OMG Podcasts

2 Killer Podcasts - 1 Result -
Accelerate your eCommerce Growth

OMG Commerce Original Podcasts

Tune in for fresh interviews with the merchants, vendors, and experts shaping the eCommerce industry.

Have a podcast guest suggestion?
Email Tyler.Bleau@omgcommerce.com
View all episodes
Episode 278
:
Aleric Heck - AdOutreach

Does YouTube Really Beat Facebook Every Time?

You probably know him from the YouTube ad that begins with "YouTube beats Facebook every time…" 

‍

In this episode, I interview Aleric Heck, founder and CEO of Ad Outreach and KeywordSearch.com, to discuss how eCommerce businesses can leverage YouTube ads for growth. 

‍

Key takeaways include:

  • Aleric's journey from creating a successful YouTube channel to becoming a YouTube ads expert, focusing on coaching and consulting businesses.
  • The importance of crafting compelling YouTube ad creatives using a "hook, educate, call-to-action" framework.
  • Leveraging YouTube's unique audience targeting capabilities, such as custom intent audiences based on search behavior and affinity audiences based on interests and URLs.
  • The power of Google's vast data in audience targeting and the potential for even more advanced targeting options in the future.
  • An introduction to Aleric's AI-powered tool, Keyword Search, which streamlines the process of finding the right keywords and creating custom audiences for YouTube ads

‍

Here are a few quotable nuggets from the podcast:

‍

"If you can give people an "aha" moment in the ad and actually provide them genuine value, they are far more likely to take action." 

‍

"Google knows everything about everyone, essentially. And so I do think they're holding back on targeting somewhat to protect the user and to protect themselves." 

__

‍

Chapters: 

(00:00) Introduction and Background

(08:26) Pivoting to Coaching and Consulting 

(12:22) How To Approach YouTube Ad Creative

(34:52) Targeting The Right Audience

(42:06) Outro

__

‍

Show Notes: 

‍

__

‍

Connect With Brett: 

‍

__

‍

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

‍

__

‍

Other episodes you might enjoy: 

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

__

Transcript:

Aleric:

The goal is if you can give people this aha moment in the ad and actually provide them genuine value, they are far more likely to take action.

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the e-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today have I got a treat for you. We're talking about YouTube, what's working now, and I have an absolute expert in the space, someone that I've known about for years and then known for quite some time as well. We were in the same mastermind together. Shout out to War Room, made that mastermind group rest in peace. And so we've seen each other's work and it's been super fun. We have different areas of focus where e-commerce is kind of e-commerce focused. My guest today, Aleric, is focused on larger ticket items, lead gen coaches and consultants. But I think the synergies of what we do, bringing those together, going to create some powerful insights and results for you. And so my guest today is the founder and CEO of Ad outreach and keyword search.com. None other than Aleric Heck. Aleric, welcome to the show man. And how's it going?

Aleric:

Awesome. It's going great. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm excited. This is going to be great,

Brett:

Dude. It's going to be a lot of fun. When you reached out recently, we were talking about leads and stuff, and I was like, oh, why have I never had Arik on the podcast? And so then we made it happen, and here we are. And so thanks for taking the time. I know you've got some really great insights. We're going to have fun kind of riffing on some YouTube thoughts, and so super excited to dive in. I want to know though, this is part of the story that I do not know, how did you become a YouTube expert? Why did you choose YouTube and how did you end up here?

Aleric:

Yeah, yeah, and that's a great question. It actually is a really natural evolution. It's probably different than a lot of other people that get into different ads and that side of things. I actually started organically on YouTube 15 years ago with the YouTube

Brett:

Channel. Interesting. Yeah.

Aleric:

Back in 2009, I created a channel called App Find and I was reviewing mobile apps, tech tutorials, and what really helped the channel take off was I was teaching people how to use their iPhone for the first time. So I've got some of those basically for every iPhone iteration. I think after the iPhone four, I was doing a complete beginner's guide to the iPhone and those videos.

Brett:

Wow, super interesting.

Aleric:

Yeah, got millions of views. So millions of people watched them. One of the videos, I think the most popular one was the iPhone seven complete beginner's guy. That's when a lot of people were getting an iPhone for the first time. It has over 8.6 million views. It's crazy. So

Brett:

No way is it still getting views to this day? Did you pay attention? So are people still watching an iPhone seven video for whatever reason

Aleric:

They are, believe it or not. And actually it's a lot of other countries outside of the United States, so it's actually really interesting to see.

Brett:

I got this used iPhone seven and now how do I use it, type of thing.

Aleric:

Exactly, exactly. And so it is really interesting because the back catalog of all those, the videos that I made years and years ago on YouTube, still get those views. And I saw recently the term iPhone tutorial, we rank for several of the placements on the first page including, and it also kind of depends on where you search and stuff, but generally it usually pops up first, second result, which is pretty interesting. So some of the videos that I'd created a long time ago are still doing well. And actually today I have hired somebody out of this guy in San Francisco who I've known for a while in the tech kind of space, just to take over the channel, keep it going, and still putting out content every week. It's just not me anymore, but amazing man. Yeah. So keeping that alive, which is

Brett:

Great. It's so cool. It's one of the things that really differentiates YouTube from any other social platform is that content, good content, organic content gets better over time and sometimes it can get more traffic over time, and it can last for years. It can last way. Beyond the point that you think this could ever be relevant, your content may still live on even an iPhone seven video in 2024, still getting some views because a pocket of the world that wants to learn that and wants to see that, of course, we're focusing on ads. I know you pivoted to ads as well, but understanding the way people work within YouTube is super important. So how did you make that leap? So you saw the power of YouTube organic, how'd you make the leap to ads?

Aleric:

So I had all of these different people that were wanting to sponsor the channel, these mobile app developers. This was also the heyday of mobile apps. So think like 20 13, 20 14, 20 15, 20 16, around that timeframe. And I was actually was in college at the time and I had all these different apps that were reaching out and I was doing YouTube videos to promote some of these different apps. I would either put it into the existing videos or do dedicated videos and I was turning it into more of a business and then I got a video editor, script writer, all that stuff. So I was turning the YouTube channel more of a business, and I remember one day, and normally I would just do these app videos. So let's say it's a dedicated video, people would watch it on the channel, it'd be great. And maybe they'd come back later and they'd do another promotion or they'd work with other influencers.

Well, at one point I had one social media networking app that had hired me to do a video or pay me to do a video. I post a video, they get a bunch of downloads that this is great, can you post that same video again tomorrow? We want to double the results. Then I said, well, hey, it doesn't really work like that. You can't just post the same video to the same channel the next week and double the results. That's not how organic works. And they said, well, how can we get more people to see this video? And I said, well, what about YouTube ads? And I was aware of YouTube ads, but I hadn't really done it at that point. And this was kind like 2014 going into 2015, I think that was in the beginning of 2015. And basically like, well, what did we take this mobile app or the video that I made, just the standard video on the channel and just run that as an ad to get more people to see it.

So I set it up just from scratch. I just went in, set it up the first campaign, and then we ran that as an ad. They ended up getting thousands of downloads from that and they loved it. They're like, this is great. So then they go and tell somebody else that it was kind of a performance marketing company that hired me. So there was another developer that was working with them, which is a bigger company, which ended up becoming later on becoming a unicorn company, which was pretty cool. But there was another app that they're like, all right, we're doing a big promotion now. We've got a bigger budget. The second YouTube ad campaign I ever ran was a thousand dollars a day budget for this mobile app that ended up totally blitzing, but that's again, now today we look at that, we're like, all right, there's obviously bigger clients we have than that, but that was the second one.

They're like, you did so well with this here, we trust you to do that. And then I just learned just from doing it what worked, what didn't work. And I think I realized I had a natural affinity towards media buying. I understood how it worked. I was going in reading Google documentation, so it wasn't like I was doing completely blind, but I was just kind of diving in and it was in the earlier days of all this. So I ran that promotion and then that company and I ran that for a while, and a company calls me up, and again, like I said, I was in college at the time. They were like, they want me to drop out of college, fly out to Silicon Valley, join their team. They're like, you can run our ads, YouTube ads and all this stuff. And it was tempting, but I decided to turn it down.

I'm like, I want to build this myself. I see the opportunity here. And so then I tapped my network. So by that time I had worked with hundreds of app developers, had sponsored the channel because at one point it was the top app review channel on YouTube with half a million subscribers, all that stuff. So essentially I had all these apps, and so I just reached out to 'em and said, Hey, here's what I did with this company. I would love to do that with you as well. And I've, since you mentioned, gone away from apps and into which actually I'll get to into more of the coaching, consulting and high ticket space. That's how I got my start, was doing those YouTube ads for apps. Then I discovered ClickFunnels in 2016. I was at HubSpot inbound. Shout out to Russell Brunson exactly. Shout out to Russell Brunson. I was there. ClickFunnels had a booth. They were still early on. And I remember signing up for that. I'm like, this is awesome. Then I said, wait a second. I can go and promote things that are more than just a free app with in-app purchases.

And so that brought me into a whole nother world. I joined my first mastermind also in 2016, and the natural evolution was this mastermind was really designed for consultants, agencies and coaches. And originally I created a webinar for how mobile app developers could promote their app with YouTube ads, and it was designed to get potential clients for me. But what did I run to the webinar? Well, obviously I knew YouTube ads, they were talking about Facebook ads and this mastermind, but I was like, yeah, I'm just going to do YouTube ads. I did YouTube ads to the webinar and it worked really well. And what started happening is everybody else in the mastermind was like, wait a second. How are you getting these results? I quickly became one of the, I got some pretty good results and I said, oh, it's using YouTube ads instead of Facebook ads. And that's when they all started asking, okay, what are you doing?

Brett:

Show me the way. Help me do this for my coaching and consulting business.

Aleric:

Exactly. That led me to really pivoting over to helping coaching and consulting businesses with YouTube ads. And actually for a long time, we have clients that we run ads for as well, but one of the big areas is we also train a lot of coaching and consulting businesses in how to run YouTube ads, helping, that's like a hybrid process, so helping them set it up, but then kind of handing over the keys. And then of course we've got clients that we'll run ads for as well. And we've also got some training programs and things, but really focused in that coaching consulting area. And it's something I love just because a lot of people that are going out and they're creating some kind of impact on people's lives or businesses and it's really rewarding to support those, support

Brett:

Them. Super cool, man. I love that background story. And so we're going to dive into content in just a minute. And the creative that works on YouTube, because the creative that works on YouTube is different than the creative that works on Meta or on TikTok or on other channels. And so what I love about your background though is that you really got to know the platform. Your goal wasn't to become an ads expert. That just kind of happened, but you created great content and people were consuming that. And it was one of the top tech review sites and app or channels and you were talking about apps and stuff, and it just took off for me. My background is from a different perspective, but still kind of the background just led perfectly to YouTube. I did TV back in the day, so I did TV ads kind of pre OMG, and so I really learned what makes for a great TV spot and how to target and things like that.

And what's interesting is that there are some similarities between TV ads and YouTube. I think YouTube is more TV than certainly Meta or TikTok or other platforms are. And then I really knew SEO, I really knew search, I knew query based traffic. And so you kind of bring those two together and that is YouTube or that certainly was YouTube back in the day. And so we were all e-commerce, and I remember, I still remember where I was, I was at a Google Marketing live, I believe it was in New York City. So I guess I mostly remember where I was when they talked about video action campaigns where you can run YouTube but bid to hit a CPA target customer, a cost pro acquisition target. And I was like, this is it, man. This is where this is a new opportunity for us. We can crush this. It's like all my world's colliding. And so then it just worked. And so super cool to hear that. Let's talk creative though a little bit. I think this is where most people go wrong. I've heard Google say that 50 to 70% of your success on YouTube is driven by creative. I think that's true. I think that's true across all platforms, but how do you guys approach creative and what's your framework for creative that works on YouTube?

Aleric:

So we really take kind of a three part framework of hook, educate, then call to action with the ads, especially since we're working with a lot of experts that have some type of value and expertise to share the educate portion we found is really important and it's essentially the key. So you talked about the similarities with television ads. I think that also there's kind of a similarity here too with the expert based ads to maybe those more infomercials or a short form one, not like a super long, but I remember watching some of those types of things growing up and obviously seeing the evolution to ads and essentially really hooking people and capturing their attention. And there's different ways to hook them. It could be identifying a problem that they have showing that you're going to have a solution. It could be more of a pattern interrupt, something to capture their kind of attention.

It could be the answer to a query that they're looking at. So it's like you kind of jump right in and it's almost like that's the video that they were meant to find, which works really well. But basically there's ways to hook people at the beginning to capture their attention, get them to decide, okay, I want to watch this ad. And then from there the educate section is really providing that value. I say I call 'em golden nuggets because we do want to keep them relatively short but worth their weight in gold. So they're small but really valuable. And so you might give a few golden nuggets, a few key points that's going to help somebody. So again, we work with a lot of coaches and consultants, so they might share a couple of keys to losing weight or to selling on Amazon or things like that, or a few keys to going and changing their life or personal development, whatever happens to be.

So share a little bit of that. And the goal is if you can give people this aha moment in the ad and actually provide them genuine value, they are far more likely to take action, the end, which is the call to action because we are sending people to a different kind of place. So whereas you're on the eCommerce side, usually going to be sending more to, and there's obviously different ways to do it, but more to have people purchase a product, what we're going to be doing is usually sending to some kind of training or lead magnet. And we found with YouTube it's the best to actually send it to a video based training because they're watching video on YouTube. They'll go from video to another video and they can go and opt in for that training and then kind of continue. And usually it would be going to book a call and then become a client, or the video might, or webinar might lead to a course or some kind of thing along those lines.

But essentially the hook, educate, call to action providing real value inside of the ad. And I think that's really, really key. And I'll give kind of an example of one of these aha moments, which I think is really, I don't always do this, but I think you'll appreciate this as somebody who I know you've created some been behind the creation of some pretty remarkable ads. One ad that worked really well for kind of a nutrition coach and fitness based person is he had a kind of cup measure you can see through, so you can see filled with oil. So just imagine this kind of measuring cup with oil in it. And he starts off the ad by saying, if a calorie's a calorie, why can't I just drink 2000 calories of oil every day and stay fit? And then he said, okay, now that we've established a calories and a calorie, why do you think that you could just eat 2000 calories of pizza and be healthier than 2000 calories of salad, right?

Because everything that you know about calories is wrong. There's actually more, let's talk a little bit about macros and then diving into that. And so basically then there's education. So it gives this aha moment. It's a visual representation. It's saying, okay, this now makes sense. And if you watch that, and I know that was a big moment for me, I had my own weight loss journey when I kind of realized that there was more to it than I had thought. And it's like how can you distill that into an ad then teach a little bit, provide value? So you've changed their worldview, now you provide value, now you have a call to action at the end to get them to go and sign up for the training where they're going to actually learn. So now you have the what and the why, but what's, how do I actually do this? So it's like, okay, calorie's not a calorie. I need to figure out macros. I've learned something, but I don't know what to do, what actually how to do it. And so that's what is behind the training that people opt into. So that's just an example.

Brett:

Yeah, it's so good. And I want to talk about the middle piece. I want to really dive into the hook because I think that's where a lot of people go wrong. So we'll spend some time there in a minute. But the educate piece, this is where you want someone to feel like my life is better just from watching your at. How weird is that? I feel like I got some value from this ad. In fact, I could probably take what you just said, A calorie is not a calorie. I can go quote that to my friends. I can use that at the next dinner party that I'm at and I'll sound super smart. So there's a little bit of value there. I believe it was John Caps in the book tested advertising methods, although I may have this wrong, where he talks about creating fascinations, these little elements of an ad where it's like, oh, I didn't know that.

That's super cool, right? Super cool related to your product or your service or your offering. And it just gets me intrigued and it also delivers some value. So that's really cool. And we've got a couple other layers that we add there for e-comm. But yeah, it's a similar approach where it's like, I want to teach you something you did not know about this because it's going to change your world and then you'll want to buy my product. And so I do want to talk about hook though for a minute because I think this is where a lot of people go wrong. I think this is where we want to contrast a little bit to our TV brethren and our TV friends and compadres tv. Historically, Madison Avenue type TV ads are great at hooking and getting people's attention, but often getting attention in the wrong way, getting attention in no way that relates to the product itself.

We've all seen TV ads we're like, man, that was funny. Monkey jumped out of a trunk and this thing happened and that thing happened. And you're like, I don't have a clue who that ad was for. And so I think you've got to hook someone in a way that's totally relevant to your product. And so you can do things like pattern interrupt, you talked about that. My buddy Ryan McKenzie from True Earth Laundry detergent strips, they've got this ad that was wildly successful that started with, hey, what should you never mix with water? And then it's witches and electronics and super silly stuff. And then it was also laundry detergent. You're like, what shouldn't mix laundry detergent with water goes on to explain it. So pattern interrupt can be really valuable. Sometimes it's just like a thought provoking question. My buddies at William Painter sunglasses, I kind of help them with media planning and stuff.

There was this great ad created by Raindrop where the spokesperson came out and he is like, your face is your moneymaker, so why would you cheapen it with cheap sunglasses or whatever? Why would you put cheap sunglasses on your moneymaker? And so coming up though with a hook that fits your product so that when someone is leaning in and paying attention, it's related to your product or related to your service or related to the webinar you're about to send them to. And so any other insights you would have on hook? When is that done Well, when is that done? Poorly? Curious how you guys test hooks, just any insights there. Yeah,

Aleric:

And we'll usually on the hook side test several different hooks. I think that's really important. You got to see what is going to work, what's not going to work, and I think having some type of curiosity is really valuable. Also, a great hook pushes away people that aren't a good ideal client and pulls in ideal clients. Now in the past, that was even more important. Back when, and we were talking about all the changes that we've both seen in the YouTube ad platform, but back when it used to be more of the paying per the CPV and it was more based around the 32nd view is what you paid for, then it was like really like, okay, let's get you off this ad if you're not relevant. Now it's more of an algorithm as we both know in terms of bidding based on the CPA.

And so it's a little less on that side. However, it still is important to train the algorithm. So you want the wrong people to skip and the right people to watch the ad. And so one of the things that is also valuable is calling out who that ideal potential person is or using language that they're going to resonate with. So for instance, one of our top hooks is actually around YouTube ads versus Facebook ads. Like YouTube ads beat Facebook ads every time. Let's face it, Facebook ad costs growing through the roof and even when you have great ads, they're almost impossible to scale. In this video, I'm going to show you how you can use YouTube ads just like the one you're watching right now to scale your coaching consulting business to seven or even eight figures.

Brett:

You've done that a few times. You said that

Aleric:

A few times.

Brett:

I have done that, a few. You have seen that ad so many times, but it's so good. And what's crazy is the way you structured that that was fitting several years ago, it's just as appropriate today. And I'm assuming that video is still crushing for you. Oh

Aleric:

Yeah, it's still crushing the original. And so we've done new, we filmed the video a few other times the educate section has changed, but before some of the changes to the platform, we had that one video. That one video was an eight figure ad. We did over 10 million revenue track from that one specific ad that we ran millions of views to. And since then, and

Brett:

That is one interesting thing too, and just as a side note here, Arik with Facebook, I do know some people that they have outliers with their Facebook ads as well and one ad that will vastly outperform the rest, but it still seems like on meta or other platforms, there is ad fatigue and that ad fatigue can sit in kind of quickly. Well, we continue to see with YouTube is if you find one or two or three ads that really hit, you may be able to run those for a year, sometimes for two years, right? Because the audiences on YouTube kind of turn over quickly, and so sometimes you get that winning horse and you can ride that thing for a long, long time.

Aleric:

Exactly, and even when we decided to phase that ad out, it was still working. It's just the content in the middle of the ad was not relevant anymore. We were talking about the old way of doing YouTube ads, which is more keyword and placement targeting, and it's shifted over into audience targeting, which I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit shortly. But basically that ad just continued to perform really well and then it's okay, well this is a good hook. Let's pair that with other new educate section, but with clients that maybe are going into YouTube for the first time, they don't know what hook's going to work or not. What we like to do is create four or five, six different hooks and actually just put those together. It doesn't mean you're filming that many videos. You want to film the videos, segment them out. I'm sure you probably do something similar.

Brett:

More modular type content. Exactly. Mod we can mix and match.

Aleric:

Yeah, so let's film half a dozen hooks. Let's film a couple educate sections, maybe a couple call to actions, maybe one goes to a training, one goes to a webinar or a PDF or whatever, and then put those all together. Now we have 24 different videos in the time it takes to film just two or three videos.

Brett:

I love that so much and awesome. So we got the hook and we found that that is the biggest lever to pull, the most important lever to pull. If you nail the hook, the rest becomes much easier if you do not land the hook than really none of the rest matters either. But let's talk about the educate piece. Some of the ways we look at this slightly differently, although I bet these components are also in your formula as well. We look at things like product demonstration for e-comm, I got to see the product in action. I want to see the sunglasses, I want to see the yard tool that I'm using. I want to see the automotive accessory. I want to see it. So that's important. I also want some social proof. I want to see, hey, are other people like me using this, enjoying it? Maybe there's some UGC or maybe it's just reviews on Amazon or on the.com or whatever that really bring to life this product works. And then I want to overcome objections because all skeptical, we've all been burned by ads in the past, so what am I doing to overcome objections? And so we kind of blend that into the middle part that we call kind of the product demo, but what are a few of the pieces there and the educate portion of the video that really makes that effective?

Aleric:

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question and there's similarities there. It's a little bit different in this side of things. One is you actually want to start the educate section by providing a little bit of credibility, but you don't want to go too over the top in that, and this is especially with expert based businesses because you want to demonstrate before you teach people that you are somebody to pay attention to,

Brett:

Why should I listen to this

Aleric:

Person? Exactly, why should I listen to you? Now, the mistake people make though is they say it right at the beginning and that's not a good hook unless it's something completely ridiculous where the coach behind this famous athlete, and that's going to be a hook in of itself. In general, what you want to do is you want to have a hook. Then you go into, we call it the why you, okay, so why should they listen to you? And that's really going to kind tout the expertise or credibility that you have. Sometimes that's more positioned around yourself and what you've done, or it could also be positioned around results that you've gotten, clients track, record, whatever it happens to be. So you do that relatively quickly. Once you do that, then we like to do either one kind of bigger teaching or three golden nuggets.

So it depends on, and actually we'll usually recommend split testing this. So like I said, there's two educate sections. So one is to teach on one particular topic, maybe to pull back that example, it could be on macros or it could be on our alpha AI targeting strategy and how that's different. It could be basically just one kind of general topic or it could be three tips or recommendations. One of the biggest is myths. So busting myths. So if people had a preconceived notion about something, how can you actually tear that down, tear that apart, and potentially addressing problems or mistakes other people have made in the past. So maybe they've tried something similar before, like you said, and here's why they shouldn't do this, shouldn't do that, shouldn't do this instead, here's what they should do. So I think that when you're looking at the educate section, there's a few different ways to do it, but you want to provide credibility, then you want to provide value, and what we talk about with our clients is to focus on the what and the why, not how is way too long. It's also what's gate kept behind.

Brett:

That's what they're buying, right?

Aleric:

Exactly. And ultimately it's not even behind the opt-in, it's really that's what they're buying at the end of the day, but we want to give them, it's like what and why should they care? What is it? And then they're going to go and get more information, more holistic picture by opting in than they go to training, which we've found. What works really well, this is actually interesting, is so what we do is call it a video conversion funnel, and it's like a cross between a VSL funnel and a YouTube video that people might watch instead of the classic VSLs that I'm sure both of us have seen, many people who are listening or watching have seen the ones with the text on the screen. It's like white background, black text on the screen, maybe a couple images pop up more slideshow. What we've found is going from YouTube to a training, it actually is good if it feels like a YouTube video, so a 15 to 20 minute long YouTube feeling video.

So where you're talking to the camera, if there's slides, you're in the bottom corner, maybe it's a demo, maybe it's even just you kind of talking to the camera and things pop up on the screen as you're talking right alongside, you have these little callouts or things, and so it feels like a YouTube video, but you follow the framework of A VSL to take people again and rehook them. You're demonstrating credibility, you're taking them through, you're teaching them something. You're then stacking what they're going to get from either an offer that you might be selling or in a lot of cases more booking a call, like a strategy call. Here's what you're going to get. And then tying back to that, so kind of following that strategy, but doing it in a way that feels like a YouTube video, so it's produced a YouTube video. That's what we found. I

Brett:

Like that because one of the things we look at a lot, and again, it's a little bit different with e-comm, but you want someone to feel like they just clicked and they ended up in the right place. I just saw this product demonstration. I saw some kind offer. I saw some person demonstrating the product. Now when I click and land on the lander, it feels like what I just saw in the video. So you don't want someone to click and then they're like, wait a minute, that right place that I clicked that I clicked the wrong thing, I got to get out of here. And I think it's a similar thing what you're talking about. I just consumed a YouTube video. I've already shown that I like YouTube. So now when I land on this page with some education or a deep dive into something that feels like YouTube as well.

So that landing page, that landing page experience is super, super important. I want to talk briefly because I want to get into some audience targeting in just a minute, and I'm trying to be mindful of time here. I want to talk about the call to action just really quickly because I think this is a place where people fall short. If you don't ask someone to take a specific action, guess what? They will not take it right? I think we assume too much. We think, well, I just showed this awesome product, or I showed this awesome training, and so they'll just click and they'll go consume it, but really we need to spell it out, click here, get the free trial, order the sample pack, watch this video so you can see this product in action. Sign up for a free whatever. And so anything you teach or help people, one thing we actually just did recently, we do quite a bit of YouTube for retail support. So hey, this product available in Walmart near you, it'll be the best price you can find. So what do you specifically want them to do? Do you want them to click and buy? You want 'em to go to Walmart, you want 'em to target? What do you want them to do? So anything you teach on call to action.

Aleric:

So what we teach on that side, and that's a really good point. You need to tell people to be able to take action, and that is what's going cause those conversions. And so we like to recommend saying the call to action three times at the end of the ad. Now, sometimes it is time sensitive, so it depends on where people are at the length of the ad, but in general, three times is really valuable because it's the repetition. And so I'll give you an example in a second. I don't have it as quite as rehearsed as my hook, but I'll give you an example in a second. But what we say is we want to restack the value that they just received. So now that you've seen just how powerful YouTube ads can be, now that you've seen why it's more than just counting calories, I want to invite you two, click the link right here on the screen or below to go and register for our training.

We're going to walk you through exactly how you can X, Y, and Z. So what are they going to get? So remind them, we just gave them value. Attention spans are short. It's like, all right, we just gave you this value. We want to give you more value, and then you tell them exactly what to do. It's not just like, oh, sign up for my training. It's click the link right here on the screen or below the video, and that's going to get you access to our full training where you're going to learn how you can X, Y, and Z so you can achieve the result that they want. And when you go and sign up by using the link right here on the screen below the video, you're going to be able to get instant access. All you got to do is put in your name, email, phone number, and you're going to be able to get full access to our training where we're going to show you how this works and there's only so much we can cover in a quick video like this. That's why we have this training available. And that way you can bookmark, you're going to be able to have that as your resource. So something like that, again, it's going to be different depending on the person, but basically it's another reason that they want to do it. They want to take action reminding them that if they already got value here, they're going to get so much more and then add a little bit of urgency.

It's going to depend. If it's a webinar, that's an easier one, right? It's like we're watching this, there's a webinar coming soon, et cetera. And then at the end, once we say click the link again, we'll actually go into a screen. I'm actually very curious if you do something like this because, and I will say it's been a little bit since we really more in depth tested this, so now we just kind of do it. We just kind of rolled it out. But basically at one point we tested putting a picture on the screen of the opt-in page that we're sending people to and not doing it, and it actually increased the conversions by small, but one 2% on the overall, not necessarily on the, but basically it actually increases the conversions by just showing, okay, here's where you're going to go. You're going to get to a page looks just like this, just putting your name, email, phone number, you can get instant access to the full training, and at the end we actually just show the page. And it's also part of a squeeze too because yes, YouTube will give you a little bit of a countdown, but it's not always the exact same. You don't want your ad to abruptly end people are entranced and then the ad ends

Brett:

Give them time to go and click. Yeah, it's interesting. We've seen a couple of different things work for e-com. Sometimes you'll do outtakes like this, William Painter do this and a number of others at the end, they're like, it'll do outtakes. And they'll be like, why don't you just click the link? Why don't you just go check it out? I think what's valuable about what you're saying where you show the actual page or you show the actual product is again, it creates that consistency of what I saw in the ad is exactly what I see on the landing page. And so now I know I'm in the right place. It's also kind of priming me to take that action. We don't generally do that where you show the actual page that may change over time, but I like that approach and it totally makes sense that that would work well.

Cool. So let's talk audience targeting. This is one of those areas where pretty unique to YouTube the way you can target audiences here. I know on meta most the advertisers I know in the agencies, I know they're doing more broad open targeting, letting the algorithm do all the work. The YouTube algorithm is powerful, but we're still finding, for the most part, we want to give the algorithm a little bit of help and we want to lead the algorithm into the right path to eliminate waste and to get us rolling into results faster. I love the connection that Google own YouTube and Google's got tons of search behavioral data, and so why not tap into that? What are people searching for? And so building custom segments or custom audiences around that, but would love to understand how do you guys generally think about audience targeting?

Aleric:

And that's a really great question there, and that's what I love too about Google and YouTube and Google owning YouTube is just, there's so much data and I think that's what people don't really think about as much when they think about running ads on YouTube is like, wait a second, Google has all the search data. They also have Google Chrome, so they know basically the websites people are going to Google Analytics install more than half of every website. They're tracking all that details. There's a reason Gmail is free. There's a lot of data they're getting. So there's so much data that Google is utilizing and pulling into the overall platform. And so essentially what we found is the best way to target is what we call alpha AI targeting. And so a lot of people when we look at what they're setting up is they're building using prebuilt Google audiences, and those could be good.

I'm sure both of us have examples of campaigns that do really, really well with prebuilt in market audiences, especially things like that. Google also has started pre-populating certain audiences too to make it a little bit easier for people that aren't building their own. However, what I've found is getting more granular and building your own audiences is going to produce the best results. And so what we do is we recommend our clients really do some research, and I'll talk about my software. Keyword search actually does a little bit of that for us for our clients in just a second, but basically doing the research to figure out, okay, what are people interested? And there's a few different types. So there's custom affinity, it's what are people interested in, what's their general interest? And this is different than Facebook and other platforms where you have to go through the pre-populated list.

Like I said, yes, Google has that, but this is where you can put in interests that people already that people have, and it could be a more granular interest. And Google's AI is going to find who those people are. Now, I know you of course know this, Brett, on your side, but just in terms of the listener, the person watching, just so you know, you can actually build your own audience. This is what they're interested, but then we can go deeper because we talked about how Google has all of the search data, both on Google and on YouTube. What you can do is target people with that custom intent based on what they're actually searching for on YouTube or Google. So people are looking up how to lose weight or how to run, how to use YouTube ads or best ad platform or whatever for these different examples. And there's so many examples here. You can target people that are actually searching for that exact thing and then get in front of them with those ads. And we found that that's really powerful, especially people have Google search campaigns, they can kind of carry over some of their best keywords into these custom intent audiences. People running the old type of YouTube ads, which is more targeting direct keywords or maybe placements. They can turn those into custom intent targeting.

Brett:

And it's just so valuable to capture that search data because yeah, you know what non-brand search terms are converting Google Shopping or Performance Max or search. And so build an audience of those people. So those people searching for those keywords on Google or on YouTube now you can kind of bundle them into a segment, target them with YouTube ads. A couple little variations we like to use there. Well, and one other quick call out, so we got that custom intent audience. I believe that the amount of time is, those are refreshed about every 14 days or thereabouts. I think that's another reason A where sometimes you can find a winning ad and it just keeps working, right? Because that audience is always being refreshed and renewed there. On the e-comm side, we like to use keywords, especially if it's a larger ticket item where someone's maybe buying an expensive pillow or mattress or something, automotive or whatever, where it's like competitor X versus competitor Y as the keyword or competitor X reviews, competitor X demonstration where you can tell if someone's typing in these keywords, they're in research mode, they're trying to decide which product to buy.

And so now we build an audience, and that usually works on the affinity side where you're, and this is totally unique, and I 100% agree with you, we rarely use the the shelf audiences from Google. They can work, but I would rather give Google like, Hey, here's my top five competitor URLs. So Google build an audience and affinity audience based on those signals, and those often work very well and can scale at least to a certain degree. So really good stuff.

Aleric:

Exactly. The URLs is another area that we found on the affinity side that works really well. The intent based is still our top performer there because it's what People're searching for. But the URL audience is performing better than the standard affinity or like you said, prebuilt or even just typing in just individual keywords. Going in and doing those URLs is really powerful because Google has a lot of this knowledge. I've had people ask me, how can that even work? How do they know? Well, they know because people go to Google search and they click on a link and they go to the website. People don't just always type it in or they're using Google Chrome, most popular, one of the most popular browsers, and then they're also Google Analytics isn't on half of the website, so they have all this data. It's just waiting for you to tap into it. And it's interesting, I was talking with somebody else in the space as well, another person at War Room Coum as well, and one thing that he was telling, love

Brett:

Kum, shout out to Kum. Oh

Aleric:

Yeah, exactly. Shout out to kasum. Yeah, Kasum ISS awesome, but they're again rhymes then too. So look at that. Anyways, I was talking with him and he thought, and I would agree that I'm curious your take. I think that he was saying that he believes that Google just has so much more targeting capability. They're holding back because they realize if they gave access to the full thing, it would just be almost ludicrous, your ability to leverage and

Brett:

Open up privacy issues, and they're really concerned about mitigating lawsuits and stuff like that. So yeah, I would 100% agree. Google knows everything about everyone essentially. And so I do think they're holding back on targeting probably somewhat to protect the user more so to protect themselves probably. Yeah,

Aleric:

Exactly.

Brett:

Yeah, super interesting. Cool. Let's talk about your research tool then and keyword search.com. Correct? And how does that work?

Aleric:

Yeah, so one of the things that I found is one of the biggest things that we were doing consistently, either for the clients we were running ads for or the clients we were training to run ads, we were teaching them how to do this, where we were just constantly doing this research, figuring out, okay, what are the different keywords to either put in affinity audience or especially for custom intent, what are all the things people are searching for on YouTube and Google? What are all the different keywords and especially long tail keywords, what people are looking up? Also, what URLs could people be going to UR L audiences? Maybe they're typing in specific channel-based keywords. So we were doing a lot of this manual research, and even when we were leveraging other tools, it was still a manual process. We had spreadsheets, we had templates, all this stuff.

We were going and putting them in the spreadsheets. So we were doing research, we were using a combination of YouTube's auto complete for the YouTube side because that's a little less out there. And then we were using some of these other, there's obviously a lot of the big tools out there that get Google and some YouTube keywords and things like that. But again, it was still a process where we were having to take it from that, put it into a spreadsheet, then go and add it in and create custom audiences. This is a lot of time, why not go and just build our own software? So I set out to do this three years ago, even before the AI side of things, it was earlier iteration, which I won't get into as much, was kind of finding these keywords on YouTube. What we did is we wanted to actually set it up to get more YouTube data, so it's a little more complicated, but basically we're going in and there's certain data that we're actually scraping based on search results and what people are potentially searching in addition to leveraging the existing data based on Google based keywords, which is more available through APIs that Google has.

And we're combining that by looking at what are people searching for, what are they searching for on YouTube? What are they searching for on Google? What potential interests do they have and what websites might they be going to? And what we have done is actually built an AI wrapper around it. So essentially what keyword search does is it allows you to go in and just type in your business some details about it, put in the URL of your landing page, and it'll go and scan that and it will go and give you all of the different affinity audiences to potentially target. So it'll give you like, all right, here's all the different things to set up. It'll give you all the different search terms and keywords for Google and YouTube, categorize by topic with the ability to go and expand each topic. So if I was to put my business ad outreach in, it could go and grab a topic, YouTube ads, and it'll have some keywords like how to use YouTube ads, YouTube ads tutorial, and if I wanted more, I would just click expand and it go and find another dozen keywords.

You just keep clicking that as much as you want, and then it'll go and have other areas, lead generation, I have lead, how to get more leads for my coaching business or et cetera, et cetera, want more. Go and expand that. And it'll actually have a bunch of these different categories. These categories could potentially become a custom intent audience, or you can just choose which keywords you want, you select which ones you want, it'll get all of the different affinities, and you can just choose, okay, which affinities, which keywords do you want? And in one click sync it to Google Ads and it'll actually build the audience for you inside of Google ads through the connection with Google ads that we have in the software. And so it's an ability to go and instead of take all this research, which could take hours, especially if you're doing more robust research, we found the average time it takes to go from performing the search and the AI to actually syncing an audience is 2.6 minutes, which is pretty exciting. So essentially we put it all into the software keyword search, AI ad targeting for YouTube and Google Ads, and now it's starting to do more features as well. We're adding some more features around different targeting and also agency features as well.

Brett:

Super cool, man. Excited to check it out. Sounds really smart, sounds efficient. And also probably going to guide someone through the process, especially if you've never built these types of audiences before. It's different than what you do on Meta or on TikTok or anything else. And so this tool is going to guide you through that. So Alrick, love what you do, buddy. Keep up the good work as people are listening and thinking, okay, I need some Alex's training, or I need to check out this tool. How can people connect with you and your team?

Aleric:

Absolutely. Thank you so much. So yeah, the tool is keyword search.com. There's also a free trial to go and check that out over there. And then I also have a GIF for anybody who's listening. I've got our 19 page YouTube ads strategy, PDF. This is more focused on coaching consulting businesses, but you can go to add outreach.com/gift, that's A DO UTR EAC h.com/gift, and you can go and get that free gift. And then if you are interested in talking with us about whether it be YouTube ads or something like that, you can just go to add outreach.com and there's some details on the page and links to all the social, you can look me up everywhere, of course on YouTube as well. It's Eck.

Brett:

Love it, man. And so we've, so listeners kind of get the inside scoop. We've kind of created this little arrangement where his legion or coaches and consultants come to OMG or come to me. I'm like, you need to talk to Al Rick, right? Go talk to him. His team knows what to do. Same on your side as e-commerce companies come to you. You're like, Hey, go talk to Brad in omg. And so it's a really good relationship that way. I love what you guys are doing because every time someone sees that ad with Arick on there in his Austin office talking about YouTube beating Facebook every time, it may nudges someone a little bit closer to saying, I should test YouTube. I should test YouTube ads. So keep up with the good work, always fun to riff with another YouTube expert. So ton of fun, man. Really appreciate it.

Aleric:

Awesome. Thank you so much, Brett. Really appreciate it as well.

Brett:

Awesome. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. Let us know what you think of the show. If you know someone who would benefit from this show, please share it. Please review it. Please rate it helps other people find podcasts. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

‍

‍

‍

Episode 277
:
Jimmy Sansone - The Normal Brand

10 Siblings, 11 Retail Stores, 1 Amazing Brand

I had the privilege of interviewing Jimmy Sansone. He’s the CEO of The Normal Brand - one of my favorite clothing brands - and the oldest of 10 children. While his brand is Normal, his story is anything but. 

‍

It’s a story that’s definitely worth telling and chock full of great entrepreneurial lessons. Jimmy grew up in a family of entrepreneurs, so this was in his blood. What started as just an idea when Jimmy was working as an investment banker has grown into a thriving retail, wholesale, and online business. 

‍

Important lessons:

  • How growing up in a large family shaped him and helped him become an entrepreneur.
  • What it’s like partnering with your family. Jimmy runs The Normal Brand with two of his brothers, Lan and Conrad.
  • How culture shapes brands and the power of culture cards.
  • How did launching their own retail stores (they have 11 now with more on the way) increase their wholesale and online businesses?
  • Lessons learned from mistakes.

__

‍

Chapters: 

(00:00) Introduction and Jimmy’s Background

(11:42) Early Days of The Normal Brand

(15:51) Working with Family 

(22:09) Expansion Into Retail Stores
(25:03) Benefits of Having Your Own Stores

(32:25) Mistakes Made Along The Way

(34:46) Culture and Core Values

(39:34) Future Plans & Merchandising Strategy 

(42:28) Outro 

__

Show Notes: 

‍

__

Connect with Brett: 

__

‍

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

__

Other episodes you might enjoy: 

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

___

‍

Transcript:

Jimmy:

It was during my investment banking time where I kind of had this idea of making these normal shirts I was calling where the normal brand came from.

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the e-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today we have how I did it, how we built It, story. I can't wait to dive into this. I'm visiting with Jimmy Sansone of the normal brand, a brand I've been falling for years now. Love what they offer, love their clothing, love their style, love their logo, love the story. And so we're going to unpack how this came to be and how they did it and what they learned along the way and what it's like working with family and all kinds of really fun stuff. We'll see what's next for the normal brand as well. So lots of good stuff to unpack here that Jimmy, welcome to the show, man, and thanks for taking the time.

Jimmy:

Thanks for having me, Brett. Excited to be on.

Brett:

Yeah, really pumped about this one. I love the clothing and I'm wearing a normal brand shirt, which I will say I feel comfortable in this shirt. I also feel powerful in this shirt, so it's a great mix and I'm probably going to be 30 to 50% more interesting wearing this shirt, so I got to thank you for that. Well, if

Jimmy:

You could write that down into review, we'll repurpose it as an ad and that'll be great.

Brett:

We'll just chop this up. I'll send it to you and you guys can use it, so that's awesome. But in all seriousness, love the shirt. Love what you guys are doing. It's funny, I actually, I got on your SMS list somehow. Email list. I signed up for it somehow some way, and then you guys opened a store in my hometown, Springfield, Missouri, talking to a buddy of mine who owns the local barbershop. He's like, oh man, normal brand. They're from St. Louis and they've got a huge family. I'm like, I got to meet these guys. And so that's how we connected. But this is one of those rare scenarios and one day I'd love to meet your parents because they are one of the few that have more kids than my wife and I have. So my wife and I famously have eight kids, but Jimmy, you come from an even bigger family. So tell us the size of your family and tell us what it was like growing up in this dynamic family.

Jimmy:

Yeah, I'm the oldest of 10 kids, so I have nine siblings, got 40 something or above 40 cousins. So I have a huge extended family and now they have their own kids. And so the generations keep getting bigger and bigger. A ton of fun. It was growing up on a team, we played team sports our whole life, but really we're, when you're kind of born on a team, I honestly, I think I wouldn't have it any other way. And I think it teaches you a lot of life lessons. I think it teaches you how to get along with people, management, things like that. And so childhood was awesome, and still to this day, my siblings are my best friends. So it's a great

Brett:

Blessing. I love it, man. And that's my hope, that's my prayer for my kids that they'll remain close. But I heard another guy talk about, he comes from a big family as well say that kids of big families, they don't grow up thinking it's all about them because it can't be, there's too many other kids and too many other priorities. It's not just all about one kid. And so I think, yeah, that environment can really shape character and make you a unique individual, but also someone that appreciates the team and appreciates the whole, which is pretty cool.

Jimmy:

Yeah, I think definitely you've got to learn humility. It's not all about you and frankly, you're judged on how you treat your siblings. Making life better for your parents really is what we should have been trying to do older when we were younger, and sometimes we did, sometimes we didn't. But yeah, super blessed with our now

Brett:

I'm going to clip that part and show that to my kids, so thank you. Thank you for that

Jimmy:

Reciprocate. But yeah, our parents were just incredible, just phenomenal role models and kind of really showed us the way and how to do things. And so yeah, it wasn't very hard. It was pretty easy.

Brett:

That's amazing, man. So do you guys still get together for dinner, like family dinners on a somewhat regular basis? Oh yeah.

Jimmy:

If you miss Sunday dinner, you've got real problems. And I mean, I live five minutes from my parents' house, so I mean, I'm over there. We work out together a lot of us. So we've got an 18-year-old brother who's a senior in high school. So we go to all of his games we're at,

Brett:

He's a quarterback, right? Plays football,

Jimmy:

He plays football and then he plays lacrosse. He playing lacrosse right now. And so those sports definitely keeps us together. But I mean if we go even a day or two without seeing our parents, I would say that's an odd couple of days.

Brett:

Love it man. Love it, man. The sand zones are my role model, so hopefully we can do something similar in the curry household. Curious, so you're an entrepreneur, it sounds like most of your family, they're entrepreneurs. Did that come from your parents? And if so, how?

Jimmy:

Absolutely. Or even before them, our grandparents were entrepreneurs also big time. And so they definitely inspired us. We were very tied with them. So my dad's dad kind of came from nothing. His parents were immigrants and he built a great business and we got to see what he had built. And then there was a family rule where the third generation is not allowed in that business, which was really a great blessing. It gave us the ability to kind of think on our own and what are the things we want to do. But since the time I was maybe 12 years old, our parents really kind of encouraged us to think outside the box entrepreneurially. So when I was 12, me and my brother Conrad started a sports camp. That summer camp continues to this day, my youngest siblings run it. It was basically glorified babysitting, but that was something that I did every single summer until I graduated college in high school I sealed driveways in college. During exam time we sold point settas like the Christmas flower. And so it was those types of, and then I went into investment banking. But I would say that those little ventures that we had earlier taught me more than banking for a few years did, and definitely shaped the type of people we are and helped influence normal brand in a lot of ways.

Brett:

That's so cool, man. So just help me understand, and this sounds awesome. So the third generation not allowed in the family business with the motivation to say, man, get out, build your own thing, do your own thing.

Jimmy:

That's right. Yeah. I think my grandfather was a very, very thoughtful guy. He passed away a few years ago in 2020 and April of 2020. But statistics kind of tell it all. I think when you get to third generation family businesses, it's like single digit percentages of those that prosper. And even there, there's still so you break apart companies, you break apart families. It was never worth that risk. And so we knew that from the time That's really smart. It was really smart. And so we knew that as a time from a young age, and it really gave us the, and then being able to have a front seat of a family business that's a family business that my dad, my uncles are end that my grandfather started. But being able to have a front seat to see how that works and how it works well, it helped us so much. And that lifestyle of we talk about work all the time now and we grew up with that as well. Yeah,

Brett:

I really enjoy that. And I've got a couple of close family members extended who are in business and we always get together and strategize and talk business. I'm actually the first in my close family to be an entrepreneur, which I don't know where it came from, but it just happened and I love it, but I'm trying to foster that environment for my kids. So we'll see. There's a couple of them that are definitely leaning that way. So as you started these ventures throughout your childhood and kind of the teen years, what was your parents' role in that? Were they kind of cheering from the sideline? Were they giving you direct advice? Were they just kind of standing back and watching and stepping in as needed or what was that?

Jimmy:

I think first it was just from a practical standpoint, I think the beginning, the impetus for it all, I asked for a gift of some sort. I think it was a bike. And my dad just said, sure, you got any money? And I was like 12 and I said, no. And he said, okay, we'll go get a job. And then at that point, you're too young to get a job anywhere. And so he said, okay, start something with one of your brothers. And so he's like, you got all these siblings, why don't you start a camp? So I think even from that, I mean a long time ago, 25 years ago, he helped even just kind of ideate and encourage us, you can do this. Just kind of think outside the box. And so I think just encouraging that mindset from a very young age, you probably can't overstate enough how much that has

Brett:

Helped. That's amazing. That's amazing. Okay, so fast forward a little bit. So you get into investment banking, which is a world that I respect. I've been kind of on a journey over the last couple of years meeting private equity groups and learning m and a and investing and doing different things. And so fascinating world. Was the goal to be career investment banker or did you always view that as a stepping stone to then launch your own thing?

Jimmy:

I always knew that I would eventually work for myself or hopefully with my brothers. That was a goal from the time. I mean, I think it's written down when I was in high school, but I didn't really know what that meant, honestly. And so I would say it was during my investment banking time where I kind of had this idea of making these normal shirts. I was calling where the normal brand came from, and it was this idea of something comfortable. Well-fitting durable and versatile was kind of the three main pillars at the beginning. And so I started getting these shirts made, people were asking me about 'em, and I was like, well, maybe more people would want these. So I quit my job.

Brett:

And was the idea because you didn't have a shirt that you fell in love with or you'd kind of always been drawn to fashion?

Jimmy:

I had a big passion for clothing my whole life, again, kind of inspired by my grandpa and my dad. So in the nineties they were all wearing suits to work really buttoned up. And so when I was 16, I remember I asked for a custom suit. So the formal wear was a big thing, but I loved clothes and just I'd lay out my outfits, I'd think about how does this color work? I'd really kind of shop with my hands. So when I go into stores, I was really really into clothes. I also kind of had a creative inkling. I like drawing and writing and doing other things, but honestly, the idea of being in fashion for a profession never even came into my mind, ever. It was never even a consideration. I thought maybe real estate or I went into finance business, stuff like that. Anything else was kind of stupid talk. But it wasn't until I was in banking and kind of had this idea. And again, I remember talking to my dad and he was like, yeah, you can do it. Why don't you just give it a shot? And so I think that kind of confidence that they would instill in us was

Brett:

Phenomenal. It's amazing. It's amazing. So that was 2015 ish. You're making these shirts, people saying they love 'em, and you go for it, and you start in the basement. Basement of your house is where you're either making clothes or packing 'em and shipping 'em or whatnot. So talk about those early days.

Jimmy:

Yeah, that's right. It actually took me a few years to kind of figure it out. So I left my job in 2012, didn't sell my first shirt to 2015. So there were some kind of, I would say that I had to do some growing up in those times in that three years. But finally got to the point where it was like I put myself in a position where it was kind of back against the wall. It's either do it or don't. And that was a really important thing to get it going, I think. And then I saw progress, and then once you saw progress, then you could kind of believe in it a little bit. But yeah, I had a bunch of mistakes on the initial, I didn't know anything. I didn't know what a tech pack was or how to work with factories or how you could Google as much as you want.

But I was trying to get these made and man, these shirts were coming in really busted up. I had my one that was good for myself and I couldn't make any others for anybody else. So it was sort of a disaster. So I actually started with hats. So the first thing that I ever sold was March 10th, 2015, and we launched with some hats to get some money in the door to pay for our first deposit, for our first run of Cut and Sew, which came in August of 15. My brothers joined me and then it was more of a business and then this kind of glorified lemonade sand.

Brett:

Nice. And so you start with hats because they were easier to produce, easier to get a quality product.

Jimmy:

And there were some people, some mentors that encouraged me to do that. And I also needed some capital to literally pay for a deposit to get the first run of shirts. I didn't know there's big MQs, minimum mortar quantities, things like that. It was a lot of money to kind of do this. I just didn't have that. And so this was a way to kind of get the name out, Hey, this is what's coming in a few months, but this is the brand, this is the story. I got super lucky that brands like Shopify were coming about right around this time. So I was able to build a website for nothing really, really cheap. And even, I'm not a coder or anything, I don't dunno how to do any of that stuff, but I can drag and drop a picture. And so I got really lucky that things like that were happening. And then also just kind of utilizing my siblings and our family network of people sharing things for me. I wasn't running any ads or anything like that. We were able to sell out of our hats a few times and then I was like, okay, maybe this is a thing. I got enough money for the deposit. And then we had to wait a few months. But then you started selling again.

Brett:

Yeah. That's amazing. And so in the early days, were a lot of your sales in person through the family network or were most of them online or combination? Oh

Jimmy:

Yeah. I think I know this guy. I wrote a thing on it, 102 people bought on the first day. I think I personally knew like 85. I mean maybe. That's

Brett:

Awesome. That's

Jimmy:

Awesome, man. So yeah, I mean it's a phenomenal thing to have your tribe come out. So it was family, it was friends. Sometimes I'll go back and I'll look at those names like, God, I forget he did that. Even distant friends and stuff like that. But those are things that you don't really forget when people step up, when you're in a vulnerable position, you're starting something. It's a public thing. It could really go poorly or it can go great and you'll never forget those people. So I got really lucky with 102 from day one in 2015.

Brett:

It's amazing, man. And that's what I've heard. I've heard the advice from, Hey, if you're a friend of an entrepreneur, don't take their product as a gift. Go buy it. Buy it at retail, buy it at full price, leave a review, help them out If you want to be a friend, that's how friend to an entrepreneur buy their stuff. And it sounds like a lot of people do that, which is amazing. So let's talk a little bit about working with family. This is a unique thing and I've always, I've tried to recruit my wife to work for me and she's busy raising a bunch of kids and doing other things, so she hasn't. But I love the idea of working with family, but curious, when is it really great and when is it challenging? And share with us some insights there.

Jimmy:

Well, I think business partners are super important regardless of if it's family or not. So if you just think about business partners, what do you want? I think you want somebody that you can depend on no matter what. I think you want someone that you can be radically honest with and fight with and get over it. And I think you want someone that's as incentivized as you are to kind of perform and takes as much pride. You want to make sure that when you hand something off to your business partner, you can forget about it. And so I'm just lucky that I have those in my two brothers. I have all of those qualities. It just makes for phenomenal business partners. I think that definitely we had an unfair advantage in that we were able to grow up with a front seat to another family business. And so you can kind of learn what to do, what not to do, learn from great successes, learn from things that didn't go according to plan. And so not to say that we're perfect, but for the reason I stayed at the beginning on what you look for in a great business partner, I mean, that's what I have in my brothers. And then you go a step further where it's like I would literally die for them that it makes going to business. It's like, okay, sales are down a little bit. We'll be okay.

Brett:

Yeah, and I love that. Perfectly aligned incentives. You're all trying to accomplish the same thing. You grew up in a family that communicated and hung out together and spent time together. So you're able to communicate clearly. I think in some ways, a lot of the reason families can't work together in business is because there may be dysfunctional outside of business. So if you can't be close as a family outside of business, you're going to be able to do it in business either. And so growing up, being able to communicate, able to do things, run projects, run summer camps with your siblings, I'm sure made that transition to another business much more doable.

Jimmy:

And I think we read books about company culture and stuff like that on trying to learn on best practices regardless of family business or whatever it is. And so I think we try to take, there's still so much that we can learn and try to learn as much as we can, but I mean those best practices, I think you said a lot of it, but it's like direct communication, passive aggressiveness is kind of like a killer. So try to keep that out. Ego is a killer, so having a healthy dose of humility. So I don't know if these Patrick Lencioni books we're big on those.

Brett:

Yeah, dude, I'm a huge Patrick Lencioni fan. Love at the table podcast. We did, I'm curious if you guys have done this too, the six types of your working genius.

Jimmy:

We just sent it to all of our people, so they're all doing their tests right now. Yeah.

Brett:

Yeah. That's awesome. So what are your working geniuses? Just curious.

Jimmy:

I've got to go back and look at it. I remember I was like, I don't remember all of 'em. And I was like, oh man, is that really what I'm like? And it really is, but I forget what they all are now. I did mine. Yeah,

Brett:

It's hard. I had if look at it several times, but I'm a galvanizer and a wonderer, so galvanize, I can rally the troops, I coach sports, I can get people fired up and excited. But then the wonder is you always ask me, well, what if we did this? So I dream a little bit too. So that combination can be great. It can also drive my team crazy and my family as well. But it's been so helpful us just understanding even with our leadership group, like, okay, what are your working genius as well? This is why we don't communicate clearly in these meetings because I'm trying to wonder and you're trying to be tenacious and get stuff done. Anyway, super helpful tool. Yeah,

Jimmy:

Actually, so we've been reading him since 2015 and the craziest thing happened. I had never met him. He shopped normal brand and then had a great interaction with our customer service and he wrote a note in and saying, giving a shout out to Colby D, our head of customer service. She sent it to us and I was like, no, wait. Patrick Lencioni, I reached out to him and now he and I have talked a few times. He's going to do some consulting with us and do some, it's amazing. Amazing.

Brett:

It's

Jimmy:

Amazing. It's crazy how that kind of stuff can happen.

Brett:

Yeah, we attend the Global Leadership Summit almost every year. I'm not sure if you've ever done that, but whenever he speaks, he's my favorite guy. He's my favorite presenter. So what a cool deal, man. That's sign. You guys are doing stuff, right? If Patrick ion's impressed, that's a good sign. Good sign for sure. So cool. So when then, is it challenging to work with family and just curious, any insights there? Well, I

Jimmy:

Think we're all very much alike. Sometimes when you can get frustrated, everybody can get frustrated, frustrated about the same stuff. So it's not like, oh, this guy's like that, but this guy kind of calms you down a little bit. We can kind of be at the same level at the same time, but the great news with that is once we fight, which happens 20 minutes later, we're fine. There's a good balance to it. We've been doing it our whole lives anyways.

Brett:

Yeah, and there's no question, do we love each other? Yes. Do we have each other's back? Yes. He

Jimmy:

Coming back be long term. Yes, yes. I mean it's all those things. Yeah,

Brett:

But we can fight about this one thing. Yes. Yes. And that's actually, that's another Patrick Lucci thing. This wasn't designed to be the Patrick Luconi podcast, but it's becoming that a little bit where he's like, good meetings should have tension. If you're in a meeting with leadership or with your executive team and there's no tension, there's no disagreement ever. Something's wrong. Either the meeting's not necessary or somebody's not necessary. There should be a little bit of tension. And so having that is super productive. So cool man. Let's talk about store expansion. So your online experience is great. I know we skipped a lot of years there, but you grew online from the site you developed on or that you built on Shopify to now you got a beautiful site. But when did you make that decision to launch your own retail stores and why your own store versus just selling through a traditional retail?

Jimmy:

Yeah, we started online and then we got into wholesale really heavy and wholesale meaning sell through other retailers. That was a majority of our business for a year or two. And then the online caught up. But I think it was through that wholesale expansion where we were able to see really great performing retailers. We were able to also see ones that failed you could and learn things about what made one store in one town great. And another store or across town, not good. Right. What's the difference?

Brett:

And were you guys selling all over the country or was it more in the Midwest initially over, yeah,

Jimmy:

We were sold all over the country. Yeah, southeast, northeast, Midwest and some west coast too. But a lot in the southeast, northeast, Midwest. I mean, we're in like 400 some odd doors right now. And so wholesale is still a big part of our business, but we got to definitely learn a lot and then mean to have a major brand, which we want to have, you have to have your own stores. And there's only so much of your brand that you can experience in somebody else's store or even online. Whereas to walk through a physical space, we do as many meetings at our stores as we can with people to, if we want 'em to really understand who we are, really. Like you're walking through something that was once just in your mind, right? In the physical space. And so our first one we opened in August of 2019 in St.

Louis, and that's been voted best men's store a few years in a row. That's amazing. Then 2020 happened, so we were about to do one, and then the pandemic happened. So we were like, okay, let's hang on. And then we opened our first out of town one in August of 21 in Nashville. And my brother Conrad really runs all of our store expansion. My brother Lan runs all of our wholesale stuff. So it's really like those guys being able to kind take it and run with it and be working on product and some of the creative stuff. It's a really good balance. But once we proved that, the store could kind of like, okay, well will people buy it outside of St. Louis? And then we saw that it performed really well in Nashville and we're like, okay, let's go. And so last year we opened five stores, so we're up to 11 now. We'll open a few more this year. And it's been a great venture for us.

Brett:

Cool. What are some of the benefits that you think you've gained from having your own store? And I will attest to, because there's one here in Springfield. I've shopped at it a couple of times. It's just got such an amazing look and feel. Oh, and I also want to ask, did I read that your mom designed the stores or was key instrumental in designing the

Jimmy:

Stores? Yeah, big time. Yeah. Yeah. She's a key part of the overall design, the aesthetic. She helps us source these crazy antiques from all over the place to really give it that extra level. She was big on, Hey, it's got to smell a certain way. Yeah. Yes. Our mom is a

Brett:

Beast. That's amazing. It's amazing. So what all are the benefits from owning your own stores? What are some of the probably obvious benefits, but maybe some of the unexpected benefits, intangibles, things like

Jimmy:

That? Yeah, I think unexpected may be that you really get on the customer service standpoint. On the customer service side, when you meet with our people there, we really want it to feel like it's an extension of our family. It's an extension of the, and so we want people to feel like it's a second home. We want them to feel at home, they're a part of the family and walking in so that there's a ton of training that we do on our side. I mean thick handbooks and a lot of formulaic stuff to make that be a thing, you're going to be greeted within two and a half steps of walking into our store. You're going to be offered a drink within three and a half steps. It, it's things like that from a training standpoint, but then manifests itself in hopefully a real authentic way.

But we want people to experience the brand in all the senses. So we want to be able to touch the clothes, smell it, hopefully it's a great smell. We've got candles burning from sound wise, we've got good music on, be able to try on the clothes of course. But I think it just gives you a chance to have a real personal connection. And what's really cool is we've seen that our managers and team members at these stores have been able to foster these great relationships with the local community where they'll text, they'll have dinner with them and things like that. So it's a little bit different in that we're a part, we're trying to be a part of the fabric of that community wherever the store is. And so it's an extension of our brand getting a lot more local,

Brett:

And you guys do an excellent job of it. And even the partnership here in Springfield with Hudson Hawk Barbers, you're connecting with other local brands that are a good fit for your brand. And yeah, it's just a good experience, man. And it feels like you're kind of stepping into your catalog and you have beautiful photography and the furniture just feels cool and looks cool. And I've got pretty long arms. I've got pretty broad shoulders, so I wanted to come in and try a few things on, ended up buying online. But it was great just to be in there touching and feeling. And I remember when my executive assistant who helped kind of structure and organize the podcast, he's like, I went to the mall and I went to the normal brand store. And it's amazing he was going on and on about it because he experienced it in person. And so that's cool. Did you see other parts of your business accelerate once you started opening stores? And once you got to a tipping point of stores, did online take off more? Did other areas take off more? Just any interesting insights there?

Jimmy:

Both. Yeah. So we actually saw, so wholesaler, maybe you would get worried if you open a store in a town where you've got a wholesaler, another retailer that you're selling through a third party, is that going to hurt their business? And we were very sensitive of that. We really came up through wholesale and online, but through wholesale. And I mean we would bend over backwards for our wholesale partners and still will. And whether it's showing up for trunk shows or showing up or, Hey, this wasn't right. Okay, let me swap you out of that. Let me get you this. So my brother Lan really kind of spearheads that and he just does a phenomenal job. He can be kind of everywhere at once, but we were worried about those stores. And what we found was that in cities where we open a store, our other retailers that are there actually do better, which was awesome. I think it's just the name gets out there and then their customers are shopping there and they're like, oh yeah, I know what that is. Lemme grab this. So our business got better within those, which is awesome. And on the online side, the same thing happened. We have found that in the markets where we have a store, our online presence grows, those people come shop in a store, it's a high percentage of 'em will buy online later. So it's a good kind of customer acquisition tool as

Brett:

Well. Totally makes sense. And did you have any of those retail partners that were a little bit resistant at first? Hey, we don't really want you opening a store in our town, type of thing.

Jimmy:

Yes, absolutely. There were some uncomfortable conversations for sure, but we were very direct about it and very honest about it. And we said, just hold on. Just wait. See what this does to your business. We had done a bunch of research and talked to other brands and things like that. It's not just unique to us. That happens. And then it's always a great thing where after a season or two and you have the conversation, they're like, you're right. We're killing it now with you guys. Yeah,

Brett:

Yeah. Now you've got the data, now you've got the proof. You go to the next city. Now you can really tell this compelling story to your retail partners, your wholesale partners, that hey, this, it's going to be a good thing. And

Jimmy:

We still go. We actually still go to, whether it's trunk shows or events at those retailers where my brother will show up or whatever and promote their store. They're a very important part of our business.

Brett:

That's awesome. So really, and we're going a little bit out of chronological order here, but so you, in the very early days, wholesale was a staple of the business, would you say? Was that the majority of the business in the early days? Yeah, for sure. Got it, got it. And did you identify that as the best path to take it? Or you knew that online was going to take some time to build up, so you wanted to go wholesale or what drove that

Jimmy:

Initiative? It was a need. It was was a capital need. We were a bootstrap business, and so we had to order all this inventory to, because of MOQs things that we talked about earlier. So we had to get on a schedule where we could sell that stuff. Pre-book is what we call it nine months in advance, because we didn't think we could sell it all online, but we had to buy it. So we were like, okay, where else can we sell this stuff? Where they were like, and somebody said, Hey, you should go to this trade show. So the first trade show we ever went to was called the Chicago Men's Collective. It's our biggest trade show by far. I mean, we'll be booked for every single day, morning till night. But that's where we met kind of our first retailers. And we wouldn't have had a company without the wholesale business because we wouldn't have been able to sell the inventory online. And from a cashflow perspective, we wouldn't have been able to pay for the inventory.

Brett:

Yeah, yeah, it totally makes sense. That's so cool. So cool. Well, you guys have done so much, right? Clothes are awesome. Store experience is fantastic. Online shopping is good. Even the text marketing is good. The SMS marketing is good. But what have you learned from failures, right? Because we all trip ourselves up as entrepreneurs and make mistakes, and those can be the best learning tools. So what mistakes have you learned from along the way?

Jimmy:

Oh man, tons. I think as the business has grown, we have more people now on the team. And so that's where we manage a lot more people than we ever have. So there's tons of failures there where it's not just enough to just kind of, okay, lead by example, and there'll be no, there needs to be processes and well thought out structures of how this is going and how that's going. So as the business evolves and matures, you need to kind of mature with it with kind of your procedures. So I would say we'd be here for a long time to tell you how many times we've kind of failed there. But I think the one thing that we've done, we've always had a good culture. We kind of knew that from the beginning. So we've always had a good culture. So that can kind of make up for some of the procedural things that go wrong, but just building processes and things like that. I would say that with store expansion and things like that, you have to, it radically changes the way you do business. So even getting inventory to the store on time, making sure it's merchandised appropriately, let's make sure we're getting them the right inventory. Well, this store actually behaves differently than this store in a big way. And so I think that we've had to add people to the team who can kind of specialize in these different verticals, but we're the type where we don't really, we make the mistake first and then try to fix it

Brett:

In some ways. That allows you to go faster, make a mistake, fix it, iterate, rather than trying to get it perfect out of the gate, which you'll never do anyway. Let's talk a little bit about culture. And we're big believers in culture as well. We have been fortunate enough, we won best workplaces through Inc. Three years. We won the number one place to work in our area, 4 1 7 biz, 4 1 7, 1 number one two years in a row, which is awesome. Wow. But we'd love to hear, thank you. What's your approach to culture? What do you guys think about, how do you approach

Jimmy:

It? Yeah, I mean, we build it. So we have, let's just take it out. We've got culture cards kind of on what our core values

Brett:

Are.

Jimmy:

Nice while I fish that out. So we build it basically off three core values. And this is a Patrick Lencioni ripoff, and we're not afraid to say that, but humble, hungry, and smart are kind of the main three things. Love it. I would say that that humility is what I would rank number one with coming to this business with just the way the business was started with really kind of no experience in it and making a lot of mistakes. You can't afford to have an ego. And so I think that that ego kills all teamwork and the simple transaction of, Hey, my bad, I messed that up. I'm sorry. And equally as important on the other side is all good, let's move on. That transaction is grease on the wheels for a team to move forward. So that's a super important thing so that we all carry one of these with the core values, but that's

Brett:

Awesome.

Jimmy:

Positivity, ownership, solution driven, humble, and hungry. So

Brett:

Good.

Jimmy:

That's kind of how we build it out. But if I was to pick one, kind of depend on the role I guess, but I would say that an ego doesn't have a place within our teamwork.

Brett:

Yeah, so good. Have you read the book? Ego Was The Enemy by Ryan Holiday. That's awesome. Yeah, so good. Love all his books. Yeah, I've gone down

Jimmy:

Stoicism Path for a year. I was reading 'em all. He had me reading Marcus Aurelius.

Brett:

So Good man. I've got The Daily Stoic, which is really good. And actually I think Discipline is Destiny. That may be my favorite book. I've read that too. Awesome is I love all of them, but that may be my favorite. But yeah, similar culture values here actually. So our kind of core three, we think and act like owners, we take ownership and what we do, we constantly help each other level up or we constantly improve and then we have fun solving problems. And so we kind of want to have this attitude of like, Hey, every problem is an opportunity for something. And so we talk about that and we would talk about owning our stuff, good and bad and giving transparent feedback. And so those things, when you communicate those things clearly, then you're living it out from top to bottom. And then when you are hiring based on culture first and skills and aptitudes second, just eventually, eventually that culture kind of permeates. Now it doesn't take much to puncture that culture to start to lose that culture. So you got to be really vigilant. But man, when you've got a solid culture, I've heard, I don't know, the old saying, culture eats strategy for breakfast or whatever that saying is. And it is true. If you've got the right culture, people will solve problems. I

Jimmy:

People will

Brett:

Get tough done friend

Jimmy:

Who's got a big HVAC companies, got a ton of employees and known him since high school and he actually gave us some ideas on, and we've got note cards with the different core values on it, one each, and then how it's demonstrated. And then we task our managers with once a month giving one of these cards out with a note on it to somebody in their team that demonstrated that core value. So find the good. So we really try to an emphasis on finding the good. And of course you can coach people up or whatever on when it's not being demonstrated. But giving a shout out to when it is demonstrated, I think reinforces how important it's

Brett:

Finding the good. And I love that it's a simple call out, here's a card, culture card, but you exemplified this, you model this that has so much meaning. I remember when I was in college, I worked at Lowe's and I worked in the plumbing department. I'm like, I'm not handy at all. But I learned enough about plumbing to be somewhat helpful. This was good at customer service. I was good at talking to people. And so I helped this dude out and he's like, I'm going to tell your manager. And so he did. But my manager immediately walked over, gave me a gift card to some restaurant. I don't remember what it was, but I will never forget that interaction when seeing my boss walk up and say, you did an awesome job. Handed me the card, which is great. So made me want to work even harder.

Jimmy:

If you walk around our office, you can see on the different, our team members will keep these cards on their desk by showing 'em. So yeah, it's a cool thing. That's very not an original idea at all.

Brett:

A lot of times the best ideas are not original. And that's one of those where I think being an entrepreneur, you just borrow good ideas from where you learn them and apply them. And it's more about the application, the execution, rather than coming up with brand new ideas that really sets you apart. So that's awesome. What's next, man? So what's next for normal brand? I know there's probably some top secret stuff you can't talk about, but what can you share with us? What's on the roadmap ahead?

Jimmy:

I think our merchandising strategy is definitely product is what I love. There's no better feeling to me. I'm staring at you and you're wearing one of our shirts. I'm making sure it's draping and things like that. So I love clothes. And so I can't talk about anything with nor brand without talking about what we've got coming up. We're always a few seasons ahead. I'm thinking fall 25 right now, but fall 24, I would say just with the new fabrics we've got coming out and the merchandising strategy of giving people more what they want and having, now we've got the data behind it where we can make a lot more educational decisions on this. It's not as much gut. It used to be like, I don't know. I mean, I like this. You think they'll like it. That's how it used to be. And so I'm pumped about the collections we have coming. I'm also excited about some of the different initiatives we've got at our stores. I think we're really getting out with the community and connecting with the community, and we're onboarding a bunch of new people that hopefully make that experience, make people's days better. I dunno if there's one thing I, I'm always excited about the future

Brett:

And usually it's a lot of little things. And one thing I'll kind of mention, because I think this ties into the physical store thing, shopped at Supplement Superstore a couple times, and actually I think you know the owner, right? Because he's a St. Louis Guy as well. Yeah, yeah. So the first time I went in the store's, been here forever. I think he opened it when he was MSU or whatever, opened the store. So I went in, talked to this girl, she must have been in college or whatever, told her what I was working on and my family working out and stuff. And so we picked a product, I bought it, kind of end of story. I get a card two days later from this girl that helped me. She's like, Hey, hope workouts are going good with your wife and your daughter. We sometimes go to the gym together and stuff. And it was just really cool, man. So it was an awesome experience. So I was like, well, can't buy this online now I got to go back to the store. And so now every time we go to the store, I get a handwritten thank you card that says something about the interaction that we had. So those little touches, man,

Jimmy:

We copied off them in that. We do that. So anytime you shop our stores, you get a handwritten note that gets sent out by the next day. Those guys supplement Super source, first form, total studs, an incredible culture, a great product. They've been phenomenal friends.

Brett:

First form is really good. I would've just skipped the story if I didn't like the product. Product is really good, so I keep buying it. And yeah, the in-store experience was

Jimmy:

Awesome. Yeah, we've got it all here.

Brett:

Yeah, that's awesome, man. Really, really cool. So pay attention to normal brand. I encourage you to shop for it or shop for it for your husband or significant other, whoever. Check out the website, get on their email list, an SMS list. That's one of the things that I do. If there's a brand that I really like and admire, even if I don't plan on buying something, I'll get on their email list. I'm just going to check out what they're doing. And so you guys do a great job there as well. So how else can people connect with you, Jimmy, I see you're somewhat active on LinkedIn. Are you active on any other socials?

Jimmy:

Yeah, I'm somewhat learning LinkedIn, I mean Instagram or on Instagram at the normal brand. And those are the big ones.

Brett:

Cool. And I noticed you don't post all the time on LinkedIn, but when you do packs a punch, that's what I actually just celebrated and just celebrated nine years. Right, so you just had your nine year anniversary post.

Jimmy:

Yeah. I always get my feelings on those anniversaries. So yeah, I just did a post talking about our parents, which

Brett:

That'll mess. It was really good, man. Really good. Worth going to LinkedIn to read that. If you enjoyed this story, go check out the post and I think you'll really, really enjoy it. So Jimmy, this was awesome, man. Wanted to do this again sometime and really appreciate it.

Jimmy:

Thank you, Brett. Thanks for having me on. And this was a lot of fun.

Brett:

Absolutely. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. We love that review on iTunes. If you got value out of this, also share this story. If you know another founder, someone else in fashion or D two C or trying to break into retail or something, share this episode with them and let the sandstones inspire more people. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

‍

Episode 276
:
Jeremy Horowitz - Let's Buy A Biz

Let's Buy a Business

It’s a good time to be in eCommerce. Just ask Jeremy Horowitz. 

‍

Jeremy is a long-time DTC and SaaS rockstar with a keen sense of what it takes to run a successful, profitable business.

‍

He’s one of my favorite follows on LinkedIn and his newsletter - Let’s Buy a Business is a weekly must-read for me.

‍

In this episode, we break down the difference between a business we would buy vs. one we wouldn’t and why. 

‍

We also talk about key financial benchmarks for eComm and unpack a few publicly traded companies that we would buy or not buy.

‍

Here’s what we cover:

- Amazon and Shopify will soon combine for an estimated $ 1 trillion in annual GMV. Mind blown!

- The P&L benchmarks that make your business a must-buy vs. a must-pass.

- The incredible performance of Crocs (and what you can learn from them).

- Why (legal) stalking your customers is about the only “non-clone able” thing you can do.

- What it would take to save Solo. 

- Why LVMH is unattainable but still teaches the rest of us mere mortals some valuable lessons.

___

‍

Chapters: 

(00:00) Intro

(01:58) The State of eCommerce

(12:39) Constructing a Healthy P&L

(22:48) Would We Buy This Business? 

(38:38) The Importance of Focusing on Core Customers

(43:29) LVMH: The Ultimate Luxury Company

(48:44) Outro

__

Show Notes: 

__

Connect With Brett: 

__

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

__

Other episodes you might enjoy: 

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

__

Transcript:

Jeremy:

They truly are playing compounding game of just wait every year, make more sales, drive more growth. It is very possible that within the next decade to 15 years, they'll be a trillion dollar company.

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the e-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today I've got a return guest. This dude is smart. He's blowing up on LinkedIn, everyone's talking about him and commenting on his posts and signing up for his newsletter. But I got Jeremy Horowitz back with me today. He's the founder of Let's buy a biz, check it out, let's buy a biz xyz. Love that top level domain, by the way. But today we're talking about businesses we would buy versus businesses we wouldn't, and I am so excited to dive into this, but Jeremy, welcome to the show, man. And how's it going?

Jeremy:

Thanks, Brett. It's great to be back. I always love jumping on the OMG podcast and catching up. Things are going really well, I think. I'm sure we'll dive into this in a little bit, but it's a great time to be in e-commerce. I know it's been a slog for a lot of brands the past couple of years. We rode the rollercoaster of Covid Up We Road, the Post Covid pullback down, and then now it feels like we're starting to level set back to somewhat saying as normal, but it feels like predictable and understandable growth again. So yeah, really excited to dive back into everything. I know that we usually talk about big predictions, the big bold bets, and I have some of those today, but also really excited to talk about for someone who wants to exit a business, what does that look like? Especially from the vantage point of someone who looks at acquiring a business all the time and then has an operational background of what would we go do if we were to go acquire and run that

Brett:

Business? Yeah, I love that so much. And so it's the first point. It's a great time to be in e-commerce. I 100% agree. We've had four years strung together of very abnormal economic and societal and health stuff going on. And so it does feel like we're reaching maybe a new normal that I think can be very healthy. I was talking about it with my buddy Sean Frank from the Ridge and there, and he said the same thing. He feels like this is going to be a year of more stability for e-comm, and it's just a bright time man. Things are growing. We're going to look at the global picture of e-comm. You've got some good data that we'll unpack. So that's super interesting. And man, I love this perspective of let's buy a biz because as we look at some of these things, at a bare minimum, this is going to help you build and operate a better business.

Even if you're like, I'm building this for the long haul. That's what Sean at the Ridge is doing. I'm building this for the long haul. It's going to be a cash cow. I'm just going to take massive distributions as I grow this thing to multiple millions in EBITDA every year, or I want to have an exit. And you and I, before we hit record, we're talking about our journey. We're actively looking to acquire other agencies. We're actively looking at m and a half for about two years. And it's a super fun space, but so many benefits even if you never buy or sell, lots of benefits to this discussion. And so let's first start with the data that backs up. It's a great time to be in e-commerce. I know you've got some interesting data looking at Amazon and Shopify from kind of a GMV perspective, but yeah, what is exciting to you about Amazon and Shopify and just the state of e-com?

Jeremy:

Yeah, so I think the first thing, and so for quick context where this all comes from is every week I go through a public company's p and l and there are 10 K. And then basically tear it down. What would I do if I ran this biz? What does the financials look like? How can we really get this to the next level? All your usual suspects, Lulu Lennon, LVMH, all those types of brands. And I also like to look at the biggest boys and girls in the space, you primarily Shopify and Amazon. And when you look at their 2023 earnings, they did 936 billion in estimated GMV between Amazon and Shopify alone. Same. So you're thinking about all the sales on Amazon, all the sales on Shopify, it's going to cross trillion dollars. Yeah, it's going to officially cross a trillion dollars in consumer spending in those two categories.

And then when you take a bigger step back and you think of the total, at least US market as is percentage of consumer spending, e-commerce in total is about 15%. So still 85 cents out of every dollar is still spent in physical retail. And these two companies are going to do a trillion dollars in total sales on their platforms across. It's very, very different between Amazon one P three P and then also Shopify and all the new areas that they spend and they play in. But Amazon's GMV is growing at 11% year over year. Shopify is growing at 19% year over year. When you just think about the just raw of dollars, how many Brinks trucks need to drive through to a bank for a trillion dollars in GB, which is going to be even more than that this year, it's a great, well, I would say it's a tail of two.

Brett:

How much money can a Brinks truck hold? I think that's something that's worth unpacking. Yeah,

Jeremy:

That's a good Google. I'm not sure I actually,

Brett:

Yeah, I'm going to Google that. How much cash? Yeah, so how many of those would it take? It looks like four to $6 million according to Google if I'm looking at the right thing. So that's a lot of Brinks trucks.

Jeremy:

Yeah, that's a fleet of brink trucks. And so what I would say is I would say it's a tale of two cities of e-commerce growing. It's growing really well and it's growing really fast. I would say maybe where I may take a nuance or a counterpoint to Sean's course, the point is I dunno if it's going to be stable. I actually think it's a really interesting tumultuous time where it's great for e-comm, the trend line is going up. But I think with the current economic conditions and everything that's happened with interest rates now kind of three big bold bets for this year is it's going to be a wider valley between the haves and the haves, not in the spaces. I think a lot of consumers are just kind of going back to their familiar brands. Going back to the places that you see, I dunno if you also look at the earnings of fast food chains over the past six to 12 months, I have not. The fast food is killing it really. Everybody tried to get healthy during Covid, everybody tried to eat better and now everybody wants those kind of indulgences and guilty pleasures,

Brett:

Comfort food, and it's a little more predictable cost to really eating healthy can be more expensive. And so inflation has been a real thing. Maybe save a little bit of money and I'm getting some comfort along the way with some Mickey D's or some Chick-fil-A or something.

Jeremy:

Yeah, exactly. Just not apparently they're going to change their prices more fast than Uber does upcoming, but I think that's a major part. I think the other big piece and coming as someone who wrote a couple of early stage checks over the past three years, VC funding is not coming back. Private equity is not really coming back in the same way and there's a whole complex macroeconomic reason for all of that,

Brett:

Not what they used to be and things like that. And that's not likely not going to return.

Jeremy:

Yeah, the amount of dollars flowing in through those sources and the valuations are just really, really different. And then also unfortunately, we're just seeing a lot of m as and bankruptcies from the people who dig out too far out over their skis over the past couple of years are now those loans are coming to maturity. They need to figure out how to pay back all of that debt. So I'd say for the brands that kept, and I know we're going to kind of dive into good biz, bad biz, but for the brands that really kept the clean, they didn't take on too much debt, they didn't overhire or take on too much inventory and really stayed in that good healthy place. This is a great opportunity where things can really just pop off. You just find that one good channel, that one right product and things really can because go very well because the dollars are coming in, the customers are spending the money.

I would say it's probably the greatest time to be a 20 to $200 million and up. It's probably really hard to be a new business. It'd probably be very unique to stand out now just because ad rates have gotten so competitive. But I will say, I mean I've been very long on this industry. I've spent basically a decade plus in this industry and mostly in the Shopify space. And I think it's only going to get better, but you really need to be a lot smarter. I think the aperture and the window has closed a little bit where it's not everybody can get through anymore. It's like you need to be a lot more precise in how to build a proper e-commerce and physical products business.

Brett:

And I think the stakes for winning are bigger. The overall pie is expanding. It's at UBS at 15% of total retail, but that's only going to increase. But I like the way you said that. Yeah, the valley between the haves and the have nots, it's widening and we'll likely continue. So yeah, I fully agree. I think there's mountains of opportunities this year both for e-commerce brands, for agencies, for those that support the E-com space, but some challenges too. So one thing that's been interesting, I've seen this trend and I'm curious what your perspective has been, but there was this grow at all costs during the height of covid and then there was a we're figuring out ship again and another supply chain issues. We're just figuring it out, all these other things. There is definitely a renewed interest in just profitability, e-commerce companies saying we need growth, we need marketing, we need to customer acquisition, but we just got to be profitable and there's definitely this ruthless quest to be profitable. I'll fire my mom to be profitable, whatever. That's the sense I'm getting from e-commerce brands and I think that's healthy. That's the way that the industry needs to go.

Jeremy:

And I think the interesting thing, because I know you and I have been from the pre 20 18, 20 19 super boom. That's what this game has always been about. It's always been about profitable growth. And I would say for sure we had a temporary people move the goalposts a little bit and we've kind of returned back to normal, but the goal has always been profitable growth. And I think looking through, I've looked through about 31 public company brands and that's every valuation we can talk about price to earnings ratio, PE ratios, we can talk about revenue multiples, everyone on Wall Street is just how much growth do you have and is that growth profitable? And the past couple of years, they would really, if you're not that profitable, okay, we'll give you a little leeway now. It is just no mercy. You either are profitable or you are not. And then are you growing and how fast are you growing? And everyone has also returns. You're hearing people talk about Warren Buffet a lot more recently than a couple of years ago instead of people on Twitter talking about Bitcoin as per financial advice and how much future cash is this business going to throw?

Brett:

I'm so glad we're moving away from Bitcoin to more buffet. We need more buffet, less Bitcoin talk.

Jeremy:

I feel like it's a 10 year cycle where everybody moves away from buffet, they forget the good fundamentals and they come back and boring as possible.

Brett:

All we need is this crypto. That's how we'll become.

Jeremy:

But yeah, and I think this is probably a good way to think about, and I think more e-comm operators need to think this way is your business is worth the amount of cash it throws off at the end of the day after all of your expenses. I think a really important piece there is you should think like an investor, you should do the analysis every quarter, every year. How much is that cash throwing off? How much is that worth? And then do your own analysis of what we call it discounted cashflow. But you can do it personally of like, Hey, I made a million dollars in net income this year. Should I put that back into the business? Should I take half a million dollars and go on a crazy vacation, buy a sports car, put a down payment on a home as the owner of the business that you are the biggest investor in it. And so thinking through that and thinking through how you want to operate your money, usually operating cash from your business is really important instead of just always grow, always grow, always grow. And then that's also what will determine the value of your business when you exit. Because the bigger that pile of money is, the more someone else is willing to give you their pile of money to take on the future cashflow from your

Brett:

Business. Love it. So we're going to unpack here in a minute. Businesses we buy versus business, we wouldn't, it's kind of like the hot or not I guess, of businesses. And so we make that analysis. But before we do that though, you've looked at so many companies and you've been in the VC space and private equity peeps, as do I, let's set some benchmarks for a healthy, profitable, growing e-comm business. What should we look at in general in terms of constructing a p and l? Now, obviously on a podcast, I'm going to go every single line item of p and l. That would be a little bit boring, but from a larger context, how do we construct a healthy p and l for e-comm?

Jeremy:

Yeah, so I'm going to keep it super high level and this is also actually how public companies have to report their p and l. So it's probably a good practice to start doing the fundamentals. Now obviously you don't go through gap accounting and pay E and y $500,000 to your books this year, but just really simply what you should be reviewing every month, if not even more frequently, definitely every quarter, every year, start with your revenue. How much total net sales did the business bring in? Then what are your cost of goods sold to get to gross profit? Hope everybody who's listening to this podcast, super familiar with that part, really comfortable. How much should we make? How much are we keeping after what we outweighed to buy the product? Then from there, you want to break out opex. Now I think this is the trickiest part, and I've seen after analyzing close to 300 pcom p and ls over the past couple of years where this just goes all over the place. So I'm going to give you Amazon structure because if it's good enough for Amazon, it's probably good enough for your

Brett:

Biz, good enough for Uncle Jeff, probably good enough for us.

Jeremy:

Right? So marketing and sales, that should be pretty straightforward. What are you spending to get people to buy your product then your GNA, so your rent, your team

Brett:

Administrative? Yeah,

Jeremy:

Just all of the backend stuff to keep the business going, your fulfillment and supply chain, and then if you have it, your r and d and why it's super important to break those four key components out. And what I see so much of the time is people will bundle in sg and a or they'll bundle in fulfillment into GNA as well is really all an e-com business is how much around money do I spend on marketing to get someone to buy something and how much does it cost me to make it and get it? And you really want to break those two things out because no offense to all the three pls and people who fulfill, but you are almost always losing money in that part of your business. And then really where the most cash is probably going to come out of your business is in marketing and sales.

And so there's a huge fluctuation, and I'm sure you probably know better than I do, but depending on where a brand is in their growth curve and how much they want to grow, that is really going to be the biggest lever and the biggest place where you push or pull back. Whereas you may not, may not love your three PL and they may be charging you 15% of your revenue to ship out a product, but you're not pulling that back tomorrow or you're not pulling that back next week. And so you really need to understand where are my softer and where are my harder expenses? Because at the end of the day, everything that I see is that is what makes or breaks the profitability of an e-commerce

Brett:

Company. I know every E-comm brand is going to be a little bit different. And we have a lot of visibility obviously, into the marketing and advertising spend with our clients as an agency. And often that's 25, 30% of revenue that's going right back into marketing and advertising. I know it varies for every e-comm brand. What are some benchmarks from your perspective, where should these percentages be with the caveat that it could be different a little bit from business to business, but what are the benchmarks?

Jeremy:

Yeah, so I think this is a really interesting, especially when I was, earlier in my career, there's always seemed to be words of wisdom that I always ask like, Hey, where did you get that math from? And it was just always, this is how it is. And now I've actually pulled enough data to know it kind of reverts back to this

Brett:

Consistent, it's how it's, yeah,

Jeremy:

Yeah. So I would say if you want to be a top tier brand that can really grow and scale and get to significant level 50, 200 billions of dollars in revenue, you want to target about a 50 to 60% gross margin. Now, I've seen some super successful brands that can dip down into the 30 40% and then some crazy high brands that are up in the 80, 70, 80%

Brett:

Sales. Yeah, 50 to 60% gross

Jeremy:

Margin. Yeah, so, so once you get to your gross margin, I think that's the most important determinant for your brand because that will determine your entire strategy. And what's really interesting also is it's kind just a function of math. If you only have 40% of your revenue after your cogs to spend, you're probably not going to spend as much on marketing as if you were spend percent gross percent on

Brett:

Marketing at that point, right? Then you

Jeremy:

Yeah, I mean you can

Brett:

Can't, but it's, yeah,

Jeremy:

Yeah, right. It's much tougher to spend 30% of your marketing at that level versus if you're an 80% gross margin brand, you can spend 30% and you still have 50% of your revenue to go spend on fulfillment operations, sg a. And so it really is interesting how it shifts and changes. I would say there's usually what I would call the pop dip and then rise on sg a. So right, your team, really, really high growth top tier brands can usually get to about 10 million on five people. I haven't really seen it on fewer. There are some brands who can do it on two or three, but that's truly special unicorn edge case. I'd say usually around 10 million in gmv, you're probably at maybe five people with a bunch of agencies and other freelance resources. And so your sg a can be super, super low. A lot of super high growth brands that I see their sg a is around, especially up into that 10 20 million in GMB, usually about 5% of their revenue now that will then grow over time.

So as you get to 20, 50, a hundred million, you will have to hire a lot more people. And then when you go to a public scale, it's usually somewhere around 50 to 20% unless you're Warby Parker and Allbirds and then you're at 40 or 50% and you're not making any net income. So that's a super important component. I would say fulfillment is usually around 10 to 15% of revenue. And this is the one area that I think is super important to break out from your sg and a of how can you whittle that down because every percentage point there could be going to marketing, could be going to bottom line, could be going to all these other areas. And I dunno, from what I've seen economies of scale is nobody's really figured out economies of scale and fulfillment for e-commerce yet. And so I think that's another major component.

And then we're always nets down to, and what's to me the most interesting is a lot of the retail OGs and people who are really successful building malls, physical brick and mortar retail presences always said your net income is going to net out at 10 to 15% of your revenue. And it holds true. The DTC darlings, the retail heavy brands, the hybrids, I mean it all will fluctuate, but you kind of always net out at 10 to 15% of every dollar you make in top line nets out as net income. And it's a really interesting trend and also makes it it's, that's probably the best benchmark. Everything in the middle, your gross margins, your opex is going to fluctuate based on your business and your dynamics, but you kind of always want to net out at that 10 to 15% in net income if you want to be high, if you want to take out more cash out of the business, raise it. If you're comfortable with growth, you can lower it. But it really seems to be that words of wisdom that really does always net out from

Brett:

The data. Got it. And yeah, maybe if you are in the agency world, we're generally seeing the high teens to say 24%, that window is what a lot of agencies shoot for and PE groups that we know they specialize in agencies, that's kind of what they look for. But it's still not far off from what you just said, but the idea there is if you take a higher percentage of profits than your are likely pulling away from something that's going to impact future growth. So you're pulling away from marketing or sales or RD or something to get to that higher margin. Are you seeing many of the e-com rockstar businesses that are hitting 20% net income or that's pretty rare?

Jeremy:

That's very rare. And I actually think the interesting thing that I'm also seeing and hearing a little bit of through the rumor mill is a lot of financial companies don't want you to be that high because actually

Brett:

It's not hitting the accelerator hard enough. It means you're not advertising enough.

Jeremy:

Yeah, I mean I think reason I was looking at this as a percentages and a pie is you got to take something from somewhere else to put it in another pocket. And when you think about an e-comm business, like your cogs and your fulfillment costs are fixed isn't the proper accounting word, but they're a lot harder to move. You buy your product, you commit to those prices, you ship it, you're kind of committed to those things. So really when most brands want to take more profit out of the business, they're cutting their marketing or they're cutting their GNA, which is team or their variable marketing spend, which is almost always an investment in growth. I will say the one caveat for the past couple of years is a lot of people just over hire and just brought on too many people and you're seeing a lot, unfortunately the layoffs are pretty painful and tough, but also Shopify got dragged in the markets for their rounds and they reduced their SG a by 31% year of year and had no meaningful impact on their business. And so I think that's also a little bit of market dynamics and corrections of people got a little too high on the hog in 20 20, 20 21, and now we just need to get back to everybody getting in shape and getting

Brett:

Fit. And I think it is just healthy, and this is something that every business needs. We've got these benchmarks and we're going to ruthlessly attack those. So right sizing, I mean it was easy for e-comm businesses and agencies. We all went through this period. Shopify did it right of just adding too many, getting a headcount way too high for what you really needed. And so the right sizing is painful but necessary for sure. So awesome, man. So love that. Not everybody likes to talk about a p and l, but come on, that's poetry in motion, baby. When you've got a good p and l for your business, you're hitting that 10 to 15% net income, you're growing. That's a beautiful business and it's attractive if you want to sell it or if you just want to cashflow it, you're likely really good. So let's do it, man. Let's kind of buy this business. Would we buy this business? Would we not buy this business? Who's kind of first on the list for us to break down?

Jeremy:

So my favorite one that I looked at and kind of actually where I started this whole journey was Crocs. And Croc is such a

Brett:

Fascinating, it's such an odd resurgence, such an odd resurgence post like yeah, they're ugly, but I love it and it makes me feel good, and so I'm going to wear it. And I love this trend. It's awesome.

Jeremy:

Yeah, yeah, I mean they were probably too early to the comfort economy and then yeah, COVID was a really good bump for them. So just a quick stats on Crocs, they're currently training $124 a share. They have a market cap of 7.5 billion, and when you look at their revenue and net income, they're trading at essentially two times their revenue and 9.7 times their, what's called the PE ratio, which is basically just what is their net income, what is their market cap divided by their net income, which is 9.7 times. Why I always like to look at this and I look at both SaaS and eCom businesses is really important is I feel like too many headlines recently have been this company traded at X on their revenue

Brett:

Or 30 x earnings or 15 x revenue or something. And it's like, yeah, that should only apply to a few business categories, not eCom.

Jeremy:

And I think the difference is if you're an 80% gross margin business and you have high recurring revenue, investors will give you the leeway of saying, okay, this will be a multiple of revenue versus we just talked about it in e-comm business. There's all of these other expenses that are pretty tied to the business. So I think a really important level set there is to always look at what are the PE ratios of public eCom companies, because that's actually the determinant that the financial players are using to get to whatever that market cap should be. But CROSS is a really strong business. They're doing 3.9 billion in revenue in 2023. They have 1.7 billion in cogs, so they're at about a 56% gross margin, and they did about 2.2 billion in gross profits. They have an SGA of 1.1 billion, which puts them at about 30% of their revenue, which they actually are at 20% net income.

So when you think about that, it's the silly brand that everybody loves to make fun of, but they really are building a meaningful business. And every year, because I've been posting about them for a couple years now, every year everybody's like, oh, it's just a covid fad. They'll slow down. They're growing just as fast as they did before Covid, and they actually have this brilliant business model, which I call ludicrous stunt collabs. So I don't know if everybody remembers the Balenciaga Crock from a couple of years ago, 2022, they did over 66 collabs with different celebrities and different huge other brands like Hello Kitty Crocs and all these other things. They're doubling down. They did even more than that in 2023. And I think it's also just a really good lesson in creative marketing as well is they make plastic clogs that our guests are super comfy. I don't own a pair, but I have, the guests are super comfy, but really,

Brett:

I owned a pair in forever, but they are comfortable.

Jeremy:

Okay, yeah. Everyone I know owns 'em. Like I am the outlier in my social network for not having a pair of Crocs. But yeah, I think it's a really compelling and really interesting business case where I think the other really important part is they're a traditional legacy retail brand that then also had a kind of renaissance of e-commerce, and now the two are really blending the business model. They've found a good way to blend those business models well together. I think the other thing that I really want to make sure this little period ends is this whole D two C or dye mania of just, it has to be D two C, we have to go to a hundred million, 500 million, whatever direct to consumer. No, if you make a product, your job is to sell that product in as many channels as possible through different vehicles. Some of those will be owned, some of those will be rented, some of those will be partnered, and I think they're one of the best examples of just really running the playbook well and always having something fresh. Really, they don't have that many products. Yes, they've extended in some other categories, but to me that's a really, really strong business where it's not a massive product catalog. They don't have 15,000, 20,000 skews, but they're selling in multiple places. Their strategy on

Brett:

Amazon, I wasn't sure, but they're selling on Amazon and they've got a pretty awesome Amazon store.

Jeremy:

I think that was one of their, I think that was a covid, we need to get on Amazon because we have to shut our physical retail down and now they don't break out their Amazon and their earnings, but I would assume Amazon is a meaningful part of their business now and their digital presence between D two C and Amazon is a bit of a flywheel that also then fuels their retail businesses.

Brett:

You get the Hello Kitty collab, the NASCAR Crocs, you got other stuff that I don't even understand what I'm looking at.

Jeremy:

And I think that's also part of the brilliance of the strategy is it's the same product, but the designs are bringing in different customers where I'm going to go on a limb and assume that the Hello Kitty crowd's not the same as a NASCAR crowd. People were probably buying their NASCAR product, probably aren't buying their Hello Kitty product and vice versa. And I think that's a really brilliant design way to acquire more customers. Now I'd say on the flip side, let's take a brilliant market, buy

Brett:

More right now maybe if I'm a NASCAR fan and I've got a daughter, I'm going to buy her Hello Kitty. Or there's the Pixar integration here on some of this, like the Woody Crock here from Toy Story. Yeah, so just brilliant.

Jeremy:

I would say on the flip side, a different example of brilliant marketing use case that didn't work out of not buying a biz would be solo solo brands. So I know everybody loves to beat up on them. They had a pretty tough quarter. I think the more important piece here is really diving into why that business didn't work. So for anyone who isn't familiar, solo Brands is essentially a portfolio company of four different D two C companies. The largest one is Solo Stove, so this is kind of basically the Yeti of fire pits. It's a portable fire pit, super high end targeting the outdoorsy people who want to do Campfires Grill marshmallows. They acquired Chub's, the short shorts company, huge fashion like Shopify 1.0 D two C Darling. Then they also acquired oru Kayak and Aisle Paddleboard. So very much trying to live the outdoor lifestyle, big products people buy.

I think here's my two main problems with it. First Shies makes no sense in that product portfolio. I'm not the customer, so I'll take this with a grain of salt, but someone who bought, I can't just imagine someone going camping, bringing their solo stove and their oral kayak while wearing their American flag, overall short shorts from Chubby. I'm struggling to see that being the same customer base, but I think the other bigger component is we have to stop shipping heavy stuff. It just doesn't make sense. They're an unprofitable business. They actually had a pretty painful year over year net loss and then obviously bring them up of the whole Snoop Do thing. I think it was brilliant marketing. I don't think it was the right strategy at the right time.

Brett:

Yeah, I mean that whole, I'm giving up smoke from Snoop Dogg. Brilliant. I think the execution was really interesting as well. It didn't work maybe for a few reasons, but yeah, quick note on that. I met one of the founders of solo solo stove, brilliant guy, just awesome guy. I know a couple of founders from Chubby's, also, brilliant guys, really cool brands. But yeah, there's been some challenges and maybe some missteps along the way and everybody does sort of love to hate on him, which probably isn't totally fair. But to your point, really good lessons here as we unpack them. And I think, yeah, to your point, I love Chubby's and Preston Rutherford's a friend. Actually I think you and I were commenting on one of his LinkedIn posts. Yeah,

Jeremy:

He's great.

Brett:

He's so good. He is one. He was on the pod recently. So if you're listening and have not listened to the Preston Rutherford podcast episode, you got to go do that. I'm not a Chubby's customer either, even though I got mad respect for them and love it, but there's going to be some crossover there, but yet it's not just this brilliant marriage of all chub's. Customers buy stoves or stove people buy chubby. It feels like kind of a different crowd.

Jeremy:

And so I think because I completely agree with you, all of those are great brands. All of those should be doing much more successful than they should. I don't mean to, I think Chubby should be divested and run as an independent apparel brand or sold to a different apparel brand and will be incredibly successful. And it's almost one of those things of if you set it free, it will do better. And then I think more of the point of where I think the midst of the original strategy was is we're going to aggregate a bunch of DDC brands that are kind of similar and try to run that as a big portfolio versus really there are three large heavy high A OV physical products that outdoors people will buy and a fashion retail apparel brand. And I think

Brett:

Which wildly different when you look at it like connection of D two C and maybe people that like to go outside, okay,

Jeremy:

And we're going to kind of make it work together. Versus Chubby's is a true D two C brand that should be in Appar, that should be in physical retail, a nine figure brand. They're at the scale in size where there's only so many dollars you can torch on meta before you have to move into retail. And then I think the other brands need to just be retail brands, the physical expense to ship. If you buy Brett and Jeremy buy a solo stove and an or Kai, you're spending 60, 80, a hundred dollars to ship something that heavy to a customer all over the country and all over the world. That's where you want to piggyback off of the retail supply chain infrastructure because it was literally built to do that. There are REI, home Depot, these companies ship much heavier things already to their physical locations, and so it shouldn't really be this D two C as an innovative disruptive channel, but really those are retail brands that will probably do much more successful and be much more profitable in a retail channel. But it feels like they're clinging to this. We have to be D two C

Brett:

Thesis. Got it. Your fix for solo stove is we divest Chubbies and it appears actually chubby is profitable, successful, all those things, but let it live and breathe and work on its own. And then we're keeping solo stove and or kayaks and stuff. We're keeping those together or are we splitting those up potentially as well?

Jeremy:

Yeah, I don't know enough about or root kayak and the aisle, but to me those all make sense together. To me, those are all the millennial REI customers. I'm going to buy my solo, so go on my camping trip or we're going to go paddle boarding or kayaking. And to me, those all make sense that urban millennial who wants to get out of the city kind of branding there, I don't know enough about the specific entities, but to me that makes more sense. And then solo brands should be going all after that customer versus let chubby, maybe there's another fund or another retailer that makes sense to have that brand live under its umbrella, but I also assume it could probably, their founders have also been amazing. I was at an event last year where their founder shared their p and l right before they exit up until where they exited. And it was a growing profitable

Brett:

Kyle as well. Kyle, that's legend as

Jeremy:

Yeah. So he presented on the main stage of a conference that I was organizing and retained.

Brett:

That's where I met him in.

Jeremy:

Yeah, Brett also dropped a lot of knowledge on YouTube ads at that conference as well. But to me and Wall Street, it's not a unique appear because Wall Street is taking the stance as well as it's not by that company. I think there are too many of these, like D two C aggregator is not the right word. It's not raio that try to buy 50, but a brands is in a similar boat where they bought three apparel brands and then Culture Kings was your retailer and somebody, everybody was just trying to aggregate revenue to just get to the size to go public. And I think a lot of companies are now unwinding that strategy and just going out really mastering who are our customers, what can we get to buy them to buy more of from us and really focus on that versus this kind of like, I call it spreadsheet math. We're really good at this, so let's just add this new market and that will increase our percentages by X and we'll be a big brand really staying true, really staying focused because the super successful brands are really nailing that really well and just have the patience to let that momentum build and that revenue and those profits compound over

Brett:

Time. And when you're just bolting on ebitda, when you're just buying revenue and trying to piece it together with kind of a loose association, that's not a recipe for synergy and true integration and ultimate long-term success. So yeah, I really like that. Awesome. Any other thoughts on how you would fix solo?

Jeremy:

It's a good question. I think honestly it's probably cut costs and ride it out as high as outdoor and home and goods rose, it fell and it's really just a demand pull forward problem. I don't think there's anything wrong with their business. I don't think that people are going to stop going product

Brett:

Sound from what I hear, products are great.

Jeremy:

Yeah, I don't know anything bad about them. The whole snoop thing generate a lot of buzz and that will always get a lot of thought boys to give their opinions on it. But I think the core of the business is really strong. It just needs to literally ride out the winter. The crazy idea that I have is they should actually go raise more money or go private and scoop up all of the other more struggling outdoor brands because I think it's that classic Warren Buffett we're going to talk about a bunch of times today. It's cost like Warren Buffet, right? Of when others are fearful, be greedy, and when others are greedy, be fearful. If outdoor is really struggling, could someone private or a larger company buy solo brands and acquire all of the other relevant brands right up the storm for two years, three years maybe?

And then you come out of it the other side, you own the entire category. And going back to the reason why I think they should divest Chubbies is if you have seven or eight products that one core customer buys, you could be Home Depot's largest outdoor recreational supplier or someone like that where it's just, it could be six different names, but you're still buying one end product that's really difficult to do. And like I say that pretty easily, it's one of the most complicated strategies to execute and it's actually one of the highest failure rates. But that would be my last crazy out of the box idea of where solo brands could go if they had the resources. And I actually think there's a lot of smaller examples of that across many different industries in e-comm right now where there are 400 lugging brands out there, there probably don't need to be 400 lugging brands, but a lugging brand can maybe get into what's the workout thing that they use or what's the beauty and cosmetics and really start to master what's that one core customer, what's our core competency and figure out that right ecosystem.

If everyone is struggling, I think a lot of consolidation will solve a lot of those problems.

Brett:

Consolidation is definitely going to happen. We're seeing it with D two C brands with agencies as well. One of the things you talked about is understanding who is our customer, what do they buy? How do we then assemble this collection of brands that are and products are going to meet their needs? And you made a post on LinkedIn. I'm just going to encourage everybody. You got to follow Jeremy on LinkedIn. He's awesome there. But one of my favorite posts recently that you, I'm just going to read it because this is powerful. You said the best businesses stalk their customers don't break laws. That's an important caveat, but you need to be in their social feeds following what they fall consuming, what they consume. You need to be in their heads more deeply than they are, do this over and over again across the entire customer base. That's when you'll have the algorithm down. That's the only way to know what they want before they do. That's going to set you apart for everybody else. Everything else is clone, which I love that. And so any other things you want to riff on there? But I think that, and that applies to the D two C brands that applies to agencies, that applies to software companies, obsess about your customer and stalk them, know them inside and out.

Jeremy:

So for anyone, I guess I should start all my statements on things now is this is not financial legal tax advice. Don't break any laws. I was never here. But yeah, this basically came from back in my time at Lumi, which was basically Kim Kardashian's favorite selfie case. So our core ICP was 18 to 34-year-old women who wanted to basically look nicer when they took photos because it was basically a phone case, light rails on either side. It made you look really beautiful. It was basically a photography level spotlight on your face or on anything you were taking a photo of when you went out in any dark scenario for everyone who isn't watching this live, I am a white guy bald with a beer. So I couldn't have been farther away from that demo if possible. Actually most of my career I found most success marketing and selling products that I don't buy and that I also don't fit the core customer base of. And so when I got asked like, Hey, how are we going to sell this to more women? I was like, cool. I don't know. So I mean it's a fun way to basically say do deep, deep customer research, I think

Brett:

Mill, right? Because you can't just rely on your, oh yeah, I know because it's me. You have to get in and know the customer and then follow the fundamentals and actually probably made you a better

Jeremy:

Marketer. Yeah, it really did. I think the important piece now that social media is just, everyone has it and it's everywhere and every brand has some relation to it is I think when most people think of customer research, they think of surveys or they think of pulling data. And really what I found to be the most successful is I would go spend hours reading people's Instagram posts and I would go look at their profiles to see what they posted. It was a little bit different. I was trying to look at what photos they take to understand how they were using the product. But what I actually discovered in doing that was I actually understood what were their interests, what were their passions. Great salespeople will always say, I know what my clients do on a Friday night. And I think that having that level as a marketer at scale is so important because from anything from your messaging, your positioning, we invented new products around a lot of what we did and what we found out there.

It's so easy. All it just takes is effort. And now anytime I look at a new brand, the first two things that I do is I go look through the reviews and then I go look through their social media and what people are saying and what people are posting and then go dig into some of those people because it's the best I found. At least it's the best way to truly understand what the person's actually like and what the person's actually interested in. And then after a certain number of hours, you just do it enough that it's like, okay, this is our entire customer base. And I mean we had hundreds of thousands of customers at Lumi and we get to profile level and personas. This is what the customers like, this is what they do, this is how they talk. And then a lot of the best marketing I've ever done is copying and pasting customer quotes and then putting in ads, putting in emails, putting in all those other components.

Brett:

Yeah, yeah. Did a podcast with the founder of Tushy and she was talking about such a great Mickey aal, such a great brand bidets that you attached to the toilet or whatever. And so some of her best marketing headlines and stuff were just lines taken from somebody. And so one was like tushy is eye candy and butt bliss. So it such a weird line, but it's like it looks beautiful and butts bit happier, whatever. Some of those lines you may not think of but your customers are and that can become your best ads. And so love that strategy, stalk your customers, but don't literally stalk them. As we wrap up and we're just about out of time, but you also had a really, really great post. I think it's worth highlighting a little bit and then people can dig in and look online a little bit closer, but talk to me about LVMH potentially going to be the first trillion dollar product company. Who are they? What do they do? What makes them so special?

Jeremy:

Yeah, so for anyone who isn't familiar, LVMH is the ultimate luxury company. They own 75 different, what they call luxury houses are essentially just brands. And most of them, Louis Vuitton Moat and Hennessy, they bought Tiffany's the famous New York jeweler. They've also bought Fenty by Rihanna, her beauty and cosmetics brand. They're basically the luxury aggregator really. Actually they are over 50 to 80 years. They've basically just rolled up 75 different luxury companies and they've just mastered this playbook because I don't buy any of these products, so I can't really speak to it, but my assumption is they have a very, very clearly defined ICP. They really know who's going to buy their business or buy their products and they're doing 80 billion in revenue. It's really hard to really, I started when these numbers started getting so big, I started like a country's GDPs, their GDP. If LVM H was a country, they would be bigger than Uzbekistan is the 72nd largest country in the world, which feels a little silly

Brett:

And gross margin, 86 billion in revenue on 69% gross, but 69% gross margins. Insane.

Jeremy:

Yeah, absolutely insane. Their net income, when I looked at it, their net income was more than I think 70 or 80% of all the other companies we analyzed last year combined. And so I think the really important lessons here is one, they have a really simple, yet hard to execute business model of they know exactly the type of company that they want to buy. They wait for it to get a certain size, they acquire it and then they just plug it into their machines and it's really aspirational. Also, they just traded a hundred billion dollars. So when you think about their growth rate, when you think about how much profit they kick off and when you think about they truly are playing the compounding game of just weight every year, make more sales, drive more growth, it is very possible that within the next decade to 15 years, they will be a trillion dollar company.

Anyway, the craziest thing is I actually don't think they need to acquire that many more brands. Maybe in that 10 to 15 years they'll be at 78, 82 maybe, but they've done a really, really good job of just consistently growing. And they have about six core categories of spirits, apparel, jewelry, I think they have an other category and then luggage and travel and accessories. And they just acquire a couple brands in all of those spaces, really run them well and then just let them go. I think the other really important piece where it's really hard coming from our end of the space where we're constantly disrupting and we're constantly trying to challenge people is they have a legacy to protect. So they have an incredible focus and I think it's so easy to get wrapped up in, we're doing this today and that looks really shiny and I have worst shiny object syndrome, but the greatest lesson I took from that is just wait 20 years, literally just do the one thing you're doing really, really well.

Let it compound, let it grow. I think they really take that approach really well to everything that they do. They're in luxury. So yes, they can really support. I mean, I don't know any other company that supports 69% gross margin at that scale or even really at most any scale, which you could past like 50, a hundred million in sales. But I think they've also just done a really great job of building the layers of their house brick by brick, layer by layer and just being very patient with it. I know for a bunch of entrepreneurs who are like, I need to hit 50% growth next month, that is the worst thing to leave you with. Absolutely. But I think really not getting distracted by the side quests, just really focusing on that core thing and sticking with it for a long period of time because there is really my buffet quote number three, there is no greater value than compounding growth. And just really having the consistency in the patients to stay on that course is why I think they're not attainable, but it's really something that every brand should go study look at and think about how they can take it away for their brand,

Brett:

That focus and longer time horizon, the patience that's there. Because if you're trying to ruthlessly hit a profit number or a revenue number, you're going to be really tempted to discount and do some things that have a really short-term, great short-term payoff, but a long-term net negative for the brand. And that's the type of stuff that LVMH and their premium brands don't do. And of course we would all look at that and say, well, of course they sell luxury items, easy for them. No, no, no. It's simple, but it's not easy. They are focused and they are just, they're cutting out everything else and they know who their buyer is and they're not worried as much about short-term profits as they are protecting and building the brands over the long haul. So really, really good man. So as people listen to this and like, dang, I want some more Jeremy Horowitz in my life. I need to follow him on the socials, I need to get on his email list. How can people connect with you?

Jeremy:

Yeah, definitely. So if this was helpful, if you want to hear more of my crazy thoughts and ideas and then hopefully some helpful macro analysis of the space, just follow me on LinkedIn, join the 20,000 other e-comm heads who decide that my crazy ideas are worth reading every day. I do try to post helpful stuff and tips as well. Jeremy Horowitz, H-O-R-O-W-I-T-Z. And then if you want to get the weekly teardowns where we do go through public company p and ls, then out of the box growth strategy as on how we would three x five x, 10 x our money running those brands, just go to let's buy a biz BIZ xyz and subscribe to the newsletter where you'll get all 32 p and ls that we've analyzed so far. And you can look through all their businesses, see what all their revenue costs of goods sold, all those other components are, so you can better understand what your p and l could look like.

Brett:

You'll be a better operator, better business mind and thinker if you get on Jeremy's newsletter. And Jeremy, man, love hanging out with you. You are a beacon of truth in a sea of craziness. You speak the truth on business and D two C growth and p and ls, and I love what you're doing. So keep it up and thanks for coming on the show. And yeah, dude, I'm smelling like round. Is this the third podcast you've been on at least two? So anyway, next round, we'll definitely schedule it here in the not too distant future. So thanks for coming on. Super fun.

Jeremy:

Yeah, appreciate it as always. Always have a great time, Brett.

Brett:

Awesome. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you what would like to hear more of on the show. And if you haven't done it so far, we'd love that review on iTunes. That's my big ask for you. Review it, share it with someone else that you think could use this. And with that, until next time, thank you.

‍

‍

‍

Episode 275
:
Jeff Cohen - Amazon

Amazon Ads News & Trends with Jeff Cohen of Amazon

No one is a better fit to serve as an Amazon Ads evangelist than my friend, Jeff Cohen.

‍

Jeff is a founding member of Seller Labs and has been keynoting, exhibiting, and attending Amazon events for the last decade.

‍

If you’ve been to an Amazon event, you’ve probably seen Jeff. Now, he’s serving as the official Amazon Ads Tech Evangelist.

‍

I wanted Jeff to join the pod to talk about what’s new and trending with Amazon Ads. 

‍

This is important even if you’re not selling on Amazon. 

‍

Amazon is now the 3rd largest digital ad platform behind Google and Facebook. And it’s growing rapidly.

‍

Here’s a look at what we cover:

  • How vertical videos are improving shopping experiences and making ad performance better
  • What is the new integration with Facebook, and what it means for shoppers
  • How Sponsored TV ads are democratizing TV advertising and utilizing Amazon’s rich buyer signals
  • Prime Video Ads and what they could mean for your brand (and when to consider running them)
  • Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) what is it, how and when to use it to unlock new actionable insights about your business and advertising effectiveness
  • Plus more!

___

Chapters: 

(00:00) Introduction 

(07:54) Vertical Video for Sponsored Brand Video

(15:43) Amazon’s Facebook Integration 

(19:27) Prime Video Ads and Sponsored TV

(31:33) Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) 

(39:22) AI’s Role In Amazon Advertising 

(42:15) The Importance of Your Feedback

(43:46) Outro 

__

‍

Show Notes: 

__

‍

Connect With Brett: 

‍

__

‍

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

‍

__

‍

Other episodes you might enjoy: 

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

__

Transcript:

Jeff:

Because every time you advertise, you're making an investment in yourself and your product and your brand, and you want to be gaining some insights from that so that you can learn, you can iterate, and then you can reinvest.

Brett:

Well. Hello and welcome to another edition of the e-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today is a first for the e-Commerce Evolution podcast. We have someone directly from Amazon joining us on the pod, and I am absolutely thrilled. This is actually a gentleman that I've known for a long time. We go way, way back from his entrepreneurial days and now he is at Amazon and Gee's, a close Amazon ad partner. I've got to visit some Amazon offices and so love our partnership with Amazon and thrilled to be diving into some trends, some new things, some stuff you need to know about as it pertains to Amazon and Amazon advertising. And so my guest today is Jeff Cohen, and you may know him from Seller Labs. If you went to any Amazon show, any Amazon conference, you saw Jeff. Jeff was there, and so really appreciate taking the time. Jeff, welcome to the show and how's it going? Oh,

Jeff:

I'm doing fantastic. It's obviously great to be on the podcast with you. We have known each other for a long time. We're both fellow Missourian. Yes, we have those extra bonding moments and I think ultimately I've always appreciated everything you've done for the community. We've kind of grew up in two different slight areas of this overall community of Amazon, but we definitely get to run into each other here and there, and it's been great to see the growth of your business over all these years as well. So thanks for having me.

Brett:

It's cool, man. Yeah, really appreciate saying that. And yeah, we're big fans of Seller labs and cool to watch that evolution and so kind talk about that, Jeff. So you're an entrepreneur, founder, owner of Seller Labs, but now you're working with Amazon. So tell us what that connection is like and tell us the story that kind of made that all happen. Yeah,

Jeff:

I guess technically I was a founding member of the company. I wasn't the actual founders. That gets kind of weird at times, but I like to be truthful. I think when it came down to it, somebody recruited me to try to leave seller labs and I made a joke with her and I said something like The only job I'd ever take is if Amazon would hire me to be an evangelist because that's what I already do. I run around and I talk about how great it's to be on Amazon to sell on Amazon. So I liked to joke. So then she came back and she was like, Hey, this position's actually available. And I applied and was hired, and I like to say I didn't come to Amazon and drink the Kool-Aid. I was drinking the Amazon. If you followed me for any length of time, you'd known that I've been strong advocate of Amazon and the community behind sellers and supporting sellers for the last eight to 10 years.

And so it's great to kind of be at Amazon representing all of the partners that I worked with who were all of my competitors. And so today I work with agencies like yours, tech providers, everybody within the Amazon partner ads partner system to really understand how to integrate in with Amazon, where priorities should be, where Amazon is putting their investments and maybe where advertisers should think of putting their investments. So it's really cool. It's been kind of an interesting journey. Amazon is definitely a more entrepreneurial company than you would think for the size that it's so, it's a great place, it's a great place for entrepreneurs to be.

Brett:

Yeah, it probably does not feel like a foreign space foreign entrepreneur, and I think Amazon treats their people like, Hey, you're owning this thing, and so operate like an entrepreneur would. And so that's funny. So you were talking to this recruiter, so you didn't know the position existed. You were just making up like, Hey, if Amazon needed an evangelist, I could do that. And then turns out that actually existed.

Jeff:

Yeah, I mean, you come from the SEO world, and so I had always Danny Sullivan, Matt Cutz, those are the people from the Google world that I always looked up to, and I always wondered, why doesn't Amazon have somebody like that? And so that was my vision when coming here was that's who I could be and that's how I could serve the community and what I strive for every day. I mean, I take it really as a responsibility because I know that the community wants representation at Amazon and they do have ways of being heard, and I know that they consider me as another way of hearing through things like this as well as being heard through the feedback that I get.

Brett:

That's awesome, man. Yeah, I can totally vouch for you that you've been preaching and evangelizing for Amazon for going on a decade now. And I agree with you. I mean, there's never really been a platform. There's never been a place for merchants to sell their wares and to build a business, and you may know off the top of your head, but the number of millionaires and the support that Amazon has given to brands, it's a pretty phenomenal opportunity. You have to approach it the right way, and there are challenges there and things like that, but it is an unbelievable

Jeff:

Opportunity. I mean, listen, it's not a golden ticket, but for the people that do it the right way and build upon it, you and I have seen the success stories over the years of the companies just like my buddy Mike Brown over at Death Wish Coffee when I met him, he was just an average guy. He's still an average guy, but he was just an average guy running a small business and now he's got worldwide distribution his products. So there's cool stories like that within the s and b world that we hear about all the time, and I think it's really an awesome opportunity for people that have great products and want to build brands. And I think that's really what you need to be successful on Amazon today. That's the

Brett:

Key one. That's the key building brands and coming up on the pod, actually interviewing one of the founders of Simple Modern, which just a phenomenal story and really they launched on Amazon, so they are great. It's a great brand. They've really built it over the years, but now I think I heard somewhere in we'll find out on the podcast, but they sell more drinkware than almost anybody else on the planet, which is crazy. That's cool. Then you got Anchor. So if I'm buying a replacement charger for my iPhone or MacBook or something like that, if I don't buy Apple, I'm buying Anchor. And that was kind of a brand that was my understanding was born on Amazon. And so, but this is what we're telling everybody. To be successful on Amazon, you got to build a brand there. Don't just sell products, build a

Jeff:

Brand, right? And that takes time. That takes time, it takes energy. And as I like to remind people, I shared this the other day, it starts with a great product anchor is what it is. I just bought one for my daughter yesterday because their products are good, they're quality, they have a reputation behind them that drives people to want to be raving fans. And ultimately as marketers, that's our goal. Our goal is to drive and create raving fans, and you need good products to do

Brett:

That. A hundred percent. So let's dive in. Let's talk about some new things that are here and that are available to marketers and will help us sell great products and build great brands on Amazon. So one of the first ones, and I'm pretty excited about this vertical video for sponsored brand video. Tell us what that is and why is that exciting?

Jeff:

Yeah, so you'll see that vertical video has kind of come in a couple of different areas. So sponsored brand ads is one of 'em also within Post. And the biggest problem that we're trying to solve with that is that people are shopping on their mobile devices. And so when you have horizontal videos, they don't play well on mobile devices. So the move to vertical was really to make that ad unit, to make that free unit through post a better shopper experience for people who are viewing on mobile devices. Now, it also solves another problem, which is that as marketers, we're creating content for all our other social media channels. And so when there's some consistency of how that content needs to be created, that's helpful to you as a marketer. I know for myself as a content creator, I might sit there at a show and I'm sitting there and I'm videoing it horizontally and then I'm flipping it and I'm doing another video vertically because I'm not sure where I'm going to be using that content or how I want to use that content in the future. And so being able to port your content from one social media channel to another is something that we want to make easier for our advertisers or for our brands because Post, which is another place you can use those videos is actually a free tool that brand builders can use to expand their audience. And so it's not just about ads and selling ads, it's about just overall that viewer experience and that sharing of content across the social media channels.

Brett:

Totally makes sense. And for those that don't know, can you explain what posts are and how they impact the shopping experience?

Jeff:

Yeah, so the easiest way to kind of describe posts is that, again, it's a free tool. They sit within the stores function of Amazon, of Amazon ads, and what they do is you put an image or a video within the post and then it will show up in different places throughout the shopping experience. So it might be on a thank you page or on a a product detail page. And they're really set to be an inspiration for people to say, oh, I'm interested in this, but what are other cooking things that I could do? And then within the post, people can either interact by clicking on a product and going to buy or by following your brand. And so what it allows is it allows your brand to create followers. And then as you do other activities throughout Amazon, through both the retail and the advertising side, there's ways to use the signal of followers as a way to make promotions. So on the retail side, you can create coupons that are specifically for those who are following your brand. You can do emails through your customer experience piece on the retail side, and then on the advertising side, you can set signals through the Amazon DSP and through other channels to say, Hey, this is somebody who's made a signal that they want to follow my brand, they want to get more information from me, so therefore I'm going to present an ad to

Brett:

Them. Yeah, it's been really great. And on the agency side, we advise all of our clients and help all of our clients create posts, and we've been kind of surprised by the thousands and thousands of followers that some products and some brands get through their posts. And then, yeah, it just makes it easy to talk about new products or to send an email or to really connect with that customer. And so it's an awesome free tool and it's one that if you're not taken advantage of, you absolutely need

Jeff:

To. Yeah, and it's similar to any social media. You have to post consistently, create, generate creative that's engaging. You just have to think of it in that same way, and no, on day one, you're not just going to post and get 10,000 followers, but the brands who have been doing it habitually for the last couple of years as it's kind of risen up and its popularity is probably the easiest way to say they're the ones that are benefiting today because they're seeing the amplification of the audience that's able to see it. Then the other cool thing you can do got away from vertical video is you can see what images are working well within your post, and you can then integrate those into other ads that you're running. So you can almost use post as an AB test type of environment, and if a post is getting a lot of engagement, then you may want to use that image to create additional ads because it's engaging, it's got high CTV stuff like that.

Brett:

Yeah, really glad you mentioned it. That's one of those under-leveraged, underutilized areas of posts. Use it to image test and use it to understand what can I build my next ad from, or what image do I need to add to my product carousel images or what image do I need to use for DSP ads? And so yeah, love that aspect of it. And circling back to the sponsored brand video, the vertical video piece, we were early adopters of sponsored brand video back in the video in search days when it first launched. And that's always like the number that's always like the number one or number two most effective ad type for our clients is the sponsor brand video. And what's great about it is because of the way Amazon shares that it's often below the fold, it's often on more category searches. We find a lot of new to brand shoppers buy from a sponsor brand video ad because they're usually scrolling a little bit further because they don't have a brand preference yet. They're still exploring this category, this product type, and so they see those videos. It's a product demonstration video with the listing next to it. It's just a super compelling ad type. I love it. But yeah, there was a gap. Most of the content that we're creating, even for YouTube shorts that OMG commerce is using or other social platforms, Facebook, Instagram reels, TikTok, vertical video. And so most brands user generate content or your demo video, it's often vertical video. And so now we can use that on Amazon and it's making a difference.

Jeff:

That's awesome to hear. And I think one of the things you said there that I think is important for people to pick up on is that when you're running video type ad units, you're not looking at straight performance metrics. You're not just looking at how many sales that video's generating. You want to be looking at things like how long was the video viewed for, right? Did it get to 25%, 50%, 75%, very, not everybody gets to a hundred percent, but did you get enough of the video view there? And that's going to start to give you a signal back to tell you, do you need to change your video? Do you need to make something more compelling? Did you get their attention in the first three seconds? And so think about all these things in a test and iteration type of mode that gives you the ability to be building upon the investment that you're making because every time you advertise, you're making an investment in yourself and your product and your brand, and you want to be gaining some insights from that so that you can learn, you can iterate, and then you can reinvest.

Brett:

Yeah, so great. Yeah, anytime we can get that data, make the next video ad better just gives us a chance to improve and more effective. So let's talk about, this next announcement doesn't really shift anything for advertisers, and there's not really anything we can do differently here, but I think it's just good for folks to be aware of, and there's been a bit of a splash about it, so would love to hear directly from you, but Amazon announced Facebook integration and so explain what that is and how that's working.

Jeff:

Yeah, so the Facebook integration with, I'm sorry, the integration with Facebook, what it does is it allows a user on Facebook to create a connection between their Facebook app and their Amazon app. And then when the user makes that connection between those two, it allows them to make the purchase within Facebook. And so the problem that it's solving for is that somebody sees an ad on Facebook and then they have to click on a link, go to Amazon, buy the product check out. But if you think about it, if the connection's made and Facebook knows what you want to buy and they know you have an Amazon account because you've given the permission to create the linking, they can create almost a one click checkout from the ad to the acquisition. And so this is really about user experience. And if you think about it, Amazon's always about removing friction from the checkout process.

It's why Amazon OneClick checkout has become so popular, and you can use it both on Amazon and off of Amazon, and we'll see how that program grows over time based on consumers and their desire to want to make those connections and want to do that. But this is just, I think social media in general trying to become more of an acquisition type of play. And if you think about the types of ads that were run on Facebook a year, five years ago, it was more about drawing into the lead funnel. And so they're just trying to remove hurdles, they're trying to make a better customer experience. They're trying to be able to tell you when you see this ad on Facebook, you can buy it on Prime. I was buying something the other day, it wasn't on Facebook, but I was buying something the other day and literally with my phone I was able to use two clicks and buy that product. Overall, it's, it's a super clean, easy checkout process, and when you're able to deliver that, you make customers happy. And at the end of the day, that's who Amazon wants to serve as the end user and the customer, and they want to make them happy, which then gets them to be happier about their purchase, be happy about the product, give better reviews, all that other stuff.

Brett:

And this is super interesting to me because we've seen some success with TikTok shops and Facebook and Instagram have tried some direct checkout type things over the last several years, but really this to me feels different. This is Amazon. We all have our Amazon account set up and our wallet set up. We trust Amazon. Just so easy to say yes to that. And so I'm very excited to see how this progresses and how this evolves. But for right now, this is Amazon choosing to run an ad and place it on Facebook,

Jeff:

Which is nothing new. Amazon's been running ads on, they've been running ads on Google, they've always kind of done that. Even for your products as a seller, you might not even realize that they're doing it for your products. It's remarketing, right? They're remarketing people back to Amazon in the same way that if you owned a website, you'd be remarketing people back as well. They're just trying to remove the friction so that they're able to convert more of those people into shoppers or into buyers.

Brett:

Yeah, can't wait to see how that unfolds more. So let's talk about another area of video ads. And I'm a huge video ad fan, grew up loving TV ads and actually did some TV for a little while, and now we do a lot with YouTube, but also as an agency, we're investing in streaming TV or STV, as you like to say in the business. And then a newer offering is Prime video ads. And so can you talk about those two and why you are so excited about those offerings? Yeah, I

Jeff:

Think, well, my excitement comes in really maybe two or three areas, but the first is that streaming tv, if you're not familiar with the numbers, overtook linear TV as the primary source that people are using for television. Now, what's interesting, there's two interesting pieces about that fact. I think the data was from e-marketer. The interesting part of that fact was that when you add up the number of streaming TV users and the number of linear TV users, the total number is higher than what the market was before at its peak. So they're not just taking away from linear tv, which they are because linear TV is declining, but the overall market is increasing. And what we're finding from that market increase is that the demographic of the people who are engaging with streaming TV that make up that Delta, they're not watching linear tv. So it's picking up a whole new audience that you didn't even have access to before. So I think that's a really cool, interesting kind of fact about this. Now, the second part is that streaming TV or linear TV used to be very difficult for brands to access, especially a linear TV where you had to create, generate the creative, you had to do buys, you had to have all these tests,

Brett:

And usually a pretty big buy. There's often pretty large minimums, especially if you're looking at any regional or national, you're talking about some pretty big minimums. So

Jeff:

What Amazon's done is they've democratized that. And so they released in October a new product called sponsored tv. It's inside the ad console and sponsor TV allows you to do streaming TV ads with no minimum. Now you still have to create your own creative. And so there is an investment that's there, and it's not for everybody. So I like to say that if you've been investing in, we'll call it middle to upper funnel ads, you've been investing in sponsored brands, you've been investing in sponsored display, you've been doing a dsp, streaming TV may be another avenue for you to expand to reach a larger audience. If you primarily are focused on pure performance based advertising, you've just been doing sponsored products, this probably isn't the medium for you to be using today. You need to kind of build up your knowledge, your experience, your understanding of the metrics that indicates success before you just jump into it. Yes,

Brett:

100% agree.

Jeff:

So the democratization of streaming TV I think is super exciting. Then I think the last thing that I think is super exciting,

Brett:

And one thing to just add to that really quickly, Jeff, we really recommend you need a very strong foundation. Make sure you're doing all you can with your other sponsored ads, sponsored product brand sponsor brand video, make sure you got some remarketing in place, make sure your listings are optimized and make sure you're in a category and with some margins where it makes sense to go top of funnel. If all of that is true, then I love sponsored tv. But yeah, it's not the first thing you do. It's not something you do if budget is really tight, right?

Jeff:

Because think about this, right? Think about this, that you put an ad on sponsored tv. So now your question is where does it show up? And I'll answer that in a second, but then they come to Amazon and they search for your brand, and you're not running a sponsored brand ad for your brand. You've just given your competitor

Brett:

Driving sales,

Jeff:

Potential sales, and so you're very right. There is a proper build to be ready for something like sponsor tv. The third thing I'm probably most excited about is around the type of inventory that Amazon's making available. So if you look at the investments that Amazon's been making, the type of inventory they have available with streaming television ranges from free V-I-M-D-B, which would put you onto shows like jury duty or judge duty, my son's favorite, which is really weird, but we can talk about that later. So funny. It can also put you onto devices like Fire tv, which are in, I think over 200 million homes was the last data point. Crazy.

Brett:

We have a fire tv. Yeah,

Jeff:

They're great. So fire TV or the Fire Stick or something like that, or Prime video, which recently went to an ad supported format or even potentially something which the buy is a little different, but something within the Amazon sports arena, which is around Thursday night football. And if you think about Amazon and the properties that they own from an intellectual property perspective around streaming television and shows, it's the MGM library, it's the Amazon Prime originals library. So whether you're a fan of the marvelous Miss Mabel or whether you watch the Boys or whether you're watching the Kelsey Reacher or something like that, right? Reacher, I mean there's a whole range all the way up to oh oh seven, James Bond, Rocky Creed, all the things that sit within the MGM library. So all this is just super exciting because it's creating access for brands to be able to place their ad in of people, but more importantly, they're not just putting their ads in front of people like you would in linear tv. They're able to read the signals and Amazon generates billions of signals that allow you to put your ad in front of the right person at the right time based on the buying behaviors that you are trying to generate. And that's working for both brands that sell on Amazon, the traditional brands that we think of, as well as brands that don't sell on Amazon, who are able to now tap into this market and able to tap into this inventory.

Brett:

And think about it, nobody has more behavioral shopper data than Amazon. Amazon knows what we shop for. Amazon knows what we're in the market for right now. They know what we're looking at. And so being able to tap into some of those signals for our ad targeting is a total game changer. And what's interesting to me about this, Jeff and I got my start in offline, so I did some TV back in the day in the local regional arena. And what's so interesting about TV is I remember helping a couple of a car dealership, a furniture store, jewelry store, get really going with their TV investment. And I remember not too long into the investment in tv, the owner would stop me and they would say, I can't go anywhere. I go to the gas station, people say, Hey, I sat on tv, and I go to the store and people are like, Hey, you're on tv. And it's like, I'm feeling like a celebrity here. And that's something that doesn't happen with other media. Nobody, and I'm a big Google ad fan, but nobody sees you in the grocery store and smacks you on the back. And man, I saw your Google ad. Whoa, big time. It just doesn't happen. But somebody sees your product on tv, they're like, man, this is legit. Yeah,

Jeff:

There's definitely a cachet to I can be on television. So there's definitely a little bit of an I made it, hopefully we're democratizing that, right? And maybe we're not losing that immediately, but we're democratizing that to where more people who didn't think that was something they could use is something they could use. I wanted to go back to the behavioral signals because I think it's important to talk about, I don't know if we have the most, or I've never seen a lineup of chart of who has what. I'm just right. But I think what's important is to say that Amazon is able to aggregate these signals across the board, and a lot of times use machine learning to make predictions around potential buying behaviors. And so it's not necessarily that Amazon knows who's shopping for your product that day. It's more like, oh, there's a signal that would say you've bought this, therefore you might be in the market for that.

You're buying baby food, therefore you might be in the market for baby products. And so it's more at this aggregated level that starts to really, and I think this is the part that people should understand, is when you're just using sponsored products, you're targeting only people on Amazon who are doing search. When you go to sponsored brands, you're targeting people who are searching for more category type based. When you do display, you're showing up in this bigger world, and as you move up into sponsored tv, TV or streaming tv, you move to this giant world of people who are in category, not necessarily just in aisle for your product. And so it's a huge multiplier to the potential audience that you can target, but it still goes back to what you said earlier. You want all those other pieces in place so that you can maximize that investment.

Brett:

And we would call that kind of in aisle, we would call that more demand capture. I'm capturing the demand that's there, but as we go broader and look at STV or other things, that's demand generation, I'm finding the ideal shopper who's likely to buy from me, and I'm generating that demand. And yeah, I mean, I saw the power of video and of TV when all we had at our disposal was age and gender, and hey, we think our shopper watches this shit. Where's going to run our act? Where now it's like, no, we know what they're shopping for and we can reach them individually. And then we see on the backend how many people are watching it, how are they engaging with it? Is this the right creative? Do we need to switch our creative? Where before it was just like, yeah, let's hope that this is the right program, and then let's see if anything happens.

Jeff:

There's a couple other things that happen within streaming television too. One, it's a captive audience. So think about your own behaviors on streaming tv. You're not flipping channels in the same way you are on linear TV two, especially on prime video, the amount of advertisement content to viewer content is very low. So traditional tv, I don't know all the numbers, but it's a lot. Just think about how often you get commercials on streaming tv. It's low. We want to put that customer experience first and foremost, and ensure that the customer is getting what they want. The next is is that you can build interactivity into your ads. So you can have QR codes, which I think are okay, but even more importantly, you have the ability to interact through the remote. And so as more and more devices are working through the remote, you'll be able to click a button and say you're interested, click a button and add to cart or speak into your remote. And then finally, because of all this, but were

Brett:

Prompts for Alexa too, I think I've seen some ads say

Jeff:

That

Brett:

Ask Alexa to do this add to cart.

Jeff:

And then also think of this is you can create dynamic creative. So one of the things that we tested this year within on Thursday night football was that you buy a spot and you could run different creative for different markets. So the easiest explanation for me is think about a car dealership and you have a different type of persona that's going to buy an EV than it's going to buy a pickup truck. You're from Missouri, so I'll go pickup truck,

Brett:

Pickup truck in Missouri. Absolutely.

Jeff:

Because everywhere bigger, the

Brett:

Bigger the better

Jeff:

Baby. That's right. And so that's a different persona, but the car dealer in this instance, the car dealer can have one ad spot, and that one ad spot can then be shown different creative to different audiences. And that's something that just, again, it's allowing for a better user experience, it's allowing for a better advertiser experience. And those are the things that I think are super exciting.

Brett:

That's amazing. Well, this perfect segue to talk measurement now because that's obviously something that we have gotten a little bit spoiled by or come to expect in the online marketing world. And again, comparing to the offline days, the tools we have at our disposal are amazing, but there's still challenges that pop up. And so let's talk about A MC Amazon Marketing Cloud and what do we need to know about that, and then how does that unlock new opportunities for

Jeff:

Measurement? Yeah, so I'll go back to, you'll see a theme, but I'll go back to what's the problem we were trying to solve And the problem that we were trying to solve with a MC or Amazon Marketing Cloud is that one, cookies are going away. Identifiers are becoming more and more difficult to identify cross channel, cross product, cross device type of activity. Two marketers need to be able to see what happens in a multi-touch attribution environment. And so a lot of advertisement that you're doing on, I'll say traditional Amazon ads is using what's called last touch, which means the ad that touched the consumer last is getting all of the credit. And then three, our brands are getting more sophisticated, and so they're asking more questions and they're wanting to bring in their own first party data to help answer those questions. And so we needed to create a tool that would allow us to solve for all these problems.

So a MC is built on what's called a clean room. And the easiest way to describe a clean room is that there's three components of a clean room. And you as the advertiser can come into the clean room and you can ask questions of the data that's inside the clean room, but what you get back is not customer identifiable information. So it's a real rich privacy safe environment. It's allowing you to ask it questions of like, well, what are the age of the people that are buying products from me? And you can then come back and you can see what the ages look like, and then you can say, how many people at this age buy this product and then buy this product? And then you can get that information back, but it's never going to tell me where does Brett Curry live and what does Brett Curry buy?

So that's where it's kind of protecting the consumer within that, what this allows us to do is it allows us to create a more sophisticated, multi-touch attribution type of model that looks at the customer journey. And so that's just one of the many things that it can do. And so now instead of just seeing that sponsored products drove the sale, I can actually see that the customer that was the customer who only sees sponsored products will see an X percent conversion. But when they see sponsored products and sponsored brand conversion turns to Y, and when they see sponsored products sponsored brand and A DSP conversion turns to Z, and I can start to see what the optimal path is, I can also start to see frequency. So a big thing within DSP is setting frequency, how often you want an ad to be shown. And so you can see like, oh, well, when a consumer sees my ad more than three times the conversion rate does this, I don't want them to see it more than three times.

I can then set my controls by having that aggregated data to understand how my consumers are shopping within their panels or within their path of purchase. And so A MC is like this giant, what questions do you have about your business? And then it's going to spit that back out to you. And we make a lot of templates available. And then a lot of our partners like yourself who are integrated into this will develop their own templates, their own reports, their own way that they want to be able to use this. And it's really kind of created this new paradigm for how marketers can understand how their advertising is working and understand where they want to continue to make investments. And then one last thing, and then I'll let you jump back in and ask a question, but then you can also bring in your first party data. And so if you want to start to see incremental to your web sales, you can bring in your hash data so you're not bringing in customer identifiable data either. And AMC is able to marry that information together and give you an understanding of how Amazon's doing in addition to maybe your own site or addition to another third party or another first party data set that you're bringing in to give you more rich information for the types of reports that you're trying to generate.

Brett:

And it's really a game changer and almost necessary, especially as you grow, if you've got a really robust D two C business and you're investing in Facebook and you're investing in YouTube and you're running Google Ads and you've got the full Amazon suite of ads running to be able to have some of that connected so you can see, okay, what's the true lift or how many new customers am I getting on Amazon that I'm not getting in my store and things like that. And so really you don't get that data unless you're connecting it with something like A MC and bringing in your first party data there. And so then who should start exploring a MC versus when does it not really make sense to invest the time and effort?

Jeff:

So today you have to be running DSP to have an A MC instance. Now, I would say that if you are running DSP, you should have an a MC instance. So you can see more holistically how your ads are running. Again, there are basic templates that can start to give you information, but anything, it's a whole bunch of additional information. So the question becomes, what are you going to do with it? What's your agency doing with it? And that's where the turning the insights into actions become kind of the critical piece and the critical component to the success. So I'd say AMC is a complicated tool. They probably don't want me to say that, but it's a complicated tool. It requires some programming background to understand. You have to understand SQL to be able to ask and write the queries correctly. You have to be able to understand what the insights mean and how to turn them into actions.

And so when you're able to do all of that, you can get to a much higher granular level of how you're trying to turn the dials on the pieces of the business that you're trying to do. And so there's lots of tools and tool providers that are out there that are giving you some of these insights. And there's many agencies like yourself that are able to turn these insights into the actions that are driving what you do. And all this comes back to this idea that advertising should be a test and iterate type of mindset and mentality. And you want to use data to understand, are you reaching the audiences? Are you hitting the KPI metrics that are important to you? Where are you going to make additional investments? At the end of the day, you have to be figuring out how these different investments are going to stack upon each other to get you to the end goal that you're trying to get to. And we're just trying to make that all easier for you, and we're trying to provide you more information so that you can be more sound in your decision making.

Brett:

And you nailed it there. It's actionable insights, actionable data, but really as you get bigger, it becomes more complex and you need to have everything connected as best you can so you can make sense of it. And yeah, we're big believers in Amazon DSP, we've been one of the fastest growing Amazon DSP agencies and help a lot of people with DSP. And so that totally makes sense. As you're pushing into DSP, you need to look at and consider A MC as well. Well, we are coming up against it a little bit. Jeff, any other new things, insights, other comments on what we've talked about so far that people need to know? Yeah,

Jeff:

I mean, the other thing, and obviously we would behoove ourselves if we didn't mention AI just real quickly, and I think there's a lot of excitement for brands around AI and what Amazon's doing on the retail side around helping you optimize your listings better or review sentiment analysis or on the advertising side around image generation. And I think one of the big things to really keep in mind specifically to Amazon ads and how we look at ai, AI is, I think part of it is part of our DNA, right? There's a lot of AI that goes into how goal-based advertising works within sponsored brands and within sponsored display and how you connect audiences to find new audiences within your DSP and within A MC. And so yes, all the good talk of AI and generation and all those things is fun and exciting. But I think for us, to us, AI is not about generating and creating new tools.

It's around solving the problems that our advertisers are having to help them be more efficient, to help them be more effective, to help them place the right creative with the right background and the right setting at the right time to the right customer. Those are the problems that we're trying to solve. And I think it's a super exciting time for brands. There's some great case studies coming out about how brands were able to use the AI generator to add holiday images and saw an uplift in their sales. So little tweaks that you could do that would've taken you a lot of time and a lot of energy you're able to do very quickly now through the types of technology that we're developing. And I think there's a lot more to come in the future. I mean, everyone's investing in ai, and I think you can see where Amazon's investing and what we're building into and what that means for the future, and I think it's super exciting for our advertisers.

Brett:

Yeah, I'm very excited to see how this unfolds. And yeah, we've seen the power of AI and machine learning on the goal-based advertising, and now to begin to see generative AI and potentially image manipulation, what can be done there? It kind of goes back to the point you made about, Hey, we're running one TV spot. We can customize the creative based on where you are. Am I showing you a truck or am I showing you a Prius or am I showing you a chief's gear or a 49 ERs gear? What am I showing you? And that's sort of what AI is potentially going to enable on the image side. Can I just easily, quickly and at scale change images to fit a promotion or a seasonality or a use case? And so yeah, pretty exciting to see that unfold.

Jeff:

Yeah, definitely. I think there's a lot to be excited about as Amazon brands and Amazon advertisers. And I think ultimately as a consumer of the product, remember that your feedback's critical to us. We want to know what's working for you, what's not working for you, how it's working for you. That's all that Amazon works backwards from. That's the customer that we're trying to solve. And so hit me up on LinkedIn, share it with me, let me know. Let me know your thoughts about vertical videos, about posts that, it's kind of funny, I don't want to say LinkedIn's a big source for us to do customer information, but I think that over the last two years I've demonstrated that there's some great conversations happening on LinkedIn and our product managers do appreciate a lot of that feedback when they see those conversations and they're reading the feedback from the end user who's talking about what's working for them or what else they would like to see. So that's really what drives a lot of the innovation that we have here at Amazon ads. And so I think you and your team for adding to that as well, because I think that's a big part of how the flywheel circle all occurs is that that feedback's necessary.

Brett:

And speaking of which, I'd love to hear that you're taking that feedback sharing with Amazon. I know you guys are very well, your goal is to be the most customer-centric company on the planet. And so you are an amazing follow on LinkedIn. So if you are not following Jeff Cohen or Jeffrey Cohen on LinkedIn, you need to, is that the best place to connect with you? If someone wants to say, okay, I need to stay up on all the latest and greatest from Amazon ads, so I need to follow Jeff. Yeah, I mean,

Jeff:

If you see me in the grocery store, say hi, right,

Brett:

Chicago land. Yep. Shout out.

Jeff:

I have had a few random, Hey, wait a minute, are you Jeff at the museum? Which is kind of always weird. Yeah, LinkedIn's the best place to connect with me. It's where I spend a lot of my time. I'm also at a lot of trade shows and events. And so I encourage you, if you do see me at an event to come up and say hello, I'm often surprised at sometimes how many people say like, oh, I've seen you, but I haven't wanted to say hello. I'm sure, Brett, you feel the same. We want to to hear from you. We want to engage. Absolutely. We want to talk. So please come up and say hi and yeah, connect on LinkedIn. But I always say I remind people don't just connect on LinkedIn. Say, Hey, I heard you on Brett's podcast. I heard you on e-Commerce Evolution. Find a way to break that Ice city. You're not just one of however many people have connected with me on whatever period of time. Yeah, I mean, I thank you for having me on. I thank you for being an awesome partner to Amazon, and I think that the growth of Amazon and Amazon ads has been largely driven by our partner population and companies like yours. So we thank you guys for everything you do and everything you do for your partners or your advertisers, your customers as

Brett:

Well. Appreciate that, man. Yeah, it's been a fun ride. I guess we're almost eight years in now as an agency, but excited about future. This year's going to be amazing and beyond still, I think one of the best places ever in the history of marketing to build a brand and so pumped about it. But Jeff, really appreciate it, man. Thanks for taking the time. This was super insightful and we'll have to do it again sometime.

Jeff:

Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

Brett:

Absolutely. And as always, thank you for tuning in and we'd love to hear your feedback. Would you like to hear more of on the show? And if you've not done it, would love that review on iTunes helps other people find the show. And hey, if you're listening and you're like, man, so-and-so that I know would really enjoy this episode, please share that with them, share it on LinkedIn or on the socials, that would be greatly appreciated. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

‍

An eCommerce Podcast Hosted by Brett Curry

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

Ezra Firestone’s Top 7 eCommerce Growth Strategies for 2022

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

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

‍

Mentioned in this Episode:

Ezra Firestone

   - LinkedIn

   - Instagram

   - Twitter

   - Facebook


BOOM! by Cindy Joseph‍

oVertone‍

Zipify Pages‍

Smart Marketer‍

Blue Ribbon Mastermind‍

Klaviyo‍

Postscript‍

Attentive‍

Dan Kennedy‍

Jay Abraham‍

Native Deodorant‍

Northbeam‍

John Grimshaw‍

Molly Pittman‍

Train My Traffic Person

‍

Transcript:

Brett Curry:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

Yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

... Yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

Exactly. Yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

100%.

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

Exactly.

Ezra Firestone:

Selling them stuff is also serving them.

Brett Curry:

Because people want to buy stuff, right?

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah.

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

Why did I buy this?

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah.

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

(singing)

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

Which is amazing. Amazing.

Ezra Firestone:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

Yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

Big time.

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

Is that right? Oh, look at that.

Ezra Firestone:

Wait.

Brett Curry:

Look at that.

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

Email. Email.

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

It's crazy.

Ezra Firestone:

And nobody-

Brett Curry:

Email touches 36% of all purchases through Boom.

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

It's awesome.

Ezra Firestone:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

What's that?

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

That creates your product roadmap.

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

It's hard to do, yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Boomstick.

Ezra Firestone:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

Yes.

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

Not worth it. Not worth the effort.

Ezra Firestone:

Just spend your energy acquiring more customers.

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah.

Brett Curry:

People get pretty hot on-

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

They do. People like it.

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

It's awesome.

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

You've missed the point here.

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah.

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

Immediately. Yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

...

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

Nightmare.

Brett Curry:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

I do. I need ...

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

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

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

It's awesome, dude.

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

Thank y'all.

Brett Curry:

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

Ezra Firestone:

Talk soon.




‍

Disruptive Innovation in Marketing with Miki Agrawal
2
:
Miki Agrawal

Disruptive Innovation in Marketing with Miki Agrawal

I’ve never met anyone quite like Miki Agrawal.

‍

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

‍

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

‍

She’s also warm and kind and FUN. 

‍

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

‍

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

‍

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

‍

Here’s a look at what we cover:

‍

  • 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:

The Spicy Curry Podcast is brought to you by Zipify's OneClickUpsell. OneClickUpsell can increase your Shopify revenue by 10-15% overnight. Created by my friend, Ezra Firestone, the owner of a $155 million brand. And it's trusted by over 11,000 Shopify merchants. OneClickUpsell helps you boost your average order value with targeted upsells and cross sells. And it includes mobile optimized offer pages that drive sky high conversions. Plus, it comes with built in split testing for maximizing your results. It's no wonder that OneClickUpsell has made its users an extra $294 million in sales. It only takes a few minutes to install the app, launch your first upsell and start generating 10-15% more revenue overnight. Get a 30 day free trial and test it out for yourself, at zipify.com.

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

They take up the whole fridge, exactly.

Miki:

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

Miki:

Hi, Stan.

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

For sure.

Miki:

Yeah.

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

Like the Bellagio fountains?

Miki:

Bellagio fountain.

Brett:

I got to see that, then.

Miki:

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

Brett:

It's a curiosity play, yeah.

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

Yeah, totally makes sense.

Miki:

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

Brett:

It's a healthy tension.

Miki:

A healthy tension, yeah.

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

Nice. Royal flushes.

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

They're so engaged.

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

Not yet.

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

You get an insane press on it.

Miki:

[crosstalk 00:46:07] ...

‍

They said, "What are you doing?"

Miki:

What are you doing here?

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

Yay. I was happy to be here.

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

‍

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

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

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

‍

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

‍

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

‍

Mentioned in This Episode:

‍

Nick Shackelford

   - LinkedIn

   - Twitter

Geek Out
   - Website

   - Events


Konstant Kreative‍

Structured Agency

Design Pickle‍

No Limit Creatives‍

Penji‍

Video Husky‍

Chubbies‍

Facebook Dynamic Creative‍

Josh Durham‍

Groove Life‍

Aligned Growth Management‍

Necklet‍

Monkey Learn Word Cloud‍

Luca + Danni‍

Northbeam‍

Triple Whale‍

James Van Elswyk



Transcript:

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

It was. It was Colorado.

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

[inaudible 00:09:22].

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

Okay.

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

Okay.

Brett:

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

Nick:

Oh, Konstant Kreatives. Sorry.

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

Yeah.

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

Got it.

Nick:

Four and five might be skewed.

Brett:

Right.

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

Interesting.

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

Both fantastic tools.

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

Yes.

Brett:

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

Nick:

Yes.

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

Yeah.

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

Yeah, yeah.

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

Yeah. Totally.

Nick:

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

Brett:

Nice.

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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




‍

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

Crafting Irresistible Offers & Building Acquisition Funnels with Molly Pittman

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

‍

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

‍

Here's what we cover:

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

‍
Mentioned in This Episode:

Molly Pittman

   - LinkedIn

   - Instagram


Smart Marketer‍

Smart Marketer Podcast‍

Ezra Firestone‍

Traffic & Conversion Summit‍

John Grimshaw‍

BOOM! by Cindy Joseph‍

“5 Makeup Tips For Older Women”‍

“The State Of Paid Ads In 2022”‍

“Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert

“Good to Great” by Jim Collins‍

“Turning the Flywheel” by Jim Collins



Transcript:

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

What's up? What's up?

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

A decent amount of work.

Molly:

I'm kidding.

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

He really is.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

"What do you need? I got it."

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

Have more fun, y'all.

Brett:

And have more fun.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

Well no, I just know your story.

Brett:

It's all good.

Molly:

You have seniority.

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

As a business, exactly.

Brett:

Yep.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

Yeah, totally, totally makes sense.

Molly:

Then we pick-

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

What was the name of that book again?

Molly:

"Big Magic".

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

Right, there's nothing else.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

Totally. Totally, yeah.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

Exactly.

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

So, test small and then go big.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

They are. They are. No doubt.

Molly:

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

Brett:

Yeah, it is.

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

And give way more value first.

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

No doubt. No doubt.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

Just emphasize.

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

No doubt.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

But it's challenging times. I know you train a lot of people, you train a lot of entrepreneurs and media buyers. What are you teaching people about mindset and how mindset impacts results?

Molly:

Mindset is everything in this game. I don't think any of us are maybe even better marketers than one another. It's your willingness to stay committed, and to continue forward. It's what we talked about earlier with us being okay with half of the work we do not actually being used. Or as a media buyer, it's not even about who can set up the best ads. It's about who can continue to troubleshoot and optimize to make each piece of the campaign better so that they can move forward.

Molly:

This is personal development, a concept that most of you have heard of before, but it's really the difference between having a scarcity mindset, or having an abundance mindset. For me, I choose to be grateful. I choose to not get upset with these paid traffic platforms. I choose to look at things with the glass half full. I think that if there was anything unique about our culture at Smart Marketer, that is it. We have all chosen this mindset.

Molly:

There is going to be trouble in anything you do. I think as a human, the last few years have been hard. It's easy to get down. Of course, I still get frustrated, angry, depressed. All of those things occur. But I try to choose to bring positivity to our business, try to bring it to our employees, to our offers, to the trainings that we provide. It really is a completely different experience when you choose to do that.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. I'm a really positive person. I'm naturally upbeat. I'm a glass half full kind of guy. But I have my moments. I have moments where I want to curse Tim Cook for the latest iOS update, and why are you killing a good thing, Tim Cook? Or whoever else is making the decisions at Apple. We can get in that mindset. It's okay to be frustrated and complain a little bit, but don't stay there.

Brett:

Get to a better place, because you're right, it's not just who's the smartest, it's not just who has the best campaign structure, but who can show up consistently and do the right thing, and who can be okay with "Okay, I got one, two, three campaigns that I wrote that didn't work, but then I had an offer that hit and then it scaled to the moon." Who could handle that?

Molly:

And who-

Brett:

Yeah, please add to that.

Molly:

[inaudible 00:44:31], and who actually cares? It's why I so believe-

Brett:

Exactly.

Molly:

... in the mission of our business that Ezra initially set out, serve the world unselfishly, and profit. If you truly care about the group of people that your business serves, and you care about the way that you're changing their lives, even if you're selling a toothbrush and you're helping their mouth to be cleaner, it doesn't matter. If you truly care about that, it changes the energy of the business.

Molly:

I can tell you, if you asked me "Molly, what is the difference between students that succeed or don't succeed, or friends that I know in the industry that have done great things, or people that are struggling," it really comes back to mindset, and it comes back to an authentic, genuine, caring for the group of people that you're serving. If you have that, and you stay consistent, there's no way that you can't make this work.

Brett:

Yeah, it's so true. If you can really be passionate about your customer, and I would even say about your team, then that's way more powerful than just being passionate about your product. I think both are important, but being passionate about your customer and about your team, that's really where's it at. One thing I discovered for me, and hey I've got lofty goals, I want my business to succeed and I want to it to grow, I think entrepreneurship, and businesses, and capitalism offer a lot to the world. If it's just about money, I burn out quickly. I get to a point where I'm like, "I don't really care anymore."

Brett:

But if I think about who I'm serving, and I think about that business owner that my agency is helping accelerate growth for, if I think about team members who were helping accelerate their individual growth, and I get to see someone step and lead a call, or mail a presentation, or come up with a strategy.

Molly:

Nothing better.

Brett:

I'm like "Whoa, I never thought of that." That is so fun for me, and so rewarding. Then when you key in on that, then guess what, the profits are better too, and then the business grows better too.

Molly:

Brett, aside from the money, I saw a study last year that rated digital marketing as the most stressful job or career path out there, even above brain surgeons, or people working in the medical field.

Brett:

That's crazy, yeah.

Molly:

I believe that. Think about it, we're basically day traders.

Brett:

[crosstalk 00:46:47] so much out of your control, and that's a scary thing. There's so much out of your control, it's scary. Yeah.

Molly:

Exactly. To be able to sustain that, and the changes, and the stress, and the fact that what we do never really turns off unless you choose for it to do so your mindset and who you are as a person, and how you treat yourself and the people around you, that is will what will sustain you moving forward more than anything else.

Brett:

Love that. So good. So good, Molly Pittman. All right, so people that are listening that are like, "Holy cow, I need more Molly Pittman in my life," where do you suggest people go? Obviously, there's lots of stuff people are going to enjoy at SmartMarketer.com, but where should someone get started, or what are some cool things, what are some offers you got going on right now?

Molly:

Yeah, check out SmartMarketer.com. There are some free resources there, depending on what we have going on at the time. I know this is coming out a bit later, Brett, so we do have that State of Paid Advertising in 2022 workshop coming up. We have lots of free resources on our website. If you want to follow me, I'm most active on Instagram @MollyPittmanDigital. I also read all of my DMs, so if you have questions, thoughts about this, I love hearing from you all and I would love to hear from you on Instagram.

Brett:

Instagram, check it out. What's your handle again?

Molly:

One more quick thing, Brett.

Brett:

What's your handle again on Instagram?

Molly:

@MollyPittmanDigital.

Brett:

@MollyPittmanDigital.

Molly:

Of course, if you like this format, you like podcasts, John, and Ezra, and I do have a podcast, The Smart Marketer Podcast. So, check that out.

Brett:

It is an intact podcast, where you get to be a guest for a couple of episodes. It was tremendously fun. Check out the Smart Marketer podcast. I'll link to all of this in the show notes as well so it's easy for you to access. With that, Molly Pittman, any final words? Any final words of wisdom, re-commendations, or asks of the audience?

Molly:

Keep doing it. Just keep at it. Take care of yourself. Maintain that balance in your life. Don't get sucked into this world so that you lose who you are. Or if you do, quickly bounce back from that. Just enjoy. We're living in a really cool time as humans, and there's a lot of crazy stuff going on. When have we ever had the opportunity to do what we're doing from a business standpoint?

Molly:

It's complicated, but also the world is truly at our fingertips. Find a group of people that you align with, that you're interested in, that you want to help, and figure out how you can serve them, and figure out what you can sell to them. I just always go back to being grateful that we are able to work in this way. It's really, really cool. Hopefully, you guys enjoy it too.

Brett:

I love it. It's a super challenging industry. It's always changing. It's very stressful. But man, it's fun. It can be fun, especially if you have the right community around you. If you can find that balance man, it's an awesome place to be. Check out Smart Marketer. Check out the community. Get to know Molly Pittman. Follow her on Instagram.

Brett:

With that, thank you so much for tuning in. This show would be nothing without you who tune in and listen faithfully. If you haven't rated the show, please do that. Leave a review. It helps other people find the show. If there's somebody that you're listening to this and you're like, "Whoa, this person needs to hear this episode," then share with them. That would mean the world to me, and I know it'd make a difference in somebody else's life as well.

Brett:

With that, until next time, stay spicy.



‍

Ready to talk strategy?

We get to know a little bit about you and what you're into, even if it’s a little bit weird. We’ll use this time to uncover the possibilities for your brand and your products online.

Request a Free Strategy Session
Our Services
Google Search AdsGoogle Shopping AdsYouTube AdsGoogle Display AdsAdvertising for AmazonBrand Management for AmazonDSP AdsMicrosoft (Bing) Ads & Shopping
Why OMG
Our AMP ApproachCase Studies
Our Team
Who We AreJoin the FamGuest AppearancesCharities We Support
Digital Marketing Resources
OMG BlogDigital Marketing GuidesYouTube Ads for EcommerceSponsored Brand Video
319 N Main Ave Ste 130, Springfield, Missouri 65806 | Phone: (417) 315-8831
© 2022 OMGCommerce | All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy
‍
319 N Main Ave Ste 130, Springfield, Missouri 65806 | Phone: (417) 315-8831
© 2024 OMGCommerce | All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy
‍