, so to use football analogy, the offensive coordinator not on the field, not carrying the ball, not breaking tackles and throwing out stiff arms. They're elevated, they see the whole field, they're calling plays, they're calling in players, things like that. And that that's more, and I think that also ties into this outsourced CMO type role that's I think where agency of the future really valuable marketing team members more in that role. So still driving things but just moving bigger pieces instead of pulling small levers.

Andrew:

Yeah, I completely agree.

Brett:

Sweet. Love it. So let's talk a little bit about what do you see as recurring themes for, okay, if you're really going to make improvements, my meta ads aren't where they should be or this platform's not working the way it should. What are the things we should focus on? What are some of the recurring themes of this is what we need to focus on to get better results?

Andrew:

Yeah, I mean I think from a, speaking through the lens of meta ads and people that are spending forward on meta ads, I was reading the North Beam newsletter where they put out weekly

Brett:

Love North Beam newsletter, shout out the guys there

Andrew:

Spending is and how many people, it's like, well, 70% of people, it's still the primary channel and meta is for traffic for chop funnel traffic. So I think if you look through that lens, what you end up seeing is number one, a breakdown of those that want to improve. You have to number one, have an idea of what the economics are behind your brand. And that's something that a lot still don't. And that's a hard thing to do because it's really outside of our zone of genius. I mean I got to see in accounting, no, and I can say that publicly, but it's not a math guy. So that took me a while to figure that out. And thanks to members sharing worksheets and things in the membership, they will say, okay, here's what we understand about that. And I think I was doing that a little, but I was not doing it a ton and was leaving it to people internally to do at the company and now we have to become that partner. So that's number one. I think if you look just at meta itself and the things that strategically need to take place, it's making sure that you're customizing and setting up shops is another one because meta shops is going to continue to be a place that people are spending money and that meta's spending your money forcibly or not kind of you're going to be continue to be pushed there for onsite checkout with shops and things like or on shop checkout

Brett:

And influencer has been pretty solid. And most of the chatter I hear about, it's been alls all green.

Andrew:

Yeah, it depends on who you ask, but yeah, the point is that you have to have, we used to have, you know would just set up, I don't know, phenomics or something and it would build your catalog and then you were going to pixel my site pro or whatever. And now you can't just have that. You have to have, having a customized catalog as part of the shop is a really important part of it. So customizing that commerce experience is helpful and I think is something that can improve. I think from an account, obviously creative, we already talked about that. Having an inbound of creative that is consistent and constant based on how much you're spending on different angles and hooks and having a plan of how you're going to test them is a must because a lot of people have that, but they have no plan of how they're going to test it.

And so you end up with all this information that doesn't mean anything. And that same goes for landing pages and having landing pages that and best case scenario match the creative that you are talking about so that the click experience is more clean and people understand what you're trying to sell them. So I think that's another one. And then I think from a technical standpoint, having and testing advantage fall shopping campaigns, if you have not, is something that's going to continue to be a priority, especially in 2023 Met has GI given access to it now to basically every account. And what it does is you know, put in assets and there's no targeting really. You just set an existing customer cap. And so it seems to be a good vehicle for top funnel traffic and for literally all funnel traffic, but it's utilizing a different algorithm it seems thus far and we're still learning about it to get top funnel traffic in or get quality traffic into your site. So I think those are some of the foundational pieces that we need to be aware of in terms of what's working and changing the plan that you have.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that. I want to highlight a couple things. One, looking at metrics and what are we measuring and what are we focusing on? And I think there needs to be this hierarch hierarchy of metrics. We're at the top is our financial goals, what are our business financial goals, whether that's contribution margin, ebitda, whatever that top level goal is, and likely the in platform goals that we usually focus on roaz or CPA or cac, they're important, but they're only as important as they help guide those financial metrics. So yeah, understanding that understanding why do we want a 200% row as or a 400% row as why, what is that contributing to or what is that rolling up to for the hierarchy of metrics? And a quick example, we had a client come to us recently for Google Ads management and they said we really want to be at a 400% return on that spend.

And as we started asking questions and digging a little deeper and trying to understand why it became clear that the 400% was just like what other people said. And so as we started actually running ads and experimenting a little bit, they found that a 200% return on ad spend actually contributed to their metrics better, more new customers. Their new customers were sticking it fed to overall profitability and so now they're growing at a much faster rate and hitting those profitability targets. So I love that really understanding the numbers. It's not just I'm following some random benchmark, but I'm understanding my business numbers and then I'm optimizing to hit that. So any tips on how you coach people or help people? And I know you said accounting wasn't your thing. I didn't like accounting class either, although I do like numbers. Any tips or suggestions there

Andrew:

Mean? A lot of it is the get some sort of worksheet or framework that you're able to look at with the business owner and walk them through it and how it can then tie to the ad goals that you're looking at in terms of transactions or conversions or return on ad spend from either the in platform metrics or in platform metrics. Plus it's like a scene of comedy. It's like yes, yeah, and a third party tool and GA four, make sure that not only you have a plan and understanding and walking through it with a client, but then you have an understanding of what are the daily metrics you're looking at and how are what making sure you're looking at the same thing. So that's the big one that I don't think a ton of people do right out of the gates and you have to make sure that you're agreed on that as much as possible.

Brett:

Yeah, I think that this train triangulation of data is really important. So in platform, yes, got to look at it, that third party, whether it's triple whale or North Beam or what have you, and then of course GA four needs to be there as well. And yeah, I think trying to simplify a little bit where you're looking at what's our MER or our media efficiency ratio to our total money in total money out, how are weekly sales changing as spin changes on various platforms. Looking at really simple stuff that you can use to make some general directions or observations and then digging into the details inside of triple oil and North Beamer or GA four, I think that makes a lot of sense for sure. So very cool. Yeah, and then looking at really understanding what kind of testing we're doing or rather how to approach testing. I love that you added that because even if we're getting really creative and really thoughtful with our ads, if we don't have a methodology to test them, then either we're not going to give them enough runway or we're going to give them too much space and waste money. Any tips there? Again, without getting too detailed or too into nitty gritty, any tips on testing methodologies or where someone should start?

Andrew:

I mean testing is number one, establish what you're trying to learn. So actually what do you want to know, number one, and if you want to know, well, I want to know what creatives work and I want to know what landing pages work with them. Okay, totally do that, but let's not do them at the same time and let's make sure that we understand first that probably creative itself in terms of understanding. If you've taken over an account and the person has not really done creative testing, the number one right out of the gates is try four or five different angles in static ads and figure out what on a broad audience they're responding to based on what we call soft metrics, like the ad level metrics. So that's number one is just figuring out what are they responding to and then from there going into testing different variations upon that particular things that they're responding to.

And then from there, going into landing page testing, which can be a big unlock. So it's more about what are you trying to figure out? And also then being patient and knowing that to figure a lot of these pieces out, it's going to take time and money to do so. You're not going to be losing money, but it's not going to be a major money maker right away if this has never been done. A lot of times two people testing to a lot of agencies and I think as an insulation for their own agency is they make it really complicated to make themselves look really smart. And in the reality, the best testing that I can do for you is putting things in a broad ad set. So 25 to 65 men and women or split by gender, whatever, and just launching it and seeing what creative metrics are going to work.

It's not necessarily anything. We used to have a thing where you would graduate, then you would or would say, okay, that ad did really well, now I'm going to pull it into my other ad set and run it. Not something you do anymore, what we call scale in place. If it's working, keep it rocking. You don't need to move it. Love that just to have it be there. So a lot of times, and well, what am I going to do? Launch another broad ad set? Yeah, launch another one and eliminate the one that did well keep that baby rolling. And so I think as humans we want to complicate things and in reality put the complication in your brain power into the different variations on creative and the different hooks and the way that you're talking about them and the different angles you're going for and how they can speak to different segments or problems that your customer has. And that's going to be more beneficial than trying to complicate it at the other side when it comes to testing.

Brett:

Love it. And yes, I can attest agencies are guilty of that and I can pick on agencies, you can pick on agency, you're an agency owners, so I sounds cool when we invent our new way of this is a proprietary way of testing and this is our model and it's a 75 point test and it's like, okay, yeah, you probably don't need all that, but that does sound impressive. So yeah. Yes, simplifying is great and I love the idea of scaling in place. We do the same thing on YouTube. If you're testing a new ad and it blows up in a campaign, don't move it. Let it live there. So got all the oxygen and all the data, just let it roll. So I love that. Hey, let's pivot a little bit. You and I can geek out on ads and strategy and what's working, what's not forever, but I want to talk about AI just a little bit. Sure. What are you hearing in the community? What are you testing? Are you extremely bullish on ai? Are you a little nervous about ai? How is it impacting things right now from your perspective?

Andrew:

I mean I think it's two prong. One is, I think there's the first one is there's operational ai. So what are you doing in terms of operations for your agency or for your brand in terms of coming out with more iterations of things, copy hooks and angles, language, I mean that's one part of it. And then there's sort of like meta AI and what is meta doing with it and what are they trying to go for? I think on the first one, I mean I think across the board I'm bullish on what it can do for us. I think as we all say, with a healthy dose of skepticism, I think for sure on the first one, operational stuff, well, how do I even begin to say this? The issue I see in the landscape many times and a lot of us, you're in the space, just like I talked about, the complication of ad testing.

There is very little that differentiates a lot of creative agent or a lot of agencies now in terms of the skills, a lot of us have the same skills and so people are looking for anything they can do to message about that they're doing that's different. And AI is currently it. I mean remember the days of ManyChat it was we're the ManyChat agency or it's this little thing that doesn't actually do. And a lot of people have put their eggs in the creative basket and are saying, well, we're a creative shop, but we do add buying, which I'm not saying is bad, but a lot of people are saying that and AI is currently being used in this. And so they're saying, okay, well I have a 50 point AI framework for your agency. So I think number one, as you think about this stuff, you have to be really careful of what is that actually doing and is it creating more volume of copy or videos and are they actually productive or is it actually helping?

So that's really where my mind goes on the first part of it. On the operational side, I think that there's a lot that can happen to summarize and to look at data and help you interpret data and things that you would not have seen. So that's an interesting one. I mean watching sessions from Clarity or whatever, hot Jar or whatever where it's giving you a readout from what happened with people mean that stuff's really helpful. I think from the mind journey type creative of video, that's AI and that kind of thing. Images that are ai, I think it's okay, it's in its infancy. Some of it looks a little corny and I don't think feels genuine to it now, but people are pushing the envelope on it, which I think is good. So that's one thing on the meta AI side, what's going on there?

It's clear to me that Meta is investing in this and will continue to take more controls away from us as advertisers. The they're going to put in assets and Meta's going to decide where to put 'em, and it's going to be an Advantage plus shopping campaign and it's going to be kind of a performance Max style. The issue with that I have with this is Meta has a bad track record with allowing freedom in terms of ad placement and display. So we have a client that's running a sale right now and we turned on in Advantage while shopping campaign, the automatic optimization, well, it put the texts in all the wrong places and it cut off one of the texts and it made the ad look terrible. And the client's getting screenshots and sending it to us and saying, this looks terrible. So like I think an AI issue right out of the gates.

But there's other things. They came out and said they're, they're testing this Lattice framework where it's looking at essentially federated learnings, which are learnings across a whole bunch of accounts and they're calling it Lattice and saying, okay, here's what we know and we're matching this color background to this person because we know they respond to things in purple. So the early tests of that stuff haven't been doing anything. They've been performing way worse than anything than we've created. And so I'm not saying it's trash, I'm just saying right now it's not proving to be anything big, but it will be more. I mean, there's going to be endless options and I think you're going to have to be one, pitching your clients to be more comfortable with the changes that are taking place and with the fact that they're dynamically changing your ads often. And number two is you're going to have to be more patient because the AI is going to take some time, I think, to learn and figure that side of it out.

And I think ultimately it will be, there could be instances where it's more profitable, but it's going to, and the initial side of it when it's learning going to be really tough because you're going to be getting screenshots of your clients from the ads that look really like that don't look good. So it depends on how much customization they're doing in this too. So that's like my honest answer about ai. I I think it's a lot of people that are really excited about it. I think that's great and I'm not excited about it. And Meta doesn't have a great track recorder when it comes to this stuff. And ultimately I think about what creates more work for us as agencies. They're saying it saves us time, but if a client's blowing us up with ads that look like crap, that's not going to be good for anybody.

Brett:

That does not save you time for sure. I like the way you frame that. I'm not excited about it. And that's the why I feel about some of the AI related topics. Just got a key in on a couple points related to operational ai. I think it's really the place right now where it's all about augmenting not replacing. It's about helping you do more with less, faster, give you ideas, helping you not start with a blank canvas, that type of thing. I've got some friends who are developers and coders and they're saying, Hey, with the proper use of Chad G p t or whatever their favorite tool is, it makes them 20% faster with coding or maybe 50% faster for certain things. It helps them, if you look at a really good copywriter, maybe you're using AI to kind of get you some thought starters or to tweak things or rewrite some things.

But as I've looked at stuff that AI just creates on its own, I'm not finding subject lines that are better than what great copywriters write. I'm not seeing descriptions that are better than what great copywriters write. I know it's improving. I know it will continue to improve, but I really think it's augmenting not replacing at least so far. We'll see how it progresses. What's really interesting, and I'll be very curious to watch how meta AI unfolds and want to keep up with you on that with Google Performance Max, one of the concerns I had when I first heard this talked about a couple years ago was, man, we're not going to have any control. This is going to all be Black Box. We're just going to serve Google our assets and step away and hope for the best. Actually, you can do that. There's some ways to run Performance Max that are very much automated, but there's also quite a bit you can manipulate and quite a bit, you can move around based on the way you structure your campaigns and then also looking at performance data, changing your creatives, changing a few of the signals and things like that.

And so I think that's probably the future too, where there's, there's going to be this option where you just like, here you go, here are the keys, Google my Money, here are my assets. And same with Meta. But I think there's also going to be this way of, okay, I'm going to leverage some of the automation, but I'm still going to apply my strategies and I'm going to apply my testing framework as best as I can to this tool. And I think that's where we're going to get the best results. So far, we've had great success with Performance Max, almost across the board, but companies that are spending like 50,000 a day on Performance Max, usually it's not just one campaign that they built in an afternoon and don't think about its, it's more of a complex structure. So we'll see. Man, I, I'm bullish, but I think I may have to copy your, I'm not excited. So

Andrew:

I love that. Yeah, I mean, I think to me the practical implications of it, a performance Max. Look at, I did a webinar with North Beam a month ago with John Moran and John's talking about

Brett:

Love That dude, it's super smart,

Andrew:

Was talking about something along the lines of running a Performance Max campaign, but then running something that then suppresses a certain part of this Performance Max campaign that it actually spends in the places you want. And I don't remember exactly what it was, but the point is, I could see that happening with Meta ads. There's going to be like, yes, you're running a manageable shopping campaign and AI as part of it, but you're also then taking and creating a separate catalog or something or product catalog with things that you want to suppress or it's that kind of manipulation that I think is going to have to take place and probably will. It just remains to be seen what that'll be and how much money will be spent figuring that out. Right? I think we're sort of in this place of a lot of people during the pandemic had businesses that were running online and now we're coming through this piece of man operationally things aren't looking as good, or ads aren't performing as well, and there's less levers to pull.

And I think it's, when you think about AI and giving people, like you said, longer timeframe, if it's a $50,000 a day thing, they're going to be fine. But it's these little guys, I think about that spending 25,000 a month, they're going to be the ones that are hurt because they're not going to be able to test this, and they might not be resourced enough to know where to direct, to direct the dollars more appropriately. So that's going to be really challenging, and that's a harder place to be as a business owner, especially when all of your traffic has come from Meta,

Brett:

Totally

Andrew:

From one source.

Brett:

We know so many small businesses that they really built their brand, built their business on Facebook and maybe partially in the glory days of Facebook. And Facebook is still going strong and still working. But yeah, it will be those with smaller budgets that don't have the ability to adapt, that will be hurt the most, which really is a great reason why someone needs to get connected to a community of other smart people and learn and ready, be ready to adapt and improve. And so tell us a little bit more about the founders community. Who's a good fit for that? How do people find out more? Yeah, give us a little down there.

Andrew:

If you do digital advertising, you're an agency owner, you're in house at a brand, you're a brand owner, and you spend anything on Meta or on TikTok or on Google, it's going to be a place for you. We have the Founders community, which is the original, it's been around for two years. That's for people that are primarily spending on Meta. And a month ago we launched the PPC community, the PPC B, both the main founders membership is foxville digital.com/membership. The other one is foxville digital.com/all caps ppc. And they're, they're places that are supportive to you. We have between five and 10 calls a week that members can join, led by different members of the community on of myriad of topics. Everything's recorded, put into a database for you lives as a Slack community. You can ask anything you want. It's a safe place. It's moderated by me. I have an outsourced moderation. It's me, which is a big part of it because it's a big

Brett:

Tax,

Andrew:

It's a big job, stays high, and the quality stays high. I mean, we just asked, we just did a monthly member survey. A couple hundred members filled it out. 99.9% of the people said, yes, I'd recommend it to a friend. So that's a fit. If you're looking, you're, yeah, and big and small spenders. I mean, we have people that are spending, that are brands that are spending half a million a month just on one channel. And we have people in there that are running, their whole book of business is a hundred K spenders. And I've tried to build a community for both of those people and also running an agency and how lonely that can be. So if you feel like you need a little bit more support, then that's a good place for you.

Brett:

Yeah, it's so important because it is kind of lonely, whether you running an agency or you're serving as a marketing director or media buyer because you're going to talk to your family about changes on Meta or Google or talk to your family about, Hey man, my margins are just really down this year. It's really getting me down. It's hard to have those conversations with just anybody. You need a community like this where you can connect. So love that. I'll link to everything in the show notes. And then also Foxwell Digital. So you run an agency, talk about what services you guys offer and who is that a good fit for?

Andrew:

Yeah, I mean, we run an agency. We do meta ads for people and take on a couple clients a year. It's not a huge book for us. And we do a lot of strategic advising to agencies. We do a lot of strategic advising to brands. So if they're looking for a new advertiser, sometime we'll come in and do an audit and say, here's what we'd recommend and help them find a new partner. We've successfully placed, well, let's see, what year is it? 2020. 2023. Yeah. So I just looked at the numbers and I think it was something like 21 leads we've placed in agencies this year.

Brett:

Wow.

Andrew:

So that's a big part of what we do is playing matchmaker. And as far as I know, they're all still there. And that was part of the work, the due diligence that we're doing is checking out on it. So that's a big part of it too, is kind of that matchmaking process. And then we do this consulting with Wall Street as well, which is fascinating to talk to them about the public side of a lot of these companies and what they're doing.

Brett:

So you've got banks, you've got people on Wall Street that are talking to you on a regular basis saying, okay, give me the inside scoop, what's actually happening inside of Meta and inside these communities, because we need to know.

Andrew:

Yeah, exactly. And I mean, the best part about being a direct response advertiser always has been, is that we are always the one out there hustling, right? We are the ones that are testing everything. We're trying everything. I mean, Lord knows we'd all love to be a brand advertiser and just be doing freaking a hundred grand in video views. Right.

Brett:

How did you optimize your campaign? I turned it on. Yeah. Yeah,

Andrew:

I did. I used to actually do some of that consulting work four, three or four years ago with a brand or a, I guess a publisher that did a lot of partnerships with those brands. And it was amazing. It was so awesome. You could just turn stuff on. They just had endless budgets. But I mean, the good news about being a Dr. Advertiser is you have the look into here's what's working, here's how it's going, here's exactly why. Here's what sucks. And it turns out Wall Street's willing to pay for that. So if any of you're interested, you can go to GLG or Guidepoint or the two networks and you fill out an application and then they reach out and you can be connected basically to people on their staff. But then they send you calls and you can talk to people and they pay you for your time. Cool.

Brett:

Super cool, man. So interesting. Well love all that you're doing, Andrew, it's been an absolute pleasure to catch you up.

Andrew:

Yeah, man, thank you so much. I'm looking forward

Brett:

To that PPC community, man. I'm looking forward to hanging out a little bit with my PhD kids in there and talk. Wait. And so yeah, I'll link everything in the show notes. Do check out Foxwell Digital. He's got some courses as well if you want to learn through courses, if that's your jam. But Andrew, super fun, man. Thank you so much. Thanks. And we'll have to do it again.

Andrew:

Sounds Absolutely. Thank you.

Brett:

Awesome. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We would love to hear from you. What would you like to hear more of on the show? Do you have any suggestions, any guests that you're like, Hey, this guest has got to be on the show. I would like to know about that and hit us up. Look at me on the socials now, man. I'm more active on LinkedIn and on Twitter sort of, and would love to connect with you in the socials are on the socials as well. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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Good ads are just the beginning when it comes to growing your business. The real game-changer lies in your landing pages. They hold the key to turning visitors into loyal customers.

That's why you can't afford to miss our latest podcast episode. We've brought together two absolute legends from OMG Commerce - Matt Slaymaker and Bill Cover - to discuss their favorite landing page tips and share real-life examples.

With over $100 million managed annually in online advertising, we've witnessed firsthand the critical role landing pages play in conversion rates and return on ad spend. They hold the power to either make or break your ad performance, while also impacting your word-of-mouth and organic growth.

Here's a look at what we cover:

• How landing page improvements turned a skincare brand's ad campaign from a dud to a success.
• What good landing pages and amazing in-store experiences have in common.
• The 4 C's of a good lander.
• 5 tips for dedicated landing pages.
• Where to start - homepage, landing, or dedicated lander.
• How landing pages and ads work together to create winning (or disappointing) results.
• Our favorite landing page examples and a FREE swipe file of our favorites!

Mentioned In This Episode:

• Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
• Unofficial Shopify Podcast by Kurt Elster
• FIXD
• Boom by Cindy Joseph
• Overtone
• FREE Landing Page Swipe File

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO, OMG Commerce. And today, I'm not the only one from OMG Commerce on the show today, this is the OMG Experts series, and we're talking about landing pages today and product detail pages. And I could not be more excited. This is going to be practical and helpful and strategic and hopefully a lot of fun as well. So I have with me right now on the show, two legends from OMG Commerce. These guys are seasoned veterans in the e-commerce space, marketing space ad agency space. First up is Mr. Bill Covert. Bill and I go way back. He's been at OMG for seven years, which is a long time in internet years, but he's been in e-commerce for I think going on 13 years Bill, and prior to that was in the ad agency world.

So Bill, welcome to the show, I think. Thank you. Is what your third, fourth time on the show you?

Bill:

Yeah, it's at least third. Yeah, we'll go with fourth actually. That sounds better. Fourth?

Brett:

Fourth. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think it's at least fourth and more to come. So excited about that. And then also a return guest on the show, we got Matt, the Playmaker sleigh maker. What's up Matt Slaymaker, how are you doing? What's out [inaudible] Good, good. So Matt is one of our lead Google specialists and strategist, and he's been with us for three years, been doing marketing for seven. He is a pro with all things Google Ads, but he's done more than that too. He is worked on Facebook ads on a number of other things, and he just gets marketing and gets growth for D two C brands and same for Bill.

So Bill's a strategist, we pull him in as we're consulting with new clients and then ongoing clients Bill's always looking for opportunities to grow, to improve, to help clients reach their goals. So today we're talking about something that I think all three of us are quite passionate about, and that is landing pages, good landing pages. So let's kind of set up this way, gentlemen. Why should we focus on landing pages? Why is it so important that we get this right? And I'll let you go first, bill.

Bill:

All right, great. Yeah, thanks for having me. So when it comes to landing pages, the reason why, and I think we're going to unpack this a little bit probably as we get in here, but I would say transition brand experience and customer education. And as I was I thinking about this coming into today's podcast, I was thinking about Steve Krug's book.

It's an old one, an old e bit of goodie called don't Make me Think, which I think is self-explanatory love. And so when you get to a site, the goal for you as a brand in connection to your customer is don't make them think. Don't make them sit there and decide. Tell them where to go, what to do. Orient them who you are, order the best sellers, order the most popular. And so a well-structured landing page does that for you and for your brand.

Brett:

I love that. And my buddy Kurt Elster. So shout out to the unofficial Shopify podcast and the dynamic host, Kurt Elster, he and his partner and their business ethos cycle. They talk about picturing their customer as a drunk guy on the couch late at night, like surfing the web. And it says it's maybe a little bit of an over exaggeration, but if you think about it that way, like, hey, could someone who was intoxicated and a little bit sleepy navigate your website? If so, then that's probably simple enough because yeah, I totally agree. You don't want to make people think or you don't want to make things complex because people will just bail. They'll bounce in no shot of Covering if it's confusing. For sure. So Matt, what about you man? Why? How would you lay that out? The reason why should we focus on Yeah, creating great leaning pages. Well,

Matt:

First of all, I just want to say it's super important, like you said, to tap into that drunken and sleepy audience. They are a big buyer segment, so you got to make sure we're appealing to them. Yeah,

Brett:

Don't forget the drunk segment of your audience sitting on the couch. They're buyers because they, they're ready

Matt:

Buy

Brett:

Ready to buy. They're not thinking about price really, they're, they're ready to pull out that wallet and purchase if they can find their way.

Matt:

Yeah, to me, I think landing pages are so important because I mean, this is where obviously the sale happens and this is where you make your first impression. As it says in the name, a landing page is where somebody lands on your website. So if this is the first time somebody's ever heard of you, you've got to make a really good first impression. So obviously branding is super, super important here. But the other part is this is where we have the opportunity to test things and maximize our conversion rate. So through the landing pages, we have the opportunity to tailor our page and the content on that page to the audience that we're targeting, rather than just sending everybody to the homepage that might look the same product detail pages that are tailored a certain way. Having a landing page where we can customize it to a particular audience is super powerful and important.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. And I think we'll share some tips as we go if you be a few product detail page tips and few homepage tips. And of course landing page tips because sometimes we do send traffic directly to a product detail page or directly to the homepage, wherever the case may be. But I love the analogy when we're thinking about a landing page or where someone shows up on your site and thinking about that just like an in-store experience. And Matt, you and I talked about this actually all three of us talked about this before we hit record. That if we think about that in-store experience, when someone first walks into the door of a brick and mortar store, what is that experience? Do they immediately know where to go? Do they have confidence that if they have a question, someone is going to be there to answer it?

Do they feel like, Hey, based on the mood, the lighting, the vibe that I'm getting, the products that I'm seeing, am I in the right place? Is this for me or is this not for me? And I'll use a bit of an example. I used to a lot of local advertising. And so you can imagine you've always got the local car dealer who's like, Hey, we're home with a fair and honest deal. And so then you're like, Hey, maybe if you're naive, you're like, Hey, maybe this is a fair and honest car dealer. So you show up at the car dealership and then you're like, wait a minute, I think this is every other car dealership guy with slicked back hairs walking out the door, khakis, fake smile, sticking his hand out. I stick my left hand and I'm not sure why, but sticking his hand out at Shake your hand, you're like, ah, I got to get out of here.

This is not the right place. Or another example in when I was in college, I worked at Lowe's, the home improvement center, and that we were one of the top rated Lowe's in the nation. We had a lot of pride in that. And there's another big box home improvement store that I actually don't think is bad at all, but the location here is not very good in our hometown. And there's always a difference to me if I go into our local Lowe's, like there's three or four people ready to help me in the different departments, whether it's plumbing or lumber, you've got a pro there handy that'll talk to you in this other box store, you can walk the aisles. I'm like, there's nobody there to help. You never get your question answered. You're not going to find what you want. And so thinking about that experience, I spent a lot of money at Lowe's. I don't ever go to this other store because of that in-store experience. And maybe the ads are just as good, or maybe the ads are even better at that other big box store. But I go to Lowe's because of the experience in the store. And I think there's just, there's so many applications we can tie in there. But what are your thoughts though, guys, when you look at landing page and comparing that to an in-store experience, any other insights or thoughts you'd share there?

Matt:

An example I'd give you is that's how I feel about Chick-fil-A. So anytime I go to that branding experience and the experience that I get from those customer service people, the sales representatives or anytime you say thank you, they're always saying, my pleasure. They've always got a smile on their face and they create this super positive experience that makes you want to come back again and again, it's more than just the chicken. That is the reason I'm going there. It's because of the overall experience that I get when I go there. And you can't say that about every fasting company. Totally.

Brett:

And then the chicken is arguably the best as far as fast food in my opinion. But you're 100% cor, correct. I can't remember a single time, and I've been to a lot of Chick-Fil-A's, spent a lot of money at Chick-fil-A. I've got a family with eight kids. And so we frequent Chick-fil-A. I can't remember going to a Chick-fil-A and experiencing a grumpy employee, I can't remember it. And maybe it's happened, but it hasn't stuck out. It's overwhelmingly positive. It's overwhelmingly fast. If you get anything wrong, they fix it. They're happy. They're saying My pleasure all the time over the top man. And it's fantastic. And that's why you can go to any Chick-fil-A anywhere in the country at 2:00 PM after the lunch rush. And you're still probably going to be a long line. You won't have to wait very long because they're efficient. But there's probably a line.

Bill:

Yeah, and just thinking about that sales rep example, we have a local water sports store where I buy wakeboards and there's lots of different kinds of wakeboards and lots of different kinds of bindings. And I'm a bigger guy, I've got a wider stance and things like that. And there's specific ones for park or there's specific ones for behind the boat sleigh maker's familiar too with these concepts. And just for the uneducated park is the water park, the ramps and stuff, because you don't want fins on that one. Totally. Right. And it's got to stand up to a few more riggers maybe. So you go in and mean even if you've been wakeboarding, if it's your first time buying nothing. And so going in, you're like, okay, these things are running like 500 bucks with the total package bindings in the board and all this stuff, and then you got to buy a life jacket and a helmet.

I mean, you're spending hundreds of dollars. And it's like, how can I get something that's entry level that I'm not going to spend too much on, but it's going to stand up to what I need it to. And you need a sales rep to help you with that. So is your landing page that sales rep or I think of if you're going to a running shoe store or something like that, you might be running on pavement, you might be running on trails, who knows? I mean it might be for something else, distance versus sprints. These all require different products and you don't want to buy the most expensive, I mean, I think we all want to get what's the bottom of the top tier somewhere in there.

Brett:

It's your maximum value. How can I get the best for the amount that I'm comfortable spending?

Bill:

Yeah, maximize value 100%.

Brett:

And one thing that I think, and I want to talk about advertising in a minute, how that ties into landing pages. But one other thing that I think is often overlooked in the space of e-commerce is word of mouth and referrals. And this is something that as we dig in with clients, more sophisticated clients, especially those that are using post-purchase surveys like No Commerce and others, they start to get a lot of feedback saying, Hey, someone referred me, my friend or family or whoever, and that's why I'm here. But you got to think about if that in-store experience or in this case the onsite experience, the landing page, the homepage product detail page, if that's not stellar, people are going to be way less likely to make that referral. And I remember back when I was in a lot of local advertising, I worked with this local printer and they were the cheapest.

They were pretty fast, but they were actually quite grumpy and they were difficult to work with. They're just like some difficulties in working with them, but they were always the lowest price. So I always used them, but I never referred to them because I was like, eh, you probably won't have a good experience. You'll probably be grumpy at the end of your day if you go with this company. But I use 'em cause I'm cheap and I'm feeling cheap right now. So there's one of those things where if you think about the landing page, yes it helps with ads and there's a big benefit there, but your landing pages also can increase or decrease or kill word of mouth. And I think that's really important to underscore here. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Matt:

Cool. So I'm a bit of a marketing nerd obviously. So I share this stuff with people who don't care. But there'll be times where I see a really cool product that has just a beautiful landing page and I'm like, look how cool this is this product. It looks so awesome. And it's not even because of the product itself, it's because of how they demonstrated what the product is and the benefits, how they communicated this. And we'll take a examples there,

Brett:

And we are a little more like that cause we're in the marketing field, we're a little more prone to share those pages, but it does happen more with anybody. They're more likely to share a page, more likely to refer if it's a great experience, if it's beautiful, if the message is clear, if it all works, they're more likely to refer. So love that. Let's talk about the relationship between advertising and landing page because we run a lot of traffic, gentlemen. We spend millions and millions a month on YouTube and Google on Amazon ads and people come to us wanting us to help them generate more customers and develop new customers. And typically the focus is on better ads, better targeting, better campaigns, all those things which are super important. But how would you talk about that relationship? Because something that is often overlooked is how are your landing pages performing?

So how would you talk about the relationship between ads and Lander and how you look at them?

Bill:

Yeah, sure. So the way I look at it is the ads job. And as a digital marketer, my job is to find a relevant audience, relevant keywords and to qualify them so I can find a relevant audience or maybe some percent of that audience that I think is relevant. Maybe there isn't purchase intent, something like that. The ads job is to then qualify that person and to have them go, okay, yeah, that's me, that's what I want. I want that now. And to have them click, whereas the landing page, his job is then to transition them and to up that conversion rate to drive the sale and to orient them from that ad click. Love that.

Brett:

Yeah. Would you add anything to that, Matt? Yeah,

Matt:

No, to put it simply, I think the goal of the ad is to reach the right people at the right time with a message and an image that compels them to want to learn more about your brand or your product. So the goal with the ad really is just to spark that initial interest, reach people who are already interested maybe in looking for this kind of stuff or like Bill said, maybe they're not even looking for this kind of stuff yet and we get in front of 'em at that stage. And then the goal of the landing page is to move them further and to drive that actual consideration and intent. And maybe that's not always somebody actually buying something. A good landing page isn't looking just for the sale. There might be other opportunities, whether it's a lead generation opportunity where people aren't ready to buy just yet that, but you can provide your email address for 20% off later on, or join a wait list for an ultimate purchase later. And then even for those people who aren't willing, they're ready to give that kind of stuff yet leaving such a positive brand impression that they want to come back later on. So I think that's what the landing pages Jo job is ultimately in the end.

Brett:

Love it. Totally agree. I think another way to say it is the job of the ad is to get the right person to click to get attention, to get the right prospect to stop and pay attention and then to get them to say maybe, right, maybe this is the product for me, maybe I want to take it a step further. And so they click and then once they get to the landing page, it's the landing page's job to do everything else to convince, to get that email sign up, to get someone to add the car, to get someone to purchase. That's the job of the landing page. The job of the ad is to get the right person to say maybe, and hopefully they come in predisposed and pretty excited and ready for your message on the landing page. But the art of closing really happens on the landing page.

And so I think that that's super important to underscore and to emphasize in this case. And so I want to give an example, and I'm curious if you guys have examples too of how this can play out. So I was working with a longtime client of ours. They sell a derma roller, so it's one of those microneedling rollers and it's got some product in it and very effective at helping reduce wrinkles and just in improving the overall glow and look of the skin. And we were running some YouTube ads and the YouTube ads were getting great engagements, so people watching the videos, people clicking on the videos way above average on all of those metrics. But the ads weren't performing, we were not hitting their cost per acquisition, target wasn't working. And so we paused for a bit and the client was like, Hey, I want to get to work on this landing page because they actually understood landing pages really well and they were like, Hey, I'm going to rework this page.

So they reworked the page and that totally changed the dynamics of the campaign. So we found a lot of people would look at that and say, well, we got to run better ads, got to run better ads, got to get better targeting, got to get, get better. But in this case, it was the job of the landing page and sometimes you could identify that when view rates are good, click through rates are good, and then conversion rates are bad, that's probably the landing page not doing its job. And so that's where you potentially need to focus. So any other examples gentlemen? Any other thoughts there on when we've identified that it was the landing page and not the ad that was the problem?

Bill:

Yes, and playing off your example real quick, just thinking of a derma roller, I don't know what that is, just because I'm in the industry.

Yes. Would've no concept of it other than I worked on brands who sell these and so are you, he's trying to hide the fact that you D roller. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there you go. You just exposed me there. I'm huge into it. I got a whole derma roller collection. Yeah. So what's your favorite brand of Derma roller? Exactly. See? Gotcha. Okay. Sorted by color. So I think when we're in our own industry, we're so jaded, we're exposed to all the ways this works, we believe in it, we're already sold. What percentage of people got to that landing page and went, do domer rollers really work? And it's like, okay, you might have the best one in the world, but what percentage? People don't even know that this category is a good idea. And are you answering those questions on your landing page or are they going to go to Google and ask?

Because once they go to Google and ask, your competitors are waiting. So totally. You just grew the category for your competitors.

Brett:

Excellent point. Yes, someone, your ad made you a beautiful job of getting attention and getting someone to click and maybe be curious, but if the landing page doesn't do its job, all you're doing is sending that prospect to go shop your competitor and to do another search and to end up somewhere else. So you're growing the category, not growing your own business, which is not the way to succeed in marketing. So what about you, Matt? Any examples or thoughts on how this plays out this role of ad and lander?

Matt:

Yeah, a hundred percent. I think you can have all the right targeting set up and beautiful ads, but if you're directing them to a page that doesn't clearly demonstrate what the value of that product is, what the differentiators are, why you should take action right now, then I don't think it's really going to matter. You're not going to see good results from that ad and from that good targeting. So an example is we have a supplements company and previously their landing pages were really core. They were essentially just product pages where the details were very minimal, so the differentiators really weren't there. Essentially all that they had were a couple lines of what the product was, so some features that came along with it and then reviews. So from there it was pretty empty. They updated one of these with the goal of this being something that they could use for a YouTube video where it focuses on one particular supplement and they added a lot of content below the fold, which was essentially talking about all the benefit, what the problem is, so why you really need a probiotic supplement, what the war inside your gut looks like, why you might be suffering from this.

Then they told the story of their brand below that too. We set out to do blank, we're different because of blank. Most prio probiotics fail because they don't have enough blank. And then they littered throughout that their social proof of testimonials, real stories from people, and we a b tested that not just for the YouTube videos but for their shopping ads as well. What if we sent people who were landing on that original probiotic page to this long form probiotic page and we saw double the conversion rates from that long form page? Wow. Because instead of just kind of answering the bare minimum of here's what it does, it then get expanded upon that and said, here's why this is important. Here are the benefits of that and here's why we're better than everybody else.

Brett:

I love that so much. I've got a couple of follow ups there, but I want to ask this question first. Just curious what your take is. Do you guys prefer longform landing pages or short form landing pages? What's say you

Bill:

Yeah, that that's a Turkey question. I am not a fan of very, very long landing pages, ridiculously long landing pages. I think a little bit, it feels disrespectful a little bit. No offense to those people out there. You probably know who you are and what I mean is just scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, going to get a lot of hate mail from long, long form landing page. Yeah, I don't think this person that I'm thinking of is offended or even I make, it's going to be a radar email too. Yeah, it's going to be really long. But what I prefer when I'm working with a client or a brand is send me something that's too long and it's way easy to, way easier to whittle it down than it is to make it longer. So I prefer that we start there. So love that, Matt. Thoughts in

Matt:

General, I don't think long is necessarily a problem as long as you're not wasting my time. If the most important information is up near the top and there's a call to action up at the top, I can take action right away and I get my answer or the questions that I have answered, then I don't necessarily mind there being additional content below there. So if that below the fold content is just additional reviews and testimonials and information about the brand that I don't necessarily mind it being long, but obviously it's something that you have to test out and like Bill was saying, it's so much easier to have something that's already long and have too much content and have to trim that down, then have to come up with more content out of thin air.

Brett:

Yeah, totally agree. And I think the right answer here is the page needs to be as long as it needs to convince someone to say yes. And I fully agree with the points you guys were making here, that it needs to be scannable. I think for those that come to your page and they're already convinced or ready, they should have an option to buy quickly. I think Bill, to your point, if someone's got to scroll through an endless landing page or they're forced to watch a 30 minute video sales letter to be able to add to cart, I know there's some strategic reasons to use that, but I always balance on those pages. I will 100% of the time always bail there. So you know, don't want to make someone scroll all the way to the end of what's the equivalent of six pages of text before they have the add to cart option, but you also need enough information to be able to convince someone.

I love an example and we'll get into a lot more here as we go, but room dividers now a former client friend, but they sell room dividers for apartment complexes and workspaces and things like that, but this is often the first time someone has ever bought a room divider when they go to this site and it's kind of confusing and new and what size do I buy and will I be able to install this? Do I need to be a builder? What is this? Their pages are amazing in terms of showing pictures, diagrams, measurements, quick videos that show you how to choose the right one, how to install it, and this would be overboard for something simple like a phone case or something like that. I don't need a lot of diagrams for a phone case, but a room divider never bought one. I'm a little bit intimidated, so give me the details but make it easy to scan because that's how people consume pages and then they look for details and they may deep dive into that interest them. And so page needs to be as long as it needs to be close the sale.

Matt:

In talking about scannable content, I think that's where visuals are so important. Yeah, they always say a picture of paints a thousand words, it says a thousand words, but you can just visually digest information through a picture much more than you can through a paragraph. And I've seen that there's studies that show that people actually remember about 10% of what they hear, 20% of what they read and 80% of what they see and do. So that's where you were saying Brett, whether it's doing videos through your landing page or visuals, that kind of stuff is so important in terms of making it easily digestible for people.

Brett:

We think and remember in terms of pictures, if I say quick think of a whale, you don't think w h a l e, right? You think of a whale, right? If I say beach, you don't think of the letters, you think of the beach and an umbrella and surfing or something like that. So we think in pictures, so we need pictures.

Bill:

My friend Todd who works with us, he sent me a Neil Patel article last night and it said that 10% of how's the man shout out to shout out to Todd, right? Smart marketer. It said 10% of people remember write no sound, but remember audio learning 20% remember something in writing and 80% remember from visual and doing. So video is key.

Brett:

I think it really is, and oddly enough, I'm one of the, I love auditory, I love listening to stories and I love podcasts.

That's probably why I'm a podcaster, but that's not the norm. People need to see and experience things that a good landing page does that. I think one last thing and then I want to get into some very specific tips. We've been sprinkling tips as we go, but I want to get into some specifics. So one additional thing to keep in mind is that people are coming to your landing page with questions, with unresolved objections. They're coming to your landing page with a healthy dose of skepticism and doubt and you've got to be ready for all of those things. I like to talk about the fact that we live in the show me state, well, bill and I are Missouri guys, a Matt's Texas guy, lots of love for Texas as well, but we're the show me state, right? And our state animal is the donkey.

So you got to show us before we'll believe anything and apparently we're quite stubborn, but you got to kind of think that way with your landing page. I have to show that these objections are not true. I have to show that this is the right solution for you. I have to overcome all of those hurdles, all that doubt, mistrust, objections that this visitor has so that they go from a maybe to a yes. So keep that in mind that people aren't just coming eager and ready to buy with the wallet out, fully convinced. I know they're coming with doubts and objections and you got to those. So awesome. Let's dive into specific tips. So lay out some of your best of your favorite landing page tips. Who wants to go first?

Matt:

Is that me? Sure. Go for Matt. All right. Yeah, great. So obviously it depends on what the goal is for that landing page. If is this a dedicated landing page, is this a product page, your homepage? Let's talk about a dedicated landing page. So I'm going to give my top five elements that I think you really need to make sure that. Can you explain

Brett:

What a dedicated landing page would be, Matt, and how we would use this? Yeah,

Matt:

A hundred percent. So a dedicated landing page is a landing page that's tailored for a specific campaign for a specific audience. So let's say that you have a top of funnel YouTube campaign where the goal of that is to use your video to reach people who've never heard of your brand before. So instead of sending people to your homepage or your product page, won't send 'em to a page that either relates to that video and that audience in some way, but portrays your brand and is focused on the product that you mentioned in that video. So it's tailored not only to the video but the audience itself.

Brett:

Awesome, thank you. So tips for your dedicated landers.

Matt:

Yeah, so I think the top five elements that you really need to have, and I'll list them all out, then go into a little bit of depth on each of those is your value proposition, your benefits and features, your branding, your differentiators, your social proof, and a strong call to action slash offer. So your value proposition is essentially just what is the point of your product, what is the value that you are going to get out of this? So if you are a company that has sells, let's just say that you are a product that helps women grow their hair back. You could just say that we are a shampoo that grows your hair back. Or you could put this in the form of a value proposition, which is really answering the what, which is the problem and the solution that they're trying to get to.

So essentially regain your confidence with our hair regrowing shampoo. So that's the value that they're really getting out of that. I think every dedicated landing page really needs to have that. The second part is benefits and features. So this really goes into the why. So what is the value that the person is getting out of the features that come with it? So if you sell an iPhone and the iPhone has a certain amount of storage space, what's the benefit of that? So the storage space is the feature, but the benefit is now you have more room for pictures and for memories and things like that, you have more apps that you can use, text messages that you can send. The third element is

Brett:

Just so quickly, Matt, some of the really great examples there, if you think back to old Apple ad campaigns, right? With the original, did we look at the iPod, right? One of the original examples, they didn't talk about the number of megabytes of storage or whatnot, but there were like 3000 songs in your pocket and I was like, this is amazing. 3000 songs in my pocket or I love the old campaign. It really I think helped launch the iPhone into kind of the stratosphere. There's an app for that. So you've got this problem, this thing, there's an app for that solved and here we'll just show you in the ad. And so yeah, really making that value prop come to life. Love, love that,

Matt:

Right? Yeah. Because in the end, features are really just what leads to the benefit and the benefit is truly what people are really after. From there you've got strong branding differentiators. So this answers the who, so who are you and what makes you different from everybody else. If you're in a crowded space, especially things like supplements for example, where there are hundreds of brands that sell probiotics or brain supplements, things like that. What is the reason that people should trust you amongst everybody else? And then the fourth element, how you can really show that is through your social proof. This elaborates on the credibility aspect of it, why should people choose? You provide things like testimonials, reviews, third party publications. So if you've been mentioned in Forbes, cnn, some of these publications out there, that kind of stuff really helps move the needle in terms of people trusting you. And then the last part of it, once they've digested who you are, what you're selling and why this is important, having a strong call to action or an offer that actually inspires them not only to take action but to take action right now. So does your call to action create that sense of urgency? If it doesn't, then people are going to leave and not maybe come back later on. So I think that's the other element you're really got to make sure you have.

Brett:

That's awesome. And Bill, I want to hear your tips in just a second, but Matt, what are some examples? Because I think we always learn better when we're looking at those who are doing this well. What are examples that we should pay attention to

Matt:

In terms of a dedicated landing page that I think does well? Yeah, so there is a company called Fixed out there. So if you go to fixed.com, you'll find this F I

Brett:

X D,

Matt:

Yeah, f i xd.com. So these guys, if you pull them up on your mobile phone or computer right now, I think they do all these elements really, really well. They do. So at the very top of the page, they have their value proposition that is super clear says meet the car Sens, meet the car repair sensor. That is saving people thousands of dollars. So instead of just saying it's a car diagnostic tool, which is just what it is, it paints that out in a very clear way. You're saving thousands of dollars. That's the value that you're getting out of this. Then in a

Brett:

Quick frame on that, just so people get the idea, like check engine light comes on, you take the fixed device, plug it into the computer port on your car, and then on your phone you get a readout of exactly why that check engine light is on, plus how much it should cost to repair it. So really answers questions for you and helps you not get screwed over later at the mechanic. So yeah, keep going man, right?

Matt:

Yeah. And from there the next thing they jump into is over 2 million fixed sensors sold 10,000 plus five star reviews. So there's your social proof, there's the credibility that they've already created. Then they get into why every driver should own a fixed sensor. So what it does, so car diagnostics like Brett just mentioned, maintenance alerts, issue severity. So it kind of shows that benefit that you're getting out of this. From there they go on to explain why they're different from other people, why you should trust them over others. But then what they do really well is they have an offer that is happening pretty much all the time. It says Shop six, shop fix today before this offer times out and they have this timer that's constantly ticking, but it's 67% off, and so they're always kind of promoting, make sure that you're getting this at the best possible deal. So you get to that page and you have that sense of urgency to go ahead and buy right then and there, which I think they do really, really well.

Brett:

Love it. Great example. We'll need to have the show notes, but go check it out for yourself@fixed.com. Bill, what about you? Top landing page tips.

Bill:

All right, sweet. You bet. So I would love to turn all of these into Cs at some point, but I have connect, so how does it change their life? Connect with the customer and where they're at and psychologically understand their pain point and address that and say, look, I get it. This is what you're going through. Here is how we help. I mean, it could be a very simple product. They have a pain point content. So I think dream big. Imagine what your brand can be, what your landing page could look like. I think some of the most awesome landing pages are just very visual and give me a great brand impression and a great brand impression. Gives me a great product impression and I want to identify with that product brands like that.

I think Peloton has amazing landing pages and they do the connect thing as well. If you are living in an apartment in a high rise, it's a big deal to have to get up, go down the elevator and go to the gym in the morning. Whereas you could have a Peloton just in the corner, you could wake up and you can do your whole workout routine with an instructor right there. You don't have to go to the gym. They make that very obvious, here's your pain point, we're the solution, and then call to action. So not just certainly tell them what to do, you may think it's obvious, it may not be obvious, but also what are the steps? What are the next steps? One thing, example would be the Goldie Locks Purple Mattress YouTube ads, love it. Next time you see the eggshell test ad, click and look at that landing page and look how it matches the ad and also watch they show you what this is.

When it arrives at your door, this thing is going to arrive in a box that looks like this. If you don't like it, here's what you do. So it answers all these questions. It walks you through yourself having bought this product vicariously.

Brett:

Yeah, it kind of leads you through the process, right? I heard this great marketing analogy one time that people will not go physically where they haven't gone in their mind burst or where they haven't imagined themselves going. And I think that's what that page does. It shows, hey, this is what it's going to be like when it shows up in your doorstep and when you open the box, it's going to look like this because there's some unknowns. There's still some people out there that are a mattress shipped to me. Is this going to be like a giant box? Can I get it through my door?

Is it going to be, it's going to be messed up, damaged. That is a hurdle that will keep people from buying. But once they see that, okay, actually the box is not huge, it's all air compressed and then it puffs out. Once you open it, then they feel confident and say, okay, yeah, this makes sense.

Bill:

Yeah, they also took the risk away from the buyer by saying, if you're not happy, put it back on the porch. You don't have to put it in the box. We'll do that, put it back on the porch and call us.

Brett:

Which I love that too, because that's the other thing. And then sometimes why I don't buy things or what gives me hesitation from buying things on Amazon. I know Amazon will take it back. I know I can return it. I don't want to. I've got stuff in my house that I knew I wasn't going to use, but I'm like, ah, it's too much words to return.

This who sits in my closet, or I give it away to somebody, which is fun, but that creates a hesitation. If I don't want this mattress, you mean I got to box what I got to compress it and box it up? No, just put it on the porch. We'll take care of it. Love that.

Bill:

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. The next tip would be trip wires. I think anyone who's doing a quiz is doing this. So something short of a purchase that I can do to segment those who were very interested. And now with GA four, maybe that's just in GA four, okay, they looked at this, they looked at five products that were all the color of red or something, and you can just track that as an event. But if you're doing a trip wire, like a quiz, then they're serious, they're curious, they, they're bounce, but they just didn't purchase yet.

So now we've isolated that group. We can go after that group with better messaging and okay, why didn't you buy? Maybe you need a sale. Maybe you had an objection or an FAQ or something like that. And then avoid paralysis by analysis. So don't give me one product unless you sell just one product, unless there's one obvious hero product. Give me three products or maybe some product categories guide me. Remember that sales rep like, Hey, what's the most popular? That's where I want to go. Don't make me think, don't give me 30 products. Give me a reasonable amount for what you sell and what your brand is and your category. And okay, I'll figure it out from there.

Matt:

And speaking about guiding me, I think that's another benefit that comes from the quizzes that you just talked about. So the obvious benefit of the quizzes, ultimate obviously when they go through all the options, they fill out all the questions at the end, it'll ask for their email address and that's where you send them the result. So the brand gets the email address and the user gets the result. But the other benefit of that is you're guiding the user to a product that is best for them based on the results that they gave. So I know there's this skincare brand called Curology that's a huge part of their system. They really just make custom skincare routines. So based on the inputs that you put in, do you have greasy, oily skin? Are you prone to acne? Things like that, what are you looking for? They're going to send you a bundle that is tailored just to you. I've seen this work for supplements companies, hair care companies as well. What are you looking for? What color is your hair? Things like that. And it tailors and guides the user to what is going to be best for them, which obviously helps the brand in terms of getting the user to the product that they're most likely to buy, but also helps the user because it's getting them a product that's most likely to best work for them. So

Brett:

Yeah, I love that example of quizzes and guiding someone to the right choice. And I think one of the tips that I would have, and actually I've got four and they all actually do start with the letter C bill, how crazy is that? But one of them is confidence. We've got to instill confidence in the shopper before they're going to make a purchase. And I love the example of Madison Reed and for former client, but we help them grow on Google and YouTube, but they are at home hair color. And so they've got this quiz, it's like a personal hair care consultant. And this is a very important thing. I've a lot of ladies in my family that color their hair and this is not something to take lightly. It's not like, yeah, I'll just try this if turns my hair. Weird color, no big deal.

Some people do want a crazy color and that's awesome, but they want the color they want and they don't want to get this wrong. And that's why a lot of people go to the salon and pay hundreds of dollars for the coloring. But at Madison Reed you can get it refresher the price and you do it at home, but they've got this color consultant, you take the quiz and it's very thorough, but it's still easy to fill out. And at the end, not only are they increasing satisfaction by delivering the right product, but they're giving you confidence in the process to say, ah, I was just asked the right questions and now I'm confident that what is going to be delivered to me is going to be right. And so then people actually make the purchase. So I love that.

Bill:

Now's how you've got visibility into that customer group.

And this could be a whole nother podcast on segmenting your cohorts, but yes, now it's like, okay, so you're male and you have dark hair, now I know how to talk to you.

Brett:

And so exactly, all kinds of segmentation there. If they don't purchase now, you know how to remarket to them. Or if they have their email now you know how to email them. You so many benefits there. Another thing, and you really alluded to this bill, but I'm going to kind of clarify maybe just a little bit, but congruent. I think the experience need to be congruent where if you made a promise or an offer on the video or on the display ad, in the display ad that you created, that needs to be front and center on the landing page. If you're talking about a holiday promotion or a Mother's Day promotion, that needs to be clearly visible.

If you had a look and a style and a tone in the video, that look and style and tone needs to be on the landing page because the first thing someone's going to say just like when they walk in the door of a retail store is, am I in the right place? And so you got to have that congruent experience between ad and landing page. And then I think that the two other Cs that I'll just throw out really quickly is it needs to be convincing. It needs to overcome those objections and really handle anything that's lingering or any objections to buy. And it needs to be compelling. It needs to promise that benefit, bring all those things to life enough to make someone say, yes, I'm going to purchase. Awesome stuff. Guys, this has been amazing. Just a couple of quick things here as we get close to wrapping it up.

Where do you usually suggest people start, right? So we run a lot of YouTube traffic, a lot of search traffic. Google shopping are now more performance max. But where should someone start? Should they start by building dedicated landing pages? Should they start by optimizing their product detail pages? Should they work on their homepage? What advice or what thoughts do you guys have there?

Bill:

That's a great question. So yeah, it's kind of recommending a supplement to someone who doesn't exercise and doesn't sleep supplement. Should I pay? Well, tell me what you were trying to do, but you got to do the basics. So if your homepage needs work, I mean, go after that. Go after the product page, do the lowest hanging. It's always going to be the most ed page, right? It's always going to be, yeah, page, get yourself a video going. A dedicated landing page is third, fourth, somewhere even further down the list.

Do the basics. But then by that time, you've got enough content and enough to kind of pull from these assets and it's like, okay, the U G C, the FAQs, the video, the banner header. And I would say also I come from e-commerce development and we talk about minimal minimum viable product and working iteratively. I've met, I have friends who worked for two years on their store and didn't launch it, and I'm like, why? Oh, there's a misspell over here. I'm like, are you kidding me? Get that thing out there and start generating revenue and iterate as you go. Just write. I don't just go to chat G p T and have that thing. Write your landing page and prop it up and then start to, I'm not I, that was an exaggeration. Do a little more than that, sorry. But just start to get something out there and then start to plug in your assets and get traffic to it and test and things like that. So work iteratively, but just start with copy, then get some images in there and get a video in there and go from there. I like it. What about you, Matt?

Matt:

Yeah, no, I totally agree with what Bill said. It doesn't have to be absolutely perfect when you launch it. The important thing is that you're just in the initial stage is starting to collect some data and like Bill said, you can iterate from there and you can ab test from there. Maybe you have the version, but then you spin up a secondary version where you split traffic 50 50 and you see what version does better. Maybe that original version that you thought wasn't as good as this next page is actually performs better than that new page does. So it's always something that you can be testing. But in terms of where to start as it comes to homepage, product pages, dedicated landers, I agree with what Bill said, and you alluded to Brett, your homepage is always going to be your most visited page, not just on the ad side most often, but all your organic traffic is tending to go to your homepage, your direct traffic, when people type in brand name.com, that's usually going to your homepage.

So I'd really think you got to start there. From there, I'd make sure your product pages look good, because shopping ads, performance max ads, a lot of this is going to be driving to your product pages and that's where the bottom of the funnel and middle of funnel traffic really lives. And I'd like to start from there. Establish a firm foundation and then at that point develop your dedicated landers where your YouTube top of funnel traffic can send potentially your remarketing traffic. Search traffic can go to those pages as well. But start with the low-hanging fruit, like you guys said.

Brett:

That's awesome. And so I'll give just a couple examples here of pages that I think you should check out. And then we're going to talk about a free resource that is in development right now, but by the time you listen to this, it'll be available. So Matt talked about dedicated landing pages later. That's the pages you use for top of funnel Facebook or YouTube traffic love Boom by Cindy Joseph and their five makeup tips for older women. We've sent literally tens of millions of dollars worth of ad traffic to that page and it's Covered. And so it's very simple. Starts with five makeup tips for older women and then has some celebrity social proof and some other social proof and then great offers. And it's a brilliant page, so we'll link to it. You should definitely check that out. Actually, I think the celebrity has been removed.

Yeah. Oh, you're right. The celebrity has been removed, but they did have a celebrity, and I don't can't say it, but there may be a celebrity there or there was a celebrity there who was very well known. And yeah, she was on friends. She was on Lisa Cdre or Courtney Cox, if that helps. And I may or may not have had a monster crush on her as a teenager when I was watching that show Totally places. I know you're my age. It does. But I also, Monica, I thought all three friends were amazing. So yeah, great. Dedicated later should definitely check it out. And when it comes to homepage, I'll shout out another one that that's owned by Ezra Firestone, overtone coloring conditioner. So if you want your hair pink or blue or green, this is color depositing conditioner that's temporary. Their landing or their homepage is beautiful.

It answers all the questions. It shows the product. It's got social proof, it's got all the elements we really just talked about, which is a great one. And then we're going to link to a bunch more because I know one, you're potentially driving or working out, and so you can't capture all of these. But let's talk this free resource. Fellas, all three of us have been collaborating on this. It's going to be Dino Mite, but what is our free resource Bill? You want to kind of plug this real quick?

Bill:

Yeah, you bet. So we are offering with this podcast a swipe file of our favorite landing pages. So these aren't necessarily ones that we work on, brands that we work on, but just showcasing anything we've seen over the years on the internet, students of landing pages, great branding and getting people from, I've never heard of you two, I want to buy right now. Yeah. And a number of these are clients. I think we have worked with them and help them grow their, they're marketing, but a of just people we shop and love and admire and respect. And so anything else you would want to say about this? Matt? Plug this resource. I mean, Matt, the Playmaker s slave maker had a hand in this guide, in this swipe file. So I think people should get it for that reason alone. Absolutely.

Matt:

No, I think just to go along with what Bill said, it covers every industry and it covers every need. So whether you're looking for product pages, how can you improve your product pages, dedicated landing pages, your homepage, it covers all those. And then depending on your different goals, so if your goal for your campaign is to drive sales, there's landing pages that cover that. If your goal is to drive lead submissions, like the boom example that Brett was talking about, there's really good examples for that as well. So regardless of what industry you're in, business size, things like that, there's an example for you.

Brett:

Yeah, so check it out, request that you can go to the show notes of this show or also look on the guidesPage@ogcommerce.com and you can find the landing page, swipe file and guide. And just a closing thought here as we wrap up. I think there's very little that can change the math and change the results of your advertising, of your campaigns, like a landing page, if your conversion rates are not great, and e-commerce standards are in that one to 3% range. Typically, brands that are really scaling have landing pages that Cover a little bit higher than that. But it does depend on a number of factors. If conversion rates are not great, focus on those landing pages. It will pay off in spades. And when you get it all working together, awesome ads, great targeting, great campaigns, end landing pages, then that's when the magic happens.

So Any closing thoughts, gentlemen?

Bill:

Sure. Yeah. So one closing thought. Make sure to understand. I said at the beginning, your client, or sorry, your client, your customer's pain point and understand their skepticism. I think FAQs are kind of a commodity. We think, oh, faq, that's just the throwaway thing at the bottom with the accordion interactivity there. But think about that. People have a reason they almost aren't going to buy from you. I've even seen on a jeans website after purchase the question, the post-purchase questionnaire, why did you almost not buy? And it's like, whoa. That's a great question. Yeah, love that. That's a bold question. But you're getting these questions through your chat on your onsite chat, and that's stuff, if you're getting these questions, collect them and figure out the common questions and then figure out the answers because your customers have these questions. And that can be just right there on the landing page.

Matt:

Yeah, I'd say when thinking about the value of landing pages, think of what is the value of improving your conversion rate from 3% to 5%. That could be the difference of 3 million of revenue to $5 million in revenue. So the best brands that we work with in terms of success are the ones that are constantly iterating and constantly moving the needle and trying new things in terms of landing pages. So whether it's AB testing, their homepage, their product pages, they're always testing some element, whether it's new images, videos, copy length, things like that. So don't be afraid to dive in and don't put it on the back burner. Don't think that this isn't really all that important or that you really just need to be focusing on the ads. All that is really important. But like we talked about earlier, you can be reaching all the right people with all the right ads, but if you're not sending 'em to a page that is likely to Cover them, it's not going to matter that much in the end. So

Brett:

True, true. Thank you, gentlemen. Awesome stuff. Much appreciated. And hey, we would like to hear from you. If you got a couple minutes, we'd love that review on iTunes or wherever you consume podcasts and or shoot us a note, man. It would make our day to see a note from our amazing listeners. And so with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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Khierstyn Ross has made a name for herself by successfully launching products and brands on Kickstarter. However, the crowdfunding landscape has significantly changed in recent years, particularly on Kickstarter. It is NOT the same world it was in 2019.

While the barrier to entry for launching a successful project has become higher, it's still a good fit for many clients.

In addition to helping brands on Kickstarter, Khierstyn is also a pro at helping companies grow on Amazon. She's mastered the art of launching new products and pre-sells on Amazon.

Here's a look at what we cover:

• What products do well on Kickstarter, and what products usually flop?
• What kind of $ do you need to invest for a successful Kickstarter launch?
• When to launch a new product on Shopify vs. Kickstarter.
• How to build a brand on Amazon.
• What kind of results should you expect when launching on Kickstarter?

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Mentioned In This Episode:

• Launch and Scale
• Khierstyn Ross (LinkedIn)
• Khierstyn Ross (Twitter)
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)

‍

Transcript:

Brett:

Hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today we have a return guest on the show and we're talking about what's new, what's working with Kickstarter launches, and also deciding to even want to do a Kickstarter launch because they're not just for people who are brand new or brands that are brand new. They can also be effective for brands that are mostly built on Amazon and want to build off of Amazon. And so can talk about lots of strategies and ideas and fun stuff. My guest today is Khierstyn Ross and she is the chief brand builder at Launch and Scale Launch and scale.co. And she's been on the show before. It was so much fun. I had to have her back. It's been like, it's been three years though, right? Khierstyn has been three years since we chatted last on the podcast.

Khierstyn:

I think so. It feels like yesterday. Yes. But I know you're one of my favorite podcasters, so I'm very excited for her

Brett:

Today. Awesome. We appreciate that. And we actually got to, so yeah, and the interview was maybe three years ago, but last year we got to hang out I r l as they say, as the kids like to say, in real life at Cap Con five, shout out to Ryan Daniel Moran. So that was cool getting to see each other in person. I know. But man, a lot has changed. A lot has changed since that first interview and what works and what doesn't. On, on Kickstarter, would you want to give a quick update? What, what's shifted, what's changed? What's working or not working on Kickstarter today compared to in the past?

Khierstyn:

Man? I mean everything and nothing is the same. Yes. I remember if you're watching this and you have heard me talk about Kickstarter in the past, you'll know I was like, everyone should do Kickstarter. And that I think was like 20 19, 20 20. And now that we're recording this in 2023, I've actually gone public to say that most people shouldn't be using Kickstarter. And I think that's a good follow up, a comment.

Brett:

It's a bold to say when you built your, I know you guys do a lot more than Kickstarter now, but you got to build your agency on Kickstarters. That's a pretty bold thing for you to state.

Khierstyn:

Yeah. But I guess the reason I did that was because I got to a point, I think it was November, 2022 or 21 that I went public on my birthday to say, I'm leaving Kickstarter. And that doesn't mean I don't do Kickstarter campaigns, but it was a bold statement because I felt that for the last few months we kept launching products based on the Kickstarter success formula products that should have worked. And late in 20 20, 20 21, we weren't seeing the kind of success with our students that we should have been seeing. We would be building the audience the way that you're supposed to. We would be doing engagement campaigns, we would be making sure they were great products. And Kickstarter campaigns for new brands started to not do as well as they used to. And that started me asking the question of, is it me? Is it us or it has something changed in the market?

So I ended up going public because I discovered that as Kickstarter has evolved over time, it's gone through some astronomical changes in how it's originally supposed to be used. And Kickstarter, for those that aren't familiar with it, it's the world's largest crowdfunding platform. And crowdfunding on Kickstarter means that you have brands like new sellers or existing brands that want to use Kickstarter as a platform to launch new products and get pre-order sales from backers or Kickstarter audience. Kickstarters become one of the prime methods of funding new products because it gives you a chance to get your inventory paid for without having to fund it yourself, which is like that right there. Sign me up.

Brett:

But yeah, it's this weird dynamic too, and I know I've got lots of friends that have done this where successful brand you, but they're launching a new product, takes quite a bit of capital to launch certain new products. And so they launch on Kickstarter, they get this, all these preys and I can fund the development and whatnot. And for whatever reason, people love the idea of funding a Kickstarter or some people do way more than doing a pre-buy on other websites or, I know it depends, we'll talk about the nuances there, but yeah, in some respects, people are more willing to do that pre-buy on Kickstarter than elsewhere depending on a few factors.

Khierstyn:

Well, what's interesting is that Kickstarter campaigns have new products that aren't available anywhere else. So the difference with the Kickstarter traffic that you're getting is you have all these early adopters that are perusing the website for really cool innovative things that are not available anywhere else. And they're willing to take that chance even though there's a risk, they may not get their product for a couple of years. The, there's just something about being a Kickstarter backer and helping fund someone's dream. And

Brett:

You feel like you're an investor, right? You're committing buying something because you believe in it and you almost feel like you're an investor and yeah, you don't want it tomorrow or anything. You are, yeah, you're part of something bigger and something cool,

Khierstyn:

But there, there's just something special about that. And so Kickstarter's a really fun platform. You get high off the success of Kickstarter campaigns and doing it, but what has happened with Kickstarter, because it's such an attractive model for small businesses for financing without trading equity, is that it became this really, really oversaturated platform. And so you get to the point where with Kickstarter, there's so much attention for new products, for eyes, for launches that your product starts to get buried on their platform. And when you look at the strategy behind how to win on Kickstarter, you need to have the algorithm kind of pick up your project as a popular project and start to show you to more people. So if you're a Reddit user, it's kind of getting upvoted so that your post doesn't get buried in hundreds of other ones that'll never get seen by be one of the top ones.

It's the same sort of thing with Kickstarter. So when you look at the strategy that goes into setting yourself up for success, you need to have a pre-launch, which means you need to go in with an email list full of people ready to buy your product so that when you go live on Kickstarter, you have a really strong day one, and then Kickstarter's algorithm is going to be like, Ooh, that's a popular project. We should show this to more people. And then that's when you start to get traction and go viral. But the problem is when you have a platform that has become oversaturated, become so competitive, it means that what you as a creator have to put into your launch goes a lot higher. It means that the Firestone

Brett:

Fair to entry is much higher. You're competing in the big leagues, it's professional stuff now.

Khierstyn:

So layman's terms more competition, way more expensive to get started, way more expensive to get started. Suddenly you are risking capital for inventory and it means the price to play may not actually be worth it because a lot of campaigns end up leaving Kickstarter not able to buy their own inventory, which is a self-fulfilling problem because what if you do all this work, you're literally putting your startup at risk. So it's like it's a problem where we've seen campaigns just not hit the levels they want because that barrier has just been so high. So

Brett:

When you say someone's leaving Kickstarter, then are they going to a place like Indiegogo if that, I don't even know. I'm not paying attention to the space. What else are they doing if they're not launching on Kickstarter?

Khierstyn:

So if you're not launching on Kickstarter, Indiegogo is their little brother. So that's definitely a good possibility if it's a product fit. But typically what we do is we help people decide whether the crowdfunding model is right for them or if they just want to take a less risky approach and go to their own website. So we end up having a conversation with people who are like, look, if you're not Kickstarter, let's launch you on Shopify or even go straight to Amazon. But typically for us, we do brand building on Shopify if not,

Brett:

And I think that's the way to go. And what you and I were talking about for a lot of brands, a lot of companies, you and I were talking before we hit record, you're working with a number of brands where they've built their business on Amazon, they're 80 to 90% Amazon now they're wanting to build off of Amazon. And so in that case, you could look at something kickstart related, but likely Shopify. So I want to spend a little bit of time there because there was a period of time in OMGs growth where our agency, we were getting a ton of leads of people who said, Hey, we're 2 million, 3 million, 5 million, whatever brand on Amazon, but we need to diversify. We're nervous of having all our eggs in the Amazon baskets. We want to launch on Shopify. That's not always that easy though, right? There's like a different mindset, different pricing approach, different marketing model, different everything on Amazon versus your own store. So how do you help an Amazon brand or someone who's largely on Amazon, how do you help them achieve success off Amazon? And how do you navigate that Shopify versus Kickstarter discussion? Oh

Khierstyn:

My God, you've opened a can of worms here. Yeah.

Brett:

Yes. Sorry. That makes for good radio, good podcasting there.

Khierstyn:

Amazon sellers are, and this is just a blanket statement, but the way to be successful in Amazon is have a good product that has high enough search volume that you can use PPC to target certain keywords to get people who are what we call high intent, who, for example, I go to Amazon because I'm looking for magnesium supplements. So I am looking,

Brett:

These are really popular now, by the way. Yes. A couple years ago, I never heard anybody talk about magnesium, and I'm a supplement guy. I take all kinds of crazy weird stuff that I experiment with where it's at. But the magnesium train that's that bandwagon I should say, has really been picking up steam lately. So what are the benefits? Why are you taking magnesium? Quick side note here.

Khierstyn:

So I take magnesium because I train for triathlons and I Oh, wow, find that my muscles really tense up without magnesium. And so mag, there's something about the magnesium that helps my body, my muscles relax. And it's like, for example, I have this chronic pain on my shoulder here when I'm biking for longer than 60 minutes, and for some reason when I take magnesium, my muscles relax and I don't have that level of tension again. So

Brett:

Crazy. So there you've heard it here, folks. If you're training for a triathlon, get magnesium. So there you go.

Khierstyn:

Yeah, it's great. That was awesome memory, great four sleep mean, but there's also different kinds of magnesium depending on the purpose you want.

Brett:

Yeah, that's what I've seen. We've got a couple of big things of it. My wife bought some for our daughters, which has a special purpose. I don't know what it is, but yeah, I've taken a little bit of it and it also seems like I have a bit of a calming effect as well, potentially.

Khierstyn:

Yeah. Yeah.

Brett:

Awesome. Well, people didn't tune in to hear us talk about magnesium, but fun little. I've loved that little wrap rabbit trail there, so that that's good. But yeah, so you were talking about someone who sells on Amazon, they're dependent on search volume. Is that still how people discover products on Amazon by search? And so people go to Amazon searching for something. So you mentioned going there for magnesium, so I'll let you pick up the story there.

Khierstyn:

I go to Amazon, I search magnesium supplements for athletes or whatever, and it takes me to 10 pages. I scroll through the first five listings, I look at reviews, et cetera. I look at ingredients and I decide that's someone who's called a, it's high intention because I'm going there for something very specific, typing in keywords, finding a product based on ads and purchasing it because of social proof. That's it. The seller on Amazon generally, unless if you have a backup strategy, you're not collecting the customer information, you have no relationship with the customer, potentially this magnesium supplement is something that's not even a custom formula that you've created. It can potentially be white label that you've just slapped your own label on, and it's a commoditized product. There's no differentiation outside of that. Not all Amazon products are like that, of course, but that's typically what I see the Shopify seller. Typically where they thrive is, and this is why I kind of have beef with a lot of drop shipping products because drop shipping products are just one of a thousand that everyone else is selling and there's no differentiation. Totally.

So the first thing we need to look at in terms of getting success on Amazon is how have you differentiated yourself? Shopify products are very different because it's direct to consumer, meaning you need to sell based on a relationship. So you're starting to build your email list, you're starting to differentiate yourself through focusing on a specific customer through helping feel people emote. What does that mean? Getting people to feel something when they're using your product? There's just a whole different kind of psychology that goes into it because it's really the difference between you ordering on Uber Eats your dinner versus you going into a restaurant and getting served by having the relationship with the waiter and hearing about the story of how the restaurant got started and the experience of it. It's like, am I making sense?

Brett:

Totally. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And what's really interesting, and then we consult with a lot of Amazon brands as well, or people that are building brands on Amazon, off Amazon. And I think really the path to success now to, regardless of where you're selling is you've got to build a brand, you have to, that's it, differentiate. There has to be some personality to your brand, and there's still money to be made just by succeeding off of all the search appointments on Amazon and people trusting Amazon and not knowing your brand. But really I think that's short lived, and then I think it's really hard to then go off Amazon in that case. And yeah, one thing, I actually posted this on Twitter earlier this year. I said, Hey, if you had to build a brand right now, would you start on Shopify or would you start on Amazon?

And why? And it was heated, man. There was people, it was like 50 50 split people you knowing and debating and hurling insults at each other and mashing of teeth and all kinds of stuff, like deciding which is better. But it really depends, I think, on what your skillset is. I think if you can build a brand on Shopify first and you can attract those customers and build a following and then go on Amazon, that's even better. But not everybody has that skillset. But really I think what you're also saying is, but if you do launch on Amazon first, you still got to build that brand building skillset to have any success off of Amazon.

Khierstyn:

Yeah, because I think there's really, you can go both ways, but if it were me, I would do exactly what you said, launch on Shopify and then go to Amazon. Because if you're a new seller, new product, I want to understand if I have three star reviews on my product, I want to understand how much my customers love and do a controlled experiment, get that feedback, and then go to Amazon for round two, because I have to make sure that I have

Brett:

When you're there, reviews. Yeah.

Khierstyn:

And if you go to Amazon with a subpar product ev for a new product, and that's listing goodbye three stars, you're not selling anything.

Brett:

Totally. Totally. So that's awesome. So then as you're kind of having that discussion with somebody, when does it make sense for someone who's selling on Amazon to then use Kickstarter as one of their first things off Amazon? Well, when does that make sense?

Khierstyn:

Yeah. So there's different levels. The timer we've taken Amazon sellers to Kickstarter are twofold. One is when they already have a thriving Amazon business in one space and they decide to launch a new brand on Shopify. So they're starting for a new brand and they want to launch it on Kickstarter. We did this with Kelly Waits where they were multiple seven figure seller in one spa in strength training and stuff like that. And then they launched Fitness Bengals for women. They wanted to create a brand around that. So they went to Shopify to launch that. We did that with another Amazon seller who saw a new product market for, and I thought he was crazy when I first talked to him because he was launching a beard straightener for men. And I was like, he's a

Brett:

Straightener. Interesting.

Khierstyn:

And being an Amazon seller, he was so an he's so analytical, and he was like, look, we've done the research. Thousands of men buy women's hair straighteners to straighten their beer because there's nothing available. And so he sold me. I was like, okay, well, clearly I'm not your demographic, but he took, well, he again had a thriving Amazon business and decided to go to Kickstarter to launch ABER Light Pro, the new beard brand. And so that's like case one Amazon seller knows the ropes, wants to build a brand. We also have the other side where you have an Amazon seller that gets on Amazon and is ready and is profitable, has a kind of figured out and wants to then become available on Shopify, and they start to do a brand extension to start going multi-channel by building out their email list, their customer relations, getting super clear on their avatar, et cetera.

Brett:

Nice. And so let's talk about that a little bit. You know, talked about the barrier to getting launched on Kickstarter has gotten harder. Yeah. Well, let's say I'm, I've got a brand and I'm launching a new product and I want to use Kickstarter. What kind of email list am I needing to build? What kind of sales volume or interest volume am I going to need to get in that first one to two days or whatever, whatever that timeframe is? What does that look like now?

Khierstyn:

So if you're a new brand and you want to invest the money, we are working with a factory right now out of China that is building a North American brand, super cool case study. And I did the hard sell, not to do Kickstarter for them, but they're like, look, we want to raise $250,000. We have the capital, we want to do Kickstarter. I was like, cool. All right, you've passed all the tests, let's go. So getting them to do quarter million dollars, we are building their list up to about 10 to 15,000 people from zero.

Brett:

From zero, largely through Facebook ads, Instagram ads, things like that.

Khierstyn:

We're doing TikTok to Google, Facebook, but our top of funnel activities are going to be your Facebook, Instagram with remarketing. But anyway, so say 10 to 15,000 people on the list, building a social media following with that. And if we assume that our cost per lead is about $2 50 cents pre-launch for a qualified lead, then that is going to yield us about, on the first 36 hours, we want to be hitting about 20% of our overall goal. So I don't know what the math looks like,

Brett:

So Well, 20% of two 50 is 50. Yeah.

Khierstyn:

Yeah. Well, there you go. Yeah. Math is not my strong suit.

Brett:

Calculators are four and computers and all this,

Khierstyn:

And I'm charging my phone. But yeah, that's like we work backwards and we have a full cash flow forecast that we essentially after doing a, we'll do a market test before we onboard someone for a full launch. And based on that, we establish what the cost per lead is and then use that to build out a full launch projection in a marketing budget. So you can say, all right, if you want to go for 250,000 for a raise, this is what your list has to be. These are the average conversions we're expecting and this is what that expected investment's going to be. So

Brett:

Nice. Nice. Got it. Okay. But man, that's pretty good though. So you're getting leads, you're getting email captures for $2 and 50 cents. Yeah. So you're spending 40 K or whatever the case may be to get 15,000 email addresses, and that's enough then to get you started on Kickstarter. Yes. And then really the Kickstarter machine, the algorithm getting listed and stuff, that's what takes care of the rest basically.

Khierstyn:

And if you look at the breakdown of a hundred percent of funds at that volume, you're expecting Kickstarter's audience and give you about 20 to 30% of your total pledges. And then the rest come in from pre-launch if you're using an amplification service like gel op to advertise your campaign to their backer audience, it's pr, it's word of mouth, et

Brett:

Cetera. What was that? Wait, what was that tool you just used? I'm not familiar with that

Khierstyn:

One. I also gel OP is

Brett:

Gel op. How do you spell that? Yeah,

Khierstyn:

J E L L O P.

Brett:

Got it. So you can market your launch on that, and then you got influencers and people that may grab ahold of that and start promoting it and talking about it and stuff. So

Khierstyn:

I love Jello because the results just speak for themselves, but they are a marketing agency that specializes in Kickstarter launches. But the difference is that where we are a marketing agency that helps people build up for a successful Kickstarter campaign by doing the pre-launch, the marketing, we start the fire, and then J Op is a great, what I call an amplification service because in exchange for say 15% of the pledges that they bring in, they're going to take over as your Facebook advertisers and market your project to their database in exchange for a commission.

Got it. With that. Got it. So we tend to, because if you really look at how Kickstarter marketing companies are built, a lot of them take, and it's completely varies, but they'll take 10 to 20% of your raise total because they're marketing your project to this huge backer community. And a lot of the big agencies have that. And I decided early on that I didn't want to be doing that. So we would rather just come in and help people start the fire and partner up with a company like Jup during the launch if a company wants to take it to that next level.

Brett:

Nice. Nice. Very cool. Yeah. Okay, great. And then do you ever do a combo where you're doing some stuff on Kickstarter, some stuff on Shopify? If so, what does that look like?

Khierstyn:

Yeah, so not at the same time. Kickstarter is very clear that they can be the only place that you're selling the product. Got it,

Brett:

Got it.

Khierstyn:

But what that will look like is if you do a Kickstarter launch, you can then after your 30 or 60 day campaign finishes, you can continue pre-orders on Shopify.

Brett:

Nice.

Khierstyn:

Okay. You want to do that.

Brett:

Are there times in when you just recommend, Hey, let's just do a big pre-launch on Shopify, and I know you don't get the boost of all the eyeballs that are on Kickstarter. Maybe you can't use gel up in that case and stuff, but when do you advise someone just to do your next product launch on Shopify, even if you're trying to get a lot of pre-orders and maybe even trying to fund the product development and stuff?

Khierstyn:

Yeah, great question. The questions I ask to make sure if Kickstarter is the right fit for someone versus Shopify is the first step I look at is the product. So more and more now you have to look and see if you're essentially launching products around for the Kickstarter audience. So because you're in large part needing to make sure that you're getting a huge 20% of your pledges come from Kickstarter, so you should make sure it's a product fit for them. So I look at that and if I'm like, okay, design projects, tech, gaming, those tend to be the big categories. So if it's a product fit and has a great track record on Kickstarter, Kickstarter can be an option. Cool. Question number two, what are you wanting to invest in doing a launch? Okay, so that's where when we looked at the numbers of say the factory that is spending $60,000, $70,000 in pre-launch between the video ad spend, marketing fees, et cetera, to yield 250,000, they're willing to pay that price because they want the big social proof, they want the big list. But I tell that to eight out of 10 entrepreneurs and they can't stomach that,

Brett:

Right? So that's a big investment because there's no guarantee you'll build the right size list. So no gear, there's no guarantee it'll get funded. So it's a pretty big chunk of capital to put out there.

Khierstyn:

Yeah. So that's question number two is like, look, this is what it costs to go to Kickstarter. What kind of a launch do you want? And if they're like, that's my marketing, and

Brett:

Is that kind of the normal, is it like 60 K to launch on Kickstarter? I'm assuming you probably do it for a little bit less, but what is the threshold there to get launched on Kickstarter?

Khierstyn:

If we say the average that you want to go for is six figures, assume you're going to put in about 40 if you're starting from zero. Okay.

Brett:

Yeah. Got it, got it. Okay.

Khierstyn:

And some people are like, cool, I have investors ready to go. But if you're that Shopify brand that you're serious, but you would rather have a smaller launch than what I would advise you do is instead of spending 40 k building up an email list that you can't convert for three months as you're building up, and if you want to go straight to Shopify and spend your money to get orders right away, then we recommend that you do a smaller controlled launch and do a pre-order campaign on your own website.

Brett:

Got it. At that point. And then how any tips or suggestions or Shopify plugins or something to make that pre-order successful because they're some people that don't like to do, but are you positioning like this, you would a Kickstarter launch and try to build a ton of excitement around it, but you're doing it all through Shopify instead of Kickstarter?

Khierstyn:

So couple ways you can do that. It's less about the apps you use unless if you want to stage a crowdfunding campaign on your own website, there's an app called crowdfunder on Shopify that you can use. So that is a good one. We typically haven't replicated crowdfunding on Shopify sites. Just, I don't know why we just haven't, but the typical, I think that there's more flexibility with your Shopify launch. So we just finished one where we had a $20,000 first month for a baby product. Now we decided after doing market testing with MoVI that we didn't want to go to Kickstarter because it's a baby product for newborns that can only be used in the first 12 months of life. And when we look at the Kickstarter demographic, it's just too narrow of a niche to get the volume that we would hope on Kickstarter. And if MoVI had gone to Kickstarter, they would've ended up driving 95% of the sales. So at that point they're like, we would rather just launch on our own website.

Brett:

That's great. So yeah, so talk about that for a minute. Who is the Kickstarter demo? Does it skew slightly mailed? I know you said tech and electronics and stuff like that are big there. What does that demographic look like?

Khierstyn:

Expect it's like 25 to 45 ish. They're early adopters, which can literally be anyone at this point, but 25 to 45. So you're looking at that millennial crowd, you are looking at people who like gadgets household, it is like a split more 60 40 these days of male female. But when you look at is my project, is my product even like a fit? I would just go to Kickstarter and in their search bar type in, okay, watches. Oh, watches are a great category, coffee maker. Oh, awesome. Diapers

Brett:

Less. Nope,

Khierstyn:

Nope.

Brett:

Who wants to fund the diaper? You want to wait till the last possible minute to buy diapers typically, unless it's watching your baby for you or something. Yeah. So that totally makes sense.

Khierstyn:

So something that they're products that servee a wide market. There's an insole that we worked with that helps with knee pain. They wanted to go to Kickstarter, but we're like, ah, I don't know if that's the demographic. So we did a market test and turned out that we were right with their demographic. It was like 55 and up people who suffer from knee osteoarthritis. And that's just too specific. And the demographics are just too old for us, too old. I say old, but it's just too old for the, it's totally

Brett:

Good. It's audience, it's not a match, it's just not a fit. The millennials on Kickstarter. Yeah, yeah.

Khierstyn:

Got it. Exactly. Got

Brett:

It. Okay, cool. So what are you doing to overcome any, so let's talk about, again, launching pre-orders on Shopify. What are you doing to overcome that resistance that some people will have to pre-ordering stuff?

Khierstyn:

Great question. So full transparency number one. Yeah, it, it's really interesting because we had two launches last month that were really good. And then one of the products keeps selling and the other stopped. And when I looked at the websites, the big difference was transparency in shipping. So for some reason, one of the launches decided to not put a pending shipping date on their website while the other one did. And so when I was like, oh, I think know what happened, you need to be be very clear with people ships in July. So number one, you need to be upfront and make sure that people know what to expect. Number two, don't start taking pre-orders until you are confident in your manufacturing timeline. I mean, you started manufacturing or it's on a boat, you need to be confidently eight maximum 10 weeks away from being able to fulfill.

Brett:

Got it. So that's the threshold any more than eight to 10 weeks and not going to happen.

Khierstyn:

We have one product right now that we keep pushing off the launch date because the, it's just like to get to that point where they're finally starting production, they're just like, the sample has to be finalized or there's one little step before we can start production. And we're like, no, we need production to be locked in because last thing you want is to have to tell people five times, really sorry, customers were delayed again. So if you could be as close to the process, better off to keep, just get to market faster and stuff,

Brett:

It really makes sense. There was this coffee maker that was really successful, I think it was on Kickstarter, and it was kind of unique, used centrifugal force to brew the coffee in, you know, could program it and then connect it with Alexa and all these other things. And I was so excited about it and it, it'll do a full shots of espresso or do a single cup of coffee or do a full pot of coffee, super versatile. But they kept having a push back the shift date four or five times something. I mean, I'm just making up a number, but it was a lot and people were losing their minds. It was so unique, so interesting that some people were sticking around, but a lot of people weren't. So yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. For most products. People are not going to want to get the date pushed back any, that's certainly not a few times. So yeah, do this when you're confident that you know what the ship date's going to be.

Khierstyn:

Yeah. But surprisingly you don't get a lot of refunds and this nice plus depend on you being good at communicating delays and how you deliver it. Yeah, of course. But those are really, what are

Brett:

You doing to, are you discounting so that someone wants to buy now? And if so, how much to get someone to say, Hey, you are, you're doing a pre-order shipping in July or whenever, but you get these perks, these benefits, these bonuses, these discounts, what does that usually look like?

Khierstyn:

So people need a reason to buy now. And so I think the pre-order offer is really important because why would I buy now when it's higher risk wait and supposed to wait? Exactly. So there's a couple things you could do. We typically do a larger discount than we would typically expect. You can get super fancy with this, but one that we did for MoVI was 20% off and we kept it simple. You could do things like offer a free accessory with all pre-orders, do something more of value to entice people to buy during a pre-order stage. It's slightly different from a Kickstarter sales strategy because on Kickstarter you have the ly bird rewards where you have 50% off door Crashers special if you buy in the first day. And then day two is a different offer. And then it's it, it's just different. But I like having pre-orders say the first week you get a certain discount, et cetera.

Brett:

But so even if it's on Shopify, you making the offer, the pre-launch offer a little bit different from week to week to again, build some urgency there

Khierstyn:

If you can do that. Otherwise you will see your sales are going to be big in the first week and then nothing for two or three weeks until Mother's Day comes up. And then you do another sale and then your sales spike. People do need a reason to buy and your sales cycle will ebb and flow, but you can help people by giving a good pre-launch offer.

Brett:

Very cool. Very cool. That's awesome. Any other guidance or tips on, do I really focus on building with Shopify or building with Kickstarter? We covered a lot of ground, but any kind of final thoughts there or final tips?

Khierstyn:

If I were launching our next product, I would start on Shopify. I would build an audience. I would keep our costs down. I would do some paid ads. I would scale that way. And then after I have a bit of an audience, I would go to Kickstarter for product two, product three. Got it. That's what I would do. I wouldn't start with Kickstarter unless if I were a funded startup, had something truly unique and stuff. But I prefer just to go direct and ask for the sale because when you close and you ask people to buy your product, that's when you're going to get the most objections. That's when the most learning happens. And that's I think how you're quickly able to figure out how to make something work as opposed to a slow build of a Kickstarter in the beginning.

Brett:

Yeah, I really like that. And we're seen it successful. And again, don't, we're not involved in Kickstarter campaigns, but have had a few clients who very established multiple seven figure eight figure brands, but they launch a new product and they've got a huge audience and a huge following and they want to do the Kickstarter thing. It creates a buzz, it creates excitement. Great. They get some funding and that works, but they've got a hundred thousand person email list or whatever and so they can make it happen. Do that. Yeah, pretty easily. Yeah, totally makes sense. Awesome. So Khierstyn, if people are listening to this and they say, man, I want to know what launch and scale can do for me. I want to know what Khierstyn and team can do. Talk a little bit about your agency, what you guys offer, and then how people can get in touch with you.

Khierstyn:

So we are full service agency. What I mean by that is we hyper focus on early stage brand building. So if you are a seven figure Amazon seller and you want to get stuff to work on your Shopify site, we specialize in helping you figure out how to get the fire going. So we do it through paid ads, conversion rate optimization, and email marketing to essentially handle all sides of the funnel so that we can start to build your audience and go from there. So that's number one. And if you're looking for more like mentorship, et cetera, we do have online programs to help

Brett:

With Nice two. And is all of that available to learn more discover@launchandscale.co?

Khierstyn:

Yes, it is what groups

Brett:

As well? Okay.

Khierstyn:

Yep, you got it.

Brett:

Sweet. Is that the product Launchpad? Is that the training?

Khierstyn:

Yeah, product Launchpad is our, and we actually have a $1 trial on that. Look at

Brett:

That $1

Khierstyn:

Trial can try before you buy. It's a no-brainer deal. But yeah, we find our sweet spot is agency. When we work with founders who are serious about building brands, I absolutely love it. So we work with all kinds of products. It's super awesome.

Brett:

That is a ton of fun. And you got a podcast as well, right? Are you still Podcasty or did you switch to the YouTubes?

Khierstyn:

So the podcast is more where we, YouTube is number one and we end up publishing most of the audio to the

Brett:

Got it, got it, got it. So you're you, youre for YouTube first and then the

Khierstyn:

YouTube's not baby. Yeah.

Brett:

Got it. It. Excellent. Any YouTube tips for the people at home? Cause I know there's some brands, I do hear this more now where people are wanting to, I just opened your YouTube channel, so I just heard you come through the computer here. But any tips on YouTube? Someone brands wanting to build their presence on YouTube organic, any tips or suggestions there?

Khierstyn:

YouTube shorts.

Brett:

YouTube shorts.

Khierstyn:

But on video, actually, this is a question for almost a question for you, but yeah, terrific. We get most of our traffic from YouTube because we go heavy into search volume or and seo. So if you are a brand, some of the easiest and best content you can do is being where people are searching for. So probably my best YouTube tip is if you are, we're launching a product to help women with bladder incontinence. So if she can create videos on what is bladder incontinence, best tips for bladder incontinence, pelvic floor exercises four. So what I'm doing is I'm looking at the problem my product solves and getting into the mind of my customer to think what are some things that content they're searching for to solve that problem. And by you building a content strategy and videos that answer that question on YouTube, you are able to get in front of them.

That's probably, I love YouTube so much because you can essentially plug yourself into where people are by being smart with search as opposed to TikTok, which is more trends and lifestyle things. I think that there's like, if you want predictable traffic, getting onto the YouTube bandwagon is probably the best thing. But I actually don't know if you can answer this, but our long form videos, we have the keyword research and titles, we've kind of figuring that out and that that's good for us. But short form videos, do those play heavily into SEO these days with that search intent? Yeah,

Brett:

So that's a great question. The short answer is I'm not sure. So I'm a YouTube ads guy, I understand organic to a certain degree, but I lean on friends like Liz Jermain who's been on the podcast a couple of times. I know for us we, I've been posting YouTube shorts mostly just clips from the podcast or clips from me speaking at events. And they've done pretty well. They've done pretty well on YouTube shorts. I do love the fact that YouTube organic grows over time and one video can be better a year from now than it is today even, and still generate leads and stuff where there are very few things probably that have the rapid scale potential that's available, the viral factor that that's there with TikTok, but it's usually kind of a flash in the pan, right? You got to keep cranking out content all the time.

Yeah. So what I've heard though is you kind of need to do both the long form content and something that's going to be keyword optimized where it's showing up in search, other content where you're just, you're falling kind of a series of ideas. And so then it's showing up in the recommendations engine and then you pull from all of that to create shorts and then the shorts can kind of feed everything. So that's kind of my understanding. Yeah. But again, I'm just kind of saying what other people have taught me. I'm not an expert on YouTube organic.

Khierstyn:

Yeah, I think this is definitely do your research, but I saw Neil Patel, he's the SEO guy. He

Brett:

Is the SEO guy. No doubt.

Khierstyn:

I did see a short about how when you start to type in things in Google, short form videos are starting to show up as answers to that. So actually

Brett:

Interesting. Yeah. Shorts are showing up in the search. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense, especially if you're answering your question. If I get that question answered in under 60 seconds, that's better than watching a full format minute video or something. Even though Google's getting pretty good, I like just saying, Hey, your answer is starting at this point of the video, and they'll just show you that, which is great. But I love the idea that that shorts can be answers to questions as well. So it

Khierstyn:

Means from that smart, I would assume that having SEO in your short strategy is probably the best way to get qualified traffic. Because our best customers come when they're searching for something. So we have a client who is doing so well, but on YouTube shorts, et cetera, but she sells a mindfulness journal, and that is she can easily tap into what is mindfulness, breathing tips for meditation. She can whatever it is that her target audience is search searching for, she can build content around that show up in their feed, they find out she has a journal, they buy the journal, and it's just, those are probably the best leads because you end up nurturing and qualifying through your content as opposed to dancing on video on TikTok. And they're like, oh wait, you sell journals?

Brett:

Yeah, okay. It's like, yeah. Or they don't even notice. They don't even notice your name or anything. They just see you dancing and they're entertained. But that's it. Yeah,

Khierstyn:

I love TikTok, but in terms of search intent and getting organic traffic through a good content strategy, that's probably where we really shine with that.

Brett:

Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense. Cool. So you can find it all out and more@launchandscale.co. Khierstyn has been a ton of fun, really enjoyed it. Thanks for taking the time. And until we do this again,

Khierstyn:

I know. Well, thank you for your time. This was awesome.

Brett:

Absolutely. And thank you for tuning in as always. We'd love to hear from you. So give us feedback on this episode. Give us feedback on the show in general. We'd love to get that five star review on iTunes if you feel like we've earned it. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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Liz Germain is a YouTube PRO and a repeat guest on the show! We first met when I was speaking at an eCommerce event held at the YouTube LA Offices. 

Liz is responsible for well over 200 million organic views on YouTube and has worked and consulted with some of the top influencers online today. 

Here’s a look at what we cover:

• The three types of content you should create on YouTube and how to approach each.
• How search-driven views only account for less than 10% of total watch time on the platform.
• The 4 phases of creating a massive following on YouTube.
• The metrics YouTube cares about and you should obsess over.
• How YouTube ads and YouTube organic do NOT mix, but how you can still leverage both for growth.

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Mentioned In This Episode:

• YouTubeGrowthHacks.com
• ChannelAmplifier.com
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)

‍

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today we have a return guest. I've been looking forward to this podcast episode for three plus years, and it's finally here, and I'm excited, and you should be excited as well. So we have one of the foremost experts on YouTube organic growth. If you listened, if you've been a longtime lister, you'll remember her first episode. I've got Liz Jermaine on the show today. She's the CEO and founder of Vidfluence and the creator of the Channel Amplifier Program. She is a superstar. She's helped a ton of names that you would know that we can't necessarily mention on this podcast, grow their YouTube following, and we're going to talk about how you can do that by following these tips and these pieces of advice, the sage wisdom that Liz is going to lay out here for us. So with that intro, Liz, welcome to the show. How's it going? And thanks for taking the time.

Liz:

Yeah, thank you so much for having me back. I always love to come and talk to especially e-commerce brands because I feel like YouTube is often an untapped market, so I really appreciate you bringing me back on.

Brett:

It is untapped. Yeah, so we, as you well know, and as most listeners know, we focus a lot on YouTube ads, and I love the YouTube ad space. It's continued to grow. I think it's an opportunity like no other in the ad space, but most e-commerce companies aren't doing that either, and they're certainly not investing in the organic side. But there have been a few occasions, a few occasions we had one and still have a barbecue client, and they invest in organic content, and then we also run ads. We keep them separate, which we'll talk about later, but the combination of the two is very, very powerful. And so we're going to get into that a little bit today. So Liz, give us your background for those that don't know, how did you become a YouTube master?

Liz:

Yeah, great question. So I am a YouTuber, first and foremost, and happened been for a very long time. My very first channel was in the health and fitness space for women. So we sold a bunch of digital products, membership sites, meal plans, guides, things of that nature for workouts and lifestyle for females all over the world. Really at one point we had over a hundred thousand women in those programs from 32 different countries around the world.

Brett:

Cool. Is that channel still active? Are you still actively posting there?

Liz:

I have not posted in over two years, but it still brings in leads. It still brings in absence revenue, and that's one of my favorite things about YouTube organic is that when you put the videos up that are the right types of videos, they have the potential to continue to produce results for you even after you stop posting. So I have direct firsthand experience with that, and that's really how I got kind of my initial YouTube entry point. But that's certainly not the only channel that I've worked on at this point. We've helped, oh gosh, I don't even know, probably several hundred other coaches, experts, influencers, authors, speakers, all kinds of people, even e-commerce brands, real estate agents, lawyers, I mean, you name it, there's probably a vertical for you on YouTube. And at this point I feel like almost like an encyclopedia of strategy based on industry because the patterns themselves will reveal themselves over time on what works and what doesn't work.

And so it's been a really cool evolution journey from going from health and fitness space just for women to expanding out. The second channel we worked on was in the van life space, and that channel grew significantly faster, not making all the beginner mistakes that we made on the first one. And then from there, we've helped all kinds of different people in pretty much every industry you could think of. So yeah, YouTube is the place to be, and part of that is due to what I've seen and firsthand experience is that evergreen nature of high quality content.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that. Good quality YouTube content just gets better with age, it grows and it can continue to get views and drive action For years and years, and we were talking a little bit before you record, I I'm posting more often on social, so if you want to follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram and YouTube shorts and stuff. But I have a lot of friends that post on TikTok or run TikTok ads. And what I always hear is, Hey, you just need to commit to 37 pieces of content per day on TikTok. It's going to explode for a half an hour and then it's going to die. And of course I'm exaggerating, but that's sort of the way it works on TikTok and Instagram in some cases where they are just content hungry. And yes, some content may really take off and reach a lot of people and it drives impact. No doubt, the lifespan, the of that content is quite short. So talk about that a little bit on YouTube and then how would you compare YouTube to other social platforms? Not that you have to pick one, but why should we be motivated to invest time in YouTube versus maybe some other social platforms?

Liz:

Yeah, that's a great question. And this comes up a lot with potential people we're looking at helping is that question of do I go on TikTok, do I go on reels, do I go on YouTube? So just know if you're struggling with that question. You're definitely not alone. I may be biased in sharing my experience, but just based on all the data that we look at and also the several dozen high level clients that we get, it's one of the first things that they'll tell us is we don't know anything about YouTube or how to do it. However, we have noticed on our sales calls, on our conversion landing pages, on basically all of the sales transactions that we have, whenever we get someone that says they found us through YouTube, it's the easiest close of all time. And I think that really speaks to the power of people's time investments that they spend watching long form video.

And this has become really interesting, especially over the last year with YouTube launching shorts, right? So YouTube now also has its own version of the vertical short form one minute or last videos. However, I think there's a lot of buzz around shorts out there in the YouTube space, and there's not a lot of practical strategy that comes with it. And so before we jump into choosing specific platforms, first and foremost know that if you do YouTube long form videos first, you will also be able to segment that out and repurpose it for at least half a dozen different platforms. So you can pull the audio and have it be a podcast. You can pull out many clips from that episode and have those turn into TikTok or reels or shorts. You can take the transcript of it and create a blog post on the websites.

There's all kinds of stuff that you can do. So one of my favorite things about YouTube specifically is if you can figure out how to overcome the barrier to entry of having to learn long form video, it can have a trickle down effect on all the other platforms. Because if you do that the hardest thing first, we can then segment that out and repurpose that content pretty much everywhere. Now with shorts specifically, it's important to also know that even though there's all this buzz, like, oh, just do shorts, just do shorts on the back end when we're looking at the actual data, and also when we consider what YouTube as a business actually wants, YouTube makes most, I think it's like 97% or more of their revenue through selling ad space, correct? So what

Brett:

YouTube, yes, descriptions are just a tiny, tiny fraction of their revenue. Tiny, it's all ads, basically.

Liz:

All ads for the most part. And so what YouTube wants out of short form video creators is essentially to be able to double dip on the ad revenue that they're able to earn and that the creator's able to earn by supporting the viewers on the platform in an even deeper way. So now we have the concept, and this is something that even if you've heard about YouTube shorts, a lot of people haven't also heard that you can actually remix segments of your long form videos and post those later pulled out directly from a long form video. And a remix is slightly different than a standalone short in the sense that it is better aligned to what YouTube as a business wants to increase the ad revenue that they make as a company. So when you pull a remix short out of a long form video and you repost that later, that will have now a little button if someone discovers that video on the short shelf that will have a button that will link them directly back to the long form video that it was pulled out of.

And this is really ideally what YouTube wants out of its creators is that if you are doing short form video, if you can figure out a way to embed high quality shorts into the long form content with this specific intention to pull those shorts out later as remixes, you'll have a what's now considered a new traffic source essentially for long form content. Because the reality is, and you can think about your own user experience on any of the platforms. And when you are in that endless hamster wheel scroll, how engaged and how much are you actually paying attention to the creators that pop on your feed with short form video, you're not really spending a significant amount of your time to get to know them. A lot of times too, I talk to some of the best TikTok organic growth strategists in the world as well, and they say it's great for size and for speed, but it's not great for loyalty and connection and people even knowing what your name is, they might remember what you did, but they're not going to remember who you are.

And so with shorts now on YouTube, we have this incredibly cool opportunity where people can go directly if they liked, especially when it's set up as a remix. If they like that short form content, they can now instantly move into the longer form version of that video and spend even more time with you. And the benefit to YouTube as a business is they can monetize now that short view. And if someone progresses through to continue watching longform, they can also double dip and monetize that longform view as well. And the creator benefits from both of those two. So the other thing with YouTube specifically is that there's all kinds of different ways that you can monetize your content, right? It's not just ad sensee revenue. We're talking developing deeper relationships with people, having those videos due the sales process and overcoming objection process for you even while you sleep. So by the time somebody lands on a sales call, for example, or they land on your product checkout page, they're already pre-sold because they've spent significant amount of time with you prior to actually getting there. So there's all kinds of different benefits for YouTube specifically, but for me personally as a human being, I don't want to have to make 37 pieces of content a day, and I will never do that. I just refused. For me personally,

Brett:

It's a awful, awful, awful way to approach life and business. Just yes, some people love it. Gary V eight to 15 piece of a day, he loves it. It sounds horrible to me. Yeah,

Liz:

For me personally, I just don't like even having my phone when I'm out in the world. So it just never made sense for me. I didn't want to keep up with the rat race of the constant timeline scroll, and I'm all about trying to figure out ways to work smarter and not harder. And in my first business in fitness, when my partner left, my partner was my real life sister, and she got married and decided to start a new business with her now husband. And when that,

Brett:

We'll push up her, I'll just point that out. How could she do that to you? But that's the wake house. Yeah,

Liz:

It was definitely a interesting year, but we're all good now. And it's actually for the way that all happened. It was perfect. However, when she left in that first original business, I had to get really smart because she was half of the leadership team, half of the content team. She basically was my second half in that business. And so when she left, obviously there's this huge gaping hole. And so the first thing I did obviously was go back to audit. Where are the highest number of sales coming in with the least amount of effort on my part? And at the time, we were running all kinds of advertising campaigns. We did Instagram every day. We had Snapchat, we had Pinterest, we had the blog, we had email, we had YouTube, we had literally everything. And it was just not like it losing half that leadership team.

I wasn't able to keep up with the pace of that. So I wanted to look at, okay, we're the highest conversions coming in with the least amount of effort and YouTube and Pinterest were actually the top two for us. And I was like, wow, that's really interesting. I wonder why that is. And that's when I kind of accidentally stumbled upon the power of Evergreen video content. And I've just basically gone all in ever since. Plus, YouTube is the coolest place to be. There's the weirdest, coolest, strangest, most interesting types of people that become creators on the YouTube platform, and I've always really enjoyed that as well.

Brett:

Yeah, it's super, I mean, really anything you're interested in, you know, can go deep on that topic and find lots of experts and find one that resonates with you. And the other thing, and I've talked about this on several podcasts, but YouTube is still growing. I've got a lot of kids, my young kids want to spend time on YouTube. My 12 year old daughter, Maggie, that's what she wants to do in the evening is watch YouTube. She watches on the tv, cause we didn't given her phone yet. She's only 12, but although she protests and says a lot of her friends have phones, but we're standing firm and she's not getting one for a while, but she watches YouTube all the time. I'm on YouTube. My dad, who's 73, uses YouTube to research things and find things. So it's growing. So your audience is on YouTube, and then when you look at all the benefits of that content, having a long shelf life, it really makes a lot of sense.

Now I want to talk about the remix really quickly. So I was telling you before we record, I haven't put as much energy into our YouTube channel as I probably should have. I have started to post shorts. So taking clips from this show, from e-commerce evolution, posting that as a short, some of those have done pretty well. But yeah, I've totally noticed what you said where I've seen this on TikTok or Instagram reels or shorts where you watch something and you're like, oh, that was really cool, but then you go to the next thing and you're like, I don't remember that person's name or what they did or how could I ever find them again? I don't know. So how does that work? How do you make a a remix from a full podcast episode recording or a longer form piece of content? How do you technically go about making that a remix?

Liz:

So to make remixes, you have to do it in the YouTube app. So if you pull up any of the long form videos that you have on your channel and you pull that up on your app screen, you'll see at the very bottom there's a little button that says create. If you click create, you'll be able to select anywhere from 15 to 62nd clips that can be pulled out as vertical video. And so there's an important conversation here and have about timing, right? Okay. You basically would want to have your long form episodes go out first, allow those to do its thing for at least a couple days, usually around three to five days to see is the algorithm going to pick this up and start pushing it out to wider audiences. Now if it does get picked up by the algorithm and it starts being shown in the homepage and suggests a video and all that, we basically don't want to touch it.

We want to let YouTube do its thing and see how high that spike is going to go. Now if it doesn't get picked up, then that's not as important with the timing aspect of it, but essentially once the initial traffic on that long form video starts to level out or even decline, that's the perfect time to blast out a couple of remixes because someone can then discover the content through the shorts feed and then be led back into it. And sometimes that can give it an additional, it's almost like taking out the paddles if you're a doctor and you just give a little heart shock to the patient on the table if it starts to level out. Okay, great, let's roll out some remixes, see if we can get some of that shorts traffic in there to give it a second wind. So all of the remixes right now, and by the way, this is all very new and it's rapidly changing.

YouTube is working on the interfaces for being able to edit more engaging shorts, clips and all of that. So I only anticipate this getting better and better over the years because as of right now, reels and TikTok absolutely win as far as editing features in app. However, YouTube won't be far behind and it is something they're investing a lot of time and money into. But where it stands right now, it's super easy. You just have to go into the YouTube mobile app and pull out any long form video and you can grab those 15 to 62nd clips and re-share them as a remix to help give new life to an old video.

Brett:

Super cool. Love that So much. Excited to try it on this end. And I really also love that the way you frame that, Hey, if you can learn to make that long form content and learn to make that well, then with each time you do, you'll have six to 12 pieces of content, maybe more that you can share in a variety of other places and really get maximum leverage out of that. But can you describe what is longform content on YouTube? We talking eight minutes, we're talking 20 minutes, we're talking an hour. What is long form content?

Liz:

Yeah, so I would classify, it really depends on first and foremost who the audience is, right? If you have a podcast channel, your standard is going to usually be for full length episodes of long form videos. It's usually going to be anywhere from like 45 minutes up to even two hours or more depending on the structure of how your normal episodes go. But I would consider long form video to be anything that's typically between four to 20 minutes long unless you're in an interview type capacity and you're creating that specific type of video format. Short form, of course, we all know it as vertical video, usually it's no more than a minute or two long. For YouTube specifically, there is a 62nd max on that. So it could be argued that anything long form would be basically anything over one minute. However, the reason I don't say that and I start at four minutes is because of what YouTube cares about most, which is total watch time spent on the platform.

So when it comes to your job as a creator, the more that you can align yourself with YouTube's business goals, the better you'll be rewarded. And one of their main things is to essentially increase the amount of time. This is what built all the different algorithms, all the AI on the backend. It's all built to keep people on YouTube and to get them to come back tomorrow for as long as possible. So with long form content, I would say we really are looking at the starting frame of reference point is like four minutes all the way up to unlimited, several hours at a time. There are also, depending on the audience, if you have an audience that is into meditation and spirituality, I've seen creators put out eight to 10 hour videos that are just audio recordings or meditation, high frequency sound healing type of things. So there really is no upper limit on the length of long form videos, but I do personally believe that the four minute mark is really when we start to move into long form because of the thing that matters the most on YouTube, which is how do I keep people on YouTube for longer

Brett:

Total watch time, align your goals with YouTube's goals and good things are going to happen. I love it. So let's dive into what are some of your top tips? So if I want to grow my organic presence on YouTube, where do I start? What are some of the top tips that you recommend?

Liz:

Yeah, so I think it's really important as we were discussing before hopping on here to understand the difference in traffic sources. So when we're looking at YouTube specifically, and this is a concept that YouTube introduced to me after they studied several of the fastest growing, highest engaged channels on the platform, they essentially came up with a framework of the patterns that they found in the content those creators were putting out. And it really comes down to most of the fastest growing heist engaged channels have three main types of content or videos on their channel. The first is help content. So that's like the how-tos, the tutorials, the listical videos, the frequently asked questions that the target customer or the viewer has about a specific problem or challenge they're facing in their life. Then we have hub content and hub content is really the meat and potatoes of fast and very profitable YouTube growth Hub content is the repeatable series or formats that you put out on the channel.

So this is if you think about your channel as a TV show and you're the host of that TV show, these are the episodes that you're known for. So if we look at that in the context of even late Night talk show host for example, they have an interview format. They have a live performance format, and they typically will also have some kind of like a standup comedy format. That's what we mean when we're talking about hub content. It's these repeatable formats or repeatable series on related topics that you can essentially turn a never ending series of related videos that keeps the viewer watching and it's kind of what you're known for. It's your bread and butter. And then the last type of video that they discovered were is something we call hero videos. So these are much more designed for eliciting emotional connection with a viewer taking a stand on controversial or polarizing topics, really the why behind the brand, the soul behind the brand, why are you doing what you're doing?

Why does this matter in the world and how can we take somebody on a hero's journey where the first half we're kind of highlighting the problem and pouring salt in the wound. Midway through the video, we have some kind of a turning point realization and call to action to join in the movement to change it. And then the last half of the video is giving them action steps and more of the inspirational hopeful, okay, now let's go out in the world and make a difference. So when we're looking at the frequency and timelines for when and how and why to post these different styles of videos, health content is really great in the beginning because it's again, how-tos, tutorials, frequently asked questions. It's also really great for e-commerce brands specifically, but health content usually is going to rely on YouTube search traffic for the most part, right? Right. It's like the specific keywords that your customers are searching for around things that they're struggling with and they want to solve in their life. Now, the challenge and the limitation of just focusing on search strategy on YouTube organic is that search views as a whole on all of YouTube every single day account for about seven to 8%, definitely no more than 10% of total views that happen on the platform daily. Whoa. So then the question is where I thought it

Brett:

Was, I had in my head that it was something, I thought it was more like 50%. Has it just been on the decline in recent years or I said another longer move had? No, it's just,

Liz:

Yeah, it's a good question. I'm not sure that it's necessarily declining. It's pretty much always been that way. It feels a lot louder and a lot more significant. I think this is at least my personal take on it because that's what everybody talks about. You think about YouTube and you're like, oh, it's a search engine, it's owned by Google, blah, blah, blah. So there's a lot of content out there that really is pushing SEO and keyword research and all of that. However, it does have these limitations, and I don't think that's necessarily a decline with search traffic specifically. It's just kind of always been that way. It's just that the people doing SEO strategy tend to also be putting out a lot of the SEO content. So it's what you kind of first are exposed to when you get into the YouTube world, and same thing happened to me, I didn't even know that there were other available options.

It could help grow the channel significantly faster and with much more loyalty and higher engagement using some of these other traffic sources that really focus on optimizing for that hub content. What are those repeatable series that will bring people back to YouTube and keep them watching longer? So with search as a whole, all the total available views on YouTube, only less than 10% come from search traffic, which begs the question, where's the rest of the traffic coming from? So the other thing to pay attention to is the recommendation traffic sources. And this is really what YouTube's algorithms are built to do, is to support high quality content being pushed out to the right audiences. So if you think about YouTube channels as a whole, channels are designed to serve a specific value proposition to a specific audience. So when you start mixing all different kinds of formats and there's not really a core parent topic, we start to see obviously engagement and reach decline in that type of a scenario.

But when we're talking about YouTube recommendation traffic, this is really the sweet spot for people. If you want to grow fast and you want to pull in the right types of people, you have to learn how to optimize for YouTube recommendations. So what does that entail? First and foremost, we have the YouTube homepage, who doesn't want to hit the YouTube homepage, but the homepage also includes a subscription feed too. This is in your analytics. This would be called browse features. That's kind of how they classify it. If you're in your YouTube studio, looking at your data browse features includes YouTube's homepage as well as the subscription feed, which is essentially a secondary homepage just for the channels that you're already subscribed to. So that's the first and really biggest and probably easiest recommendation traffic source to crack into is the homepage traffic. But then we also have suggestive video, and you've probably seen this even when you're watching TV with your girls or YouTube TV with your girls, at the end of every video, yeah, you'll see the creator's end screen where they might have a couple related target videos linked up there for you, but at the end of that, YouTube will also tell you, Hey, this is the next best video to watch, and then it will just start auto-playing it.

This is very similar to how even Netflix works. If you finish a movie on Netflix, what does it do? It puts, there's three other recommended movies right below there. So suggestive video traffic also includes the sidebar if you are on desktop, the videos that YouTube's recommending for you based on what you're currently watching. And then if you're on mobile, those suggestive videos will be right below the video that you're watching. So homepage traffic as well as suggestive video traffic are really the secret keys to the YouTube kingdom, especially if you want to grow fast and you want to grow a really big brand, that is what you really need to figure out how to crack into. And it really comes down to a couple main things we have to consider the viewer's journey. So step one for the viewer is do they even see your video in one of those three traffic sources? That's called an impression. I probably don't have to explain impressions because you have a very smart audience that's called an impress. Yeah,

Brett:

You talk a lot about ads. So impressions will make sense for sure. Yeah, and I'm really glad to bring this out cause I'm assuming there's quite a difference between optimizing to be discovered in search on YouTube, the organic search results and optimizing for YouTube recommendations. So yeah, I'd love to hear this. So we're thinking about the viewer's journey continue. Yeah,

Liz:

So phase one is getting the impression in one of those three spots, and you're absolutely right. Optimizing for search is very different than optimizing for recommendation traffic. However, there is also this third crossover spot where you can optimize for all three, and that's really my favorite spot to be because that's where we see insane exponential results. But from the viewer's perspective, first and foremost, do they even see your videos pop up in those recommendations or in the search engine results page, if they're searching for a specific keyword, you don't have direct control over whether or not YouTube gives you those impressions. But what you do have direct control over is step two, three, and four for the viewer from the viewer's perspective. So let's say they do see your video in those impression spots. The next phase, and this is arguably the most important and biggest opportunity that you have, is the click through rate.

Do they click to watch your video and click through rate is going to come down to three primary things. First and foremost is the topic, is it relevant to the target viewer that's seeing it? And then from there, it's just the title and thumbnail because that's all they see in those impression spots. So getting really, really good at writing insanely clickable titles and creating complimentary imagery or packaging in the thumbnail designs is an absolutely essential skill for anybody that wants to grow their YouTube channel because it's directly correlated to your click through eight. Nice. Now, usually with click through eight, we're aiming for anywhere from seven to 10% is kind of a baseline. The only time I'd be okay with it not being within that baseline would be if the impressions just shot through the roof and all of a sudden we have 10 million impressions, it's expected that that would go down because that means YouTube's actually doing exactly what we wanted to do. It's showing it to wider and wider audiences.

Brett:

YouTube's loving your video and they're showing it to a lot of different places. We see the same thing on the ad side of things as well with you YouTube or with Google Shopping as an example, sometimes you're really insanely high clickthrough rates, but then as Google says, Hey, this is a great ad, and they start showing you more places and more often clickthrough rate comes down, but your overall impact goes up for short. Now I get the title and thumbnail piece. You talked about the topic of the video. Do you just mean what you're making the video about or is there something on the video where you signify this is the topic of the video?

Liz:

Yeah, well, everything you do on YouTube is going to come down to who you're making the videos for. So we have a specific process that will typically take people through where we get really clear on who the avatar is. And it's not that you necessarily have to just choose one avatar and stick with it, although that does help. You can have up to two to three varying avatars, but what they do need to share is core underlying values or psychographic behaviors. So why do they do what they do? What are their fears? What are their triggers? What are their values? What are their goals? Things of that nature are super, super important to break down psychologically for the viewer, and it's probably the same way with ads too, but that's the first step is figure out who you're making the videos for, because then from there, we can essentially pretend to be that viewer on YouTube and create a whole separate account, then start to behave as they would behave, and then study the patterns and top performing content that YouTube does put in those impression spots.

So that's kind of essentially how we reverse engineers starts with who is the person we're creating this content for in the first place, and then how can we become them so we can basically see what they see and then match and mirror our content to follow the patterns in top performing videos or top performing creators on YouTube as a whole. So yeah, click through rate is super important, and we have to have that relevancy factor first because even if you have a great title on thumbnail, if it's not relevant to the viewer you made it for, they're not going to click it anyway. So that's kind of that's, and then YouTube

Brett:

Is going to stop showing it, and then it's just going to die a

Liz:

Switch. Then a it gets buried painful death. Yeah, so that's phase two. Then let's say they do click on it because it's relevant to them and they like the packaging, the title and thumbnail. Then from there, we're on phase three for the viewer is once they're on the video, how long do they stay on the video? Do they leave after 30 seconds? Do they watch 80% of it do what is going on the backend once they land on the video? So really looking at the audience retention reports, and we want to bare minimum baseline 40% retention, if we can get it, can get up over 60, 70, 80% retention, basically doing exactly what YouTube wants creators to do, which is keep people on YouTube. So got it. That's super important to look at as well, is your audience retention reports. And see, just because you a video has a hundred thousand views, that doesn't really mean much if they all left after 15 seconds versus if you had a video that had 3000 views, but the viewers stayed for 85% of it.

That's what we're trying to do and what we're trying to optimize for there. So that's kind of phase three from the viewer perspective of what the creator needs to understand, click through rate and audience retention are two of the most important things that you need to optimize for. But then there's this fourth phase, which is once they're done watching your video, then what do they do? Do they go on to watch more of your videos or do they leave YouTube altogether, or do they just go over to a video that was recommended to them in the suggested up next spot that YouTube put in front of 'em, right? Where does that viewer go from there? And this is a part of YouTube organic strategy that I don't see a whole lot of people talking about really at all. But it brings it back to that importance of hub content and having repeatable formats or series, because you look at the biggest YouTubers in the world, like the Mr Beast of the world, they have essentially four or five main formats that they just repeat over and over with different people or different prizes or different environments.

And that's pretty much it because they have this proven formula of a video that gets really high clickthrough rate, really great audience retention. So if you find that you have a breakout video in those two regards that your audience really resonated with, then the next challenge from there is how do we turn this into a never ending series of related videos? So if you can though you don't have direct control over impressions that YouTube gives you, you do definitely have direct control over the click through eight, the audience retention and the ability to feed those viewers into these bingeable behaviors or rabbit holes of related videos for them. And that's really what we help support all types of creators in doing so that when you optimize those three things, the impressions are guaranteed to go up.

Brett:

Nice. So we're we're launching more with the help content, FAQs, listicles tips, ideas, five reasons why, five things to do, blah, blah, blah. So we're starting with that more often than Knocks, that's going to drive some search impressions and get a little bit of volume and traction for our channel. Then we're going to pivot and eventually do mostly hub content and hero content, or what does that kind of frequency or makeup look like over the long haul?

Liz:

Yeah, great question. So ideally, what we want to have happen from search videos or even from shorts videos is that they find those videos, but then they go on to watch more content on the channel. So we want to see both of those styles of content as a gateway into the repeatable series. So when it comes to, let's say you have your first, it's brand new first day on YouTube ever, you're going to put out 10 videos. Of those 10 videos, I'd probably make sure that at least four or five of them had some kind of keyword, especially if you have products or services or something that you sell on the back end of the channel. It is really important to have that help. Library of Evergreen FAQ's, tutorials, how-tos. So out of 10 videos, if you started with, I'd probably make sure at least four of them are search related, and then the large majority of the rest of them, like five, six of them, would be more focused on recommendation traffic sources.

So right out of the gate, we're doing both, because the cool thing about help content is you can make it at any time. You don't have to just do that in the beginning. And if you only focus on search based videos in the beginning, you may end up pigeonholing yourself into becoming a resource channel where essentially people will get those answers. They might find you through search, they watch that one video, but they got their answers. So there's really no incentive for them to go on to watch more content because they just came to YouTube to figure out how to change attire or how to file their taxes or whatever it is, and they got the answer from that video, and then they're gone. They're going to go apply the answer. So when you only focus on search stuff, you can run into what we call a resource channel, where it's like you may have one video that has a million views because it was really relevant and it's something a lot of people struggle with, but then the rest of your videos are getting two, 300 views, so there's not any crossover between your content because there's no real relationship between you and the viewer themselves.

So yeah, if you were starting with 10 videos, I'd say at least four of 'em should be some kind of search topics to get people in the door, because search is amazing for discovery, but we want to make sure that the bulk of the strategy is focused more on that hub content that has a higher likelihood of being recommended by YouTube. And then Hero videos is really only once or twice a year. This is like if you have a big launch coming up, if you are wanting to do press, you want to deepen the relationship with the viewers that you already have attracted to the channel hub, or sorry, hero content really isn't something that is like you're doing on a consistent basis every single month, because they usually have much more storyboarding that goes into them a lot more time, money, and energy that goes into the production them if you want them to really take off. And they're usually focused more on the emotional aspects of the human experience. How does this practical information or entertaining information also apply to who you are and what you're here to do on the planet? So

Brett:

Love it. Love it. Well have several more things I want to ask you, but we're running out of time. So we got about five minutes left. Let's go a little bit rapid fire for this next section, but mistakes that you see. So you coach a lot of people, you work with a lot of people, you've grown a lot of channels, hands on. What are some of the top mistakes you see YouTube creators make?

Liz:

Yeah, I would say not understanding traffic sources and how important recommendations are for YouTube growth and trying to cheat the system with especially paid advertising. Like, oh, let me just run some ads to these videos. Ooh, that's like, Ooh, it just makes, it grinds my gears when I see that. Okay, yeah, you might get a lot of

Brett:

Views on it, open number of views quickly though, but

Liz:

Yours, so it helps your ego quite a lot to get lots of views. But on the back end, we'll look at the data around it, and it's like we're getting people from the wrong countries. We're getting people in the wrong age groups. There's all kinds of stuff that can go wrong with that. And not only that, the watch

Brett:

Time is not good. The P people are not engaging with the video

Liz:

Usually. I mean, think of it, it's the difference between invitation and interruption marketing. If you're watching a YouTube video and then an ad pops on, you might go through and watch the remainder of that video, but in most cases you don't because it was interrupting your experience, right? You're not leaving comments, you're not watching the increased audience retention, you're not watching significant portions of the video. You might pop on because you were curious, but it can hurt audience retention, it can hurt click through rate, it can hurt engagement, and all those things YouTube's AI will be looking at and basically be like, oh, this video must not be that great, then let's just bury it. Right? So I would say that's one of the biggest things, especially for entrepreneurs and business owners, is trying to run ads to content to build an organic audience. And I just never think it's worth it ever, ever.

Brett:

Yeah. And so do you recommend that, obviously YouTube ads have their place, we spend millions a month on YouTube ads, but you shouldn't really mix your ads strategy and your organic strategy. They can compliment each other. You can take viewed video audiences of people that engage with your organic content, you can target them in ads, but are you typically recommending two separate YouTube channels, one to house your organic content and one to house your ad content?

Liz:

Yeah, definitely. The other reason for that too is to preserve the integrity of your organic data when you're doing analytics reviews, if you have all this paid traffic coming in YouTube on the backend, there are filtering tools and all that, but it's a little, it's kind of complicated to get there, and it's a much more advanced skill to be able to filter out paid versus organic traffic sources and all that. So YouTube's going to clump that all together on the back end of the channel. And especially for the more beginner type of analytics reports, you can filter it out in advanced analytics, however, it just creates an extra roadblock, an extra step to really be able to understand what's working organically for you. So typically we'll recommend that you keep those two channels separate. You have a separate, almost like a dummy account just for your paid advertising, and then you don't really SEO or put that out there at all. It's kind of just like this shadow account, because on the backend with Google Ads, like you were saying, you can still retarget totally the viewers that you get organically even on a separate account. So totally, I just think, you know, couldn't pay me enough to put ads on an organic channel.

Brett:

So we'll keep 'em separate. I am sold on that idea. I really appreciate that. So as we wrap up, Liz, I know people are going to be watching this and thinking, okay, I got to spend more time with Liz. I got to learn from her. I want to know all that she has to offer. So I think you get some free tools, some free downloads, and then also I want to hear about the Channel Amplifier program as well. So where should people go now if they want to learn more?

Liz:

So you can head over for free stuff, you can go over to YouTube growth hacks.com. We have a free little starter guide over there for you. And then as far as getting deeper level support and really learning how to take action on what we talked about today, you can head over to channel amplifier.com. It's a 90 day training program where the first eight weeks, you're essentially going to be going through a whole library of over a decade of YouTube experience and really breaking down what actually matters on the platform for successful organic growth. And then the last half of the program, we do hot seat coaching. So if you need a second pair of eyes on your data, you can't figure out what's going on with the channel, where your bottlenecks are and things like that. It's a really supportive community of other creators, and also you'll be able to get direct access to me in a much more affordable way than working.

Brett:

That is awesome. I'll, I'll lead you. So URLs, one more time to check both those out.

Liz:

Yep. YouTube growth hacks.com to get the starter guide for setting up your channel correctly. And then channel amplifier.com is where you can learn about the YouTube training program.

Brett:

Awesome. We will link to all of that in the show notes, but go check it out. Hang out with Liz, learn from Liz. List your name, ladies and gentlemen, you killed it. Super fun. The hour, or not quite an hour by way too fast. So now we're going to have to think about part three at some point. So Liz, really appreciate it. This was awesome. Thank

Liz:

You so much for having me.

Brett:

Absolutely. And thank you for tuning in. And as always, we'd love your feedback. We'd love to know what you'd like to hear more of on the show, topic suggestions, guest suggestions. We are open to it. And so with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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‍

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

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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.

‍

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:

‍

• 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:

Over 81% of consumers are opted into text message messages from their favorite brands, and that's where Attentive comes in. Meet Attentive, the company helping thousands of innovative brands connect with their customers through personalized text messaging. Attentive's text marketing platform lets you grow your subscriber list, interact with customers in real time through two-way conversations and drive the war revenue. Brands who use Attentive see $55 in sales for every $1 they spend. See what Attentive can do for you, at attentivemobile.com/omgcommerce. Attentive: drive sales with text message marketing.

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] Amazing press. And same thing with ButtCon. We held this event called ButtCon, which was all things butt-related. We had butt lift surgeons, we had anal reconstructive surgeons, we had anal porn stars, we had cake sitters who makes money on sitting on cakes as a living. We did a class on making money on your ass. I mean, just crazy things. Like, we had Kim Kardashian's physical butt trainer, came and showed us how to do butt exercise. We had twerking champions doing the twerk, teaching people how to twerk. Just name. We had gut doctor, Dr. Mark Hyman, who is one of my dearest friends. And he did a whole gut and butt session on how poo the right poops, and what the right poops look like. We had, again, every walk of life in the realm that touched the butt, or gut, or the poop space was there. And we had 49 press, of the top, top, top, top, top press came to the event. Because they were like, what the hell is ButtCon? We had to see for ourselves.

Brett:

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.

‍

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.

‍

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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