This is a recording from AMZ Innovate 2025 in New York City. Brett Curry breaks down why YouTube is a fundamentally different growth channel than Meta, TikTok, or Amazon ads, and why most brands struggle when they treat it like “just another social platform.” He explains the four key ways people use YouTube (searching, streaming, scrolling, shopping), shares a proven creative formula to keep viewers from skipping, and walks through an Arctic case study showing measurable lift in branded search and Walmart sales. Finally, he covers why YouTube measurement often understates true performance and what to track instead (search lift, sales lift, geo holdouts, Amazon + DTC combined impact).

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Sponsored by OMG Commerce - go to (https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact) and request your FREE strategy session today!

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Chapters:

(00:12) Intro

(01:11) YouTube is the missing piece for ecommerce growth

(04:07) YouTube on CTV + why creative can’t be a direct Meta/TikTok copy

(06:50) Examples of YouTube-powered brand growth (Dr. Squash, Native, BOOM)

(10:20) Creative strategy: length, formats, and what actually converts

(11:12) The 5-part YouTube creative formula (hook → CTA)

(14:34) Creative examples breakdown (RTIC durability, Native UGC montage, OPO Pop)

(15:51) Sponsor Offer: Loop Subscriptions

(21:18) What metrics matter for creative feedback loops (view rate, watch time, clicks, CVR)

(26:01) Why YouTube under-measures + incrementality findings (House Analytics)

(28:36) The “trifecta of lift”: Amazon baseline + search lift + overall sales trend

(30:41) Sponsor: Fermat (AI-native commerce platform)

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Connect With Brett:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce
• Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/
• Request a Free Strategy Session: https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact

Relevant Links:

• Sponsor Offer | LOOP (Mention Ecommerce Evolution): https://www.loopwork.co/
• Sponsor Offer | Fermat (Mention Ecommerce Evolution): fermatcommerce.com

Transcript:

Brett Curry:

Hey, thanks again for tuning in this episode's brought to you by OMG Commerce. That's my agency. Hey, we're specialists at creating omnichannel growth for brands profitably. Now, the greatest brands we know are no longer just D two C. Yes, they're masters of D two C, but they're also growing and scaling on marketplaces and in retail stores. And we understand the complexities of how to grow in all of those channels from a campaign strategy, a creative strategy, and a measurement strategy. In fact, we recently won a Google Agency Excellence Award for helping Arctic coolers grow their retail sales in Walmart using YouTube. We've helped add almost eight figures in growth on Amazon for brands, and we've even helped a brand go from nine to 10 figures. And so we want to help you grow. So if you're not satisfied with your growth in any of those channels or you're looking to unlock new growth, we should probably chat.

Visit us@omgcommerce.com, click that Let's Talk button. We love to schedule a strategy session with you. With that back to the show. Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. So we've had the privilege, my agency, we've had a pro. You're working with some really cool brands. So Native Arctic. I'm going to break down an Arctic case study here in a bit. Dude wipes, just doing a really cool campaign right now for little dudes. They're kind of their answer to baby wipes, but cooler called Little Dudes. And so we have a full service Amazon agencies. We'd manage Amazon, we do meta, we do email, we do retention. But man, YouTube, YouTube is this piece that people are missing and the people don't understand and the people don't exactly know how to leverage. And so we've had the privilege, we manage about a hundred million dollars a year and ad spend want some awards, and I share that to say all the strategies that I'm going to walk through here are based on data, real appliance, real experiences that are going to break this down for you.

But here's the real issue, why more people are using YouTube. It's different. Not the same as Meta, not the same as TikTok. It's very, very different from Amazon advertising. It's just a different beast. And so if we want to understand how can we use YouTube to influence shopping behavior, how can we use YouTube to get people to be aware of our brand, to buy our brand? They don't understand how people are using. How are people using YouTube? And it really comes down to four key activities or modes that people are in when they're running YouTube ads. So there's searching, there's streaming, there's scrolling, and there's shopping. So kind of break this down a little bit. YouTube is the number two search engine behind Google. So more people do searches every day on YouTube and on any search engine including AI search other than YouTube people trying to learn stuff, find stuff, that sort of thing.

Scrolling right on the YouTube mobile app or if we're on YouTube shorts, we're scrolling. That's the mode that's most like other social platforms. Then there's streaming. How many of you guys watch YouTube on connected TV is on your TV screen or your kids do? I know for my kids, we let them have TV time. Several of them just want to watch their favorite YouTube creators. They're not watching cable, they're not watching any of that stuff. They want to watch YouTube on tv and then they're shopping. We're researching products. We can actually discover products on YouTube. We could click it, buy product directly from YouTube. So it's really these four modes, but they're all different. And so we again understand how we interrupt people. Now, this is kind of crazy. I've been doing this for a long time. This number has been changing over the last couple of years.

So this is market share of streaming platforms specifically on connected TVs. YouTube has been the leader for two years and the lead is extending. So even last year was 10%. Now it's 12.4% therapeutic Disney, they'll be paramount. They're bid NBC, they're crushing Netflix. Take all the smaller ones combined. YouTube is bigger. This is based on time spent on TV screen. So if you want to influence people through tv, you use YouTube. And so this element though, this element of YouTube, it's way more like TV because it's on tv. So you can't just take your meta ad and translate it directly here. You can't just take your TikTok, add it, translate it directly to a TV street. It needs to be a little bit different. Also, YouTube is the number one podcast platform. My guess is if you've got a podcast you love, they're on YouTube and that's maybe where you watch.

I have a podcaster. I run the E-Commerce Evolution podcast talk to a lot of podcasters. And most of the people that I talk to say that their YouTube viewership for their podcast is growing and audio in some cases is staying kind of flat. So YouTube is a podcast platform and we're in a different frame of mind. We're watching a podcast. It's long form. We're in it for the whole episode, most likely great place to advertise someone, show them new product. This is also a little bit different, right? I'm a huge TikTok fan. My buddy Josh ha is going to be talking about TikTok shops. There's a difference though, between YouTube creators and TikTok creators. You may be served an ad on TikTok or see a video just because of its viral nature. You've never followed that creator before. You may never see them again, but you see that ad or that video with YouTube, it's usually creators that we've got a relationship, this is a creator that we've watched 5, 10, 15 videos.

We're subscribing, we really get to know them. So it's a different trust factor. So 98% of people say they trust YouTube influencers more than any other influencer on any other platform. But ultimately the reason YouTube is different and the way we have to approach is there are different creatives. So the way we structure our ads, it's different because there's different modes and different screens, different campaign structure, different algorithm, different bidding. All of that does not sponsor product ads, not even sponsor brand video. This is something different. And then this is where a lot of people lose heart, give up, abandon ship, say YouTube is not for me. It's because of measurement. It's a different beast to measure. You got to kind of be ready for that and up for the task or else it's not time to look at YouTube, but I believe it's the most powerful growth engine your likely missing right now.

Can you give a couple examples here, Dr. Squa, anybody blown away by their valuation, we saw that Unilever 1.5 billion, freaking crazy. So we did not work directly with them, but Raindrop agency close partner of ours, they did all the original Dr. Squat ads and one of the original ones won YouTube out of the year in 2020. Just found out recently that during that hypergrowth stage when Dr. Squash was crushing it on YouTube, their media buyers were following my YouTube course. So I put out a YouTube course with Ezra Firestone, he's speaking later today. And the guy told me just a few months ago, I was like, oh yeah, we were consuming your course and just doing what you said. And so I was like, oh, sweet. Would love to get some equity, maybe some shares. But that didn't not work out native. We didn't work directly with them.

So they were a client for about six years. When we started with them, they were about a hundred billion dollars in sales. Modi a founder, awesome guy. He tweeted recently, beginning of this year they did a billion dollars in sales. Last year ne did on about 20% EBITDA margin. So 200 million in profits, they bought native for like one 23 million that paid off for them. That was a good investment then just pretty crazy. But we mapped out their YouTube strategies for retail and for D two C and then boom, my city Joseph, like I said, you'll hear from Measure Firestone later today is one of the keynotes. We ran all their Google their YouTube but still do for maybe 10 plus years. We launched them on Amazon, so they were not on Amazon. We built out storefront listings, Amazon ads strategy did all of that. They did 6 million in sales the first year on Amazon and it did not cannibalize their D two C business very much.

But the reason that all happened is because they're spending a lot of meta spending a lot on YouTube. They had this demand creation engine flowing. There's a lot of people that wanted boom and a lot of people that wanted boom, went to Amazon, didn't see it there and bought something else. So we were able to capture that. But really this speaks to just the power of building a brand off of Amazon. Now, can you win in this scenario? So you want to win on best wheeled coolers. I'm a big fan of the coolers with wheels, right? You got to lug in something around that's just full of ice and drinks. You got to use wheels. Can you win in this scenario? Can you win on a purely search basis? I think you can and I think you should, but I also think slugging it out in the SERP can feel like a knife fight sometimes versus is really brutal.

It's just brutal and it's harm, right? So you got to do that, but I think it's even better to do this. I'm going to break down Arctic in a minute, but what if you showed people how awesome your coolers are and they end up looking for you on Amazon now they largely skip your competitors. You dominate this resolve and now you win the sale. So ideally you want to do both, but I think you gained real advantage when people are coming to Amazon looking for you. Totally changes again. So you have three keys to make YouTube work for you. You're going to break those down right now. We're really some examples. Watch some ads and have some fun. But the first part is you got to nail your creative strategy. This is really where the battle is won or lost. It's with your creatives and there's a few things to consider here.

So I'll go a little bit technical, I'm going to give you a formula and then I'm want to watch some as I think that's the best way to learn. So what's interesting, I know the trend on meta has been shorter ads, although I hear that's kind of maybe reversing with the Andromeda release, but YouTube, 45 seconds up to three minutes, that's the sweet spot. We've never seen 15 second ads really crush it. The shorter ads though, they usually don't drive conversions. People need to stick with the video, see your product in action, get all the features and benefits and then they're more likely to purchase. So a little bit longer. There are elements of your ads that can feel like a meta ad and elements that feel like tv, I'll show you, you'll see that. And then you want both the vertical as on by 16 for shorts and mobile and then 16 by nine for tv, desktop and also part of mobile.

And I will say the core of YouTube, the foundation of YouTube is that 16 by nine video because 50 to 6% of views are on tv. Sometimes we're watching a longer form piece of content on our phone, we're still pooling it in landscape mode. And so that 69 is core for YouTube. Alright, here's create a formula. I don't like to get super formulaic because I think sometimes you got to do something that fits for the product and you don't want all your work to be just a copycat of somebody else, but these are elements that have to be there. So first of all, the hook. This is where we spend the most time word with a creative partner. We're reviewing the performance of a campaign. How strong is that hook? You got five seconds, right? Five seconds and then that magic skip ad button pops up.

Some people are hovering over the button to press that they hate you for interrupting them, but you have five seconds to win 'em over. You have five seconds to make them say, well, a little bit, maybe just maybe this ad is worth watching. We've all done that, right? We're all like we're ready to skip. Maybe I'll give this another 10 seconds and see what's here. And by the way, that is actually the point of the hook. The point of the hook is not to close the deal. The hook can close the deal. The point of the hook is to get them to keep watching and to stay to get the right person to keep washing. So logos, important product demo. We want to see the product in action, either an actual demonstration of the product. So I'm using it, I'm using the cookware, I'm putting on the makeup, or you're showing the end state of what your product will do.

Taking a supplement out. I feel better now I'm running, now I'm lifting my kids up, whatever. So show me the product of action. Some kind of social proof. It could be reviews, could be actual UGC, but I need some kind of social proof that other people like me, I've used this product and it's worked for them. Got bust objections. I'm from Missouri. Anybody else here from the state of Missouri, right? St. Louis from Springfield. Yeah. So Missouri for those know the show me state and it's very charming. Our state animal is the mule. So we are all a bunch of donkeys out there in Missouri. But the key there is like you've got to show us. So we're not going to believe you right there. We all have objections. And I think when you're picturing your customer in your mind, think about people from Missouri, right?

They're stubborn, you got to show them or else am not going to believe you. And so we got to overcome those objections. Objections left unaddressed will prevent someone from clicking and taking action. They just won't do it if there's still objections that are there. And then finally some kind of call to action, some kind of offer, some kind of, hey, do this next thing. And if you don't have that, people will not take action. So here is something to keep in mind. How many you guys are advertising on meta right now? How many guys advertising on TikTok? Alright, yeah, great. So your best social ads on meta on TikTok, you take those videos, those may become your best books for YouTube. So that's one way to leverage those ads. Now I'm going to show you a few ads. I'm going to show you three ads. This first was for Arctic. I'm going to break down a case study. We helped Arctic grow in Walmart with YouTube, but it also lifted Amazon D, you see? But this is one style of video. This is a creator that I'm going to play the whole video since this works.

April Wilkerson:

This is the 65 chord ultra. Its off our dick goer and I actually put it to the test and in quite a few fun different ways. And this thing is ultra top. I am April Wilkerson and I'm a builder. I am always running and gunning, whether it be in my work or in my hobby. And I put a high value on function, durability, and high quality. And that's why I resonate with ATech here because they are overbuilt but not overpriced.

Brett Curry:

So that video crush, this was a shorter version, straight to the shorter version because that's easier for presentation. Longer versions actually worked better. What did you like about that ad? So this would be audience participation bar. What did you like about that ad? What's that concise tagline? I like that overbuilt not over press. Yeah, Brandon, immediate action. Like how this right in, right in the action. And that's an excellent point. Learn this from Google. Years ago they say, Hey, if you're building a YouTube ad, think like a movie trailer, right? This is not a normal story arc where there's like a slow buildup and then it builds to a climax. No, no, no. Think about a movie trailer. What happens at the beginning of a James Bond movie trailer explosion. He's jumping out of a plane, something crazy's happening and then maybe it'll back up and tell the story and then something intense again, right?

You don't to have special effects, you don't have to be change bond, but start high immediate action. Somebody else. What else did you like? Maria, sir, it's a single problem. Durability. Yeah. Really focused on one problem, right? She's chucking this thing down the bank of a levee. She's kicking it off her deck. She's parking her F three 50 on it, right? This thing is durable, right? If you're going to invest in a cooler, this thing is going to hold up and it just absolutely crushed. I want to take a minute and tell you about Loop subscriptions. Now. What if one platform transition could transform your subscription business overnight? Well, that's exactly what happened to longtime OMG commerce client Nutri. They switched to Loop and grew subscription revenue from 4% of total revenue to 20% of total revenue. OC reduced subscription churn by 50%. Lumen achieved 12.6% additional revenue from the payment recovery feature alone.

Unlike other platforms, loop includes dedicated success managers on Slack and costs about 40% less than the competition. Plus E-Commerce Evolution listeners get an additional 50% off the pro plan that's nearly 70% in total savings compared to other subscription apps. So if you're ready to join almost 1100 brands who've made the switch to Loop, visit loop work.co to book your demo. Also, anybody a fan of home improvement from back in the nineties? I know it's been, she is like a Tim Theto man Taylor, but way more trustworthy. I kept telling the Arctic, we still work with Arctic, they're great. We're like, get me more April Wilkerson videos. I'm like the super fan. So great video. This is one from Native. This is not their top product, but this ad, and you'll kind of see this is a mashup of a whole bunch of creators and Instagram creators, but woven together in an ad. And I think this format will work for a lot in for

Speaker 3:

Brands. Maybe Moisturizing Nation helps my skin to feel so hydrated and stewed. I just love the fact that I keep your skin moisturized all day. What they new and improved formula. And I just love how rich and creamy the formula is. They provide a dehydration with a lightweight field. It is super irony, but also lightweight and secret to your skin is super fast. You're going to love it. The formula absorbs in the skin so easily without leaving a residue. And don't even get me started on how good they smell. Just smells so yummy. And also actually haveland seven of their best stuffs. You smell good. It's quite literally the best compliment.

Brett Curry:

Awesome. So what you like about that one constant movement? Not to the point of being overwhelming, but you almost can't look away. It's movement. It's moving a lot, right? There's always two panels, you bet that has kind of at three panels, two panels are almost always moving. One is static, one is kind of branding, showing the product, showing some design elements. The other two always moving. What else sir?

Speaker 3:

The count,

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Yeah, the count. The number of UGC elements. I remember sitting in a room showing this ad for hair products to a group of women and one of them said, my hair's not like that. I don't think it'll work for me. And so that's something we got to keep in mind. If we're showing UGC, you need to show a variety because the person you want to buy, they've got to see themselves in that ad. So if you're watching this ad, you're probably seeing someone with your hair type, your skin type, maybe your personality. I resonate with that person. So this will likely work for me. Here's another similar one. This is for oppo pop. This is one we just launched some on YouTube. Listen, a month ago, this video is absolutely ripping right now. I'm going to go and play it.

April Wilkerson:

I had no idea popcorn could get that good. I have a thing for you to eat. It's called opo Pop. Beautiful

Speaker 3:

Step right on sea go.

April Wilkerson:

It's just so cool.

Brett Curry:

Alpa Pop where every kernel is individually wrapped in flavor. No more half flavored popcorn.

April Wilkerson:

How glue can it really be? It's just popcorn. I had weird flavors like C Delicious, fancy Butter, KLE mustard, that ones sounds good. Wow, you need to try this. Popcorn oppa pop.com, you min.

Brett Curry:

So it really is Ray Popcorn. I recommend you try it. You kind of see, again, that's a variety of influencers. There's some quick pitting clips. Then there's the one clip of the girl trying the pickle monster. And she's like pauses. Usually it goes quiet. She's munching. You're like, what's she going to? A little bit of suspense built up there. But yeah, you see that. And if you're a popcorn fan like I am as my favorite snack, you're like, I should probably check this out. Should probably give this a second. Look, the Drew Barrymore piece helps as well. Getting some celebrity in there, but not necessary. Just a bonus if you have it. And so this is what we build for our clients. This is what you need to do with your team, with your agency, or we're using for YouTube creative feedback loops. So the good news is with YouTube, it is dependent on creative.

You'll live or die by the creative, but you don't need dozens or hundreds of ads running to make YouTube work. And that's what I know from my meta team is that, hey, some accounts you need hundreds, thousands of creatives to make meta work. Not the case with YouTube, you need a handful to get started and then maybe a handful a month testing from there on out. But what we're really looking at is these three things we're watching what's called the view rate. So the percentage of people that see the ad that actually watch the ad, so they choose to watch the ad, they don't skip. What is that view rate that view rate's going to tell us? And it's more relative to your brand than it is based on a benchmark. But how good is that view rate? That's going to tell us, does this book resonate?

Does this book resonate with this audience? We all get the view rate, the product demo piece. We're really going to see if that's working by the duration of the video that they watch. How long do they watch the video? And then do they click? Because if they're bailing early, the demo's not good. Or if they're not clicking, could be it's on tv. TV doesn't get clickthroughs, but it could be that the demo wasn't developed and I didn't see enough there to make you click. And then of course, conversion rate really kind of wraps into all of it. We are trying new calls to action, new offers all the time to see what wins. Alright, so number one is creative. Number two, we got to look at campaigns and the right campaign structure to win on YouTube. I break down this Arctic case study for you.

We were approached by Arctic I guess almost two years ago. They said, Hey, can you use YouTube to grow Walmart sales? We've been succeeding on Amazon to grow online. We're in Walmart town, coast to coast. Can you help us grow there? We said, yes, that's what we built for Native back in the day. And so these were kind of the five ways we measured success on YouTube. But this is really how almost everybody needs to look at measuring success on YouTube minus the Walmart piece if you're not in there. But we number one objective was Walmart sales. Can we lift in a meaningful measurable way, Walmart sales using YouTube ads? So we create a search lift. And what that means is, and Google will measure this for you, people that see your YouTube ad, are they more likely to search for your brain? So they'll actually measure the lift from YouTube that drove increased searches for your brands.

Can people visit the store? And so something you do if you're in Walmart, it's harder or Lowe's or some big operation, Google can measure someone saw the ad and then visited the store. So in store visits, online sales of course. And then post-purchase surveys for those are selling D two C. How many of you guys are running post-purchase surveys? It's huge data point, especially as some tracking goes away in some areas, like you got to be doing post-purchase surveys. If you are D two C, this is something that I'm happy to run. If you're a bigger brand, eight, nine figures, I can run this for you for free. Google will do this. Basically they'll look at where across the country your category has high and low demand. So sell wheeled coolers. Where are wheeled cooler searches popular? Where are they not popular? Where is it kind of the middle?

And where is your brand popular? Where are people searching for your brand? Where are they not search of your brand? You start to look at where that overlaps. And this gives you opportunities of, Hey, I need to lean more into these areas to sell more. So if there's high category demand, a low brand demand, I need to go for it there. And sometimes if there's high category and high brand demand, I can get even more from those markets. And so we use this for Arctic to kind of map out the strategy. Here's what we saw after running YouTube for about six weeks, we saw 230% lift on mobile searches. So people that saw the YouTube ad, two 30% lift in Arctic brand terms, and then two 31% lift on YouTube where people were searching, and this was just one of the test sales we ran in, but they saw a two 45% sales lift in Walmart.

So we kind of a geo holdout. So they got statisticians on our data team, data science team at Arctic. They measured this, but they said, Hey, comparing these markets to other comparison markets, 25% Lyft driven by YouTube. It was the only variable in those markets. A couple of callouts, little rock, 44%. And I just threw up Stringfield, Missouri where I live, and I think that was all my wife, she was like, let's get art to COAs for everyone in our family Drake wear. And I think that was all me. But anyway, this was how we measured. Did YouTube actually work and drive sales? We won an agency excellence award from Google, which is really cool. And now we're doing this for a bunch of different brands, omnichannel growth with YouTube. And then the third thing, last thing is how do we measure for success? I kind of showed that a little bit, but I want to break this down a little bit more here in the last few minutes.

Anybody heard of House Analytics or has anybody seen this podcast with Olivia Corey? My buddy Andrew Ferris said, yeah, there's a yes back there. Yeah, this was awesome. So I'm a huge house analytics fan. They do incrementality tests based on geo holdouts, right? So you got to test set of geos, you got a control set of geos. You're measuring the difference because here's what's frustrating about ads. Even if you're using a tool to measures click-based data, you don't really know what made this person buy. Was this ad the reason they bought or was this just the last piece of the process? So the most scientific way to figure out did this ad cause a lift is an incrementality study. They're actually kind of expensive, but here's what house said, 190 incrementality tests rolled with eight and nine figure brands. Israel brands spending about 30% of their meta budget.

They were investing in YouTube, so they were not just spending a few thousand dollars here and there on YouTube, they were investing in it. But then they measured, okay, how do these geos, where they reign YouTube, how do they compare to other markets? And here's what they saw. They saw that the actual incremental performance, the performance in their data was 3.4 times better what they saw in YouTube. So to transl that if you saw a one x row ass in your YouTube data and platform, this group was actually getting a 3.4 x roas. Okay? Now, if they were advertising or if they're also selling on Amazon, you could add a full a hundred percent to that. So you may be seeing a one in platform. It was actually a 442% lift, including all of DSC and all of Amazon. And also 76% were new customers, net new customers to these brands.

They maybe thinking what, why is YouTube so bad at measuring their own platform and measuring their own performance? Really it comes out to a few things. One, we're all logged into a bunch of different Gmail accounts. We have Vision one meta account, we all prep dozen Gmail accounts. Our kits are logged into things and it's a bit of a mess. So that's part of it. But the other thing is people don't really click on YouTube ads. If we're on YouTube, we're there for a purpose. We're not that likely to click. And so even at its best, YouTube has half the click-through rate, less than half the click-through rate of meta. And so if you don't get a click, it's really hard to measure what happens after that unless you get creative. 50% of views, it's up to 60%. I've seen in some studies now are on tv.

You don't click your tv, right? TV has never been measured by click data. You got to measure that a different way. And so that's where you look at search lip, brand, lip sales lift, things like that. You got to get sciencey to make that all work. And so it's just a different beast to measure. A couple quick examples that I'll wrap up. This is for Haircare brand. We ran all of their Amazon or we ran all of their YouTube. They had to pause their YouTube ads for a bit to kind of, they were retooling a few things. When they did, we were measuring because we were running their brand search, we're running everything on Amazon for them. Their brand is search volume got cut in half. So people searching for them by name on Amazon volume got cut in half when we paused Amazon. And then over time they had a data science team as well, pretty big brand.

They believed that for every 1D two C subs, we were driving traffic action to their D two C store with YouTube. But they were confident. They said, Hey, for every 1D two C sale we're getting here, we're getting two on Amazon as people just like to buy on Amazon. So they see the ad, they explore, they learn within they buy on Amazon. So really to look at YouTube, you got to look at what we call the trifecta of lift for the results here. So we're not just measuring the click data in YouTube, we're not just measuring with Triple Whale and North Baer or another multitouch attribution tool like that. We're looking at all of these things. How can I create a baseline with my Amazon sales and look at growth rate and then how can I see lift above that? How can I look at search lift?

That's something Google will do for you for free, something we can help set up. And then how are my overall sales trending up as well? It's not the same. And you got to just be okay with that, that it doesn't look the same as sponsor product or sponsor grand ads. It is a different piece, but it's a very powerful tool and that's why brands lean into it. Brands like Dr. Quach, it was their big growth lever. It was the new growth lever for Arctic and many, many others. And so how can we help? I'm going to be around rest of the day, be around tomorrow as well. So we can do these things for you. Kind of a YouTube readiness. So if you want YouTube, read this audit. We can look at your creatives, look at what you're doing now and say, okay, you would need to do these things to be ready for YouTube.

We can talk about the combo of YouTube and Amazon and overall just help you get ready for this. So I think I am officially out of time. Thank you for kicking off. Innovate with me and look Port as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. What would you like to hear more of on the show? Leave us that review if you've not done. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening. This episode of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast is brought to you by firmat, is the AI native commerce platform that optimizes shopping experiences leading to best in class shopper engagement and conversion, leveraging proprietary data tools, and its adaptive commerce Graph for MO delivers hyper-personalized experiences to both human and agentic shoppers that adapt in real time to behavioral and performance insights. Trusted by industry leaders like Backcountry, Bissell, and Glossier, as well as Premier Agency partners for MO platform blends advanced analytics and optimization tools like Heatmaps Strategy engines and conversational data insights to maximize shopper impact and tailor every touchpoint. Check it out for yourself@commerceftcommerce.com.

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When Beav Brodie was handed his wife's purple diaper bag to carry around town, he knew something had to change. As a tattooed, custom car-building dad, that bag just didn't fit. So he did what any problem-solver would do—he grabbed his sewing machine and made his own. That side project turned into Tactical Baby Gear, a thriving eCommerce brand that's become the go-to for dads who want gear that's as functional as it is badass. In this episode, Beav shares his journey from knowing absolutely nothing about eCommerce (including what a UPC code was) to building a product line that customers trust and keep coming back for. He also pulls back the curtain on navigating the chaos of 2025—from Meta auction issues to tariff headwinds—and why he's betting big on Amazon and YouTube as his growth channels for the year ahead.

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Sponsored by OMG Commerce - go to (https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact) and request your FREE strategy session today!

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Chapters:
(00:00) Opening & Introducing Beav Brodie

(04:45) 2025 Headwinds, Tariffs & Personal Life Challenges

(08:45) Becoming a Real Operator: Systems, SOPs & Founder Mindset Shifts

(12:00) Origin Story: From Custom Cars to Tactical Baby Gear

(17:00) Manufacturing Realities: COVID, Price Creep & Moving Abroad

(24:38) Recover hidden Amazon revenue with Threecolts

(25:33) Meta Constraints & The Founder Bottleneck in Content

(29:30) UGC, Influencers & Why Authenticity Beats “Pretty” Content

(36:25) Offers, Acquisition & The Realities of Low-Repeat Categories

(42:10) Brand vs Discounts: Community, Trust & True LTV

(47:00) Channel Expansion & Product Philosophy

(50:19) PostPilot: Direct mail that prints money.

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Relevant Links:

• Tactical Baby Gear: https://tacticalbabygear.com
• Sponsor Offer | Threecolts: http://threecolts.com
• Sponsor Offer | PostPilot: http://postpilot.com/

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Transcript:

Beav Brodie:

In terms of growing the business, it's just trying to identify what the constraints are, right? What's preventing us from growing and how do we fix that? How do we attack that? How do we problem solve for that?

Brett Curry:

Hey, thanks again for tuning into the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I want to take just a minute and talk about my agency OMG Commerce. We've been helping e-commerce brands for 15 years, and that's like a hundred e-commerce years. And our specialty is finding opportunities for growth that other people miss and unlocking channels that you're not currently maximizing. For example, YouTube, most brands are sleeping on YouTube, and my belief is it's the biggest untapped opportunity for your brand. We're also good at adding up to eight figures in growth for Amazon brands. And so if you are looking for scale and growth profitably, that's what we do. We'd love to chat with you. We'd love to review your current marketing efforts, show you where there's missed opportunities and craft a specific plan for you. So visit us@omgcommerce.com, click the Let's Talk button, and we'd love to schedule a complimentary strategic review with you.

With that back to the show. 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 my guest is the one the only be Brodie from Tactical Baby Gear. I love this brand, I love these products. I love the story of this brand. And so this is going to be a show that covers lots of different facets of running and growing an e-commerce business. I love opportunities to sit down and talk to somebody who's in the trenches from product development to brand building, to scaling, to figuring out what the heck's going on in the economy and how do we still grow through the madness. And he's also a podcast host, the Ultimate Dad podcast. So we'll talk a little bit of family stuff as well, which we have that in common, both family men. And so with that beef, how you doing, man? Welcome to the show and thanks for coming on. Thanks for taking the time.

Speaker 3:

Yeah,

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, I'm doing really good. I'm doing really good. Yeah, you have a bunch of kids too. I got a bunch of kids, man. I got eight kids. It's wild times. Golly. I can't hold a candle to that and I'm not trying to catch up.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, that's what most people say. Like, Hey, I know this isn't a contest, but if it was weren't, I'm not trying to beat you. I'm not trying to win. And so that's kind of the way it goes. But dude, I got to just ask, you've got an amazing setup right now,

Speaker 3:

Your

Brett Curry:

Camera, it's a good look, dude, like the background, everything. Talk to us about what's your tech stack here for your podcast setup?

Beav Brodie:

Yeah. Alright, so those who are interested in the nerdy stuff I'm running. This is a ZVE one full frame camera, great sensor. It's a 24 mil 1.4, so that blurred out back. And then I got my

Brett Curry:

Podcast Focal Links and Aperture there for those that want to get nerd. Yeah, the great podcast, Mike. So that's awesome, man. Well, excited to dive into a lot here. You're one of the rare, I would say, male founders in the baby space in what you guys have achieved. You might think so. That is what I think. So correct me. Am I mistaken in that?

Beav Brodie:

Yeah. Well a lot of the guys I know in the baby space, particularly in the mobility space, strollers and wagons and that sort of thing, most of that side of the industry is run by a bunch of old white guys.

Brett Curry:

I mean, that is what I also heard. I know some people that are trying to rework, disrupt the undergarment space, like the female underwear, and they're like, yeah, most of the problem here is it's old white dudes that run this industry. And so Makes sense. Yeah. So you're trying to reshape that for sure. So I want to talk about several things. 2025 has been a weird year. We've kind of faced some headwinds with tariffs and auction issues on meta and government shutdown and all kinds of stuff. So we'll kind of talk through some headwinds. We want to talk about business growth and a variety of things. But first for people that don't know or haven't heard this story, what is tactical Baby gear and where did this idea come from and why launch a baby product company?

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, so I'll give you the abbreviated version. I could go all day telling the story, but I started Tactical Baby Gear in 2013 when I found out we were having another girl. I had one daughter at the time, and I had the pleasure of carrying my wife's purple diaper bag. Hold on. I actually have

Brett Curry:

A here. Oh, you got it. You got this for those watch right here. Oh, look at that. Just said the is very purpley. Yeah, that's not going to give you a lot of street cred with other dads. I mean, girl dad, and I'm a girl dad as well. I've got six daughters, so I'm used to carrying stuff like this. So people give you the nod of approval, but that's not what you want to carry all the time. Look at me, look

Beav Brodie:

At me. Do I look like the kind of guy who must

Brett Curry:

Got it doesn't fit

Beav Brodie:

For me?

Brett Curry:

God, guns and diaper hat on? Come on man. A purple bag is not what you're wanting to

Beav Brodie:

Rock. Yeah, I mean it's fine. We all step up to the plate, we man up, we do it, and it's like whatever. But then you're walking through the store and you're like, man, I really hope one of my buddies doesn't see me carrying this thing Nice purse around. Yeah.

So anyways, we're doing ultrasounds and stuff with my second child. We find out it's another girl and I was like, God dang it. I'm so sick of carrying this bag. And at the time I was building custom cars. I've got a shop, we build custom cars, really high-end stuff. We've set world records, built stuff for celebrities, et cetera, et cetera. Featured in magazines and things like that. But one of the things we did was upholstery. So I've got sewing machines and things like that, and I couldn't find a bag. I had no interest in starting a baby brand. That wasn't part of my thing at all. I was trying to become Jesse James, you know what I mean? And so I was like, well, I'm just going to make a bag. I can't find anything close to what I would want to carry. And then all my buddies are like, yo, that's sick. Make me one too. And I was like, man, this could be a cool little side hustle, whatever. I got so much time for that. In between

Speaker 3:

Building

Beav Brodie:

Cars, build custom cars and one thing leads to another that leads to another. And then suddenly I've got this side hustle that's got more demand than I can keep up with and I'm trying to figure out how to manage all of it. I don't know anything about e-commerce, I don't know anything about sales. All I know how to do is make a cool car. That's it. And so I reached out to a buddy of mine I went to high school with who had developed a product and was selling it to Target and a bunch of big box retail stores. I was like, oh, that's the guy I should reach out to. So I called him and I was told him what I had going on. He starts asking me some really simple basic questions. I was like, dude, I don't know anything about this crap.

I don't even know what a UPC is. He's like a barcode. And I was like, oh yeah, right, sure, yeah, I guess if I want to sell stuff like this, that's probably a good idea. So anyways, those conversations lead into him becoming a partner and then we really hit the ground running. He's ended up selling his business. He really believed in what I had started with TBG and was able to help me really build it as a business. And he's an operations guy, he's like, he's that kind of guy. So helpful to have a product

Brett Curry:

Visionary, growth-minded guy with an ops person as well. It's really

Beav Brodie:

A necessary thing if you want to make big moves in my mind, it's hard to do it without it, but so that's kind of the origin story and how we got started and why we got started. And since I have that prop here, this is my everyday bag that I carry. But dude, this is what one of our current diaper bags looks like and it's got camo. You got the space for patches, you get the wipe in some kid stuff, insulated cooler pouch for bottles, things like that. It's got a ton of features. It's got changing mat, stroller, straps, everything you would expect in a diaper bag, but looks nothing like a diaper bag.

Brett Curry:

Looks nothing like a diaper bag. It's feature rich, right? Guys, we can geek out about the features. What do we want to do when we're hanging out with other dads? We want to show off our gear. So why this gear is better than your gear, right?

She went off your custom car in the garage or whatever. And so love this. And so started in 2013. I've been kind of following your journey for quite a while because Kurt Eler mutual friend, I know he runs kind of the dev side and the side of your brand, did a brilliant job there. And so I been watching that. I want to fast forward to this year just really briefly give some folks some kind actionable stuff and then we'll, like I said, talk about a variety of things we can bounce around. It's been a weird year. So we had tariffs, which has locked things up for a little while. We've had meta disruptions, yet the government shutdown, it's now coming to a close and things like that. How have you faced the headwinds of 2025 and then maybe more broadly, how do you approach problems in general? Because obviously 2026 is going to bring its own unique set of challenges. So how have you weathered the storm this year?

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, it's been extra weird for us too. Coming off the back of my, actually the daughter who inspired me to start the business, she had cancer. And so I spent the last two and a half years living in hospitals and taking care of her fighting cancer. And thankfully she's doing really, really good now. So amazing that she's been in full recovery. Love it. It was rough. So I'm coming off the back of that and being distracted with that and getting back into the business this year and really trying to refocus, try to, okay, I'm get my head back in the game. And then we face some of these other things and there's some things where I'm like, alright, are we struggling because I had my eye off the ball for a little while and things got a little messy or is it tough because of all these other things?

So for us, it was a little bit of both, I think. You know what I mean? So there's a lot of things that I've had to do to reestablish a foundation within the business, put a lot of SOP systems and processes and things like that in place that allow people to do their job more effectively, more efficiently, keep me from having to do certain things so that I can focus back on growing the business and not being in the weeds and being such an employee. So there was that side of it, which was probably the biggest thing for us is trying to get me back out of being an employee and being an owner, which is such a mind change. You know what I mean? Mindset change, which is really

Brett Curry:

Tough. I heard that phrase one time. It's going from being in the business to being above the business. So there's this thought of working on the business instead of in it. I really like that thinking above the business where what if I was an investor? What if I was just a financial interest? Would I move pieces or how would I architect this or engineer this? And so got to do a little bit of both obviously,

Beav Brodie:

But

Brett Curry:

Yeah, love that.

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, so that was one of the biggest things for us. And I went into, this year we hired some agencies to help with Facebook ads and things like that, that were taking up a lot of my time and trying to outsource Amazon, which became an epic failure. And we had to take that back over and that was a whole nother thing. But with the tariffs thing in particular, we had an unfortunate situation where we had a manufacturing partner that was just taking advantage of us through all the COVID stuff. And every time we would make a small change to our product, they would increase the price. Like ah, COVID more expensive.

And we were with them for 10 years, so we had a lot of trust with them. They's been really good to us for a long time. And then the quality product and all that, they started to take advantage of us on the price side and it was just continuously eroding our margins. Same with coming off of an election year with Facebook ads and political money thrown in the system. CPMs are up, everything's a mess. So our margins really got eroded through a lot of that stuff. And so we cut ties with our manufacturing partner, went with some new factories and stuff, which really cut our margins, got our margins back, and then tariffs hit and we're like, oh my God, like a break, man. Can't catch a break. But we have been super lucky and been very fortunate with Alex, my business partner, really keeping an eye on the climate of a lot of those things

And staying, I think probably more luck than good. And I think he would agree that we're always one step ahead of some of these major changes and it keeps us from being really screwed. Super important. Same thing happened with in 20 16, 20 17 when all the China tariffs hit the first time we had just moved all our manufacturing out of China to Vietnam, and then the China tariffs hit. We were like, whoa, we got lucky there too. So it's been an interesting ride, but we're very fortunate that we've been able to navigate a lot of that stuff and we're still in the game and not everyone can say that, which really sucks for a lot of people, but we look at those things as we, we'll figure it out mentality, we're just going to power through it. We'll figure it out. As entrepreneurs and business owners and product developers, you're just solving problems all the time. And some days' just a different set of problems

Brett Curry:

From one problem to the next. That's the game forever. We're solving problems, trying to anticipate the next problem, trying to have some first principles, mindset to handle problems as they pop up. And that's just the game. That's the game of being a founder and

Beav Brodie:

Being a business leader for sure, a hundred percent. So that's how we tend to think about those things. And in terms of growing the business, it's just trying to identify what the constraints are, what's preventing us from growing and how do we fix that? How do we attack that? How do we problem solve for that? Do we need to hire, do we need to outsource, do we need to, whatever that is. Is it a new sales channel, is a new marketing channel, is it right? Any of those things.

Brett Curry:

I love that. Let's actually pause for a minute and see if you have any more to add to that, because I love the approach of looking at what are the constraints in the business? This is what I'm trying to accomplish, this rate of growth at this EBITDA margin to reach this outcome at this given time. But what are the constraints? So what are the components going into that and making up that growth? And then what are my constraints? So any recent examples of where you've identified a constraint that's limiting growth and how you've kind of tackled it? And you can be as

Beav Brodie:

Specific or as general as you'd like. Yeah, I mean for us, I think there's two things we're up against presently. One of them is I think we are sort of maxing out what we can do in terms of ad spend on meta because we don't have the volume of content to throw at the platform. Because we all know right now that the game on meta ads is volumes of content. It needs to be good, but you need to have a lot of it.

Brett Curry:

And with the Andros we were talking about when we were hanging out in Denver, it's like it's not just amount of content, but there's got to be content diversity. So you've got to have enough very unique content aimed at different avatars and things like that. If you don't have that,

Beav Brodie:

You're going to be behind a little bit. So oftentimes I become the bottleneck, which is why I've been trying to remove myself from being an employee for so many different tasks. So that was a constraint, which is why we started outsourcing things. Get someone else to do Facebook ads, get someone else to manage Amazon, get someone else to, whatever the thing is, try to outsource the things and get someone to do it better than I can. That's one constraint. Another is I make all the content, a lot of it, or at least my face is in a lot of content, you're

Speaker 3:

In the content.

Beav Brodie:

So that creates another bottleneck, which truthfully needing diverse content and different looking people, male, female, black, white, Hispanic, whatever, different locations is almost frees me up. But now we have to manage finding other people to make the content and is it up to par and getting UGC stuff and that UGC content is a whole nother thing. And we can touch on that because I've learned a valuable lesson recently around UGC, but another, and we can come back to that. But yeah, definitely come back to that,

The constraints side of things. It's just a lot of it is hypothesis too, right? Okay, we're stuck here. I want to get here. What is holding us back? Well, I think we need to make more content or I think maybe we need to find a new marketing channel to use the existing content we have because we we've it out on other platforms. Can we use that same content on a different platform to acquire new customers there? What does that look like? And you start to hypothesize what you think the constraints are and then try to problem solve for it and then you confirm or deny that works. Totally, totally. So I think that's

Brett Curry:

Sort

Beav Brodie:

Of the workflow.

Brett Curry:

It totally makes sense. And that's just to use a media buying analogy. We do a lot with YouTube ads and YouTube has kind of been one of the vehicles for our growth and why people are attracted to us and things like that. And there's several things we look at. You look at some of the early signs of is this ad or this campaign working? And you look at things like view rate and engagement rate and watch time per impression and click through rate and how are people engaging with this content? And that's good, but obviously what ultimately matters is are people buying. And so if the end goal is scale at a CAC goal or scale at a ROAS goal, what are the components that make that up? And so this is what we do all day long. It's looking at, okay, actually everything is working here except the conversion rate. And so then what is made up of conversion rate? Well, it's either the quality of the traffic, it's the quality of the offer or it's some component there. The message,

Beav Brodie:

Is it the website? Is there a hiccup? Is there

Brett Curry:

Problem? So you start breaking that down over and over and over again and then it's like, okay, well then these then are the three or six things we need to test and in this sequence. And then you get to the bottom of it and then you scale. So

Speaker 3:

Yeah,

Brett Curry:

Yeah. But I think the cool thing is you can take that mentality and apply it to essentially every area of business. So that's awesome. Talk about UGC. We obviously UGC is a winner across all socials, it's big on YouTube. What have you learned there?

Beav Brodie:

The interesting breakthrough moment I had mentally about UGC and you see a lot of UGC ads run, I cringe at them, I can't stand them. I get about 45 emails a day from agencies to connect you with UGC creators and blah, blah, blah. And we have a bunch of influencers that we work with that create content for us and these sorts of things, but they're in their own way, their own thing. And I recently was on a call with smart marketer about UGC stuff and blah, blah, blah. And when they broke down their workflow on dealing with UGC creators and everything that goes into it, it became very clear to me in that moment, there is a big difference between an influencer and a UGC creator. It's a completely different business. It is the influencer you're paying for access to their audience, which I would argue you're not even getting access to their audience anymore with the way the algorithms are.

And oftentimes they're so stuck in the content that they have made forever that built this audience over the last five, 10 years that the numbers aren't great anymore. Anyways for them, the UGC creators are like, Hey, hire me as a paid actor. And it's like, give me the product, let me know what you want me to say. I'll make you the content, I'll record it. I'll send you the assets, whatever stipulations you have, and pay me to make the content or record the thing for you. I'm not posting it to a platform with lots of followers, I'm might do any of that kind of stuff. And that was the big learning point. I was like, oh shit, influencers and UGC and your customer's reviews, those are separate. Too different. Totally different thing. But UGC creator is a very specific breed and hard to find and it takes a lot of management.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, yeah, it does. And one of the interesting things, and I know other people share your same sentiments where it's like, oh, I see a UGC ad and I just cringe, I hate it, don't want to watch it, things like that. I remember when I was fresh out of college, I was doing some TV and radio and stuff, and I remember talking to this creative guy about TV ads and he was like, Hey, customer testimonials and video ads, they don't work anymore. You see that, you know ad's not going to work. So that day is over, it's finished. I'm like, yeah, I don't actually think so this is like 20 some years ago. And UGC is more popular than ever. And here's the thing, it's always going to work if it's authentic, at least authentic feeling, if it's addressing a problem, if it's talking about a feature or benefit, if it's allowing a prospect to really connect with a product, it's always going to work, but it's a pain and bad UGC or inauthentic UGC, it does not work like it used to for sure. So I would argue that it probably never worked. Any tips or tricks or tactics that you're doing to get really good stuff in all those categories? Reviews, UGC, creator

Beav Brodie:

Content? Well, UGC we're struggling. I still can't get anything from anybody that I'm like, I get stuff and I'm like, what is this? What is this? So if anyone has tips for me, leave it in the comments. I'd love to read them because I'm on the struggle bus with the UGC. I also have a hard time being okay doing it because it feels so fabricated and whatever. And that goes back to some of my moral stuff. Such a brand guy. Totally get into that. Yeah,

Brett Curry:

I'll share something on the UGC side really quickly. I know Ezra, a Firestone Mutual friend of ours has some content around ambassador programs and things like that. You can get some content from that. What's interesting is because I was doing this long ago, back when I was doing TV and stuff, I actually put together this resource of, and this was back in the day when you were mostly filming things in person. And so I've actually got this guide for how to interview someone on camera. So you should do this for jewelry stores and other people. I'd be like the guide behind camera interviewing. And this was an art, art and a science to how you ask questions and how get someone talking and feeling comfortable. I'll share that with you. Maybe that's something I'll release to a wider group. But what we'd always do is we would just ask questions kind of leading, but just letting someone talk in their own voice.

You end up with 85% or 90% unusable garbage, boring ums and ahs and what did you just say? But then you'll get a couple of clips that are just amazing. I remember this one time we were early on with this jewelry store I was helping where this guy was like, Christmas isn't Christmas unless I have something under the tree with this jewelry store's name on the bag. And I'm like, oh, that's an awesome clip. So we use that for, so you pull a few of those things and now you're like, I've got some marketing gold here that I can use a long, long time. And so I think part of it is how do we guide someone in just being their authentic self? And then you got to find good editors who will just weed through the garbage to find the nuggets. And the cool thing is AI can really help with that now as well.

So happy to share a few resources there because the cool thing is you should be able to get a lot of UGC because your product is so unique and because you're targeting dads, but with cool gear, baby gear that they want to wear. But it is difficult, no doubt about it. It's tough. This episode is brought to you by three cults. What do L'Oreal, Celsius, Samsung, and Quest Nutrition all have in common? They trust three colts to recover hidden revenue, unlocking two to 5% in extra cashflow. That's more budget for PPC channel expansion or pure profits to fight margin compression. Now three Colts is offering you the same advantage, completely free. They'll recover your first $1,000 at no charge. Go catch upfront costs, just a real $1,000 to show you why the world's leading brands choose three cults to recover cash cut shipping costs by 10 to 30%. Alternatively, three cults offers a complimentary month of multi-channel pro valued at $999 to facilitate the launch of your products across 30 plus e-commerce marketplaces. Either way, improve your margins, grow your online revenue with three cults. What about working with creators? Any tips or tactics there?

Beav Brodie:

No, nothing useful. I don't claim to be an expert in that field. I don't want to

Brett Curry:

Do it all good. I think one of the things underscore there is that stuff's not going away. And so figuring out how to solve it and do it in an authentic

Beav Brodie:

Way is key. Yeah, I mean the most valuable thing that I find with working with other creators and influencers or other internet personalities is I just create authentic relationships with these people. You know what I mean? We'll fly out to wherever they are. We spend weekends together, we do things, we go to dinner, whatever it is, you know what I mean? And I create a relationship with them that are authentic real relationships. It's not like I'm doing a fake relationship so that I can get whatever, but that just creates these lifelong ambassadors and long friends. And so that's how it's tough to do and it's slow in some, it can be slow moving in some capacity that when I haven't done it as much over the last few years, obviously with my daughter's situation, and we've seen the change of the quality of creators that we have in our world. It's just like a business relationship for them. They're like, send me the thing, I'll make you the video and then you never talk to 'em again,

Brett Curry:

Right?

Beav Brodie:

I don't like that.

Brett Curry:

And sometimes the old saying, sometimes to scale, you have to do things that don't scale. And sometimes that flight across the country, the dinner with the right key partner goes a long way. It doesn't scale, but it can enable you to scale. And so that's important. One of the big challenges every year, all the time for people, but especially this year is new customer acquisition. How are we attracting new customers, especially when meta it's being wonky or the things just conversion rates are low or whatever. Javi has been approaching new customer acquisition this year. And any learnings, insights, interesting things to share there.

Beav Brodie:

We've approached it a little bit differently. As much as I'm a brand guy and I prefer to be making a lot of content that's attracting customers versus us chasing people around the internet convincing them to buy, there's a time and a place for it. Totally. And as I outsource a lot of the Facebook ads and that sort of thing, and digging back into the data and the analytics and we have a pretty low repeat customer rate, but you buy a bag that's going to last forever, you don't need a second one. Generally they're not coming back for more diaper bags. They might come back for a patch or an accessory or a teddy bear or something like this, right?

Brett Curry:

Hey, look at that. Nice. That's awesome.

Beav Brodie:

And they come back and they spend 10 or 20 bucks or something. But outside of that, so our first customer, that purchase really has to matter. It's got to be profitable, it has to be to be. And some businesses that's not the case. They can lose a little bit of money because the repeat customer and the LTV is so high that it's like whatever. But so we've approached it a little bit differently. We're being a little bit more aggressive on the front end trying to do that and trying different options. Aggressive in terms of how you're targeting people or more aggressive in the offer or both? A little bit of both. We've tested a lot this year to try to find different things that we think we can use to scale without me having to create so much content because I'm trying to work on the business and less in the business, which is a struggle for me. But yeah, we're just being aggressive trying and testing different offers, different audiences, narrowing that down, really excluding existing customers from things more than we have before, which we actually saw an interesting dip in repeat customer rate when we stopped spending money on them.

Brett Curry:

Interesting.

Beav Brodie:

And I was like, so then I was like, well, maybe our repeat customer rate's not as bad. So there was some interesting stuff there. Then you're like, okay, well there's a problem to solve. Let's look into this data. Is this accurate? But we have a lot of gift giving going on and all these different things. So it's like it's tough got It's tough.

Brett Curry:

It's tough, man. And this is something that we look at all the time doing this with a number of clients right now that are kind of scaling. We're in the thick of holiday shopping right now as we record this. And so how are we getting net new customers? How are we driving incrementality? And several clients are running house analytics studies and things, which are really interesting. But yeah, we're constantly trying and we see this across different Google properties, whether it's p max demand gen on the YouTube side is yeah, how are we excluding of course past customers if it's an acquisition campaign or a true prospecting campaign, but also maybe getting even a little more restricted than that. Maybe we're excluding site visitors and some other things like that. Generally that's not always the best idea because you want to a little bit of remarketing in some of your campaigns really fuel them. Yeah, we're doing all kinds of stuff because what it seems like platforms are doing is really leaning into remarketing audiences more and more, even if you're trying to exclude and go broader. So

Beav Brodie:

Because these platforms are in the market of attribution. Totally, totally. And they're all trying to steal attribution. I say steal, I mean what mean? Take credit. Totally. Totally. Yeah. How can we get the

Brett Curry:

Conversion, take credit for the conversion. And so to optimize that, the algorithm's going to lean more into some remarketing almost regardless of what you do.

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, it's tough. So one of our big things this year was really focusing on that new customer row as more so than we had in the past.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, love that for sure. And has that led to some new creative, I know you said you're trying to limit that and not be a content factory type of thing, but as it led to some new creative or has it more been on the audience and campaign testing

Beav Brodie:

Side? It's been more on the audience and campaign. I mean, we are always making new content, but it's like audience campaign offers. Those have been a lot of the testing this year.

Brett Curry:

Any interesting insights on the offer side of thing? I think that's seeing this with a very large skincare brand we're working with right now where just gone through a couple of different phases of different offers that are kind of seasonal and content's good, view rates are great, click-through rates good on all of it, but man, one launch is performing worse than a couple others. And it's all conversion rate driven. As we're digging in, we're like, I think it's just the offer. It's like the makeup of the, no pun intended, of the things you're offering here as a skincare brand. I think that's it. And so been tweaking and testing to see if that hypothesis is true. But what have you guys learned on the offer side of things

Beav Brodie:

That for us, and I say that because for us, because it's always different, it's still just a 20% off offer crushes it for us. We can try this or this dollar off or get this thing and get this thing for free and all kinds of different variations. 10% doesn't move the needle, 15% doesn't move the needle. 20% kills it. 25% really kills it.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it kills your margins potentially too. And so that sweet spot where it's motivating gets people to move off center but still protects margins it seems like

Beav Brodie:

From all the things we've tested in the past year

Brett Curry:

Again. Yeah, yeah, totally. Totally makes sense. Anything new or interesting in the community building side of things or the brand building side of things? And it totally makes sense as I see your content and see what you've built. I'd forgotten about the custom car piece, but you build custom one of a kind cars, you're a craftsman. So quality design, look and feel aesthetic, it matters to you. And so I know you've guys have always been good at this, but any insights on community building, brand building or how that's shifted here in the recent past?

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, I mean brand building is really my strong. It's like brand building and product development is really where my heart is. We haven't done as much of the community and brand building stuff that I'd like to be doing in the last few years, again because of my daughter, but I'm desperate to get back to it, which is why I'm trying to lay such a foundation right now with the rest of the business so I can break away from some of that day to day and just get back to making content, doing podcasts, creating educational content for new parents and attracting, what I try to do is attract customers to us love it, versus chasing them around and trying to convince them with all these offers all the time. I feel like a used car salesman doing it and it's a necessary thing. There's a time and a place for it obviously, but when you talk about first purchase matters and it has to be profitable and cost to acquire a customer needs to be low and you want to get to LTV up as high as possible and there's no better way to do that than building a brand and a community of people who just are attracted to you and it takes a lot less convincing.

Yep. And one

Brett Curry:

Interesting thing for you too, biv, that you mentioned this and I think this is a way that maybe LTV is a little bit different for you than for others. Maybe someone's not buying two or three bags, but I think what you do have though, you talk about the gifting idea, you could create this passionate group of customers. So yeah, maybe they'll buy one or two things, but they're also very likely to refer and very likely to buy a gift for someone else. And so I think you could argue that that's a bit like LTV. So I attracted this one customer, now I've got community, I've got offers now. They love my brand and love what I'm about. They're going to be way more valuable as a customer now they're going to refer three or four or five people to me, they're

Beav Brodie:

Going to be

Brett Curry:

Buy something else as long as,

Beav Brodie:

As long as you build that brand. And when I say brand, it's like if you replace the word brand with trust big, it's like you're building trust, right? It's reput is ultimately. And so I'm really big on that. It's like, yeah, it's great if I get 'em to come by. It's even better if they become a fan of the brand because then you're right, they refer, which becomes difficult. No attribution on referrals, especially pretty hard. So it's you

Brett Curry:

Put surveys and a few things that piece it together, but ultimately it's pretty hard to track

Beav Brodie:

Can be difficult and especially in a day and age where you can track so many things and you want to be able to track those things, sometimes you just let go of it and let things work. It's kind of refreshing.

Brett Curry:

Let's actually talk about that for a second because it's so interesting. And I have always been a data guy. I love data. I think it tells a story. I think it's really valuable. I think I remember there was a time when I was like, oh, MTA is multitouch attribution tools. It's going to solve all our problems. Then you get in and you're like, nah, it actually doesn't really solve our problems at all. And so then it's like, all right, well you probably need some component or some combination of MTAs, MMS and incrementality tests. And even then it's not perfect. You get post-purchase surveys and things you kind of pulled together. And so I think you want to be directionally accurate and actionable, but trying to be super precise is probably a bit of an exercise in futility. But how do you look at measurement and attribution and how do you measure and understand is what I'm doing working?

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, I mean we look at a lot of that stuff obviously on a platform platform, individual platform level through the native platforms tools or through triple whale for example, which is super common practice, great one. So we look at some of those things. A lot of times it's just looking at different assets within that to what's the benchmark within the platform? This one's performing better than this one, et cetera, et cetera. But a lot of it is just looking at blended numbers and some of it you're taking a wild stab in the dark and you're hoping you're like, I think this is working. The data YouTube ads is so hard, so hard. Hard. It's hard. It's one the hard one. Yeah,

And you just get, sometimes your gut will tell you, and that's a tough one. And other times you just attribute or set aside a small budget for testing. I don't know what's going to happen with this, but I'm just testing. So yeah, I mean it's a lot of roas, a lot of blended stuff for us that we're like, we're trying lots of things. We're testing things. Some of it is very analytical, and I also believe that you can optimize things to a point where you go backwards. Yeah, that's true. Especially with conversion rate optimization or something. You look at a heat map, you're like, well, no one's clicking on this thing. Take it off the site. You take it off the site and then suddenly you've got negative actions of taking from that, and then you're just like, what I don't understand or whatever. Or you start to add, you definitely be ROAS

Brett Curry:

Rich, but growth poor if you're really optimizing roas, which can be a bit misleading. And so I love the blended look to balance that. So looking at mer, looking at total ROAS or total ACOs depending on where you're looking and things like that because you've got to balance it. And it's one of those things where I think it's not necessarily always helpful to look at this data is wrong or this ROAS lies or whatever. But sometimes it does. And sometimes it's like it's just telling you it's measuring in a certain way and there are limitations to that measurement. That's what it's right. And so understand those limitations and then make decisions accordingly. What about channel expansion for you guys? And I'm thinking more on the distribution side of things. So you guys are on Amazon, are you thinking retail? Is that a big opportunity for you? Are you looking at more marketplaces and how do you view channel expansion?

Beav Brodie:

We're not really looking at retail right now with my business partners background in big box retail stuff. It's just, we said early on that it's just not a road we want to go down. Got it. And we did a little bit, we had some very strategic retail partners at one point in time, the exchange, which is the Army, it's like the military's target. It's on every military base. We had to deal with them for a while and it was a lot to manage. It wasn't that fruitful, truthfully got it through COVID that sort of fizzled out and we just kind of let it be. It was kind a pain in the butt and we didn't pursue it anymore on our end. But yeah, so we've got Shopify and Amazon. I don't think we're looking at any more sales channels right now in the near future, at least probably not in the next two years, but definitely going harder on different marketing channels, I think.

Brett Curry:

Yeah,

Beav Brodie:

And I think one thing about your

Brett Curry:

Product is it may not do great as a standalone in a retail store without some explanation because it's different and because it's very feature rich and it's very well built, you almost need some explanation. You need to see a demo of it in that target or something. And so that's where the online advertising really helps with that. I think it could help you convert some of the people that you educate online, get them to buy more, but totally makes sense, man, it is capital intensive. It doesn't always work out. The terms are terrible. Like, oh, okay, A buddy of mine helps people get into Walmart and he talks about the Walmart hug of death where it's like, it can be great. It can also literally put you out of business. And so yeah, it's a tricky game for sure. What about then marketing channel expansion? What's your philosophy there? What are you guys looking at thinking about there?

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, I mean we're going to dive heavier into Amazon ads. As I briefly mentioned, we tried to outsource that to an agency to just manage the Amazon store because Amazon's a whole nother beast, and that was a really bad experience. And so we kind of took the reins back and we never turned the ads back on and it's continuing to perform as it was. So really it was a lot of sort of, you're converting from your Facebook traffic basically, of course. But a lot of the ads we're running were brand search, things like that they were going to convert anyways. Totally. It was the demand generation from Facebook ads that converted on Amazon. So trying to go more top of funnel, new customer acquisition on Amazon, and that's where sponsor brand video really

Brett Curry:

Comes into play, or used to be called video and search. It kind of creates a nice picture. But yeah, someone's searching for a product on Amazon. You got the category level, the sponsor brand video. Which one of your videos that I'm picturing my mind and I know that you shared in Denver, just brilliant for that. I think you want a little bit shorter. Amazon needs to be more product demo focused, but that is a huge way to get non-brand traffic on Amazon. My favorite way is responsible video for most products and for you guys, I think that's where someone can see it and when they see it, they're like, oh yeah, we have so much video

Beav Brodie:

Content that really the next big play for us. Love that. As well as YouTube. We run YouTube ads, but I was talking to you in Denver, it's like, we have some really awesome content. We got a great product getting this in. It's always when you get it in front of the right people and they're like, holy shit, this is amazing. Take my money. Know what I mean? Exactly. So that's the game we need to play. I'm sort of lost at where and how to grow and scale that particular piece of the puzzle on the YouTube side, because I'm like, I don't know if this is working and I don't want to throw money at it more than I'm already

Brett Curry:

Want to get clarity. And it is one of those things where you definitely have to triangulate with YouTube, obviously talk about that a lot. But yeah, again, kind of getting post-purchase surveys and search list studies, and of course direct conversions, but also engaged view conversions and looking at your MTA eventually looking at a house studies is something with that really comes I think once a brand is mid to high, eight figures probably. And so yeah, YouTube is a challenge, but what's interesting there is that's the platform people are spending more and more time on. And I hear this, I was actually talking to a guy who's kind of in his fifties and he is like, I just find myself spending more time on YouTube. I'm watching golf content and I'm watching this content, that content. And then when you kind of blend YouTube and YouTube tv, you're like, man, I'm spending a lot of time on these two platforms.

So there's opportunities there, but it's not unfortunately for Google and YouTube and for us as Advertis I, oh, I guess maybe this is Help me out. I'm not sure. It's not as easy as meta, and I'm not saying the meta is easy, but Meta's algorithm, and I heard my buddy Cody Ker from Jones View talk about this. There's never been a better mid funnel engine like meta where meta knows what you're in the market for, what you're about to buy. I just bought an SUV for my wife, and I don't know if I thought or searched for all weather floor mats, floor mats. I'm seeing I'm about to drop 300 bucks on floor mats. And so I'm like, Meta's just scary. Good at that. Google's good at a lot of things, but they're also not as good as tying the loop back for YouTube. So they make a challenge for YouTube in particular because YouTube in particular, you don't tend to

Beav Brodie:

Click

Brett Curry:

From a YouTube, right? Yep, exactly. And that's one of the biggest issues there. Yeah, for sure. So love that. And I know we're going to be chatting about that, which is super exciting for me. What about then on the product side? So are you more of the philosophy of, Hey, this is our flagship product, you buy it once you have it for life, it's amazing. We're just going to stick with that. Are you constantly looking at innovations and tweaks and changes in new launches? How do you look at product development?

Beav Brodie:

A little bit of both. I mean, when we develop a product, we want to make it the last one you buy. You know what I mean? Love that. Some people come back a few years later and buy another one because every year or two, we continue to make improvements on our existing products. We're like, we could really make this a little better. So if you look back at version one versus version four, it's quite a bit different. And you're like, wow, version four is really refined. I want the new one. So that's one thing. I also try not to add to the noise if I don't think it's something that I can innovate and make wildly better than someone else. I just don't touch it. It's great. It's great. Generally speaking, if I think it's something that really, maybe that trust factor,

Brett Curry:

Your customers begin to know that this isn't going to be released unless it's going to be the best in its category or at least to something new and different.

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. So that's how I really approach it. And then I obsess over making it as the best I can. And then I try not to get that too much into that, where it's like at some point I have to release the product for timing purposes. We got to get this out. So this has to just be good enough and knowing that next year we'll iterate and we'll make improvements to it. So I think a lot of people get held up in that like, oh, I've been sitting on this thing for four years and it's almost there. It's like, dude, you'll learn faster about how to make it better if people are using it, release it. Iterate. Yeah, that's one of my favorite Steve Jobs

Brett Curry:

Quotes is real creatives ship, right? Meaning you think you're a product designer or developer or creative, then ship something, right? Don't just sit on it forever, ship it and then make it better as you go. I think that's brilliant. So that's awesome, man. Well, anything else? We'll wrap in a minute by sending people two tactical baby gear. Buy some gear, whether you're listening to this right before the holidays, right after you need this in your life. If you know a young family, a dad that you need to deck out, then do the right thing and buy some technical baby gear. But before we do that, anything that you want to talk about what's next? What's next for technical baby gear that we haven't already talked about?

Beav Brodie:

Yeah, I mean that's kind of where my mind is right now is really just like Amazon. Amazon, YouTube is these new marketing channels. Amazon is just rebooting, but really taking them far more seriously than just testing a little bit here and there and seeing what sticks. It's really attacking some of these things head on and creating with Meta and Andromeda and these full funnel campaigns you can do now, a lot of the things we're doing is we have quite a few different product lines. So it's creating full funnel content for each individual product line versus just sort of top middle, bottom of funnel of a little bit of everything. We've got stroller as kind of a newer product for us that's been sort of like a cherry on top. And now we want to try to make that a core product that we're selling and really attack that market. Love that, which will take us to a whole nother level. And there's a lot of really amazing benefits to that stroller, which again, I'm not going to come out with something unless we can kind of disrupt things a little bit. So we're excited about that one. That's a

Brett Curry:

Great natural addition to what you're doing. It's also high a OV. You buy one, you maybe have that thing for a long, long time. Although I will say as we kept having more kids, we would always upgrade strollers. So maybe there's a little bit of upgrade upgradeability there for some folks. Well, they

Beav Brodie:

Tend to

Brett Curry:

Get pretty gross

Beav Brodie:

What mean? Yeah, pretty quickly. And you're like, I mean it's just time for a new one. I mean, it's like your car, right? Your car is expensive. You don't keep it forever. It's like

Brett Curry:

Every three years you're like, yeah, four or five

Beav Brodie:

Years

Brett Curry:

Ready to get something else. And so beat has been awesome, man. It has been super, super fun. Where can people go? Where can they buy some tactical baby gear? Because folks need some.

Beav Brodie:

Yeah. Tactical baby gear.com and then you can follow me personally, I try to make some brand type content time to time. And that's be Brodie on Instagram and YouTube. Yep. BEAV. Be Brodie, check him out.

Brett Curry:

Awesome. Follow awesome products. Keep with the good work, dude. So great chat with you as always. I could keep going for a long, long time, but we're out of time, so it's been fantastic. B, enjoyed it. Thanks man, and hope you crush what's left of this year and into next.

Beav Brodie:

Thanks, man. I appreciate you.

Brett Curry:

Awesome. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. Would you like to hear more of on the show? Leave us that review if you've not done. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening. Today's episode is sponsored by post pilot. It's the secret weapon behind some of your favorite e-commerce brands, and they're using it to print money on the regular. So if you're already crushing it with Klaviyo with meta, then imagine taking that same segmentation and automation and sending it straight to your customers mailboxes. That's right. We're talking physical mail, personalized postcards that drive serious trackable revenue. And right now, post pod's giving E-Commerce Evolution Podcast listeners 1000 free postcard credits just to test it out. But this is for new users only. Just go to post pilot.com and tell them that we sent you to claim your credits break through that digital noise and beat rising ad costs. That's direct mail done right post pilot.com.

‍

‍

Think you've maxed out your paid advertising? Think again.

In this episode, Miranda Pettinger (365 Holdings/Cuddle Clones) shares how she scaled AppLovin from zero to $80,000/day in just 7 days during Black Friday—and why it's now their highest-spending channel, even surpassing Meta.

Miranda doesn't just share success metrics—she breaks down the exact strategy, creative approach, and measurement framework that made it possible. This is the blueprint for brands ready to diversify beyond Meta and Google.

If you're spending serious money on Meta and hitting scale ceilings, AppLovin might be your most underrated growth opportunity. Miranda proved it's possible to find incremental customers, better ROAS, and massive scale—all while simplifying your account structure.

—

Sponsored by OMG Commerce - go to (https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact) and request your FREE strategy session today!

—

Chapters:

(00:00) Introducing Miranda and Cuddle Clones

(07:54) The Journey from Zero to $80,000 a day.

(13:27) Targeting, Media Buying and Creative on AppLovin

(17:03) Understanding AppLovin

(19:38) Analyzing Customer Behavior and Incrementality

(22:59) Fermat: Optimize Shopper Experience with AI

(23:53) Limitations on AppLovin and Final Thoughts

(31:15) Crafting Compelling Ads

(37:24) Analyzing Successful Ad Elements

(42:17) Targeting and Audience Engagement

(46:27) Brand Recall and Interactions

(50:25) Utilizing AI for Ad Optimization

(53:35) Creative Diversity and Longevity

(58:41) Final Thoughts

(01:03:08) Save Money and Connect Your Marketing Channels with Channable

—

Connect With Brett:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce
• Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/
• Request a Free Strategy Session: https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact

Relevant Links:

• Connect with Miranda on X: https://x.com/mirandpettinger
• Cuddle Clones: https://cuddleclones.com
• AppLovin: https://www.applovin.com/
• Sponsor Offer | Fermat (Mention Ecommerce Evolution): fermatcommerce.com
• Sponsor Offer | Channable (Mention Ecommerce Evolution): https://channable.com/

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, JC Hite, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Stephane Colleu, Jeff Oxford, Bryan Porter and more

Transcript:

Miranda Pettinger:

It was blowing that out of the water. It was crushing on every single metric that a marketer looks at. We saw revenue go up, we saw our MER come down, which are all like your north star metrics of like, Hey, this is working. This is going well.

Brett Curry:

Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. We're going to take just a minute and tell you a little bit about my agency OMG Commerce. Now we work with some of your favorite eight and nine figure D two C and omnichannel brands. And our specialty is profitable scale. We love taking great brands and amplifying their growth profitably. We've helped a number of brands go from zero on YouTube to spending as much as a million dollars in 90 days while hitting a CAC or CPA target. We've also helped multiple brands launch on Amazon or just add scale to Amazon. We took Boom Beauty from zero to almost $6 million in sales their first 12 months on Amazon. So if you're not satisfied with your current level of growth, if you're looking to diversify channels, maybe you're a little too dependent on meta and you want to add YouTube or you're not pleased with your Amazon growth, then we need to chat.

So visit us@omgcommerce.com, click the Let's Talk button. We'd love to schedule a complimentary strategy session with you. And with that back to the show. Well hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And I am so excited about today's topic. This will be a first, we've never talked about this topic in the history of the podcast. We're diving into AppLovin. How should you be thinking about AppLovin how to use it, can you really scale on it? Will it work for you? Is now the time to scale? And we'll get into all the ins and outs. And so my guest today is Miranda Pinger and she's an OMG client with Cuddle Clones, gotten to know her and Ryan and the team at Cuddle Clones, super smart marketers, amazing products. You'll hear about those in a minute. And get this, she scaled from zero to $80,000 a day on app 11 last holiday, and now it's a staple in their marketing arsenal and going to scale this holiday as well. She's going to tell you how she did it and all the ins and outs. And so with that, Miranda, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on. And how's it going?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, thanks for having me. We're almost in the heat of q4. November is knocking on our door somehow.

Brett Curry:

Crazy.

Miranda Pettinger:

It's already here. So yeah, it's Black Friday time.

Brett Curry:

It's Black Friday time for sure. And today, who knows when people will actually be watching this, but today was a big day for you. You were the keynote to a big presentation with my buddy Taylor Holiday. So tell us about what you did today because like in presentation mode today.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, definitely. I've got my presenter's hat on.

Yeah, we were talking about the success of AppLovin and channel diversification, which has been a main topic of this year that I think a lot of people have been talking about. And it's been a key thing that I've been trying to unlock for Cuddle clones. We've added App 11 last year. We've added YouTube and Snapchat this year. So I think a more diversified brand is a healthier brand. So if you're on Amazon, if you're on lots of different places, I think you can reach customers in a much healthier way versus if you're all in on one channel, you're going to have a really hard time when that one channel is having a down day or is struggling to grow.

Brett Curry:

Totally. There's more stability with channel diversification. Usually the channels can feed off of each other at least a little bit. There's not always a ton of channel overlap. We'll actually talk about that as it pertains AppLovin. But yeah, love working with you guys and growing on YouTube. I think get the perfect product for YouTube as well, but more on another episode today is all AppLovin and also what was that event and where can people check out the replays or do you know?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yep, you can find it on the Operator's podcast, you can find them on LinkedIn, on X and on their website and they'll have a recording. So if you want to hear even more in depth from people outside of my voice who've really had success on the platform, and that's kind of where the place to find it,

Brett Curry:

Check it out. I love it. So before we dive into AppLovin, we're going to start with that zero to $80,000 a day scale run that you had last year, which is just phenomenal. But for those that don't know, what is Cuddle clones? What do you offer and why do pet lovers go crazy for your products?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, cuddle Clones has a special place in my heart. Say I have a horse, so I'm all in on the animals. And then I have always grown up with rescue dogs. Amazing. And I have a rescue dog myself. So love animals have always been really drawn to 'em and they hold a special place in my heart. And I love the mutt mixes. I have a Clie cattle dog mix. So

Brett Curry:

Mutts are generally the best, right? They, they're not pretentious, right? Yes, they're generally loyal, they're often cute, their own signature unique looks. So I'm a mud fan as well.

Miranda Pettinger:

So all in on animals. So that's why working with Cuddle clones is so much fun. And so Cuddle clones, what it was founded on was creating custom replic because of your pet. So we have custom stuffed animals of your dog or your cat or your horse or your gerbil. And most often people do buy them when they pass away. So I think too, having a breed, I can't just go out and buy a stuffed animal that looks like my dog because he's unique and everyone's dog is unique. They don't all look the same. So if you go to cuddle clones, you can buy a stuffed animal that looks exactly like your dog. They're all handmade. There's only one of a kind. There's only one of your dog, there's only one cuddle clone of your dog.

Brett Curry:

And these are phenomenal. I just want to underscore when you say custom, and when you say replica of your pet, it's crazy how much this looks like your pet. My business partner Chris Brewer, has a small dog named Bubbles who he adores and Pauls is still living, but you did a clone of bubbles and I'm telling you what, you look at a picture of real bubbles and clone bubbles and you're like, I'm not really sure. I'm not really sure because they're not moving, so I'm not really in the picture. I don't know which is which. It's crazy.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, yeah. They're very lifelike and our team puts so much love and care into every single one they create. And that's clear when you get the product. And I think that's unique when you buy something that's a hundred percent custom online, you might be a little skeptical of like, Hey, I don't know if this is going to turn out. I don't get to preview it. I'm putting in all my information in photos and then getting a product. It's really special brand close to my heart. And in addition to the stuffed animals, we pretty much sell anything you'd like to put your pet's face on as a gift. We also sell on the site. So our other bestseller that we had a lot of success with on AppLovin and we're testing on YouTube now is your pet's face on pajamas. So everyone loves getting Christmas jammies, so make it even more special with your pet face

Brett Curry:

PJ's for grownups, kids and for your pet. So get some PJ's with your pet's face on it and have your pet wear it and you wear it too. It's a super fun combo. And yeah, love what you guys are doing and love how you scaled. You guys are really smart marketers, like I mentioned. And so let's dive in. So this year, YouTube is new, Snapchat is new. Last year app 11 was new. What led you to test app 11? And then walk us through that story of zero to $80,000 a day. Because my guess is that was not your target or your expectation. I'm assuming that exceeded even some of your wildest thoughts on scale there.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, definitely. I think onboarding any new channel is a lot of work. You have to get a pixel, you need to figure out the ins and out of an ad account, you need to get your ads uploaded. It's a lot of work regardless of

Speaker 3:

Panel.

Miranda Pettinger:

And so heading into Black Friday last year we were a bit behind Target and Meta was underperforming what we had thought it was going to do, and we were kind of like, this is not looking great heading into Black Friday, we should be a little bit more up on revenue. We were crushing all year and then November was getting harder as the CPMs were rising on meta.

Brett Curry:

Was that the main issue you think? It was just the competition in the auction. CPMs rising on meta and that's what kind of put a damper on what was otherwise a great year up to that point.

Miranda Pettinger:

And I think economic factors too, and the users on Meta and Meta's algorithm, I think other people were having similar issues last Q4 with trying to scale past what they had done previously on Meta and previous years and months. That's kind of where we were at mentally last Q4. So that's where Sean Frank from Ridge was tweeting all about AppLovin and dropped Kathy's email into the Twitterverse. And

Brett Curry:

Kathy's from AppLovin.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yes. Yeah, Kathy's son, she's awesome if you get to see her give any presentations. And so we emailed her and got onboarded pretty quickly after that, probably a couple days we sent over our assets. At the time the platform was not self-serve, so in order to get into the platform, you had to be spending at least $30,000 a day on meta, and that was your proof that you could get into the platform. They just wanted to keep it small because it wasn't so you couldn't just get in there and work on it yourself yet.

Brett Curry:

Got it.

Miranda Pettinger:

But they helped us with all of our assets and getting things uploaded, and then at the time there was an onboarding credit, so that was also an incentive of, Hey, if this doesn't work, we'll just not spend our own money. So that was helpful too of, okay, we're going to onboard with this credit and if it doesn't work, we'll just turn it off and no harm, no foul.

Brett Curry:

Yep, totally makes sense. I love the setup there. Hey, we're not hitting our goals. We're not hitting our targets. And good entrepreneurs, good marketing teams, you don't accept that, right? You're like, no, we want to hit our goal and exceed our goal. And so what else do we have out there? And also any smart marketer, you're living on D two C, Twitter or D two CX, so kudos to you following smart people like Sean Frank. And so you're like, Hey, let's give this app 11 thing a try. And so what did that look like? So obviously you started Zero because it was brand new. How long did it take to get to $80,000 a day and what did that look like? What was that experience like? I'm assuming it was quite a ride.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yes, and so the thing about Cuddle clones is it does most of its revenue in q4, so because it's a great gift, everyone wants to buy it for the holidays. So that's where we're a bit unique compared to an average G two C brand where we have to work really, really fast in a very short window of time because we're also custom, so we can't just Amazon prime you a custom order in a few days. So our shipping cutoffs are much earlier. Yeah,

Brett Curry:

Totally. That makes sense. Yeah,

Miranda Pettinger:

Because the earlier we have a shorter window, so you have to act very, very quickly in a short period of time and make sure you're hitting all your KPIs on a daily basis. Every day does count when 30 days out of the year you're going to do most of your revenue.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, yeah. Like every day is a few weeks or some days are a month to other times year. And so it totally makes sense. It's nice because you can dial up the urgency for the buyer. So that's real urgency, not manufactured urgency, but it means you can't screw it up every day really matters for driving those new orders. So yeah. Were you just glued to the app 11 dashboard increasing budgets and bids constantly or what was that journey like?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, you actually couldn't touch anything at the time. Okay,

Brett Curry:

You got it.

Miranda Pettinger:

There was Nova fiddling of my fingers. So yeah, the team is the one at the time that was managing all of our budgets. So we had a Slack channel with them and they would give recommendations to us, but I genuinely couldn't touch the platform. I couldn't adjust a budget, I couldn't touch anything, which sometimes as a marketer, sometimes it's good to have to ask someone else, Hey, can you do this for me so that you're not the one touching things. So that's kind of how we started with them. And obviously now, but at the time you couldn't touch anything. So they onboarded with our whole ad account, all of our videos, and essentially we had a $10,000 credit, and if I was the one doing that with 10 grand, I'd been like, oh, let's spend 300, maybe 400 a day and then we'll go to a thousand and then maybe we'll go to 2000. In my head, that's probably how I would spend 10 grand for the brand and they spent it over the weekend, so it was like boom, the 10 grand was out the door in a couple days,

Brett Curry:

Let's go man. And so how did that first 10 K perform? Obviously? Well, because you scaled up dramatically after that, but yeah. What kind of CPAs were you seeing in comparison to other platforms? What did that look like?

Miranda Pettinger:

It was blowing that out of the water. It was crushing on every single metric that a marketer looks at click through rate

Brett Curry:

Validated by Triple whale. Right? So you're using the pixel from App 11, but you were really validating through Triple Whale.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, yeah. So we had that third party source that you could really trust. We saw revenue go up, we saw our MER come down, which are all your North star metrics of like, Hey, this is working, this is going well,

Brett Curry:

It's working, it's

Miranda Pettinger:

Working. And so we were like, alright, cool. Let's put our own money in this. Now we spent through their $10,000, we have proof of concept. So at that point we were at

Brett Curry:

A quick question here on the volume, because I've got thoughts on this with a few other platforms, YouTube namely. But did they recommend condensing that $10,000 spend into a tight window because the algorithm works better that way and because they feel like you can learn and grow when you spend that much money in that tight of a window? Or was it more about they knew what your goals were and they knew that you had this 30 days to kind of make hay and so they were trying to hit that target?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, I think we both were seeing such good results. So early on it was kind of a no-brainer of we just this thing day over day, will it break, will it hold? And that was kind of the crazy part of, to sit there and say, okay, well we spent five grand a day, let's go to 10 grand and then see the 10 grand keep holding steady roas, keep nothing went down that scaled crazy, alright, let's do 30 grand today and then alright, let's do 45, let's do 50. And then it got to the point where within seven days I was telling them, okay, let's spend $80,000 today on Black Friday and let's just go. Because again, we have such a short window where most marketers probably wouldn't go that hard in it, but it's like I've got three weeks here, we got to make as much revenue as possible.

Brett Curry:

Totally. But it made sense because you've got the triple oil click data, so you see click attributed data from these campaigns, you can see your global sales, you can see your MER globally, your in new customer, CPA type of thing. And so you knew you were on it was working and so why not? That's fantastic. So you basically gave them your meta ad account and then they were tweaking some of your top meta creatives for that initial run or what were the creatives like in that first run?

Miranda Pettinger:

So we had some meta creatives, but for our bestseller, the Pajamas, we actually didn't have a ton of video. Most of our winning ads on meta were stills, and that's what had always worked on meta for us. So we didn't invest into a lot of video at the time because Meta didn't usually deliver it or spend as much on it compared to all the stills that we would make of the product. So we actually didn't have a ton of video when we launched and we kind of scraped some together of, okay, well here's a good voiceover and here's some good visuals that we have in the drive. It was very much piecing stuff together on the fly. It wasn't a giant production timeframe. It was working with my creative strategist, Sydney and us being like, okay, this is what we think could work on the platform. Let's make a true ad because we know someone's watching an ad and kind of see what happens. So we really didn't have a Meadow winning video that was active in app love, perfectly honest. Got

Brett Curry:

It crazy. So you pulled it all together for App 11 and I think it'd actually be useful. I know there's been quite a bit of chatter online and on D two C Twitter and stuff about App 11, but for those that don't know, what is App 11? So what kind of ads are you running? Where are these ads showing up? What is App 11 for the uneducated?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, so App Eleven's been around for quite a while in the mobile app space. So it's a platform that's existed for a while, but it's new to us e-comm folks because it wasn't open to e-commerce before. So they have all this advertising data on mobile game players and typically if you think about if you've played mobile games on your phone, you would get more ads for mobile games. And so if you're playing Candy Crush, you're going to get an ad for Clash Royale or you're going to get ad word scapes, you're a different ad. And they recently then rolled out this e-comm platform Axon to where now e-comm ad buyers can buy inventory on a mobile game.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's amazing. So these are all video ads. They show up on mobile apps, mobile games, they're nons skippable, so you could exit out of the game, but they're nons skippable, right? So if I'm playing Candy Crush and not the paid version or whatever and the ad pops up, I can either close or watch it basically.

Miranda Pettinger:

And in most cases, you're actually entering into an agreement with the game of, Hey, I want to earn extra coins, I want another try at this round. And so you're kind of entering in this agreement with the platform of saying, Hey, it's

Brett Curry:

A gamification of watching the ad to earn a little something.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, exactly. So you're entering into this agreement with your game of saying, Hey, I will give you my time. I'm going to give you 30 seconds of my time to watch this ad and you're going to give something in my game.

Brett Curry:

I love it.

Miranda Pettinger:

Love it. People go into it knowing I'm watching an ad, I have voluntarily given the click to say, I will watch an ad. People are expecting to see an ad, they're

Brett Curry:

Expecting to see it, there's something in it for them. So they're not resenting the ad maybe like they do in other platforms. And so that's maybe part of why some of these ads are really accepted and responded to. So super, super interesting. Now the platform though, so in the early days when you scale from zero to a hundred or zero to 80 KA day in less than seven days, that was all managed by the app 11 team now itself serve. What does that look like and how important of a part of your marketing mix is App 11 today and even when it's not peak season?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, it's remained between 20 and 30% of our media mix all throughout this year. And at this point I've spent a couple million dollars on the platform and it's continued to help our brand grow this year. And because of the seasonality, I'm really expecting it more growth heading into Q4. And as we sit today in October, it is our largest spending channel. It is currently surpassed meta by a lot for the month of October. Crazy in 2025. It's so crazy. And we've never spent in the month of October ever on app 11. So this is all brand new data and brand new customers for October.

Brett Curry:

That's amazing. Let's talk a little bit about who is the buyer here, because the buzzword obviously in marketing over the last year or two is incrementality, meaning can we get net new customers from this ad endeavor that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise? Or are we just paying for another ad that's going to be inserting itself along the buyer journey for people that we're going to buy anyway? And what's really clear about App 11 is that these are net new buyers. And from your experience, it looks like there's not a lot of crossover between typical AppLovin buyers and meta buyers. Can you talk a little bit about that? Who are these buyers coming from? App Love.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, so we actually looking in Triple Whale, we saw there was less than a 5% overlap from our meta customers and our app love, and that was at of 42,000 orders last Q4. So it's a very large data set as well. So out of 42,000 orders, less than a 5% overlap with Meta's customers. And we did find pretty often that the app Levin customers were first click buyers. They would click on the ad, they would go on our website, and they would check out that day because you gave them 30 seconds of information for them to read versus you saw still on Pinterest or Meta, or you just saw a graphic on a Gmail website where you have to go learn more on the site. So your time on site is going to be longer and you may need to have more questions answered versus if you watch a 32nd commercial of the product that tells you everything about it, you're much more ready to buy.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it totally makes sense. And your product is pretty straightforward, at least the pajamas are the cuddle clone. Maybe this wasn't going to have a few more questions and it's more expensive, but do you think part of that where people were clicking and buying one day was because it was holiday or are you seeing that now even when you're not running during, I guess now is almost peak holiday, but when you're running in the off season, is it still kind of that click and buy day one from map 11?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, we do see that a lot. We see probably one of the highest day one ROAS out of all our channels on app 11 I think just because of the time that the customer spends with you. I mean, attention's the new currency. So every app and every social media channel is trying to just capture your attention and that's what you're buying with app Love is attention for a full 30 seconds.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, yeah, it's crazy and attention that someone has agreed ahead of time to give you. And so again, I think there's less resistance and probably less resentment as well, which has got to work in the advertiser's favor. I would think. This episode of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast is brought to you by Vermont. Vermont is the AI native commerce platform that optimizes shopping experiences leading to best in class shopper engagement and conversion, leveraging proprietary data tools and its adaptive commerce graph for MOT delivers hyper-personalized experiences to both human and agentic shoppers that adapt in real time to behavioral and performance insights. Trusted by industry leaders like Backcountry, Bissell and Glossier, as well as premier agency partners for MO platform blends, advanced analytics and optimization tools like heat maps, strategy engines and conversational data insights to tailor every touchpoint. Check it out for yourself at Vermont commerce F-E-R-M-A-T commerce.com.

So let's do this. I want to spend quite a bit of time on the creative side because as with any ad channel, creative is the biggest lever. Creative is what's really going to move the needle, that's where you're going to win or lose. But let's talk about targeting and media buying for a minute. Longtime media buyer did TV back in the day, of course now Google, YouTube and Beyond and stuff. And so I do like to tinker on occasion and pick audiences and all these things. Yeah, no, I know you, you guys geek out about that as well, but what is possible, what is not possible on app 11?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, so there is no targeting, there's no toys and rules to tinker with, which

Brett Curry:

Partially makes me very nervous, but I obviously know Sean Frank really well and several others and seeing your success, I'm like, okay, I get it that the algorithm's smart but still makes me a little bit nervous.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, I think the most important part is your ad creative doing the targeting, which we've talked about. Everyone's talked about with meta, leave it broad. That's been a topic for the past five years of don't put target demos on your meta account, leave it broad, let the ads do the targeting. I think that's kind of the brave new world that we're going to live in as advertisers of making really good creative that an algorithm can pick up of who to serve it to. I mean, I think all the social platforms, platforms have cracked that with organic content and viral reels, viral tiktoks, they knew who to show it to based on a few times. So the same thing's going to happen with advertising

Brett Curry:

Makes a lot of sense. And so basically the levers you have to pull mostly creative, we'll talk about that in a minute, but you've got your budget, it's your daily budget, you've got bid and that's pretty much it. And how do the bids and budgets work?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, so you'll set either for e-comm, you've got cost per purchase or you've got a target roas. So whatever works for your business, you can try both. I've tested both. I have success with both and whatever works for your business. And then you're going to set a goal. So whether that's your target goal is to hit a 300% ROAS or a 100%, whatever that is, you're going to input your goal there or your cost per purchase goal and the algorithm's going

Brett Curry:

To do you start with that goal. So when you first launch with App 11, do you recommend having a goal or you recommend having a little more open where they're just like, Hey, get me as many conversions as you can.

Miranda Pettinger:

I would recommend having a goal that's closest to your business objectives. The algorithm's pretty smart to know to put you in the auctions that it thinks it can win on.

So that's what I've discovered is putting the truest business goal that you can into the auction and that way it can go out and find your ideal customer at a target that makes sense for you. The other options you have for targeting are either day zero roas or day seven. So if you want more data, usually I would recommend using day seven because it's going to just the system more data. I use seven day on meta as well. So that's just kind of what I found the most successful for our brand. But you can do whatever fits your business objectives, but usually day seven is feeding it the most data as possible.

Brett Curry:

Makes sense. And I think just like any platform, the more conversion data you feed it feed the better the algorithm is going to get. And if you have the seven day window, you can rest with some confidence that there's going to be a lot of day one or day zero conversions. Those will be captured obviously in that seven day window. So yeah, that totally makes sense. And so then what kind of data can you see from this then? Are you seeing things like CPM and CTR and CPCs and things like that? Is it calculating those and showing those to you, or what does the reporting look like?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, you'll see the same things you see in meta, I think what makes it different or again, your interactives, your end cards, those are things separate from your video, but you'll still see your click through rates, your CPMs, what you're paying, and then you can also still see day zero, day seven, day 28 row and platforms similar to how you can measure in meta, especially if you don't have a North Beam or a triple whale to pull out those attribution windows longer than seven days.

Brett Curry:

Got it, got it. Makes sense. And then are you actively going in and pausing creatives, adding new creatives or mostly are you letting the algorithm do its thing and basically if there's a creative that's not working, it's going to take that to zero on its own. What does that look like?

Miranda Pettinger:

I think it all depends on the journey you're on with app 11 and where you're at. I think you should pause ads after a certain period of time if they aren't working for your business, especially if you have a lot of them in there. If you've only got 30 or so, I would just let them all, leave them all on, let them learn. But we got to the point where we had a couple hundred in each campaign and then it got to the point where it was like, okay, we have a lot of data, we're feeding the system, let's try and concentrate this more. So at that point we did go in and turn off ads that didn't perform over a 60 day window. So we gave it a lot of time to see if like, Hey, is this going to be successful? Then we did turn some ads off, but I think you're perfectly safe to leave them on for a long period of time, especially as you're starting.

Brett Curry:

Cool, that's great. And then are you doing one consolidated campaign per product line? So maybe you guys did one for clones, one for PJ's, or are you doing separate campaigns maybe by avatar or customer persona? What does that look like?

Miranda Pettinger:

We have just one campaign per product type. So PJ's have their own campaign clones do. That's how I run everything on Google and Snapchat and Meta just to keep those personas of that product in one place. The conversion rate is the same and the A OB is the same per product. So I wouldn't recommend mixing products, but I think keeping them in their own campaigns, this is fine. You can have a hundred ads on one product and be healthy.

Brett Curry:

Got it, got it. And the algorithm is going to decide, okay, I know who going to like this ad and who's watching, who's responding to it, things like that,

Miranda Pettinger:

And they won't spend on an ad that's not successful either. I think that's something important to note that it's not going to pick up an ad and spend a lot of money on it at a bad ros, which I think sometimes you'll see happen in meta if it's not successful and it's not hitting targets, it's not going to spend very much on it, so it's going to drop to the bottom. So I would not worry about that happening because I think people worry about the meta of like, oh, it picked up this ad and it's spending crazy money and it's a 0.2 roas. I don't dunno what Meta's doing with it. That won't happen with Apple and I have not seen that happen. And again, that's with a couple hundred creative we've tested, I have never seen that happen.

Brett Curry:

Got it. Totally makes sense. Okay, so let's get into the creative side of things. This is where the magic really happens. So these are all video ads, they're all vertical, correct? So we're not running landscape ads, these are all nine by 16 or four by five or one by one, correct? Or are they all nine by 16?

Miranda Pettinger:

They all need to be nine by 16. Yeah, no scores.

Brett Curry:

Got it. So all nine by 16. Talk a little bit about how long are these ads, what are the requirements of the platform and where are you finding the most success? At what ad length are you finding wins?

Miranda Pettinger:

You can upload up to 60 seconds. I would recommend doing at least 30 at the low end. You can upload shorter than that, but we usually see a lot more success having longer ads. People go in there expecting to watch a longer ad. So I think if you only showed them 15 or 16 seconds, you're just not utilizing the platform enough and the time that you have with the customer.

Brett Curry:

And I think just to draw a quick parallel to YouTube, we spent millions a month on YouTube and we see the same thing. You can run fifteens and people like them and maybe they get less frustrated or something like that, but usually people don't respond, they don't click or they don't convert. And so yeah, I love that 30 to 60 seconds and just test within that window, but you got a captive audience they've agreed to watch and so tell them enough to get them excited to overcome objections, to get them to click and to take action. So that makes a ton of sense. Now are you running polished ads? Are these like UGC mashups? Do these look like a meta ad look more like a TV ad? Talk about the style of ad.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, I would say it's kind of right in the middle of those things. So we've got millions of followers on TikTok and on Instagram and Facebook and those viral entertaining videos that everyone's like, oh, just plug it into meta, it's going to work. That actually doesn't work great on the platform. Someone's going in there expecting to see an ad. So I think you can still be entertaining and you should still be entertaining as a brand, but I don't think you need to be super polished. And I also don't think you should run something that's pure entertainment driven because someone's expecting to see an ad and I think you're not utilizing your time with the customer if you aren't giving them information about the product and following a story arc about your product.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's such good advice and I think you could draw a few parallels to TV just more from a call to action standpoint or a structure this like an ad versus an organic post that you just want to go viral on TikTok or something where if you look at, and I come from the TV world, if you run a TV ad that's just entertaining or just fun, people may watch it and people may remember it, but they're not going to take action on it, they're not going to make a purchase. And so you need to structure that ad where you are telling people where to go, what to do, getting them hyped up to buy, you got to ask for the sale, things like that. And so totally makes sense. Make this a commercial, not just a fun viral video. So what are some of the components then if you look at your winning ads versus ads that did not win, what are some of the components or what are some of the things that the winning ads have in common?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, the winning ads definitely flow more like an advertisement than an entertaining video that you would see on social media. So I think that's something to keep in mind and I think the more you can overcome objection ahead of time for the customer when you are telling a story to them is the most important. So some of our winning videos have, we sell long pajamas, we sell short pajamas, we sell pajamas for your kids and your dogs. So those questions are already out of your head of, oh, well can I get this for my kids? So they have kids sizes already have overcome that objection.

Would highly recommend taking all your meta comments and questions and putting them in an ad because we would get those all the time. How can you overcome them before that? They even have to go looking for it. So I think that's a really important thing to keep in mind when you're running ads there. And also just give them all of the features and benefits. If you're selling a supplement, what are the health benefits that you'll see? What is the before and after state? What is the problem you're trying to solve? And then give them the solution with your product. So I think

Speaker 3:

That

Miranda Pettinger:

Can go very DR style and you are wanting to get a response and a reaction from these people. So how can you tell your story in that short window to where there's nothing left they have to question except putting their credit card in.

Brett Curry:

Totally makes sense. Yeah, it's one of those things where questions left unanswered objections left unaddressed will cost someone to not take action, they're not going to click and they're not going to do what you want them to do. And so yeah, what are the FAQs, what are the top features and benefits, address those and then ask for the clicks. Are you guys kind of following one of the YouTube formulas that we use as hook product demo social proof, which we weave some objection busting in there and then call to action and there's some different layers and different things we do there as well, but would that kind of be the flow for AppLovin as well? Right. We still want to think about even though we get a captive audience, we still want to think about the hook, still need the product demo there still need some objection busting and social proof and they need a clear call to action. Any tweaks or nuances you would share there?

Miranda Pettinger:

No, I would just say that the hook is important but it is not going to make or break. I think about a YouTube ad if you don't capture their attention in five seconds,

Brett Curry:

Your host, yeah,

Miranda Pettinger:

Audio, but same thing with meta. If you don't capture your attention in 0.2 seconds, you're scrolling. So I

Speaker 3:

Think

Miranda Pettinger:

That's the point where you don't have to do, I think meta, you have to get a little crazy with your hooks to get someone to stop scrolling and yeah,

Brett Curry:

That thumb stop rate is huge for YouTube, the skip rate is huge or the view rate is huge, but here is it maybe more that the hook is about getting someone in the right frame of mind and getting them thinking about your product or prepping them for selling rather than thumb stop or view rate.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, definitely. And some of our winning ads is our pajamas in a state that kind of looks like a fireplace, so you kind of get that cozy energy from it and

Speaker 3:

Totally you're

Miranda Pettinger:

Like, oh, this is cozy, this is warm, this is the emotion that comes with pajamas, which is important. Same thing if you're selling a problem solution. If you're selling something for performance, what is the feeling you're going to have with that product to start the ad?

Brett Curry:

I love that. Yeah. What emotion do you need to evoke for this? It's like love and adoration for your pet and it's just good family vibes and stuff like that. As we lean into holiday, the fireplace and stuff kind of feels like Christmas morning. It all just feels right. So it's like getting someone in the right frame of mind, love that so little nuance on the hook, you're prepping them to sell them, you're not so much worried about thumb stop rate or view rate. So that's really cool. What other elements in the ad itself, and I want to talk about things like in card and the DPAs and stuff that are part of this. So I think a lot of people don't dunno about, so we'll talk about that in a minute, but other elements of the video ad itself that are critical to have,

Miranda Pettinger:

It's really important to have an offer in your video. Obviously we know offers are important in e-commerce, give someone a reason to buy, but I think we've even tested not having offers and ads to see what's going to change and usually the click-through rate drops by at least 2% statistically.

Brett Curry:

Whoa. So when you say offer, you're saying specifically save this much, get this deal, we've got this sale or this promotion going on. So you're talking about that kind of offer.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yes, for sure. So what's the offer? And it's easy too to switch out if you don't have an offer in the video and you want to have it in an end card or an interactive, you could change those out every weekend if you've got a different offer every weekend. So that's also a unique thing where you don't have to go shoot a whole new video or edit into Premiere and edit a video.

Brett Curry:

That's great. That's great. Okay, cool. So let's actually talk about that. So every video ad then has an in card and an interactive after it. So talk about what are those and how do those work?

Miranda Pettinger:

So you'll have images that you can upload and then you'll also have interactives and the system will feed through in testing different things. So images, you could take your top stills from meta and reincorporate them as your end card. You can take product images of no context at all, just product image and you could also just go very off or heavy on your end card of like, Hey, black Friday sale going on now save 50% bogo, whatever that is. You can also put into that image the interactive end cards are different. So those are more of, it says interactive, so you can scroll on them. Some of them are quizzes. You could run a quiz and someone can click on it. So you're trying to get the user engaged with the ad. I'm sure if you've played a mobile game, you've played one where it's like, hey, drag this over here in the ad so that you're touching it and that makes you more likely to engage with it. So these are the same way with e-comm where you can ask a quiz. You can also make them scrollable so there's somewhere you can input a bunch of images and then the user can scroll through them so they're actually touching the ad and interacting with it.

Brett Curry:

So great. And there's also something psychological about if you are interacting with the ad, clicking on things or hovering over things, you're more likely to take action and purchase. And so what I'm going to do, I'm actually going to share my screen and we will walk through one of your ads. I'm going to mute it. I know this is only going to be most valuable for people that are watching the YouTube video, but I'm going to have you give a commentary here and I'll chime in as well, Miranda as we go. But this is one of your current winning ads and you can see if you're watching this, we got, what is this word? Scape is the game that someone is playing here and so of course they're trying to level up or whatever got this bonus gift and then here's the ad, and now we're seeing a closeup of the pajamas with a cute furry dog on there and then someone holding their pet. There's that family room with the family. Kind of taking a look here, how did you select these? So these videos that they're showing us rapid fire, it's showing clips of different styles of pajamas, pajamas on people, pajamas that are folded and kind of on the bed type of thing. How did you select the video clips for this?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, we wanted to have a variety and I think when you have UGC content, mixing it with a voiceover we have is really effective of keeping attention and then also showing different use cases of the product. So we don't just have a 20-year-old influencer wearing pajamas. We have the

Speaker 3:

Whole

Miranda Pettinger:

Family around the tree. We have kids, we have the dogs. There's a lot of content around the tree in this ad at Christmas time to kind of evoke that feeling of

Brett Curry:

Totally

Miranda Pettinger:

Having Christmas pajamas,

Brett Curry:

Just giving family all that.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, so those are kind of the reasoning behind having lots of different clips, showing it on the bed really close up so it's not just on a model. So okay, when you open your package, what is it going to look like? I think too if you shop for apparel and in person in a store, it's folded. It's not on your bed, it's on a display and you're touching it and feeling it. You can't do that with e-commerce. So it's like how can you evoke the same feeling of going into a store, picking up apparel, feeling it, touching it and opening it visually in an ad so that you can get that same feeling that you would get going to the mall?

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's so good and we run a lot of mashups for a lot of different brands from popcorn to accessories to skincare, and we did this back in the day with native, we would always try to find a lot of diversity with the UGC just like you're talking about because you want the person, whoever you're trying to get to buy to either see themselves in the ad or to see the person they're buying the gift for in the ad. So you've got some clips here that are just kids, two kids sitting on the fireplace with the stockings behind them or sitting on the hearth or whatever. You've got a couple of people that are just slightly older by themselves. You've got some people in their twenties, you got some young families that include mom and dad, everybody's wearing PJs. So you've got some real diversity there where someone's going to watch this one. It's fast paced so you're not tempted to look around the room or check your watch or something like that you're watching, but then you're also going to see yourself or your loved one in this ad, which is really, really important.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, definitely. I think the most successful ads we've had on AppLovin two include a lot of different use cases too of buy it for your grandkids, buy it for your significant other, buy it for your best friend trying to evoke maybe if they don't like it themselves, but I know someone with a dog who I need to get a gift for and then if we mention it, that recall is there. So I think that's important too. If you are trying to not hit a niche audience and you want to go really broad, you have to go broaden your ad too. So if you just have a 20-year-old creator talking about why she bought them for herself, you're going to find 20 year olds who want to buy it for themselves and that's great, but if you want to get it out to everyone and everyone who sees it to buy and for that ad to grow in that pocket, you have to go broader in your ad. Same way that you would go broader in your targeting if you were to touch all the controls.

Brett Curry:

Totally. And there's a reason if you watch direct response ads or even mini infomercials where someone will give all the use cases and you may be tempted to say, well it's obvious it's pajamas, you can buy it for anybody, why do I have to list it? But sometimes you seem to be really obvious, people are not thinking deeply about your product and so saying buy it for your kid or for your grandkid or for your niece or your nephew or whatever, you kind just need to make the right suggestions because people, we can't assume that people will be thinking about that on their own

Miranda Pettinger:

And you see an ad, you may not like it yourself. I mean there's a lot of things here. Yeah,

Brett Curry:

Totally.

Miranda Pettinger:

Especially in the holidays, I'll see an ad for something, I'm like, I don't like that, but I'm like, oh, but my husband might like that but

Brett Curry:

I got to buy a gift for Exactly. But

Miranda Pettinger:

If you don't call it out, I'm probably not going to subconsciously think that unless someone was like, Hey, buy this for your significant other. Buy this for someone else other than yourself, especially if you are trying to target people outside of what they would buy for themselves.

Brett Curry:

Love it. How holidays love it. So then as we're going here, there's a shop now button at the bottom that's always there and then you show this 60% off deals. You talk about, hey, the best ads have offers. There was a hooray audio that goes on with that. So you've tested these ads with and without the 60% off or with other discounts or whatever and this has been your winner.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, definitely having an offer and especially if you are a brand that advertises in Q4 and you are something that people gift to others, I think the urgency of like, hey, this is a deal you should get right now, it's for the holidays, limited time offer. Another thing we do a lot is like, hey, you need to get it in time for Christmas, especially it being a custom product, you don't have until prime day, two day Amazon it to your house on December 22nd that you have to get these ahead of time. So I think too, if you have a product with longer lead times leaning into that urgency of like, Hey, you have to order this now because otherwise you just don't have it for Christmas, no matter if you want it or not on this the 22nd of December, you

Brett Curry:

So offer plus some urgency, bonus points if it's points, points, urgency, that just is totally legit. It makes sense here. So now we're looking at cuddle clones logo, white background shop now button at the bottom. This is the end card. Is that what we're looking at right now?

Miranda Pettinger:

No, you're not quite at the end card yet. This is just the video, but we're trying to really put that brand name in as you're watching the ad. I think too, if you think about if you're watching a reel or if you're watching a TikTok, you're going to see the brand name as the title there or if you run a white listing ad it'll be partnered with, so the brand name's always on an ad on a social platform. Most cases you'll see the brand name and the logo somewhere. So we like to insert it into the video somewhere or mention it verbally so that even if you don't make it to the end card, you heard the brand name or you saw it visually and our logo is actually purple, but we added the red because it's Christmas. Again,

Brett Curry:

Bringing,

Miranda Pettinger:

Continuing to bring all of that holiday recognition into it

Brett Curry:

Totally makes sense. And I know one of the things you mentioned when we were prepping is that real comments, there's a lot of people that just clicked on bought, but there's also really a common journey where someone saw it on AppLovin and then searched on Google. So that's where you really have to make the brand name clear. You don't want them just to get the idea and go search for something else. You want them searching for you afterwards on Google.

Miranda Pettinger:

That is the second highest customer journey is either AppLovin to purchase or app AppLovin to Google to purchase. So

Speaker 3:

Crazy.

Miranda Pettinger:

Again, super important that brand recall. And if you don't have the brand recall, they're like, what was that thing? Was it pajamas with my dog on it? You better be targeting all of those broad keywords as well.

Brett Curry:

Absolutely. Absolutely. So

Miranda Pettinger:

You didn't advertise to them and then they went to your competitor.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, which happens a lot. Yeah, you're just giving someone an idea and helping out a competitor. Congrats. So now this I believe is an Incar arrest. You got low at top custom pet face pajamas as the headline. Then we got these are shorts, PJ's, closeup of the cute dog's face, actual picture of the dog there, get some highlights of some features and stuff there. So this is the end card that we're looking at.

Miranda Pettinger:

So here's an interactive end card. If you play it, it's going to go through different color variants.

Speaker 3:

Oh, nice,

Miranda Pettinger:

Nice. So it's very interactive animation style. Again, there's different variety where you can scroll with your thumb across several photos. You can ask them a quiz at the end. So there's different ways to interact with them through that end card that I think is very different than most ads you'll see on any other platform.

Brett Curry:

Totally. So we had the interaction where there's different styles of PJs popping up there. Now we've we're looking at something that looks more like a feed ad or a collection of Google shopping ads type of thing. A DPA, this is a progression or this is a separate, this is a different in card that you could test.

Miranda Pettinger:

This is the DPA A at the very end. So if you toggle this on in your settings, this will always appear on all of your ads. So that's kind of where the customer can interact with your feed directly from Shopify. So this is where you can then show the products or show the customer what products you have to offer.

Brett Curry:

Have you tested this with and without price? So right now we're seeing sweatshirts, mugs, all that has your pet's face on at PJ's of course. Have you tested that with and without the price listed?

Miranda Pettinger:

No, at this point we have not tested with the price listed. I'm not sure if that's an option yet in their offerings.

Brett Curry:

I kind of like this, I actually not showing the price here. This is something we test a lot on YouTube. You can make your YouTube ad shoppable and you can insert your feed into YouTube ads. And I've found that actually sometimes that kills your conversion rate if you're showing the price of something too soon before they're really sold, before they've interacted with your product enough, it can actually be a detriment. And so I think it's kind of cool that there is no price there. So we'll keep playing this here and then basically, okay, then basically you're just showing the progression then someone clicking through to the website.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yep.

Brett Curry:

Great, great. Love it. So talk about this, I know now in every platform obviously utilizes AI in some form or fashion, but now you can upload lots of different elements and then Apple Oven is going to piece those together and test those and find winning combinations. What are the variables that the AI is combining to try to build winning ads for you?

Miranda Pettinger:

So I think something important to follow in their best practices. So if you're making a creative set, you can upload up to 10 videos, up to 10 interactives and up to 10 images. And then your DPA is always going to be connected if you have turned on. So that's

Brett Curry:

All part of a creative set, a that ad group type thing.

Miranda Pettinger:

So those are newer, those didn't exist earlier in the platform, so that's a newer feature. But what I found and what they suggest is best practice is doing a couple videos and then as many interactives as possible, as many images as possible. So best practice I found is do two to three videos and in a set and then you do 10 interactives. 10 images. And in their media library, which is unique compared to meta, you can see the performance of that end card or image as a standalone versus how it performs with nice. So if you have the same end card in four campaigns, you can measure just the performance of the end card, regardless of where it lives. Very

Speaker 3:

Cool.

Miranda Pettinger:

So that's something that's important. And two, testing your end cards in your images. You can look at the performance. So if you have say two that have a lower click through rate, pull those out and try to test more and keep, how high can you get your click clickthrough rate and test through those. I think that's the most important part of someone deciding to click forward. So can you show the offer? Can you show the features in the end card? We have one brand that I've worked with of two, can you show as many products as possible on the end card? So we're showing all the colors of the PJ's. Can you show all the variants that you have so that someone's like, oh, well I don't like pink, but I really like blue.

Speaker 3:

If

Miranda Pettinger:

They see that you have for blue, they're more likely to click or say you have shoes and I don't want sandals, but I saw that you have sneakers. I like sneakers. And then they'll click through. So kind of just thinking through what can you show them about your product before they click to make them really want to go through to the widest amount of people.

Brett Curry:

Totally makes sense. And then do you have a setup where if someone clicks on the in card, that's maybe taking them to a different page versus if they're clicking in the DPA that's going directly to that specific product detail page? Or what does that look like?

Miranda Pettinger:

You'll just pick one landing page per creative set. So if that's your PD DP, but if someone does go to the DPA, they can click on a product that maybe was not in the ad. So that's where your DPA is going to be a little bit different. So if someone sees all of our pajamas that we offered where there are our standard line, but we also have sweatpants that is included in that dpa, someone might click on the sweatpants and then they're going to end up on the sweatpants pdp. So that'll be a little bit different. But in the grand scheme of things, most times when you do have the DPA connected, it has a much higher conversion rate than if you did not.

Brett Curry:

Very cool. So let's talk about how many creatives do you need to get started, and then I want to talk a little bit about creative fatigue, and then I want to talk about creative diversity in a second as well. But how many creatives do you need to get started?

Miranda Pettinger:

You just need one really. I mean, you can add more. I'd suggest more, but I mean, Q4 last year we spent a million dollars and we probably had less than 30 creatives in the platform. So

Speaker 3:

Great.

Miranda Pettinger:

I really don't think you need hundreds. I think you need probably five great ads and then continue to test and make more and see what works for you and your brand on the platform. But no, you don't need a lot to get started.

Brett Curry:

Cool. And then in terms of longevity or creative fatigue or these wearing out after a week or two, are these more YouTube and TV where maybe you've got a winner that can run for months or a year plus? What does the fatigue look like?

Miranda Pettinger:

Much more like YouTube. We have a winning ad that's been running since November 21st, 2024. That's always at the top.

Speaker 3:

I love it. Yeah, it's

Miranda Pettinger:

A great ad. So yeah, if you have got a really good winner like YouTube, you can run it for a very long time and it'll continue to reach new people and continue to perform, continue to test. Don't just get one winner in there

Speaker 3:

Totally and

Miranda Pettinger:

Done with it, but you definitely don't need to continue refreshing them every single week with 30 new ones. I feel like Andromeda and Metas starting to gear towards, so definitely not as high as a fatigue as meta. Definitely more like YouTube.

Brett Curry:

Love that. And then let's talk a little bit about creative diversity. And I know that's kind of the name of the game as everybody's talking about Andromedan meta and things. It's like, I wouldn't say iteration is dead, but this idea of subtle variations where it's like we have 15 or 30 or a hundred versions of basically the same ad, but just with slightly different hooks and so different endings and things like that. I know now on Meta Meta's going to treat those all one ad. And so now it's saying take bigger swings, make the creatives quite different On YouTube, we're still finding some wins if it's kind of the same core video, but very different hooks that can work really well. And so we're still iterating. We're kind of trying to do both iterate and take big swings. But what are you finding in app Loven? As far as creative diversity goes?

Miranda Pettinger:

We've definitely tested different things. We found more success with iterations at this point. We have a couple core winners. We've sliced and diced 'em different ways. We've made some short, we've made some long, we've called out different things than others. And then also doing the same of big swings as something that's totally, totally different. Maybe using a different creative agency, using a different influencer. So that's where I think you should do both, and I think you should do it at a quality level. I would not just make creative for creative's sake, that's all different and you spent five minutes on it, you should really be thinking about these ads and your customer and making a good informational ad, not entertainment and not something that was thrown together really quickly. And with poor intent, you should think really deeply on it of what you want to make and what you want to portray. It doesn't have to be high production though. I mean all that content you saw is UGC. We've spent millions on the platform. We have a very small in-house creative team, scrappy team, so you don't need to be a multimillion dollar brand with a videographer and a camera to have success here.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, I love that. And then the logo looks really professional. The end card, the DPA that's got all those product images look really great and look professional. But yeah, the video looks like UGC, but that makes it look authentic and trustworthy and fun and doesn't make it feel like just a standard ad. So yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. What we're doing on the YouTube side is something similar where we're looking at, hey, what are our winning hooks and measured by view rate and what do they have in common and what do the losers have in common? And then the ads that have the best click-through rate, what do they have in common and what are we doing in terms of the product demo and what are we doing in terms of the offer? And then what is the highest conversion rate?

And we're just kind of looking at the similarities and over time we're able to iterate and able to say like, Hey, we saw for this baseball ad, it was like this product line just didn't really work. Or for this skincare ad, it was the founder on camera saying these things. It just worked consistently over and over again. And so then you're able to take lessons, take that next iteration and maybe take a big swing, but take a big swing that's informed by data. I know I probably want to mention these things and maybe I'll just take a big swing in terms of saying it in a different way.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, definitely.

Brett Curry:

So yeah,

Miranda Pettinger:

I think you can have a good mix of quality content, but it can be UGC and it definitely doesn't need to be a TV commercial. So I think that's where it's very similar to YouTube in those ways where you want to seem authentic, but you also want to portray a story to the customer at the same time. Yeah,

Brett Curry:

Yeah, portray the story. You got to hit all the points of overcoming objections and strong call to action, all those things which are really, really important. Great. Any other mentions or callouts as far as creative goes? Anything we didn't talk about that's important from a creative standpoint?

Miranda Pettinger:

No, I think we touched on everything. I would just say to think about the way that these customers interact with the platform. When you're adding creative, you can 100% add your meta creatives in here. And depending on how the style of them is, they may perform really, really well. But if they're purely entertainment, you're probably not going to have a lot of success right out of the gate. And you should probably make some creatives that are closer to a YouTube ad or a commercial compared to something that's just either eye catching hook or an entertaining video.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, I love that. Maybe one last thing here before we wrap up and talk about how people can learn more about you and also buy some amazing pet centered gifts for the holidays. Talking again about lack of overlap between App 11 and social. I think you had mentioned that there's a true classic tease case study where meta was mainly selling to women buying for their significant other app love and was more men buying for themselves or maybe have that. Yeah. But yeah, was it the inverse of that?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, so I think you can reach new audiences, especially on app love, and I think everyone also talks about the older demos are always really successful. You can find those on app love. You can also find 20 year olds who like to play scape. So I think regardless of your brand, you should give it a shot. And I think there is a wide variety of demos on here that you can reach, just like Meta

Brett Curry:

Makes a ton of sense. I think the time is right. You need to diversify if you've got video content and can pull together something that will fit for app 11. It just makes a ton of sense. So first off, Miranda, if someone is like, all right, I got to check out these cuddle clones and see what these are all about and I need to check out the PJs, how can they learn more about you?

Miranda Pettinger:

Go to cuddle clones.com. You have to order before December 10th if you really will. These at Christmas

Speaker 3:

Now,

Miranda Pettinger:

Click now. Yeah, make sure you go get them well ahead of time. They can all be made to order for you.

Brett Curry:

And I would venture to say, and I've got several pet lovers in my house, this will be their favorite gift. You get this for somebody, it's going to be the gift they talk about and share with other people, and you'll get to see them wear it for years to come. And then what about you, Miranda? So I know you are active on X and you're speaking at operators events and things like that. How can someone connect with you or follow you?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, follow me on X on Twitter, Miranda Tinger. Just look me up. I'm sure I can tag it at the bottom here. I'll send it over to you, Brett. That'd be great. Just an advertising nerd. And I like communicating with everyone online. I live in Ohio. There's not many media buyers in Ohio over here, so it's nice to connect with other marketers that work in DC because I don't quite live in an area where that's a hotbed.

Brett Curry:

Totally. That's same. I'm in Missourian, so it's like most of my friends who are e-commerce nerds or media nerds are on the coast or somewhere else. So yeah, love that connection. Awesome. Any other asks, requests, anything else coming up that you want to mention to the audience?

Miranda Pettinger:

No, but I hope everyone has a good Black Friday. It's going to be a wild, wild west I think this year. And if you can diversify and have success like we did, I ended up packing PJ's in the warehouse. I'll ask you for after everything I sold, so I'd love to do that again.

Brett Curry:

It's like, congrats Miranda, you made app love and work as a thank you. You get to go pack orders in the warehouse. Oh yeah, that's fun. I can think of the way worse things to do for sure. So love that. And hey, if channel diversification is on your Christmas list or beyond, actually probably based on when you're going to hear this, reach out to us at OMG Commerce. We'd love to talk to you about opening up opportunities on YouTube or on Amazon or Meta or things like that. And so would love to chat there. Miranda, thank you so much for the time. This has been phenomenal. I'm all hyped and pumped up to go run some AppLovin ads.

Miranda Pettinger:

Sounds good. Hope everyone else is too.

Brett Curry:

Awesome. Thank you. And thank you for tuning in as always. We'd love to hear from you. If you found this episode to be helpful, share it with someone else that you think might enjoy it. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening. This episode is brought to you by ChatAble, the number one feed management and advertising platform for savvy e-commerce marketers. Over 11,000 brands and agencies, including OMG Commerce, use channel's powerful automation engine to sanitize, optimize, and advertise product data across the world's biggest channels like Google, Amazon, and many more. So save money, save time by switching to channel's, full service platform, and get world-class support. Plus month-to-month pricing as an e-commerce evolution, listener ChatAble is giving you a free feed audit for a channel of your choice, learn how you can improve your feed score and increase visibility of your products. Sign up for free@chatable.com. Mention e-commerce Evolution to get started. No strings attached.

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As Q4 approaches, OMG Commerce founder Brett Curry hosts a special Last-Minute Levers masterclass to help brands maximize performance during the busiest shopping season of the year. Joined by Amazon strategist Luba Ilyasova, ad expert Jonathan Steffens, and Connor Crook, CEO of Diamondback Tools, the session dives into what’s changed on Amazon in 2025, how to build a profitable holiday strategy, and which final levers to pull before Black Friday / Cyber Monday hits.

From international expansion and tariff navigation to using Amazon’s newest ad analytics, profit margin tracking, and creative promotion tactics, this masterclass offers a playbook for protecting margins, scaling smartly, and avoiding common Q4 pitfalls. Whether you’re planning coupons, bundles, or last-minute campaigns, these insights will help make this your strongest and most profitable holiday yet.

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Sponsored by OMG Commerce - go to (https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact) and request your FREE strategy session today!

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Chapters: 

(00:00) Intro

(04:32) Diamondback Tools & Amazon’s Role in Brand Growth

(06:43) Strategic Fit – How Amazon Complements DTC and Wholesale

(11:54) Key Shifts in 2025 – Tariffs, International Expansion & SKU Updates

(16:07) Major Amazon Changes – Matching Product to Customer Intent

(21:04) Sponsor Acknowledgements & Tool Shoutouts

(22:14) Ad Trends and Competitive Landscape in 2025

(25:26) Making Data Actionable – Customer Journey Analytics & Search Query Insights

(32:40) Last-Minute Levers for Q4 Success

(34:15) Testing New Main Images & Launching Video Ads

(35:51) Building Gift Guides & Creative Holiday Angles

(37:18) Integrating Email and SMS With Amazon Promotions

(39:26) Diamondback’s Promotional Strategy for the Holidays

(45:21) Virtual Bundles – Opportunities and Pitfalls

(50:27) Balancing Aggression and Profitability in Holiday Ads

(52:33) Post-Event Remarketing & Retention Tactics

(56:35) Final Thoughts – Promotions That Actually Work

(58:37) Closing Remarks – Building Profitable Brands This Holiday Season

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Connect With Brett: 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/ 
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce 
• Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/ 

Request a Free Strategy Session: https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact

‍

Transcript

Brett Curry:

Well, welcome to last minute Levers, your final prep before we enter into what is arguably the most wonderful time of the year for sellers and merchants and brand owners. We got q4, we got peak holiday, we got BFCM coming up right around the corner. And so we wanted to take this time to do something kind of unique and this is going to be a bit of a unique event. I'll kind of lay the stage here momentarily, but we want to get you ready and give you some final strategies, tactics, levers to pull so that you can make this a smashing success. And so this is not going to be your typical webinar. I love learning. I love attending webinars. Sometimes they're kind of like death by PowerPoint or Google Slides or Gamma or whatever the latest flavor is. We'll certainly have some visuals, we'll have some presentations to show you, but I wanted this to be more of a conversation with experts so that you can get some raw feedback and ideas and I think this will be fun and I think the pace will be enjoyable.

And so I'm really just your host today. I'm just the guy behind the microphone keeping everything moving, making sure we're on track and really pulling out some great insights from our guests. And so I do want to introduce our guests because do we have a lineup for you? So first off, we've got Luba. She's part of team OMG. She's our senior A BM or Amazon brand management strategist. And Luba is one of those people that I don't know anybody that knows the insides of baseball for Amazon, like Luba. She comes from running a hardware store just long as the other day, running a hardware store on the upper west side of Manhattan to becoming an Amazon pro. And she actually ran Amazon for a client of ours years ago and then someone that I became a real friend with, the owner and Luba and her team grew that brand, a pretty big brand from 3 million a year on Amazon. Nothing to seize that, to just shy of 17 million a year on Amazon. She's grown other brands. She's a trusted coach and advisor. She's kind of running our team here at OMG and so can't wait for you to hear from Luba. She's fiery, she's got insights. You're going to love her as soon as you hear from her. So we'll hear from Luba momentarily. But welcome to the program Luba and scale of one to 10, how excited are you to be presenting on the webinar?

Luba Ilyasova:

I actually love being on a webinar, so I would even say it's 11.

Brett Curry:

Oh, we're dialing this one up to 11 for all you Spinal Tap fans out there. Next up we got Jonathan Finka. I had to look this up. Jonathan, you've been with OMG for seven years, man, that is in internet years. That is a long, long time. So super glad that you're part of the team. Jonathan is an ad pro. The dude remembers numbers like nobody's business. He is very strategic, he's logical. He understands how brand building works and how Amazon advertising works. And so Jonathan, with that man, welcome to the webinar. Welcome to the show, so to speak. Thanks for coming on. And same question for you. Scale of one to 10, how excited are you?

Jonathan Steffens:

More of a realist. So I'm going to give it a seven, a strong seven.

Brett Curry:

I actually, I had those hedging bets in my mind, right? Placing bets and I knew you were going to come in under, so I love that. I think that's a good ad strategist who's really watching the numbers and bidding and looking at probabilistic outcomes. Got to take the realistic approach, right? It's a seven. Yeah, and I think that's spot on. So love that. Love having both you on the program. So you're going to hear a ton from Jonathan and Lu as we go here, but the real star of the show, the real guest of the show here is our friend and client, Connor Crook from Diamondback Tools. What's up Connor? How's it going today?

Connor Crook:

Things are good. Things are good. I've been down in the warehouse sewing stuff all morning. You've been making tool belts today, not tool belts. We're looking at some brand expansion and I'm just sitting down at the machine playing around with some concepts and seeing what might come out in the future.

Brett Curry:

You're playing your best Christmas elf here. Like, hey, let's not just talk about products, let's not talk about growth. Let's go make some stuff. You're going to get to hear from Connor, one of the longtime OMG clients, a friend. We're really seeing tremendous growth, amazing product time and back tools. And so we'll get to see how Amazon fits into their overall growth strategy, what their promotional strategy is going to be like for q4, and then some challenges and some wins from this year. And really that's going to be the flow of this webinar. I think it's important to take just a couple of minutes. We won't spend long here, but let's talk strategically how should Amazon fit into your overall brand growth before we get into a season like this and start discounting and start going nuts, trying to close sales and whatnot. I think it's important to back up and say, why are we doing what we're doing?

How is Amazon fit into the grander scheme of things? Because ultimately I should be trying to build a business and trying to build a brand, not just trying to sell stuff on Amazon. So we're going to back up. I really love Connor's perspective here. So we'll do that very briefly and then we're going to get into some challenges and some wins from this year, what has changed and what's different and so how that's going to shape our Q4 plan. And then we'll get the last minute levers, promotional strategy, lots of good stuff for you to take away and make this one of the best holidays yet. So let's start with strategy. So Connor, I want to hear from you, how does Amazon fit into your overall brand strategy and how has that evolved over recent years? Because again, as we get into this situation where we may be tempted to slash our profits to close more deals in q4, we step back and think about the overall strategy. So how has that evolved for Diamondback Tools?

Connor Crook:

Yeah, Brett, thanks. So I bought Diamondback back in 2016 at the very end of 2016, got going next year and our strategy was all about our website tool wells.com. We eventually added some dealers. We weren't really able to get into the dealers in the US but we had some success internationally and I was really hesitant about Amazon, just horror stories that I've heard about them copying your product, knocking off your product, you lose control of it. And after a few years, I think it was 21 or so, we had an employee at the time sales lead who said, Hey, I've got some experience with Amazon, I can set it up. We'll see how it goes. Well you know how to do it. Let's do it. It was also a good timing because that was post COVID when the DTC market was slowing down and it was a good time to really branch out into some different channels.

So once we got in there, what we found is Amazon provides a couple of different really key features for us. One, it's a different sales stream, it's a different customer. I think Luba has some information she'll share about globally the overlap or lack of overlap with Amazon, but we've definitely seen from what information we can get from Amazon that it's a different customer. We have some really interesting anecdotes about how you can get a customer on Diamond Bag that becomes your online customer and vice versa. Some of the different just shopping habits. Another great thing that it's done for us is help smooth cashflow issues. Amazon DTC wholesale, they all have different ebbs and flows. Obviously right now stores or wholesalers are stocking up for the holidays, but customers are cooling it down. They know Black Friday's coming, so we know that we're going to have a spike in both Shopify and Amazon as you go into the holiday, but then even there they kind of ebb and flow a little bit differently. So just understanding how Amazon can smooth cashflow, how it can bring in new customers, and it's just an expansion to have one more stream. And I was talking about costs and stuff. I look at it this way. Amazon wholesale and DTC, they're all going to cost you 30 to 40 points. It's such

Brett Curry:

A good point. It's such a good point. You really can't avoid

Connor Crook:

It. Yeah, you're going to pay margin to a dealer, okay, dealers doing certain things for you, they're selling for you. Amazon, that's a place where you can market. It's a place where they're going to sell for you. They're going to do part of your warehousing for you and they're going to open you up to new eyes so you can pay for that. DTC has been a tremendous amount, much of it with OMG on advertising, on Facebook, on Meta and Google. So either way you're paying. Yeah,

Brett Curry:

Yeah, man, it's such a good point. Yeah, you're going to lose 30 or 40 points. It's going to vary a little bit by your category, but you're going to be giving up that margin and just where it's going does vary a little bit from channel to channel. And I love this chance to step back and just look at this holistically. I'll use a couple of examples here. Boom. Originally boom by Cindy Joseph. Now boom, beauty longtime client of OMG. We worked with them for years and years on the Google and YouTube side, and then we helped them launch on Amazon and they went from zero to $6 million the first year and very little cannibalization of their core business. And it's because there was a lot of pent up demand. There was a lot of people that have been seeing the boom, my Cindy Joseph ads, and they love the message and they love the angle, but they just weren't buying because Boom wasn't on Amazon.

They launched on Amazon. Things take off. Obviously we do a lot of work on the ad side and the organic optimization side and stuff like that. Then you look at native deodorant. We were working with Moist, the founder from the early days and went through the acquisition and grew them with p and g for years. I think they did a billion dollars last year. Moist tweeted, but one of the things he said about Amazon was like, I just wish I'd gotten there sooner. That was the main thing. I wish I'd gotten there sooner. But I think what we're potentially tempted to do, and I tease this a little bit at the outset, is we're tempted to say we're on Amazon, it's Q4, it's about to be cyber five or cyber 12 or cyber whatever it's going to be this year. Got to do well. So I'm just going to start giving away all my margin and then end up making mistakes.

And so seeing how this fits, this is a great place to close new business, a great way to attract new customers. To your point, Connor, sometimes you meet people and you will get customers you wouldn't have otherwise gotten. And so that's really what this is all about. I want to talk briefly about, anyway, actually we can dig in as much as we see fit here as we go here, but what are some of the things that have shifted? So I'll start with you Connor, and then I want to go deep with Luba and Jonathan. What's shifted this year? What's changed on Amazon because there's been a lot and then how that's going to influence us in q4. So what are some of the changes you've kind of endured here in 25 so far, Connor?

Connor Crook:

Well, the big story in e-commerce and commerce in general this year is obviously the tariffs. The tariff situation has been really huge here at Diamondback and interesting on a lot of different levels because we were a made in USA product for the first five, six years I ran in business. That just became untenable and for a lot of reasons and we moved our production to Vietnam. That was a huge move that we did. And as about the time we got all of our product moved to Vietnam, we had the announcement of liberation day and we were being liberated from, I don't know what liberated from your profits. Exactly. So it quickly became our strategy around liberation day and the tariffs was, hey, we are selling a lot of our product internationally. We need to lean into that and we need to figure out a way to get our product to various places around the world without coming to Charlottesville, Virginia along the way.

And so we were working with that a lot with wholesale, but it's also a part of our Amazon strategy. We had always fulfilled orders into Canada from here, FBM from here in Charlottesville or FBA through American warehousing. So we are moving a lot of our Amazon strategy around Australia and Canada. We're leaning in heavier there. We're starting to put in advertising in Canada. We haven't started advertising in Australia yet, but we're seeing solid organic growth there. And so it's all about moving the product and getting it to those locations without coming here to avoid the tariffs. So international expansion has been really big for us. Another thing that came with the shift in manufacturing was skew changes internally. We made the decision that this product is a DB 500 or whatever it is when it's made in Asia, it becomes a DB 500, a phrase.

Well then you lose a lot of traction with the algorithm. So working on strategies to avoid losing the traction that we've grown around certain products has been a big part of our growth this year. We also, because when we moved to Asia, we divided between our best product and our old product, which is now on sort of our better level best product. And so there's been a lot of discussion around channel strategy as to what goes on Amazon, what goes on tool belts.com, what goes to dealers and how do we emphasize different products. And the biggest part of our Amazon strategy this year is just really been the growth DTC wise. September was pretty far off of the pace of where we hoped to be, but we made up for it on Amazon. And the interesting thing is it's not cannibalization because we're seeing most of the growth, Amazon or a lot of it is in Australia and Canada. As we've moved more there, put more of our product available on Amazon. So our Amazon strategy has been avoiding tariffs and leaning into international, dealing with updated skews and trying not to lose traction and then trying to figure out how to make Amazon really a thoughtful part of our omnichannel approach so that it's growing without cannibalizing the other channels.

Brett Curry:

Man, such good insights there a lot we can unpack. I love that. Thinking about which products are going to be on Amazon, which are going to be strictly DTC or other channels and yeah, tariff mitigation and international expansion, all of those are opportunities that Amazon unlocks for us. We'll get back to some of that more as we go here. I'm going to kick things over to you Luba right now and I want to hear from you what are some of the things that have really shifted this year and what's changed that has materially changed the game on Amazon? You've been doing this for 11 years, you've seen everything under the sun as it pertains to Amazon, so fire away and feel free to share your screen too if you want to share that presentation if that's useful.

Luba Ilyasova:

So first of all, Connor, great success on Amazon and most importantly I think you have the winning perspective on how Amazon feeds into your ecosystem because too many people are afraid of Amazon. And I've always said that if you are not in control of your products distribution on Amazon, somebody else's will. We see it all the time where a brand's products end up on Amazon sold by third party resellers and you have no control over content, over pricing, over quality. And we always advise brands who may not even be interested in it, at least take control of your own product that is being distributed there. There's always going to be the case. And just to elaborate on the whole cannibalization thing, we've actually, in a good old days when you could match Amazon scrambled email to the actual customer information, you can't do that anymore, not at the scale, but we ran with one of the brands I worked with, we ran their Amazon customers versus their direct to consumer customers. There was about 10 15% overlap.

Brett Curry:

That's crazy.

Luba Ilyasova:

You would think it would be so much bigger, but in reality people shop where people want to shop. I can see 20 Facebook ads for a beauty product. I will not buy it through Facebook, I will not. I go and I will look on Amazon, is it available there? That will be my first resource. But what dramatically changed on Amazon this year is matching product to customer intent. That is the biggest change that took place. You can't any longer spend your way into sale because if your product is not optimized to the point where it's matching the consumer purchasing content, your ads are simply not going to show. So you have to be very thoughtful about who your customer is, what your brand is and what is your value proposition. So we're going to be giving away some of templates and I know everybody uses tools, we all have tools, sometimes we have way too many tools, but these are quick templates that you can use and I'll just walk over them and then we'll email the links to anybody who is interested. So template,

Brett Curry:

We'll make sure everybody gets it, we'll email it out to the whole list.

Luba Ilyasova:

So the first template that I put together that I like to use is sort of estimating if you should even be running the deal. So you just plug in with the referral fee. That's standard 15%. So let's say on average you pay $5 in fulfillment fees, that's your 20% is your gold taxers and let's say you're going to run a best deal. Best deal for either be next week or for Black Friday, Monday is going to cost you a thousand dollars per deal. Now this calculator helps you calculate if your regular price is $15 and you're giving 10% discount and you sell 6,000 units with 20% advertising cost, will you make money in the end or not? And you just plug in numbers and see where you want to be in terms of advertising, how many units you need to sell, how much margin you can give away to come out where you want to come out financially. That's a useful little template.

Peak event budget, pacing what you plan to spend, what you actually spend paid revenue, total revenue, are you where you want to be in Taos? If not, then you may need to dial down your advertising expense. You may want to look into why you pay so hot. And finally inventory, do you have enough on hand inbound to FBA at a WD, how are you selling through? Should you pull back your ads or maybe pause the promotions? This is something that I usually recommend running during the large high velocity events, literally to have 15 minute touch bases and during the event just to see where you are because things can get out of hand.

Brett Curry:

Love it. Those resources are amazing Luba, so we'll email that out to everybody. Feel free to use those, share those. I think now is a good time actually to mention our sponsors and you alluded to this Luba, that everybody is using tools and I think the most sophisticated, the fastest growing brands are using tools makes life easier and better. But sometimes you just need to get down and dirty with a spreadsheet and I do that all the time. We use HubSpot and other tools for sales, I love them, but sometimes I just want to put stuff in a spreadsheet because I want to manipulate and play around with it and think big picture. And so I do want to highlight our sponsors before we hear from Jonathan on what's changed, some wins and challenges from 2025, but Amazon Prep, a MD prep, kpac, hello tax seller, candy LTA three Colts, check them all out, they've got special offers, they're all valuable in their own and so check out our sponsors. Jonathan, from your perspective, challenges wins and what's shifted in 2025 so far from the ads side of things.

Jonathan Steffens:

So I think everybody knows that the landscape in Amazon is always getting more competitive and obviously 2025 is no different from the past couple of years in that sense, but it is different in the way that it's getting more competitive. Obviously we've been seeing a lot more, at least the bucket of brands on Amazon. I think we OMG work with about 30 ish brands on Amazon, but we've all pretty much across the board been seeing more and more intensity from either copycat sellers or knockoffs or even more that are more sellers popping up that are trying to say that they're your product or making swiping your images and whatnot. But that's sort of always been around, it's been a lot hot more intense over the last couple of years. But of course the tariff play and just kind of piggybacking off of what Lulu was saying about using really scrutinizing, will this promo actually be profitable at the end of the day to tie into that is really brands have had to really hone in on what are your numbers.

We've worked with many brands that were just on Amazon and they had their product that they were slinging on Amazon for the last few years and they never really like, Hey, what's margins? What's your goal? And they would come to us and they'd say, what should our ACOs be? What is tacos? I've never heard of that and not a business owner myself, but I like to think that if I, I would have that nailed down, but just as it's getting more and more competitive, we're seeing higher CPCs, the tariffs are obviously eating the margins, that number is really important and that's also really important for the ad side of things to know that if that number is being determined by your agency or you're trying to figure out what is that performance target we need to be hitting, it's really critical to have everything else in a row so that yeah, we can be at that 15% or 20% or 30% ACOs or whatever that taco number is.

Just making sure that you are being obviously profitable at the end of the day, but then as aggressive as you can be. Another big shift in the Amazon ecosphere, which also is if you're going to events or whatever and hearing from promotions from Amazon, they're always talking about their new features that they're rolling out and it's sort of been a data overload and it's really been rolling out for the last two years, but with all the brand analytics and the customer journey analytics and the search query analytics and then the Amazon marketing cloud and all the insights you can get from that, there's just so much that you could really dive into it. Especially like the Amazon marketing Cloud and all the different audience segmentation that you can go into there. You could go in there and be absorbing so much data for you could probably absorb that data for two months and not really come out of it with an actionable like, Hey, I'm making more success over here because there's just so much data and so much to look at.

There are some really good nuggets and I think that the customer journey analytics is a great insight so you can dig into your audience trends and then Amazon's also giving you like, hey, your awareness is decreasing month on month and here's some tips for growing your awareness, whether that's expanding sponsor brand ads, sponsor display or running promos to certain subsets of your audience groups. And we do use that very frequently, but then the software providers that we use, KPO one that we use a lot for just really great reporting and they can pull all of that kind of together and then we can have more cohesive narratives. So the software is doing the work of analyzing all this data into group sets that we want to be looking at to then optimize our PPC around that, the Amazon marketing.

Brett Curry:

One thing I want to do, sorry, let's just key on something really quickly Jonathan. So with the, we've realized that our problem was never necessarily more data. Now we have lots and lots of data. We're swimming in the data and if you're not careful, you just at the end of the day you end up and you're like, well, I looked at a lot of numbers today, like an unbelievable amount of numbers, I don't know what to do. So the only way this is beneficial if we say, okay is what this means and this is what I'm going to do next, and so you just talked about something interesting where if awareness or impressions are going down on a specific item, you're maybe looking at, okay, how do I reverse that trend? And so can we unpack a few of those or just the highlight if I kind of cut you off midstream, but what are a few of those? Okay, these are the important data points that you could be finding and then what do we do with those?

Jonathan Steffens:

Yeah, so especially on the topic of as we're getting into q4, we've always got the promos, the big deal event next week and then of course Black Friday, cyber Monday, so the customer journey analytics as I touched on, you can look into that and see your different audience pools of shoppers that are in awareness, shoppers in consideration, intent purchase, and so sponsored brand ads sponsored display are the ones that ad types that we can use to really grow the awareness and considerations. So shoppers who are seeing the brand, becoming aware of the brand, maybe even engaging, coming to the listing page and those are critical initiatives in the lead up to a promotional event is just getting awareness out there. People don't know your brand and of course they're not going to be searching for your brand, at least not as often. And so then just building that awareness pool is hypercritical and then you can also use those pools to then retarget both during the event to say, Hey, you looked at my product, so I'm using a display A to retarget people who looked at my product in the last seven days because I know you've been kind of window shopping in the lead up to this event and now I'm remarketing my product to you while the promo's running and then also post an event and you can again remarket to those same cools if you have a consumable remarket to those who purchased at the repurchase rate range.

And then also in the search query analytics. This is a very insightful data point that's going to say for your whole subcategory, Amazon sees we're selling tool belts. Amazon sees there's 5,000 purchases in the last month for tool belts and your brand only got 1%. Okay, this is mission critical because this is on the core of our

Brett Curry:

Product, a lot of upset, a lot of room to grow and extend,

Jonathan Steffens:

Right? A lot of room to grow and then obviously you can see the fruit of your effort and that we're working on the SEO to make sure that we're organically ranking and indexing for tool belts and that we're working on the ad side of things to make sure that we're showing up for tool belts and then week over week, month over month, we can see, okay, our share is increasing here we are gaining this relevancy. And so yeah, just really knowing not all of this data is going to be actionable, but using the data to steer some of your actions and using it to assist you and not getting too lost in the, because it can drive you a little crazy. It's

Brett Curry:

Easy to do. One of the best analogies I ever heard was that of a pilot and if you ever have looked in the cockpit when you're boarding a plane or something, you're like, there's an unbelievable amount of dials and displays and knobs and buttons and stuff like that. Really pilots mostly use about six of those to fly the plane, right? Everything else is just if something goes wrong, they can diagnose and fix things and whatnot. And so that's really the way you're going to be too running your Amazon business or hiring an agency or an in-house team is they're going to run the business based on five or six data points with, they'll have everything else to kind of diagnose if something goes wrong. I love that the lead up, the main event after math, Jonathan where the lead up we're looking at, hey, how do we grow awareness and kind of fill the funnel so that then during the main event we can close as many people as possible and then afterwards, how do we remarket to people and close those that maybe didn't close or close people that maybe got money over the holidays but haven't bought anything and now they're going to buy from you.

And so lots of good stuff there. Lube, did you want to chime in on that?

Luba Ilyasova:

On a data, the number one data point that I always look at, and I'm coming from a brand perspective, so number one data point that I've always had to report on was profit margin in terms of dollar and percentage. So if the profit margin in terms of dollar and percentage was at or above the level that I needed, that was literally the only data point that I needed to look at. Now if the profit margin was not where I want it to be, if it was below in terms of dollars or percentage, then you start looking into which of my products is not making me money? And then you start dialing in why is that product is not making money? Very often you discover that the reason is because it's sitting mostly unpaid traffic versus organic. If that's the case, you dial back down and you say, okay, great. Why is it unpaid traffic? Is it not getting click through rate is the conversion rate is the number of session. So I always like to work back from the profit margin looking to what's not working and answering questions, what can I change, which lever can I pull to improve it?

Brett Curry:

Love it, love it. Let's roll right into the next topic with you Luba, and feel free to share some of the visuals on this, but as we look at our last minute levers for holiday 2025, what are some of those? And so after you share, we're going to talk to Connor about his promotional strategy and then we'll wrap up with Jonathan. Jonathan on the ad side. But I know part of this could be we're looking at deals, we're not going to do deals because we want to protect margin, but roll through some last minute levers here for us, Luba.

Luba Ilyasova:

Absolutely. Well first of all, before we get into levers, I just want to reinforce the ideas that you cannot sell stuff that you don't have. And I've seen brands lose Q4 because they didn't ship stuff in time and always be proactively planning. And if you can, and I think you're doing it, if you can have fulfilled by merchant backup to your fulfilled by Amazon,

Talking about paths, deal track or no deal track, I'm not going to lie naturally, it's much easier to have successful Q4 if you plan on running deals, but even if you don't plan on running deals, there is still a no deal track, which is where you focus on video ads on optimization of your product detail page, setting up specific store pages and retargeting. That's where your SAEO, which is genic search optimization, we all optimizing for AI these days. And for Amazon agents, Chad g pt, you want AI agents to pick up your product as the most relevant to consumer query. So leader assets optimization, store curation and use of advertising is going to help you if you are not going to run deals.

What are the last minute levers you can pull? And I'm just going to scroll through some of this. What are the last minute levers you can pull right now because we are really in the final stretch of getting everything done and ready. The number one thing I recommend test new main image, have several versions of a main image, test it through. There are multiple services that help you with that PFU product tinian, there may be more if you have your own user group AB test on Amazon, test as many new images as you can right now that may possibly dramatically improve your click through rate regardless of you running deals or not set up sponsored brand video campaigns. Believe it or not, if you don't have high production assets for a video using Amazon Video Builder actually works. Those videos that you make using Amazon templates, they perform rather well build an Amazon gift guide page. Even if you're selling, you may think you're selling the most UNG giftable products, but I worked with a Showerhead brand which had a huge spike in q4. People were giving each other showerheads for Christmas. You just never know what's helpful.

Brett Curry:

Quick note on that, Luba, we got a long time client, they sell mops and microfiber products. Shout out Brett Haney, but a long time ago they ran an email that was the worst Christmas gift ever and it was a mop and they're like, don't give her a mop or don't give him a mop or whoever. And it actually ended up being a tremendous seller for them. And so they're like, oh, sweet, we'll just lean into this worst, worst gift ever. Here you go. It's like you could have a holiday guide and even poke fun at your own product, but people are going to buy, people are going to buy in q4,

Luba Ilyasova:

People are going to buy in q4, build an Amazon give guide page, have a sponsored brand ads targeting that page. Specifically Jonathan already mentioned retarget with recent product visitors set FBM backup. You just don't know what's going to happen with your inventory in q4. Always have a backup. It's not going to be as effective as having FBE offer, but at least you're not going to go completely dark depending on your business model. If you have SMS and email list, this is what we found, and Brett, I think Nick actually has some studies on this where the email includeDTCall to actions, one by on website, one by an Amazon, and they've actually seen really well response to buy on Amazon.

Brett Curry:

Yep. It's a great strategy where if you've got an email list, and I hope you do, especially if you're multichannel and omnichannel test with some of those, including that buy on Amazon button, a lot of people would rather do that anyway, so test it.

Luba Ilyasova:

Amazon has stats which say that Amazon buy with Prime button on your website actually improves conversion by 25%. That could be very meaningful, 25%. So whether you are all about aggressive deals or leaning more into optimization and PPC, what I call the no deal track, all of these seven levers you can pull right now and have meaningful impact on your Q4 sales. I do have one disclaimer. Do not make any major changes to your product detail. Page 72 hours prior to high velocity event

Brett Curry:

And why is that? Luba 100% agree, but make it clear why you don't want to do that.

Luba Ilyasova:

You're confusing the guts of Amazon. There is an algorithm you make change to the bad end or to the copy and the algorithm now needs time to figure out how you relevant to customer incourse. So if you're going to do major updates, either do them at least 72 hours prior to major event or wait till next week's, big prime deal days are going to be over and then make all of your changes in time for the algorithm to index them prior to Black Friday Cyber Monday.

Brett Curry:

Totally makes sense. That makes sense. Awesome. So let's do this, Connor, and I believe you're muted, but talk through your promotional strategy for this year and how has your promotional strategy changed over the years because it's important to consider it. A lot of people expect discounts, and so this is the time of year for deals. It's also a great way to give away all your profits. And so yeah, how are you guys approaching this year? How has your promotional strategy changed over the years?

Connor Crook:

Well, my first comment, now that I'm unmuted, I'm going to reiterate some of the things that Lou has been talking about. Inventory? Yes,

Brett Curry:

Yes, yes.

Connor Crook:

Inventory, inventory, inventory because it makes a huge difference to success on Amazon. One of the main things we have seen in our success this year is maintaining steady inventory because whenever you have stockouts on Amazon, you get dinged and you just fall back down the algorithm to recover from. A big part of our growth and success this year has been maintaining the inventory of all the products that leads into what are our holiday plans. We don't really know yet. And the reason we don't really know yet is because we're still a month out and we don't know exactly what our inventory balance is. We know that we're going to have coupons on Amazon, we're going to do discounting on our website. We're going to try to make them a different play so that if you go to Amazon, you get this product at a good deal.

Whereas we've become very specific about categories of products on our website, and then there's also product bundling, which we like to do on both of them. But the product bundling is one of those things we really don't know until we get approach and we look at our inventory because bundling is oftentimes, well, here's a product that we think is really great, but we haven't been really selling that much of it, so let's make it part of a bundle. Maybe that way we can promote that product going forward. I believe that customers always prefer a free gift than a discount. I also prefer to keep protect my margin by giving away free gifts because we're a brand that we want people to become immersed in. So the more Diamondback products I can get into the customer, the more I know they're going to buy down in the future. So

Brett Curry:

I love that. I want to key on that just really quickly, Connor, I think it's a great point, and we have several apparel brands that do this, especially early in holiday, and some of this is mostly all they do for the holiday is free gifts with purchase and it fits because we need stocking stuffers. We need a gift to give someone else. Maybe I want to buy a tool belt for myself, but if I do this, I get a free gift. Now I can be, I was really shopping for my son or whatever because I'm going to give him the free gift. There's all kinds of ways to kind of position that and angle that. I remember my buddy Peter that owns a Groove Life's silicon wedding ring company for the longest time, and I think they still do it. They mentioned, Hey, free gift with purchase, it's a $19 value, a $30 value or whatever. And all that really means is you're going to get a free ring in your size of a color or something that couldn't sell, right? It's just like it's inventory that's sitting there. Let's make this a high perceived value. Let's increase our conversion rate for it for holiday. It's man, I'm making you feel an outsized benefit. It maybe even feels bigger than a discount, but guess what? I'm not eroding my margin at all. And so love that strategy. I think more brands need to use it.

Connor Crook:

So we're going to be running coupons on Amazon as we get closer into the season and we'll have some bundles, but of course we won't really probably start running some inventory reports over the next couple of weeks as we see what's coming in inbound, what's been selling well, and then we'll make some decisions about what exactly products we put into bundles, any particular discounts, because going back inventory is so important, you never want to run out of the inventory. So we try to run different promotions between Amazon and our website just to kind of give different customers a different opportunity.

Brett Curry:

Connor, is that sort of based on the skews or the products you see moving on those various channels or is it based on the products that you have excess inventory on in those channels? Thinking about what products do you discount or feature what you bundle, how do you look at that differently on DTC versus Amazon?

Connor Crook:

Well, let's just take a step back and look at this strategy in general. You can use all the, we have a lot of tools now. We've been talking about tools. You can use tools on your website or on Amazon that say, I know that if a customer buys this pen, they're probably going to buy the top for the pen and they might buy this bag to put it in. Great. I know that information. I can bundle those things together and I know that customers are likely to buy all of those things. On the other hand, I know that I got this pen, this top, but I got a lot of these phones lying around, so I'm going to say on my website or on my Amazon page, people who bought this also bought this. No, they didn't. But if I convince you they did, then maybe you will too.

Brett Curry:

Maybe they didn't, but they should. And so if I bundle it and now people will,

Connor Crook:

So bundling to me is a way that you can help your customer by helping them complete their bundle, but it's also a way that you help yourself as the brand by slow inventory, promoting inventory that you do. We've got this great product, but it's not getting in the hands of the customer. So if we just get more of 'em out there, it's not a bad product. We just hadn't found the right target audience for it yet. So I don't think our mix there is different on Amazon versus on our website. We do want to see what's selling on that channel so that we're highlighting that product, but then what we put with it might be based on some mix of those other factors.

Brett Curry:

Totally makes sense. I want to pause for just a minute and talk Luba and Jonathan. I know you guys were talking about virtual bundles and some new opportunities there specifically that we can lean into around the holidays related to ads. Any points on that? And whoever wants to go first, go for it.

Luba Ilyasova:

I'll go first and I'll say that virtual bundles has been probably one of the least. You utilized tools on Amazon, mainly because A, you're paying two or three fulfillment fees for one order. So if you're doing commercial bundle of product A, product B and product C, you're going to end up paying three FBA fees at the lower price. Kana, you did not know that.

Connor Crook:

I didn't know that, but I hope that the person who manages my Amazon channels here in my office and there and the consultants that they use have that conversation regularly.

Brett Curry:

I love that. I love subtle messages. This is how you lead folks. This is how you become CEO, the subtle messages. I love it, Connor. Yeah, with emails after pro. Yeah, so that's good.

Luba Ilyasova:

You have to be careful about putting those bundles together because you do pay more than one fulfillment fee. Also, it only shows up on one of the product pages. So what you want to do, if you want to move that product that you have laying around and doesn't sell, you want to put it on the most traffic page that you have, even if it may not make sense from the product usage decision, but that's how you bring visibility to your slow movers. That's how you create a virtual bundle. But the biggest drawback was virtual bundles always was that they could not be advertised through sponsor it product ads. So you could create a ton of them and the only way to advertise them was through setting up a pitch store saying bundles and driving sponsored brand ads. So Jonathan, how excited are you about sponsored product ads for bundles?

Jonathan Steffens:

We have seen some light success out of virtual bundles, but with the addition of putting them into sponsored product ads, we could see obviously a lot more traffic going to them. As lube said, that historically hasn't really been a way to push them too hard just kind of existing on the listing page. And it's just like another variation of frequently bought with, it's not that right, but it is just as a shopper perceiving it historically didn't really ever mean too much to them unless the discount was pretty large. So did you want the less levers for PPC here now? Yes, please. Please

Brett Curry:

That. Back to Connor in a second. Yeah, go

Jonathan Steffens:

For it. Yeah, I'll be here real quick. So in the lead up, obviously already we're almost done, get the lead up to next week, but lead up to promos always being, considering the performance dip that we usually see two to three days, sometimes a little bit longer in the lead up to the day of the event. So you want to be just really aware of that PPC performance, and so making adjustments to make sure you're still hitting your targets sponsored brand. Jonathan, any insights

Brett Curry:

There? And this probably depends on how aggressive or how conservative our clients want to be, but do you ever advise, Hey, don't black too much in that lull because our people that are looking, then they're looking in the few days leading up to the fall prime day, which now just totally blank on what it's called or the Turkey 12 or whatever. And so how much should they pull back or should they pull back at all?

Jonathan Steffens:

Right. No, yeah, not necessarily meaning pullback, and I don't think we touched on this yet, but obviously any promotional period, you really have to know what you're trying to build on Amazon and where does your brand fit into the Amazon system? With Diamondback tools, they have a very diversified product portfolio and someone who's buying the belt is likely developing a belt system. And so there's many different pieces that they're going to buy potentially over the lifetime, especially if they love the brand, which most of our shoppers we do see, they love the brand, they come back and they buy more, but it's not like a $20 supplement that you're consuming every single month. And so the repurchase window is very different and someone who buys a whole tool belt system is not likely to buy that exact same system again, at least not for, hopefully it lasts for five, 10 years.

I don't know how long it typically lasts, but that's going to last a long time. So thinking about the event in that sense that they're not diamond back is building subscribers. So we do want to be moderately aggressive for the promotional periods with this kind of brand building product line, but because we're not building subscribers because we have a longer repurchase window, we're not going to be hyper aggressive. If you're a consumable product and you know that if somebody likes your product, they're going to be back in 30 days where you're going to get a subscription out of it, you can afford to be a lot more aggressive. So

Brett Curry:

Thinking maybe even go break even or close to it in a situation like that where in other scenarios that would be silly. You're not making any money giving it all to Bezos. Yeah, exactly.

Jonathan Steffens:

Right. So all that to say in the lead up, it's not necessarily you need to pull back, it's just you need to be a bit more hyper aware that you could see sharp fluctuations in those couple of days in the lead up to the event. And then even days right after the event where your usual parameters for bid adjustments and if you have bid up and down or you have some kind of software running your bids, just knowing that it can be a little bit out there skelter in those couple of days. So you might shoot your tacos from a 5% up to a 15% for those couple of days. So you want to go in and make some changes. You don't want to blow up your efficiency just for the sake of that additional awareness. A lot of window shopping that's happening in those couple of days during the event, you still again kind of have to know how aggressive you're trying to be.

And so we check in at least every hour from 9:00 AM eastern till about 8:00 PM Eastern, which those are kind of, that's when it picks up and that's when it falls off. And then of course if you have a lightning deal, you really got to be on top of that, but during that time, tacos is a bit better. So that spend divided by total sales is a bit better of a true north star than ACOs. ACOs is still very important. If you target is 15 and you're seeing the ACOs coming in at 300%, it's probably some adjustments you need to be making, but there's a lot of lag because that hourly data updates that Amazon gives us is there's going to be a ton of sales attribution lag. So the ACOs is a little bit less relevant. It might be showing if your target's 25, you might be at 50, and that'll lag down to probably closer to 30 after the event, and that might be okay for during the event, but that tacos number is still very important to be paying attention to because there's not going to be too much clawback to the total sales.

And then as we get outside of the event, we already hit on this a little bit, but remarketing, using display ads to remarket, especially if you are a consumable repurchase brand product. So you can use that to time when you're remarketing, did they purchase in 30 days ago during that event? Okay, now it's time to remarket to them with display ads. Yep,

Brett Curry:

Really great. So we're going to talk about a couple of those bonuses and then how we can help you as well if you need additional help for the holidays. But final thoughts from you, Connor, on just how you approach couponing and discounting and this time period, are you going to mostly lean into just coupons on Amazon? Have you ever considered lightning deals and some of those other tools that Amazon has available? Just kind of talk about any final points there.

Connor Crook:

So margin and profitability, I think we've played around with some of these other tools before, some of the lightning deals and those things, but a big part of where Diamondback is right now in our evolution as a company is establishing the baselines, which sounds kind of sad, I guess, pathetic that we're nine years in and we're trying to establish baselines, but we've been through a lot, especially with the change in manufacturing, so profit margin, contribution margin from the different channels. Right now we want to really focus on doing the same thing for a little bit of time and establish and establish a plan. So I think we're going to really lean into coupons this year. It's something we've done in the past so that we can then look back and say, effective how are we doing? And that way when we look at next year, we've got a plan for, okay, last year this was the margin that we assumed was going to be the sweet spot where we didn't lose too much profit, but we sold more units.

And then we can really start to hone in on these things. So going back to 2017 when I started the business or bought this business, that was the time of revenue, revenue, revenue, revenue, revenue. Let's see how fast and how hard we can go and how much we'll count profits later. Just grow, grow, grow. We'll figure it out. Yeah, yeah. Guess what got equal? Bottom line, right? Eventually, yeah, that time has come. And so for us as a company and our stage of evolution is really now establish those baselines, know those numbers so that in the future we can really start to see are we being successful? Hey, we sold a whole bunch on Amazon. Well, so what could we have done better? Did we do better last year? Did we give away all of our profitability? So stick with the coupons this year and really focus on establishing a baseline so that we know when we're being successful in years in the future.

Brett Curry:

Love that coupons, establish that baseline. Look at virtual bundles, look at how you're doing this. Fantastic Connor, brilliant insights, a way to weave the brand story through this man. Really appreciate it. And hey, everybody out there, go buy a tool belt, man. Somebody in your life that needs a tool belt. My brother-in-law's a contractor, I'm aided by my recommendation. He's like, oh, I'm a Diamondback tool belt fan, for sure. Yeah, look at that. Showing off the product. I love it. And so really, really good stuff. Check it out on Amazon. So Connor, thank you so much, Luba. I want to let you wrap up here with a couple of final thoughts on prepping here and also want to mention, if you're looking at this and you feel like, man, I've got the team, I got the plan, I got everything. Awesome. Crush it. I can't wait to hear about your success. If you're like, well, wait a minute, I would like a Luba and or a Jonathan on my team to help me. There's a short window to do that, but there is a little bit of time and so we'd love to do some last minute planning and prep to help you crush the holidays. And so you can GoCommerce click on Let's Talk, we'll do a strategy session for you, a little prep time for the holidays, but Luba closing thoughts as we get everybody ready for Q4 closing tips and thoughts,

Luba Ilyasova:

Closing thoughts. Don't do promotions, coupons, deals, or anything else just for the sake of creating a deal on them.

Brett Curry:

Just you feel like you have.

Luba Ilyasova:

Yes. And then two weeks later saying, well, we run a lightning deal and it didn't work. The reality today on Amazon without external traffic, without that external push, your deal is not going to perform. That's just cold, hard truth. So if you are running a coupon at the very, very list or a deal or any kind of promotion, at the very least, pretty much every brand today has access to creator connections where you can go and set up 10% commission, create a connection campaign, make sure that you put in word deal promotion Black Friday into the title because that's the only searchable field for affiliates and just have that evergreen because you can go in and you can change it if you have a little bit more time. LTA helps you to scale it. The least low effort is create a connection. The higher level is paying up with LTA and really growing because Amazon is all about the brand. Just slapping a coupon on doesn't work without brand identity, brand equity and external. Amazon wants your external traffic. Whenever you do Amazon, always ask what does Amazon wants. Average conversion of a consumer when they land on Amazon is close to 70%. That's why Amazon is giving you 10% referral bonus back because they want you

Brett Curry:

That external traffic. If you provide it, they will reward you for it. Yes.

Luba Ilyasova:

Well, whenever the brand says, I tried a deal last year and it didn't work well, what did you do outside of putting the deal together and running ads? That's the last

Brett Curry:

Thought. Protect your margins. Make this a profitable holiday season. In the end, that's all that's going to matter. It's what you get to keep if you're building a brand or business to one day sell, that's all a future buyer really cares about. They want to see growth and some other things as well. But without profits there, you don't have a very strong case. And so last minute lever I'm going to pull is let's talk about our sponsor. So a MZ prep, KPAC, hello, tax seller, candy lta, and three cults. Check them out. We'll send out some unique offers from them as well as we send out these resources that Luba has expert put together, I promise you you want some more Luba in your Amazon business. And so we'll send out these resources. Thanks once again to Connor Crook, to Luba to Jonathan. And as we mentioned, if we can be of assistance last minute here, let us know omg commerce.com. And with that, we'll wrap up. Thanks everybody and good luck this holiday season. See everybody.

‍

‍

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.

‍

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:

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Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

I love it.

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

Irish triplets.

Brett:

Okay.

Miki:

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

Brett:

It's insane.

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

By "their vibes".

Brett:

That's awesome.

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

That is crazy and amazing.

Miki:

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

Brett:

Unfathomable, yeah.

Miki:

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

Brett:

Yeah.

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

Yes, so true.

Miki:

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

Brett:

Amazing. And it's called WILD, correct?

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

Yeah. Nobody wants healthy pizza. That sounds cardboard.

Miki:

Exactly.

Brett:

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

Miki:

AB testing, literally like email, subject heading.

Brett:

I love that.

Miki:

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

Brett:

Fascinating.

Miki:

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

Brett:

It doesn't matter, yeah.

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

Yeah.

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

Yes.

Miki:

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

Brett:

You're like, this is amazing.

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

None of that.

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

Patent pending.

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

They take up the whole fridge, exactly.

Miki:

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

Miki:

Hi, Stan.

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

For sure.

Miki:

Yeah.

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

Like the Bellagio fountains?

Miki:

Bellagio fountain.

Brett:

I got to see that, then.

Miki:

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

Brett:

It's a curiosity play, yeah.

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

Yeah, totally makes sense.

Miki:

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

Brett:

It's a healthy tension.

Miki:

A healthy tension, yeah.

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

Nice. Royal flushes.

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

They're so engaged.

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

Not yet.

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

You get an insane press on it.

Miki:

[crosstalk 00:46:07] ...

‍

They said, "What are you doing?"

Miki:

What are you doing here?

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

Yay. I was happy to be here.

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

‍

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

‍

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

‍

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

‍

Mentioned in This Episode:

‍

Nick Shackelford

   - LinkedIn

   - Twitter

Geek Out
   - Website

   - Events

Konstant Kreative‍

Structured Agency

Design Pickle‍

No Limit Creatives‍

Penji‍

Video Husky‍

Chubbies‍

Facebook Dynamic Creative‍

Josh Durham‍

Groove Life‍

Aligned Growth Management‍

Necklet‍

Monkey Learn Word Cloud‍

Luca + Danni‍

Northbeam‍

Triple Whale‍

James Van Elswyk

Transcript:

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

It was. It was Colorado.

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

[inaudible 00:09:22].

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

Okay.

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

Okay.

Brett:

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

Nick:

Oh, Konstant Kreatives. Sorry.

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

Yeah.

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

Got it.

Nick:

Four and five might be skewed.

Brett:

Right.

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

Interesting.

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

Both fantastic tools.

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

Yes.

Brett:

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

Nick:

Yes.

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

Yeah.

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

Yeah, yeah.

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

Yeah. Totally.

Nick:

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

Brett:

Nice.

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Nick:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

‍

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

‍

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

‍

Here's what we cover:

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

‍
Mentioned in This Episode:

Molly Pittman

   - LinkedIn

   - Instagram

Smart Marketer‍

Smart Marketer Podcast‍

Ezra Firestone‍

Traffic & Conversion Summit‍

John Grimshaw‍

BOOM! by Cindy Joseph‍

“5 Makeup Tips For Older Women”‍

“The State Of Paid Ads In 2022”‍

“Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert

“Good to Great” by Jim Collins‍

“Turning the Flywheel” by Jim Collins

Transcript:

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

What's up? What's up?

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

A decent amount of work.

Molly:

I'm kidding.

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

He really is.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

"What do you need? I got it."

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

Have more fun, y'all.

Brett:

And have more fun.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

Well no, I just know your story.

Brett:

It's all good.

Molly:

You have seniority.

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

As a business, exactly.

Brett:

Yep.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

Yeah, totally, totally makes sense.

Molly:

Then we pick-

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

What was the name of that book again?

Molly:

"Big Magic".

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

Right, there's nothing else.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

Totally. Totally, yeah.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

Exactly.

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

So, test small and then go big.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

They are. They are. No doubt.

Molly:

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

Brett:

Yeah, it is.

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

And give way more value first.

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

No doubt. No doubt.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

Just emphasize.

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

No doubt.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

And who-

Brett:

Yeah, please add to that.

Molly:

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

Brett:

Exactly.

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

Nothing better.

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

That's crazy, yeah.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

One more quick thing, Brett.

Brett:

What's your handle again on Instagram?

Molly:

@MollyPittmanDigital.

Brett:

@MollyPittmanDigital.

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Molly:

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

Molly:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

With that, until next time, stay spicy.

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