Amazon enforcement has reached unprecedented levels in 2024. Even 8 and 9-figure sellers are getting suspended, and Amazon's "two strikes and you're out" policy means there's virtually no room for error. If you sell on Amazon, this episode could save your business.

Amazon's tolerance for any form of manipulation is at an all-time low. The cost of non-compliance isn't just a warning anymore - it's permanent removal from the platform. Even if you think you're playing by the rules, the rules have changed, and they're being enforced by AI that doesn't give second chances.

We sit down with Chris McCabe, former Amazon employee with 5.5 years inside the company and 11+ years helping sellers navigate suspensions and enforcement. Known for direct, no-nonsense advice that saves businesses from permanent bans.

Key Topics & Insights:

Review Manipulation Enforcement (The #1 Suspension Risk)

• The enforcement surge: Why Amazon has been cracking down harder than ever since March 2024
• Harsher penalties: Re-offenders are essentially blacklisted - no second chances
• What actually works: The proper way to report competitor abuse (hint: it's not support cases)
• Social media strategy: How LinkedIn and Twitter reports are getting real results

Tactics That Will Get You Suspended (Stop These Immediately)

• Physical mail to customers: Postcards and inserts are dead - Amazon considers this harvesting private data
• QR codes and email collection: Any attempt to move customers off-platform is flagged
• Review requests: Even indirect asks like "if happy, leave review" will trigger suspensions
• Giveaways and rebates: Amazon assumes you're buying reviews, regardless of what you actually ask for
• Influencer services: Many are using compromised influencers that Amazon is actively tracking

AI-Powered Takedow

• Keyword triggers: How certain words in titles and descriptions automatically flag your listings
• Category manipulation: Competitors are weaponizing ASIN contributions to get your products moved to "search Siberia"
• Improper ASIN merges: The difference between legitimate consolidation and review manipulation

The New Reality: No Gray Areas

• Amazon's policies are now black and white - stop looking for loopholes
• Focus on how Amazon interprets policies, not how you think they should be interpreted
• Generic appeal templates and ChatGPT responses are being rejected automatically

Actionable Takeaways

• Audit your current practices: If you're doing any of the "forbidden" tactics mentioned, stop immediately
• Document competitor abuse: Screenshot evidence of review manipulation and report it properly
• Prepare for enforcement waves: Peak seasons (Prime Day, Q4) are followed by major suspension sweeps
• Get help early: Don't waste 5-10 appeals trying to DIY your way out of suspension
  
  

Chapters

(00:00) Intro

(01:40) Overview of Amazon Enforcement and Review Manipulation

(06:12) Reporting Abuse: Best Practices

(11:42) Identifying and Avoiding Review Manipulation Tactics

(23:11) Grow Subscription Revenue with Loop Subscriptions

(24:16) Common Mistakes to Avoid and Additional Considerations

(30:44) Understanding AI Takedowns

(33:39) Improper ASIN Mergers

(36:04) Amazon Policy: No Gray Areas

(38:50) Navigating Appeals Effectively

(45:22) Drive More Revenue with Post Pilot

Transcript

Chris McCabe:

I think Word is finally getting around that you can't just use generic templates to appeal that you can't use chat GPT to appeal. I think Amazon's catching AI use in appeals and they just throw them away.

Brett Curry:

Hey there. Thanks for tuning in to the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. We want 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 at 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 today we are talking about an absolutely critical topic, Amazon enforcement and how to keep your listings live and available for shoppers to purchase your goods and how to avoid suspensions, how to navigate if you do get suspended. And I probably need to tell you if you're an Amazon seller, but it is gnarly out there, and even the best sellers, even eight and nine figure sellers are not immune to having issues impacting the visibility of their listings. And hey, we got to think about this, like the retail shelf, right? You can't sell anything and Walmart if your products are all yanked off the shelf.

And while that may not be a reality in the physical world all that much, it absolutely is on Amazon. And so today I've got a returning guest. He's a superstar. He's all over. If you're in the Amazon world, you probably know him. He has e-commerce in his name. Chris. Chris McCabe is joining the show again. We caught up at Prosper Show in Vegas, I guess months ago now, Chris, but you've been traveling the world. I've been speaking at events, and we just now are able to record. But welcome back to the show and thanks for coming on and how's it going?

Chris McCabe:

Yeah, no, I always enjoy speaking to you about these types of topics, and we always have good feedback and comments from people that hear it and see it and who are concerned about these things. Things are good. This is a hectic, busy summer. Sometimes summer gets a little quiet, but prime day coming early. Everything I think is different this year. Yeah,

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Yes, we just finished Prime Day, but I know you'd mentioned to me sometimes right after Prime Day, there's an increase in suspensions and listing takedowns and things like that. Amazon's maybe a little cautious about doing that during prime day or right before it, but afterwards they're looking at it. And then of course, we're prepping for Q4 basically right now and for the next several months.

And so ai, I mean, Amazon's going to be enforcing things sometimes with ai. And so yeah, we need to understand what are our risk factors? What are the things that could take down our listings? What do we need to be aware of, and then how can we mitigate things if we do get suspended? And so you had shared with me several hot topics that I want to dive into because these are mission critical for all Amazon sellers or brands that are on Amazon. And the first one is review manipulation, and then this is one that we all understand from, hey, our competitors, especially we've got overseas competitors, we we're probably confident that they're doing some shady things as far as reviews go, but it's something that really Amazon's trying to crack down on getting rid of spammy manipulative reviews and ratings. And so walk us through what are the things we need to be aware of? What is Amazon looking for and what could get us into trouble in terms of review manipulation? So

Chris McCabe:

It's kind of classic, good news, bad news. The bad news being, I'll start with the bad news first. Penalties are harsher. Reoffenders are generally speaking, not considered as eligible for reinstatements. So if they've been warned or suspended for review manipulation in the past, they should not be experimenting, dabbling, grabbing a gimmicks, looking at hacks. They found out about at some event somewhere they should be super compliant, extra compliant, extraordinarily compliant because they should consider themselves on their last go. Don't

Brett Curry:

Tow that line, avoid that line. Just be above board. Yeah.

Chris McCabe:

Yeah. There's very little wiggle room left anyway, whether you're a offender or not, and I can get into that in a second. This is still kind of the bad news answer. I mean, the good news in terms of abusive competitors is it's 10 times better now reporting them for abuse if you do it correctly, which is not support cases, not random calls to account health, not waiting for your SAS core manager to report them for you. That might be part of it, but I mean, reporting abuse and seeing action is higher now than anytime I can remember. Wow. Yeah.

Brett Curry:

So maybe we can double click on that because I'm confident. I mean, this is the thing that I hear so much. Of course, at OMG, we help clients grow on Amazon, and so as we have new brands coming to us, they all complain about those Chinese sellers with fake reviews and stuff like that. So what's the proper way to notify Amazon that, hey, these sellers are manipulating reviews,

Chris McCabe:

Take action. And there's more than one way. Historically, it was emailing escalations to senior management or executives at Amazon or their staff, their support, their direct

Brett Curry:

Reports. I just texted Jeff. I just texted like, Hey, Jeff, hope you're not on the yacht, but take a note of this,

Chris McCabe:

Jeff started. That's why Amazon execs can't really ever complain if they get direct emails from people. Jeff himself was the one who began that trend, or isn't that crazy?

Brett Curry:

Yeah,

Chris McCabe:

Practice of the, Jeff had Amazon email and Jeff had eight or nine back when I was working at Amazon, and we got the so-called Bezos escalations. Of course, you don't hear about Bezos escalations anymore. Jeff had eight or nine assistance and he had eight or nine email addresses, right? Wow. And most people didn't know those. They mostly knew Jeff B at Amazon or Jeff at Amazon, which of course now has morphed into a generic email queue just like writing the seller performance. But Jeff kind of began the trend of emailing directly to S team execs, or let's just say senior management because there's only three dozen s team executives, and getting them to delegate directly to mid-level management or higher direct reports that they work with to have a senior level senior quality review as opposed to doing abuse reports to seller support cases 90 something percent of the time, that's useless.

No follow-up, no proper review. That's just marking something like it's been worked on, but it hasn't. Yep. Yep. So we don't do email cues. We don't used to do that a lot. There used to be multiple abuse reporting email cues, and they were hit or miss. It was worth doing because sometimes you would hit, maybe other times you would miss and you'd end up escalating it anyway. But if you do it properly, there's been no time that I can recall. I mean, actionable step number one right here is report abuse early and often, but do it the right way. Don't send volumes of attachments or info or don't write three page emails unless it's very fact and data-driven, something that they can use to decide if they're going to enforce or if they're going to ignore it or if they're going to transfer it. But usable value add info. If it's just mushy comments and complaints, and I mean, you can complain a little bit in the first sentence or two, but the rest has to be factual.

Brett Curry:

This is not prose or emotional or this is not an essay. No, this is let's get right to the facts and make it easy for you to

Chris McCabe:

Make a decision. As time has gone on, people have had some success, lesser success, but some success with Twitter posts tagging certain people. LinkedIn has kind of been the dark horse, which is kind of coming up on the rail on the leaders. LinkedIn's been used a lot more in the last 18 months, I would say.

Brett Curry:

So reaching out to select team members at Amazon on LinkedIn, is that what you mean? Just

Chris McCabe:

LinkedIn. LinkedIn. Post LinkedIn. You're publicly complaining. But also the great thing about LinkedIn is first of all, there's a lot of high level Amazonians and high level people like us on LinkedIn who are watching this stuff, but you can ask for help describe a problem. You can be factual. You can tag people who are relevant both inside the company and maybe X Amazon like me, but you get a lot of eyeballs on it. You get a lot of people who care about it, maybe people who don't have an exact answer, but people who are resharing it elsewhere where other people might see it that the original post didn't get to. So, and LinkedIn's the only real proper channel for professional posts of anything business related or work related, but also Amazon related. I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn too, so people are tagging us about posts I do and about their problems. So it's changed. I mean, as time goes on, people are sharing more things publicly anyway. Maybe this time next year people will be doing YouTube shorts and doing it and tagging people. Got it.

Brett Curry:

So we're going to keep a factual, we're going to keep it fairly brief. No long prose. We're going to consider posting even on Twitter slash x posting on LinkedIn and tagging appropriate people, even former Amazonians like yourself. But what else are we looking at doing? Who do we reach out to? Who do we notify to support to report nefarious review manipulation?

Chris McCabe:

Yeah. The abuse prevention teams at Amazon for obvious reasons, are largely behind the curtain. So essentially you're reaching above them to somebody who's high enough that they probably report to them or report to somebody who reports to them, and their skip level would be somebody who would get eyes on it. But you're generating attention for something that's not just impacting you. That could be happening to other sellers, to other brands. Creating bad seller experiences, creating less faith in the marketplace. I mean, Amazon.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, bad customer experiences. Exactly.

Chris McCabe:

Ultimately the biggest risk

Brett Curry:

Here. Yeah.

Chris McCabe:

Ultimately it results in, well, whether it's fake reviews or just listing content that's been misrepresented category abuse, it results in buyers not being able to find things want to pay for. It involves buyers being misled, misinformation, taking them down the wrong path. It's bad buyer experience, which Amazon exists to provide the best buyer experience. And on top of that, legitimate honest sellers get punished when abuse goes unreported or enacted upon. So Amazon has their own interests in protecting everyone's experience, and it's not just their own financial interests because sales would be hurt, their own reputational interest and their own integrity of the marketplace at stake, and also it just makes it harder for them to pitch you services, Hey, pay us 5,000 bucks for an account manager who's going to help you expand your selection and create accessories for your product. Well, you're less likely to do that if you're fighting a two or three front war all day with competitors with bad reviews that don't belong there with listing sabotage, especially coming out of a peak sales period like Prime Day. Well, what happened during Prime Day, I did a lot of posts on LinkedIn about category abuses. People were showing up randomly in the wrong category. People's listings were vanishing

Brett Curry:

Intentionally meaning? Meaning people found that one of their competitors sneaking into or someone sneaking into the wrong category on purpose to try to get sales or

Chris McCabe:

Or competitors pushing you an example into the wrong category.

Brett Curry:

Oh, got

Chris McCabe:

That. The famous example is your products wind up in the adult category, which is like what I call search Siberia.

Brett Curry:

Very hard to find your products, and that's maybe a competitor saying, Hey, I know what to do with my

Chris McCabe:

Competitor.

Brett Curry:

I'm going to put them in the adult category. No one's going to find it. Got it. Right.

Chris McCabe:

Elicit as in contributions sometimes through a vendor central account, sometimes through other means, but there's a variety of ways. This is a well-known, extremely understood problem that crops up every prime day. It's just a little bit disheartening that it happened this prime day too, but it'll come back in Q4, so you have to be on your toes and aware of that. I like how you started this off by saying there are peak enforcement periods like a month and a half before prime day, and then as soon as prime day ends or Q4, like Black Friday, cyber Monday, all of a sudden the enforcement teams pounce with, well, we waited until this period passed. Now we're going to start enforcing all this stuff. That's true. Bad ASIN merges always a hot topic. People are constantly getting busted for merging ASINs inappropriately or reporting their competitors for doing it. They ease off on the pedal with the enforcement right before Prime Day or Q4, and then they dive right back into it because they want to clean catalog. They want to stop these types of practices.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, yeah. Totally makes sense. Just to circle back, I want to make sure we close the loop. I don't think we ever fully landed that. So we can post on LinkedIn, we can post on Twitter. A lot of the enforcement team is hidden behind the curtain, so to speak. How do we reach out to them or who do we reach out to, or is that a little more elaborate than a podcast lends itself to,

Chris McCabe:

I mean, there's too many names to count in terms of s team executives or senior management, but that's what you're wanting to reach out to an S team member. Those are emails. Those are direct emails.

Brett Curry:

Got it, got it, got it, got it. Yeah.

Chris McCabe:

Yeah. I'd love to rattle them off right now, but that would take a while

Brett Curry:

And that might not be the best

Chris McCabe:

Approach. You have some good clicks on the podcast for that.

Brett Curry:

That's true though. Yeah. Want all the to Amazon st.

Chris McCabe:

You can't send the same thing to 15 people. That's what sellers, that's their number one mistake,

Chris McCabe:

Customized

Chris McCabe:

Content. Depending on your audience, depending on where it goes, you're probably contacting the people who do different things at the company that have different types of staff supporting them. So you don't just say, well, they're high level, so we're going to send the same thing to these 15 people. That's not going to produce a good result. And they're also going to see annotations on your account that show you've sent the same exact thing to other people, so they can just say, oh, great. I don't have to do anything here. Somebody else got the same email,

Brett Curry:

They'll take care of it. Yeah.

Chris McCabe:

Yeah. So that's a major mistake people do. Got it. But in terms of, I know you want to circle back on the review manipulation mistakes.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think what's interesting here too, so as we look at the review manipulation mistakes, one, these are things for us to avoid, but two, these are things that we could be looking at for our competitors to be able to mention or potential, so kind of dual angle here, what should we avoid and what should we be looking at that our competitors might be doing?

Chris McCabe:

Yeah, and if you see anything I'm about to say, if you capture screenshot, collect evidence, live links, whatever it is, of any of the things we're about to talk about, that's abuse reporting. That's exactly what I was just talking about, and no better time than the present to report these things. They take it very seriously. I cannot recall any other prior period. I've been doing this for 11 years, by the way. I can't remember any other period where 11 years and former Amazonian,

Brett Curry:

Which we failed to mention at the beginning of the podcast, but you

Chris McCabe:

And a half, yeah, five and a half years at Amazon, six years before that, so 17 out of the last eight, I did take a year off. Understandable. 17 out of the last 18 years, but I don't remember any period that's been this long of one particular suspension type, continually enforced week in, week out for these many months. Prosper is when I last saw you in person. I would say this started in March, and I mean there's been a little bit of an ebb and flow. Not every single week is as heavy as the week before to the week after, but we've been consistently getting suspended. Sellers or the threat of suspension, as you've probably heard, many sellers are in the account health assurance program, so they make you appeal. It's the same process. They make you appeal, but to keep your privileges active, they don't suspend you upfront. But this topic's been hot since March. I mean, that's four months. That's a long time for one suspension type. Usually it's like four weeks of the peak. It's kind of the bell curve.

Brett Curry:

People kind of clean their act up for the most part, and then in the Amazon eases off a little bit.

Chris McCabe:

Most suspension types follow the traditional bell curve where there's a little tail in the beginning where they're sort of ramping it up. There's the big bump in the middle, and then as word gets out, people get suspended, reinstated, some get suspended, not reinstated. Then it kind of tails off over the course of a few weeks. Not this time, not this year. Yeah.

Brett Curry:

Well, I mean, this has got to be the biggest issue though. I know this is something that all the soldiers talk about or complaint about this, but even as a shopper, I'm like, I want to be able to trust the reviews, and if I start to get the hint that these reviews have been manipulated, now what am I trusting? I'm not trusting the whole experience, and so totally makes sense. So yeah, what are some of the things we're looking for here or trying to avoid,

Chris McCabe:

And unfortunately, several people are still doing most of the things I'm about to say. Now I realize a lot of the tricks and techniques are in a cycle. They get trendy and then they go away. Remember, years ago, rebates were a big hot thing, and then those completely went away once a bunch of people got suspended, a couple of people are trying to weave rebates back into it now. Inserts hot topic, then it goes cold for a while. Maybe there's thing you were

Brett Curry:

At the tail end of that bell curve, and so it's like, Hey, we can maybe fly into the radar, but

Chris McCabe:

I would argue that it's no longer trendy or cyclical anymore. I think now you cannot recycle these old tactics, which sending postcards like physical mail to people is just dead. No one should be doing this. I've seen, I don't know how many messages I've been on calls with Amazon enforcement teams calls sometimes of my own calls with other sellers on the call. They are not interested in any mail going to buyers. The messaging's been extremely clear, and all the suspension notifications don't use residential addresses. Don't send physical mail for anything that's not essential to the order. They don't want people harvesting emails through QR codes on inserts. I've had a lot of arguments with people about, well, what if the QR code takes you somewhere where they don't ask for a review or where they don't give any product away? First of all, tons of sellers are still giving product away, and all you have to do is scan the QR code. It takes you straight to a page where there's giveaways and I'm kind of amazed and shocked. I'm still having conversations about, well, what if I give product away, but I don't ask for a review? That question has not been relevant for way over a year.

I don't know. Countless suspensions have been for people. It doesn't matter if you asked for a review or not anymore. That's completely not relevant if you're giving product away.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, no giving products away. No,

Chris McCabe:

No giveaways,

Brett Curry:

No physical mail

Chris McCabe:

Period. Amazon assumes you're going to harvest good reviews from giving product away, so I still see people doing the, if you're not happy, contact us directly. Here's our email. Here's our phone. If you're happy with the product, please leave us a review. People are still doing that on inserts. I thought that was dead two years ago. Still happening. Still

Brett Curry:

Happening. Now, I'm assuming one exception could be, I'm assuming on the postcard thing is if you're using Buy with Prime, right? We got a few sellers that also sell D two C, so on my Shopify store, if I'm doing Buy with Prime, I get all that information, right? Amazon's fine with me having all that information. It happened on my site, but Amazon's fulfilling it and doing the merchant fee with that. I'm assuming we get all the data so we could mail to those customers, correct. They're our customers.

Chris McCabe:

That's a different deal. What they don't like is that you're using private info data about buyers for your own purposes and a lot of pure Amazon

Brett Curry:

Buyer,

Chris McCabe:

And then like email harvesting QR code here, enter your email. We'll send you a, we'll subscribe you to our newsletter. That's what a lot of people do. We'll send you a product, we'll send you information about new products. Somewhere in that funnel, you're eventually giving them something, maybe later asking for a review. Somebody told me the other day, they're only asking for a review way down the road after they send three or four emails that have nothing to do with anything. Your competitors can see all of this. The reason why none of these marketing tricks that are ancient already anyway, the reason they don't work anymore is because your competitors are getting that information. All they have to do is buy from you. So unless you're somehow lifting out and picking out those particular people, which I know you can't do no way to do it. Yep. All they're going to do is take screenshots of it and report it to Amazon, because I can't tell you how many sellers have told us Amazon can't see our funnel. Amazon can't see this. It's like Amazon can see anything your competitors can see and take pictures of.

Brett Curry:

Yep.

Chris McCabe:

That's why this stuff doesn't work.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, totally makes sense.

Chris McCabe:

Yep.

Brett Curry:

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Chris McCabe:

People are, I mean, some of this is they're hiring a third party service and they don't vet them for compliance. People are hiring marketing agencies or services who handle their messaging with buyers like customer service for them, and there's been things even appearing in buyer seller messaging, not even an email right there in the messaging that says, if we help you with a refund or we help improve your experience, can you change your review

Brett Curry:

From

Chris McCabe:

A three to a five? You can't do that. You can't ask people to change. Can't

Brett Curry:

Make that request.

Chris McCabe:

Nope. You can refund people all you want. You do not ask them to change their feedback, their review, their rating.

Brett Curry:

Some people might do that on their own, but you can't make that request.

Chris McCabe:

People are still making that mistake. Now, I understand some of them are newer and they don't understand that that's been banned for a long time. Whether you're new or old, doesn't matter to Amazon. They're supposed to treat everyone the same when it comes to policy enforcement, and then again, I kind of mentioned this a minute ago, but do not re-offend. Don't be guilty of one of these things, and then you're guilty of another type of review manipulation, and you think, well, we weren't doing the postcards this time. We were doing illicit language on inserts. I mean, that's, you're playing with so much fire there

Brett Curry:

That you have to repeat offender, just like the court system, right?

Chris McCabe:

Okay. I didn't rob, but I sold drugs. It's

Brett Curry:

Fine.

Chris McCabe:

Well, that's the court system is typically three strikes and you're out. This is two strikes.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Got it. Got it. It is court of Bezos

Chris McCabe:

Much less common now, chassis, I guess. I mean in 20 17, 20 18, yeah. There were people who got busted two three times, wrote a plan of action, got reinstated. They almost never ask for a plan of action anymore. I'm sure most sellers know that because they don't want to read them anymore.

Brett Curry:

They don't care. Yeah. Yeah. Not reading

Chris McCabe:

That they want troublemakers off the site. If they mark you as a troublemaker, it probably means that they think whatever you're selling, someone else can sell it in your place. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's very true. Who don't give them administrative headaches and problems. Yeah, that's how they view it. That's how they view

Brett Curry:

It, and if you think you're too big to mess with, no you're not. I mean, unless you're Nike or something, but obviously know there's issues there, but

Chris McCabe:

Yeah,

Brett Curry:

You're

Chris McCabe:

Not too big. You're not too big. You mentioned eight, nine figure sellers. The second you said that a minute ago, I thought of some nine figure sellers we've worked with on these issues and we were able to help them. Amazon kind of told them right before reinstating them, we're giving you an extra shot out of the kindness of our hearts, but you probably shouldn't be. Reading between the lines was We probably shouldn't be doing this. We will give you one more shot, but this is an exceptional case. It's not just because you're a nine figure seller. It's because we've decided that you presented us a strong enough appeal and you sound sincere and we're just tired of talking about this,

Brett Curry:

But they take another strike. No way. They're getting that back in way,

Chris McCabe:

And there are nine figure sellers that have lost their accounts. I mean,

Brett Curry:

It's crazy. It's crazy. Interesting. Cool. What else should we be avoiding on the review manipulation side and or be watching for?

Chris McCabe:

Yeah, no, just be careful with hiring a group that says, we have a bunch of influencers who are going to buy your product and promote it and talk about it. Some influencers have been trying too many products, leaving too many five star reviews and the influencer themselves themself is probably a problem, and if you're just paying a service who has a group of them and works with a bunch of them over and over, you might not even know that that particular influencer has been a problem,

And Amazon in the past, Amazon would just delete all the reviews that that influencer left, but they're doing more now. Now they're harshly punishing the people that hired the service that used the influencer, so be very careful and vet those services and talk to them about their influencers or talk to them about their methodology and tactics, because a lot of times Amazon suspends the seller account and they're not even that interested in you as the seller. They're trying to get the guy or the woman behind the screen who's helping you because they know that that service is working with a lot of sellers and they want you to name names. They wanted, where did you find these people? What's their methodology? And I saw some sellers appeal saying, oh, this was our methodology. We hired the service, and Amazon declined the appeal and wrote back and said, no, no, no, no. We know what your methodology was already. We want to know what they do. We want to hear what you paid them to do because

Brett Curry:

We can going after the service providers and the

Chris McCabe:

Influencers,

Brett Curry:

Interesting

Chris McCabe:

Why they've been prompting all these sellers to name names and they see the same service named over and over and over, and they start circling them. Okay, so these people the problem. Yeah.

Brett Curry:

Yep, yep. It's finding the drug dealers, right? It's like,

Chris McCabe:

Okay,

Brett Curry:

I can find that, but I want to find the drug lords here and then go after that.

Chris McCabe:

I mean, maybe the last word on this be just document everything. They more or less guide you into terminating the service, so have it in writing, have a contract, terminate them with a dated signed letter and keep track of that stuff because it ends up being attached to your appeal. So

Brett Curry:

Interesting. It's

Chris McCabe:

A much harsher landscape. This is not two years ago where you just apologize, say, I'm sorry, take responsibility. That's ancient history with this.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, yeah. It's like the teacher that's fed up with the students. These folks names are like, I've had enough two strikes, and you're dead. You're dead to me, so totally makes sense. Anything else on the review side or should we transition to ai?

Chris McCabe:

Yeah, I think we should go to the AI takedowns. The last part about the reviews is just Amazon has their own selfish needs and reasons for wanting this to go away. People have bashed them for not having reliable reviews on the site, so it makes them look good to say they're finally

Brett Curry:

Taking action, which is actually good. Yeah,

Chris McCabe:

It makes them look good to say they're punishing wrongdoers, so

Brett Curry:

Don't play

Chris McCabe:

Into their hands.

Brett Curry:

Exactly. So AI takedowns, what are those and what do we need to know about them to avoid them?

Chris McCabe:

Some people are just getting Amazon bots to take their listings down because they've got improper wording in a title like you're using trademark keywords or if it's a consumable product, they're using disease claims, health claims, unsupported claims. Those are just, those people are trying to rank by inserting certain keywords or certain terms without thinking about how they might be triggering Amazon's AI to take their listings down until they can prove that they have products that have those qualities or just might be they're being triggered. They're triggering restricted product bots, so some of that's just low hanging fruit. Keep an eye on compliance. Don't just be going for sales and throwing whatever words you can think of in there. Then there are AI type problems where you are either improperly classified by Amazon in terms of what category you belong in, or you suddenly wake up and you're in a totally different category. I was talking to somebody recently who they moved from the home category to the media category, and they didn't belong in there at all. Well, somebody had made some illicit ASIN contributions and triggered what maybe in the old days would've been a manual review by a person. It's more likely to be an AI review now by Amazon, and Amazon started asking

Brett Curry:

Them for, explain that, what is it? What is an elicit ASIN

Chris McCabe:

In there? I'm putting in terms which make it look like you're selling a certain type of product, which you're not. Got it. Amazon starts asking you for, I mean, there are people who were selling Tupperware or books or other types of products who were suddenly being asked for things typical of consumable products like compliance documentation and testing from ISO certified labs, and that was all because an abusive attack. Somebody tried to make it look like your product belonged in a different category. Got it. There are all kinds of ASIN contributions. You should have the strongest level of contributions on your own ASINs, of course, people make illicit contributions and try to update product pages with certain types of information.

I mean, there's a lot of different ways they do it. There are a lot of illicit tactics out there. Sometimes it's social engineering where they get somebody at Amazon to do something that shouldn't happen, but you have to kind of have the right tools and software in place to catch this so that you're not completely oblivious when people are tampering with your detail pages, but also you have to understand what's happening to you instead of just calling account health or calling support and complaining and saying, this is all wrong. Amazon screwed up. A lot of people spend time blaming Amazon for something that a competitor did.

Brett Curry:

Got it. Got it. Yeah, and when you start an interaction in complain mode, you're potentially less likely to get help. What about improper ASIN merges? I know that's something you mentioned to me before. That's something that some of our clients, we help merge ASINs. There's some valid reasons to do it, but what is an impro ASIN merger? Maybe contrast that with what a proper AON merger is and why you would do it, but why should we avoid the improper?

Chris McCabe:

Oh, no. There's plenty of reasons to merge ASINs. This is mostly for people who want to harvest reviews to boost. I mean, maybe you've got a bunch of unsold inventory for a particular ASIN and you've got another ASIN out there with better reviews and you're trying to boost the visibility by putting them together. Maybe you sold out of one asin, which has all the reviews and the ASIN with very few reviews. You've got a bunch of unsold product, right? You're trying to take advantage of all the reviews on the other ace. Got it. By pretending like it's the same product when it's not asin, separation is a lot more common now where Amazon sees what you're doing and they go in there and they re separate them. Does Amazon improperly separate asin? Sometimes? Of course they do, but a lot of the separations are valid because sellers are trying to merge them for their own sales rank. It's a form of

Brett Curry:

Review manipulation. In some cases. It's a form of

Chris McCabe:

Most commonly review manipulation. I mean, the other merges are, of course, people are taking over zombie listings, some other listing out there that has a bunch of reviews where it's kind of floating free and disembodied from whatever it was, and people go in there and get Amazonians or using other tricks, merge their product with that listing because that listing has all the reviews. That's why you have a lot of buyers complaining. I went to the older reviews and they're all about shoes, and your product is a salad spinner. Why are the product types different? Well, because two listings that did not belong together at all were merged together, so people are still, I mean, I think these are just hacks and gimmicks and they belong to a mastermind. They go to an event. I understand where these ideas come from, marketers and services and agencies and lots of people out there are always trying to come up with the next fad.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's the fun thing to talk about that gets people coming back to a mastermind. It makes your service appear more valuable if you're an agency, but yeah, these hacks, tricks manipulations. It just isn't going to work. And one of the other things you mentioned, you alluded to it earlier, but you talked to me about offline is no real gray areas anymore, right? It's very black and white with Amazon right now. Do you want to unpack that a little bit?

Chris McCabe:

Well, certainly with the review manipulation, there are no gray areas, and if you look at the policy, which hopefully you can put in the show notes here, totally pretty black and white. There isn't a lot of people try to talk themselves into that. There is a gray area, but my main word of advice there is don't talk yourself into how you think Amazon's policy should be interpreted. Focus all your energy on how does Amazon interpret this policy?

Brett Curry:

Yes, yes. How are they interpreting it? How are they enforcing it? That's all that matters. Understand that and plan accordingly,

Chris McCabe:

And if you aren't sure, you can talk to me because we do this stuff all the time. You can talk to some people at Amazon. Now, granted, some people at Amazon don't know. Well, obviously don't ask support. Don't ask account help. Don't ask any lower tier staff if you have an account manager who can run some stuff down for you. If you go to events like Amazon Accelerate in Seattle, you can probably bump into or meet up with some people who work for Amazon who can explain some of these things to you at seller cafe, but don't make assumptions. I still see a lot of people assuming that their interpretation is gold or they're just looking for more wiggle room. Well, isn't it kind of different if you offer them a warranty? That's a big one with the inserts, right? Well, what if the insert just talks about warranties?

I don't know down the road. Do you ask them to leave a review because that's not about the warranty anymore. That's why say there aren't any real gray areas and when you're suspended for this stuff, which is kind of a little bit late to learn it, but if you're suspended and you start talking to those teams yourself, you start realizing very quickly, oh, okay, we can't do that stuff anymore. Oh, okay, whatever I heard at this event or in the mastermind or post it on YouTube, I used to be in the dark myself to an extent. Where are these ideas coming from? I don't understand why so many people are making these mistakes. That's the two or three years ago version of me. Now that I've been to some of these events where I've seen people on stage talking about this stuff or I see it on YouTube or Instagram or wherever. Now I know that it's just sellers who are looking to boost sales or sales rank or boost their visibility are consuming this stuff and not questioning it. I mean, now I kind of understand.

Brett Curry:

Totally. Totally makes sense. Awesome. Any final rapid fire tips before we talk about how people can work with you? Because obviously you're the one we recommend if they're wanting to prevent issues, but certainly if there are issues and how to get reinstated, you are the guy and your team is the team, but any other rapid fire tips before we talk about how people can work with you?

Chris McCabe:

I have so many with appeals. I think word is finally getting around that you can't just use generic templates to appeal that you can't use chat GPT to appeal. I think Amazon's catching AI use in appeals and they just throw them away. You can't appeal over and over and over and expect them to read an infinite number of appeals and you have to show them that you take it seriously because they think you don't care about your suspension or your brand or your business if you send in appeals that your VA did for you or whatever. I'm not saying every business owner or CEO is the best communicator or writer, but it's not just about communication. It's about having a strategy.

Brett Curry:

You want this to feel human and to have the right strategy, but yeah, you want them to believe that your earnest and you are going to make a change. You're not going to be a repeat offender, that type of thing.

Chris McCabe:

Yeah. I quiz people all the time when they say, well, if this doesn't work, we're going to try escalating it, and then if the escalation fails, then we'll call you back and I say, okay, so when you use the word escalation, that means something very specific in the Amazon appeal space. What do you mean by escalation? Nine times out of 10, it's their kind of muddled hazy idea of basically using the word escalation on a phone call with account health or putting the word escalation in a Dear Jeff email, really outdated, not useful, and that worries and scares me because you only get so many cracks at escalations and similar to what we said a few minutes ago, if somebody opens an email from you that you send straight to them or their team and it says, escalating blank reinstatement of our account, and they go in your account annotations and they see that you've done prior escalations, probably not that well, then they'll say, well, this has already been escalated,

Brett Curry:

So I don been escalated and got rejected, so why would I do any

Chris McCabe:

Different? I got rejected, so either A, why do I need to read this at all? Or B, they're biased against reinstating you because they can see how many people rejected you previously. So

Chris McCabe:

No

Chris McCabe:

Has see appeals, no, shoot first ask questions later. I don't blame people for thinking two or three moves ahead and thinking about let's start filling in some notes or a potential escalation if today's appeal fails. I don't begrudge you that, but that's at least a strategy.

Chris McCabe:

Be

Chris McCabe:

Willing to change your customize or modify that escalation. Don't just say, we wrote this three days ago and now we have new information, but we're going to send the same thing in as an escalation. That's not how this works. Totally

Brett Curry:

Makes sense. Totally makes sense. Awesome. So Chris, when should someone reach out to you and what services do you provide and then how can someone reach out to you?

Chris McCabe:

Yeah, I mean our, first of all, how do people reach us? Support at eCommerce? chris.com is a good place to email us summary info include messaging from Amazon. You don't have to send us the phone book, just the suspension notification. Maybe your most recent appeal and background or summary info is usually what people do. Reach out to us early in the process, do not appeal five or 10 times and then show us a bunch of failed appeals and then show us a bunch of generic canned messages from Amazon rejecting you. I assume those people are doing it because they don't want to pay the cost associated with hiring us, but think in advance about the time lost and the money lost. If you appeal that many times, that means you've, I mean, I assume you're not sending in five appeals in five hours. It's probably five appeals in five days.

Well, how much do you lose in five days? How much do you lose in five weeks? People are still coming to us in week six after they've lost six figures, and all I can say is I don't understand that thinking come to us a lot sooner. Even if you don't hire us right off the first phone call, we can evaluate and we can at least level with you. We're known for being direct and blunt on this stuff. We can at least level with you, waste time with sales pitches. We level with you on what you think, think your current status is before we even talk about what we would do to fix it. So reach out to us early and yeah, it helps to make a higher or not higher decision early in the process too, but it depends on the particulars of course.

Brett Curry:

Got it. Got it. Awesome. So e-commerce chris.com, email support@ecommercechris.com. Also sounds like you're on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, so people should follow you on LinkedIn also X as well, I assume.

Chris McCabe:

Yeah, LinkedIn. I'm on there every day and all the usual social channels at amz. And Chris, C-H-R-I-S is social, so Instagram awesome.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, check it out. We'll link to that in the show notes and then Twitter also will link to that.

Chris McCabe:

Yeah, I sent Twitter earlier policies. I meant X, sorry.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's all the same. Sort of think that people will call it Twitter forever. Twitter slash x. I dunno. I finally got in the habit of sort of saying X first, but I didn't like it in the beginning, that's for sure.

Chris McCabe:

Yeah,

Brett Curry:

It's tough, so it's tough, man. It's tough. Well, Chris, thanks again for coming on. Thanks for helping people keep their products live and their accounts in good standing with Amazon so we can keep making money there, keep our products on the shelf. That is the first step in the name of the game of trying to dominate on Amazon, and so I'll link to everything. Also, if you share that links to the policy, I'll put that in the show notes as well, the review manipulation policy. And so with that, Chris, thanks, man, A ton of fun as always, and look forward to seeing you at the next Amazon event. We run into each other at

Chris McCabe:

Exactly.

Brett Curry:

Yep.

Chris McCabe:

Thank you

Brett Curry:

Again. Awesome, and as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear more from you if you found this show helpful. If you know someone who is in Amazon purgatory or Amazon, hell send 'em this episode. Let 'em know about e-commerce, Chris. If anyone can help, they can. 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.

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If you're selling on Amazon, you're playing defense every single day. Or you should be. Negative reviews can tank your rankings overnight, and dozens of hidden listing issues are quietly sabotaging your sales while you sleep. In this eye-opening episode, Danan Coleman, CEO and founder of Ecom Triage and host of the Ecom Growth Show, reveals the underground world of Amazon review manipulation and the critical monitoring strategies that separate thriving brands from those that struggle. From detecting fraudulent review patterns to catching orphaned ASINs before they cost you thousands, Danan shares the insider knowledge that most sellers never learn until it's too late.

Key Topics & Insights:

• The True Impact of Negative Reviews - Why dropping from a 4.3 to 4.2 star rating can cause a 750% shift in BSR and 25-50% reduction in sales overnight, plus how to identify which negative reviews actually violate Amazon's guidelines
• The Review Removal Game Plan - How to use Amazon's community guidelines to your advantage, the specific patterns that indicate fraudulent reviews, and why Danan's free ReviewGPT tool can instantly tell you if a review is removable (with templates to send to Amazon)
• Detecting Review Manipulation - The telltale signs of fake negative reviews, including suspicious reviewer patterns and the "batch attack" method competitors use to tank your ratings
• Critical Listing Monitoring - The "orphaned ASIN" problem that can kill individual product variants overnight, split review issues that destroy conversion rates, and why products sometimes get mysteriously recategorized into completely wrong sections
• The Amazon Merchandising Mindset - Why you need to think like a physical store merchandiser, constantly ensuring your products are on the right "shelf," facing forward, and visible to shoppers in the right category
• Advanced Catalog Defense - How dimensional weight changes can secretly increase your fees, image monitoring strategies that prevent conversion killers, and why change logs are essential for big brands and agencies managing multiple ASINs

Chapters: 

(00:00) Introducting Danan Coleman

(03:40) Understanding the Impact of Negative Reviews

(08:07) Amazon Guidelines and Best Practices for Review Removal

(14:09) Identifying Defamatory Reviews

(19:20) Time Decay to Reviews

(24:47) Navigating Amazon’s Review System

(30:56) Monitoring Product Visibility and Critical Issues

(40:43) Tools for Managing Amazon Listings

(42:26) Exploring Catalog Defender

‍

Transcript:

Brett Curry:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today I have an amazing guest and we are talking about a hot topic, a very useful, important topic. Two topics actually. We're talking about negative reviews on Amazon. If you're a seller on Amazon or you're building a brand, you're trying to grow on Amazon, you got to be thinking about negative reviews. What do we do? Do we do anything? When do we take action? Things like that. So we're going to dig into that. Plus, what are all the critical things you need to be monitoring with your listings to make sure you're showing up on the right digital shelf consistently and making sure you're able to make sales without this sabotaging your success and you're missing out on opportunities. So my guest today is Danon Coleman. He is the CEO and founder of e-Comm Triage. He's also the host of the e-Comm Growth Show. I was just on that podcast. It's a great one. And so with that, Dana, welcome to the show, man. And how's it going?

Danan Coleman:

Thanks Brett. Yeah, thanks for having me here. And it's going great. Thank you for asking. Yeah, so host of the e-comm growth show founder e-comm Triage. As you can tell, it's e-comm related. So yeah, man. And yes, of course, I'm on your show now. So I would say, yeah, our episode was definitely the best episode I did.

Brett Curry:

Best episode in the history of e-commerce evolution right here, and you are here to listen to it, so it's amazing, man. And we were just talking, we met in Austin, Texas, over tacos, unintentionally. I was speaking at amazing selling machines, or shoot, what's it called? Seller con silicon. They put on my a SM, but it's called Silicon. So I was speaking there, I went to grab a taco. We were sitting at the bar and I was like, Hey, I think I know you. And so we officially met and hung out there.

Brett Curry:

And

Brett Curry:

I will say, just a quick plug for Austin, I think there are two parts of the country that have the best tacos, Southern California, amazing fish tacos and other tacos. And then Austin, Texas, man can't beat either of those locations as far as tacos go.

Danan Coleman:

Yep. Yeah, I actually grew up in southern California, so Austin had being known for having great tacos. They got taco carts all over the place. It's like, I don't know, man, as

Brett Curry:

It SoCal native. Were you skeptical? Were you like, I don't think so. Austin, Texas. What you doing here?

Danan Coleman:

Yeah, because the tacos that I ate were made by my buddies, Aita. Their grandma's made the tacos. Nothing will ever beat that. Nothing beats grandma's

Brett Curry:

100%. And I've got a few spots that are my favorites. One in San Diego called Taco Sand, and in the back there's usually maybe an abuelita back there. She's got the ball of mash, corn mash, she runs it to the thing to flatten the tortilla, throws it on the griddle right there. I mean, there's no way you're going to get a better tortilla than Matt. Not possible. No. So yeah, so anyway, so we met serendipitously over tacos, which is awesome. And they got to know each other. We both at Seller Summit in Fort Lauderdale with our mutual friend Steve Chu and Terry ach. And so yeah, man, excited to dive in. Obviously I'm a huge, huge fan of Amazon. We built our Amazon practice in 2016, so decade ish. And I'm extremely bullish on the future of Amazon. And whether it's a brand that was born on Amazon or it's a brand that's just growing on Amazon, I think it's going to be relevant for this foreseeable future. But there's some issues there. It's not all sunshine and roses, it's not all easy. And there's lots of stuff to keep an eye on. And so I know you've got a really unique perspective on negative reviews. How do you handle it? How do you remove them if you can remove 'em, things like that.

And so maybe before we dive into that, Dana, what would be kind of interesting is tell us about negative reviews. Obviously we know they're not good, but put some context around that. Are negative reviews really bad? Are they all bad and how bad are they type of thing.

Danan Coleman:

Yeah. Alright, cool. So let's look at the good side of negative reviews first. Negative reviews, as long as they're legitimate, tell you what you need to fix with your product. So that's the first thing. It's feedback, right? It's feedback.

Brett Curry:

The legitimate ones

Danan Coleman:

Feedback. Yes, exactly. So where they're bad is when they're not product feedback,

They shouldn't be there. So, or they're just unhelpful. Product sucks, didn't like it. I see those reviews all the time, all the time. Didn't like it didn't work for me. That's the title, that's the body that's completely unhelpful. It maybe it's legitimate, but it's not helpful to anybody. So that's the good side is that if you actually get constructive feedback, you can do something with that. You can repair something, it can be indicative of a serious problem that you need to fix. On the flip side, a lot of, because reviews are so critical to the psyche of a buyer that could be manipulated, that's where we get into the bad side of things. So if you can manipulate the product rating, then you can so manipulate the placement and therefore the sales of a product. Totally. So that's where it gets on. Awesome. That's what I deal with. Yeah.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. It's so interesting, man. And anybody that's tried to launch a product on Amazon, especially if you're launching in a competitive space or we had a client, I still have this client worked with 'em for years and years, boom, by Cindy Joseph or Boom Beauty now, but they grew for years not on Amazon. So they grew through meta ads and YouTube ads and Google ads and things like that. And so then we helped them launch on Amazon. It was one of our best case studies went from zero in sales to 6 million the first year, but they had all this pent up demand, a lot of people seeing the brand in other places. And so we found those that people were going to Amazon couldn't find, boom there, and a fair number of them were just finding a similar product. So we had these sellers who were kind of squatting on the brand name, and once we launched, boom, all hell broke loose with these sellers.

And as you can imagine, they're like, we got to protect our territory. We don't want to miss out on these sales. So we got all kinds of spammy bad reviews we had to fight through. I mean, then we started getting real reviews from real customers and everything's growing and going fine. But sure, I mean, it's the equivalent to your point, you get a seller rating down to a certain point kind of drops off the shelf. It's kind of the equivalent of, Hey, I'm going to go to the supermarket and just hide all my competitors' products. I'm going to push 'em to the back or put 'em on the floor or something, put a big sign in front of them so no one can see it. And so yeah, there's some nefarious things going on with bad reviews, that's for sure. So talk to us about what do we do then? Obviously we never like to see a negative review. I'm the same. I'm a business owner, I feel the same way. Whether it's my agency or a product I'm involved with or I've got some Airbnbs. So I'm thinking about going into

Danan Coleman:

Airbnb actually

Brett Curry:

And doing negative

Danan Coleman:

Review removal there.

Brett Curry:

Well, I think that'd be a great idea. I think that'd be an awesome idea. I would buy your service if you did that. So if it's an unhelpful review, that's not good for us. But when should we take action? When should we be like, I got to get this thing removed?

Danan Coleman:

Okay, so let me start off by saying I can shortcut the whole, the answer to that question. Is it okay if I give them the link to the, okay, please. Alright, if I remember correctly, it's review gpt dot eCom triage.com. I hope I'm right about that. Hold on. Review gpt dot eCom. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. So review gt dot eCom triage.com. So I built this GPT, so you don't have to bother asking that question. You just put the review in there and the GPT comes back to you and says, yeah, this is it. This is noncompliant, this is why it's noncompliant, and here's a template to send to Amazon requesting removal of that review. That's

Brett Curry:

Amazing.

Danan Coleman:

But don't just trust my GPT because GPTs can be wrong, AI can be wrong. It often is or has some aspect of it that's not correct. So here's what you need to know. Your Bible, your reference that you go to determine if a review is noncompliant is Amazon's community guidelines. And you can just search that on Google and you'll get right to it. It's a public document. There's a section in there called What's Not Allowed, and then it goes over a list of what's not allowed. Now there are about nine or 10 other policies, both public facing and behind Seller Central and in responses that I've found from Amazon Direct in the forums that I've trained this GPT on. So it has far more than the community guidelines, but no matter what, that's your initial reference. So familiarize yourself with the what's not allowed section of the community guidelines. And that is where what you're going to quote, if at all, when you are contacting Amazon requesting a review removal. So right off the bat though, these are the things you want to look for. Is it shipping or FBA related? Is there personal information in there? Is it defamatory in some way? And fairly often, is it just not a product review at all? Right?

This product sucks. I hate my life title and body. And there was, oh, another big one is unsolicited medical advice.

So that's kind of the list, the list of the biggest offenders and the most common offenders in the space in the review space and have the greatest possibility of being removed. Now I know every listener's response right now is, yeah, cool. I know, and I tried that and it didn't work. So first things first, when you see that negative review, like, ah, I hate this person. This is why that review is wrong. You need to remove all emotion when communication regarding that review. And with Amazon, no emotion whatsoever. They hire robots anyhow that read from scripts. So it doesn't, your emotions literally means nothing to them. So keep all emotion out of it. That's super important. The next thing is stick to the facts. Keep it short. Remember that the person that is looking at the person, if it gets to a person, the person that's looking at your case is probably English as a second language.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, good

Danan Coleman:

Point. Yeah, you don't want to go, this is ubiquitously unacceptably and it's paramount, therefore henceforth at Alia, blah, blah, blah, blah. You don't want to use terms like that. Keep it super simple English and then keep it short. No stories.

Brett Curry:

We might be tempted. We're thinking like, Hey, if I can just convince someone at Amazon that I'm so great, so lemme tell you the origin story of my product. This was my grandmother's recipe, or this was that you're telling, you're laying at this whole emotional story like you're testifying before a jury in court. That's not it. It's either going to be someone overseas, there's going to be a robot anyway, keep it short, just the facts. That's it.

Danan Coleman:

And then you have to tell 'em what to do. So the solution is remove this review. If you don't do that, they go, all right, cool. It's noncompliant. So there's some sort of internal escalation process that Amazon has that I don't know how it works. And neither does anybody that I've ever spoken to at Amazon.

So when it comes to me removing reviews, my rate of review removal is somewhere between five and 10%. It can be higher, but five to 10% of the written reviews. But I've spoken, I've back and forth a lot of emails with a lot of different contacts at Amazon. Literally nobody knows where these go and who removes the reviews. So Amazon apparently keeps that super secret. Even in brand registry, every case that gets submitted through brand registry, 100% of them are transferred and there's no response ever again. There's no response anyhow. It just gets transferred and nobody at brand registry knows where they go either.

Brett Curry:

Interesting, really, really keeping that arms length distance and then some, wow, okay. So there's some serious protections there and some secrecy kind of makes sense. I mean, it's such an important part of the Amazon ecosystem. It's great for buyers. We all go there. We want to see the review before we buy something. It's important for sellers. And because of that, it's a place where lots of manipulation takes place. Lots of

Brett Curry:

Definitely

Brett Curry:

Dirty deeds happen there. So give me some examples or some parameters. Obviously we can lean into your GPT, which sounds like an amazing solution.

Danan Coleman:

No need. It's there. They can just

Brett Curry:

Use it

Danan Coleman:

Whenever they want.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's awesome. It's awesome. When should we say something is when can we begin to think something is defamatory versus just a bad review? This is what I look for

Danan Coleman:

Is are they making really alarming statements, alarming statements will set off some sort of trigger inside of Amazon, potentially. That's what they're trying to do.

Brett Curry:

Got it.

Danan Coleman:

So if this were a webinar right now, I'd share my screen of a screenshot that I took. So I think I already showed you one that shows you the difference of going between a 4.2 and a 4.3 star rating. So this person saw a, let's see, what would it be? A one 750% decrease in their BSR, which is an improvement. Wow. Right?

Brett Curry:

Yeah. So it's going from a 4.3 to a 4.2. Say that one more time. What was the reduction in bsr?

Danan Coleman:

So sorry, this was going from a four two to a four three is what I meant to say. So they

Brett Curry:

Sold Got it, got it, got it. Got,

Danan Coleman:

Yeah. So they went from around 1500 to two 50 on BSR 1500 is already an incredible BSR. And every client that I've had, I've spoken to hundreds and hundreds of brands, anyone that goes from a four, three to a four, two Cs, roughly somewhere between 25 to 50% reduction in sales overnight. Wow, wow, wow. But what I was going to say is when it comes to defamation, there was, I'd show you a screenshot. There's somebody that went to a bunch of different snorkels and said, killed my friends. That's the title, killed my friends danger. CO2 buildup might kill you. And that's on about five different products. So that could be considered product defamation. Now, that's an extreme example, but a lot of times what I see is, let's take a dog supplement, gave this to my dog. There was throw up everywhere they weren't eating and it was clearly super dangerous. So I didn't use it again. Right. Well, I guess it's not impossible, but if you see only three of those or two of those reviews and everything else is good, and the rest are like three stars, those are baloney because a one star review, a written one star review holds roughly the same weight as about ten five stars. Wow. It's backwards.

Backwards.

Brett Curry:

But

Danan Coleman:

Anyhow, so those are some of the things you should look for. And unsolicited medical advice in those cases, like a pet supplement said, yeah, my vet said that these ingredients aren't good. Well, alright, so this is Uncle Sam told Sally and nefarious this, that and the other, and therefore one star, these products aren't good. So that would be another example of unsolicited medical advice, even though it's a supplement for dogs.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, yeah. Interesting. What about, and the next, we had a skin moisturizer client and it was getting attacked by competitors we believed, but one of them was caused a rash. Oh yeah. And we're like, well, this doesn't really cause rashes. We've never had that feedback from a single person ever. It's like your bottled water gave me a rash. Okay. So I

Danan Coleman:

Actually get those removed on the regular.

Brett Curry:

Do you really? Okay.

Danan Coleman:

Yeah. Yeah. I've got quite a few. It's beauty supplements, beauty clients. I actually get those removed regularly. It's also a crapshoot though, whether or not it gets removed depending on how they wrote it. So yeah, I always try to get those removed. Now also, there could be a brand, and there have been brands that come to me and they go, yeah, we've got a whole bunch of one stars. And I look, I'm like, all these one stars say that this broke. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we had a problem. I'm not going to help you. That's a legitimate problem with your product. It's like, don't

Brett Curry:

Come to me once you fix your

Danan Coleman:

Product. Yes,

Brett Curry:

Yes. Those are legitimate one star reviews. Sorry. Absolutely. You got a product problem, not a review problem. Yeah,

Danan Coleman:

Absolutely. And I have quite a few people tell me, come to me that have this. And I say, look, I'm not going to go after reviews that are legit cool. You've fixed your product. That's wonderful. But Amazon's not going to remove that review anyhow because it is fully legit.

Brett Curry:

And

Danan Coleman:

You have a density period and a time period where they can go, Hey, you shipped in an order at this time. I don't think they go this deep, but you shipped in an order at this time. You started getting a bunch of one-star reviews. You shipped in an order at this time, and you stopped getting those reviews. Cool. You had a legitimate product issue. You fixed it. Good job. Good on you. Well, that's why there is a time decay to reviews right now.

Brett Curry:

Can you explain that? What is the time decay to reviews? What does that look like?

Danan Coleman:

Okay. Yeah. So I'm actually glad you asked me this because this goes into much deeper than just time decay, but most of us assume that the review, the rating is a mathematical formula. It is far, far from it. So there are so many other factors. A lot of this Amazon doesn't tell you I'm making an educated deduction based on my experience. So I'm a Google local guide. So the star ratings that you see on businesses on Google. So I've rated hundreds and hundreds of businesses and done videos, thousand videos and stuff like that. I learned a lot about, because they give you, as a rating person, they give you points based on how good your review is, how many photos, how long is the video, how much content is in there. And so basically what I learned from that is that if I have at least 500 characters and X number of pictures or video, then I get the maximized number of points and those points lead to a level. So I'm a level eight out of 10 with Google level nine and 10. That is a ton of points a ton. But my point in that is that I can safely make the assumption that Amazon's doing roughly the same thing as Google.

So what that means is that there's a one star today doesn't hold the same value as a one star seven years ago. Right? Yep. Totally makes sense. However, the one star from seven years ago still holds so much more weight than it should that if it can be removed legitimately, it should be Also, you have, well, how many reviews has the reviewer done and how good are the reviews that the reviewer did? Do they do photos? Do they do videos? So there's a scoring system that Amazon has on how much weight does this one star have?

Brett Curry:

Right?

Danan Coleman:

And so

Brett Curry:

Not all one stars are created equally, and not all ratings are weighted equally, which makes sense.

Danan Coleman:

Yes, exactly. And if you've got a campaign to acquire a whole bunch of five stars legitimately not illegitimately,

There's a pretty good chance that if you've got some system in place where you say, Hey, give us star rating, get this, that, or the other, whatever it is legit, legit that a lot of the accounts that are giving those five stars, maybe that's only one or two or their third review or something like that. These accounts that illegitimately give you negative reviews, they know what they're doing for the most part. Most of them do. They're a company. This is a company that some brand is hired to do this. And so what they'll do, and this is another thing you can look for, is when you see a suspicious review, go look at the reviewer itself. Amazon will show you the last 20 reviews that they did. So let's say you sell here sunglasses. These are my favorite brand because they're like 30 bucks. And I have children, so knock around sunglasses.

Brett Curry:

Nice.

Danan Coleman:

So let's say I own knock around and I get a one star and the one star says, yeah, these are super sharp and dangerous, and it cut my head open. What? That doesn't make sense. So look at the reviewer. You'll see the last 20 reviews. If what you see is you've got a onestar, three other brands have a one star, and one brand has a five star where those sunglasses saved their life and cured their cancer a little bit suspicious, right? So what you'll find is that they'll batch these reviews where it's attack, attack, attack, oh my gosh. Greatest thing since sliced bread. And then there'll be nothing for one or two or three or four months. Then they'll come back to that batch 'em out again. So this is a common thing, fairly common thing that I see, but it's super hard to detect this stuff.

Brett Curry:

And so then if you see that pattern, are you able then to make a case with Amazon? Can you use that pattern as a case against that reviewer?

Danan Coleman:

Yeah, definitely. And so that's one that we go to seller support for because seller support doesn't support you when it comes to negative review removal. But that's one that we'll claim fraud on, that we'll do a fraud case.

Brett Curry:

Got it on that. Interesting.

Danan Coleman:

And we try to get as many of those types of reviews on a brand as we can and batch them because then Amazon can go, oh my gosh, look, look, look, look, look, look. And then they'll see a bunch.

Brett Curry:

Super interesting. But it totally makes sense. And I love the comparison between the Google Guides program and then Amazon reviews. And if you think about it from the platform's perspective, from Google's perspective, they love the local guides because you're leaving thoughtful, helpful reviews. You're posting pictures and videos and things like that. And I don't post reviews that often, I just don't think about it. But I have a few places when I travel, there's a couple coffee shops I visited that I really love or whatever, or there's an autobody shop that I visited. They fixed up my foreign looks amazing. I take pretty good pictures. Your four runner? I like photography. Yeah. I've got my wife's four runner and my wife has a four runner now, actually I had a four runner before my tundra that I had hail damage

Danan Coleman:

To six. So you are a Toyota family?

Brett Curry:

We are a Toyota family for sure. Love 'em.

But dude, I remember getting notifications from Google, your photo has this many views and it was a shocking number. One was for this coffee shop in California near Cardiff, and then one was this autobody thing. I'm like, I can't believe how many views these things are getting. Right? I know, but that's what keeps people coming back to Google to look for reviews. It's what people love about Amazon. There's tons of reviews there they can use to evaluate a product. And so it's extremely important to the platforms, but yet we've talked about it's a place where you can gain the system, but they also want to keep the integrity of the system as well. So they're motivated to do that.

Danan Coleman:

Yeah, exactly. And that's why I think they made it so tough is because review manipulation is a real problem. If you look at, I think it's, they say that something like 60% of the reviews on Amazon are no bueno.

Brett Curry:

No way.

Danan Coleman:

It's a crazy percent. It's either 40 or 60. I forget. That's wild. But just a little side thing. Yeah, I've got 21 and a half million views on my photos on Google Maps. Yeah, that's insane. So yeah, that means something to Google. And I have to assume that that stuff like this means something to Amazon as well. And that's

Brett Curry:

Why all those impressions are opportunities for Google to sell an ad. All those impressions on Amazon are changed for them to sell a product or to sell an ad or both.

Brett Curry:

And

Brett Curry:

So they want to guard that very, very carefully. So what are some solutions for driving up our ratings and getting more positive reviews, but doing it in a way that's above board?

Danan Coleman:

Yeah, I mean that's such a tough question. And I hesitate, I've got some stuff, but I hesitate to even answer it because Amazon can just one day decide,

Brett Curry:

Hey,

Danan Coleman:

You're breaking the rules. Yeah.

Brett Curry:

That's no longer allowed to. OS has changed and you're screwed. Yeah.

Danan Coleman:

Yeah. So I mean, one of the things that I did, I'm going to tell you some of the things that I've done in the past, I may or may not still be doing them and I don't suggest you do anything. All right. Ass is covered here. Good. I like

Brett Curry:

It.

Brett Curry:

I like

Danan Coleman:

It. So what I did, so I had a camping blanket and I would send them a follow-up message, the buyer seller messaging system with an attachment of A PDF. You could at this time, I don't know what it is today, but at this time you could have a 10 megabyte up to 10 or 12 megabyte, PDF when you reached out to a seller, this was before the time that they made it that you could only reach out to a seller for a major issue. And I debated even using that because I went, oh wait, you didn't get your care instructions with your order.

Brett Curry:

Nice, nice.

Danan Coleman:

So I used care instructions and that was how I would go into the brand story. I had a picture of my daughter on one of the blankets of this is who you're supporting right now.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, make it personal. Let them see you're a small business owner. It's not some baseless corporation. It's not just Amazon type of thing. So

Danan Coleman:

Exactly. Because even professional Amazon purchasers that are, a lot of them, they don't even know, they're not purchasing actually from Amazon, but on Amazon,

Brett Curry:

They

Danan Coleman:

Think they're just buying it from Amazon. Right. That's a

Brett Curry:

Really good point.

Danan Coleman:

Now we're in the space, so we know we're third parties and small businesses and stuff like that, but a lot of buyers, they have no idea. So that was one thing that I did. If you're FBM, then sending them a written postcard. Thank you. Postcard has a crazy conversion rate on reviews. Right? You can't do that unless you've got the customer name and address. Right? Right. Then you've got inserts. So getting a warranty on a product and putting in them, basically what I'm saying here is that no matter what you do, there's got to be a flow. It's got to be a flow, a multi-step flow, and it has to be done in such a way that Amazon's not going to have any feelings hurt over there in Seattle. Right,

Brett Curry:

Got it.

Danan Coleman:

But unfortunately, everyone's feelings are hurt for any reason, and therefore you're on the hook. So there's a degree of risk no matter what you do, but there's a degree in risk on selling on Amazon because as I love to say, Amazon, it's a schizophrenic dictatorship.

Brett Curry:

There's some merit to that, man. It is one of the best tools ever to make money. Absolutely. Or the best shopping experiences, but schizophrenic dictatorship, there's some truth to that. All of those angles do have truth to them for sure.

Okay, fantastic. Love that. We got to mitigate negative reviews. If you think they're violating what's allowed, use Dana's GPT, confirm it, and then go after those negative reviews and it will make a huge difference. Even a 4.3 to 4.2 can mean a massive difference in sales. So great. In the time we have left, I want to talk about another really critical topic, and that is monitoring your products for critical issues that sabotage sales. So this is one of the bans of people's existence. It's all on Amazon as it feels like whack-a-mole, trying to knock down all the potential issues and challenges that keep my product from being visible or keep my product from being sold the way I'd like for it to be sold on Amazon. And so can you walk us through what are some of the things we should be monitoring? And I know you've got an awesome tool, we'll do this for us, but what

Danan Coleman:

Do you need to be monitoring and keeping an eye on that? If we don't, it's going to sabotage our sales. And my tool is geared towards bigger brands or agencies that have tons and tons of skews. If you're a smaller brand and you've got five 10 ASINs, then you can do this manually. You kind of probably already are, but some of the most critical things are orphan ASINs. So if you've got a parent child set up and one of those child ASINs, say, your pink sunglasses gets split off one, it takes with it any reviews that it's had in its history. And so it strips those reviews out of the parent relationship because all child ASINs share each other's or should. The next issue that we go over is split reviews. So if your child ASIN gets split away, let's say it's got no reviews, okay, cool. You didn't lose any reviews on your parent asin, but guess what? Now you've got an individual ASIN that's got no advertised going into it because it's not in the ads campaign and it's got no review. So literally nobody's going to buy it. And you wonder one day like, Hey, what happened to our pinks? They were selling like three a day and now they're not selling at all. So okay, take a look and wait a minute, where are the pinks? And so that's number one is an orphan ascent issue. Next is split reviews.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. So let's talk about that orphan ascent issue. How does that happen? How do the pink sunglasses, how do they wander off or how do they get orphaned? We don't know.

Danan Coleman:

Literally have no idea.

Brett Curry:

Yeah,

Danan Coleman:

I mean, it seems to happen with bigger brands than smaller brands, certainly more often, although smaller brands are not immune to it. It's happened to me. And at that time I was selling literally two products. So

Brett Curry:

Interesting.

Danan Coleman:

Yeah, I literally have no idea why. I mean, why does Amazon, Amazon anything? So it happens. It's

Brett Curry:

An issue. You need to be looking for it for all the reasons you just laid out. Okay, orphan big deal. What was the next one?

Danan Coleman:

Yeah, split reviews. So you may not even realize that maybe one or two or three of your variations are not sharing the reviews with the perina. So a scenario of this would be, let's use the sunglasses again. I got my reds, my blues, my whites, my greens, and my yellows. And the yellows are not sharing the same reviews as the others. The others have a 4.6 star rating, but the yellows have only gotten three reviews and it's got a 3.8 star rating. Well, guess what? Nobody's buying those.

Brett Curry:

They're

Danan Coleman:

Going to look at it and go 3.8 on the yellows. I liked them, but now I don't.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, there's something wrong. The yellows are defective.

Danan Coleman:

Exactly. And so this is the power of the review system and the star rating is that it has the ability to instantaneously, if it's low, has the ability to instantaneously stop the sale. If it's high, great, now you're being compared against the others. But if it's low, it's an instant. No, unless you're a fat burner, you can run at 3.5 and still make a million dollars a week. Congratulations.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, that's high. Relatively speaking. Yeah, exactly. Fat burning category, so it makes sense. Makes

Danan Coleman:

Sense. So orphans, nations split reviews, but then there's a whole host of other issues like title issues, bullet point issues, text emojis, categories, browse nodes, image changes, just so many different things that could go wrong that you would never, ever, ever know and may not even cause you any known problems. But as these things start to stack up, it's a death by a thousand cuts scenario. You've got say, let's take the sunglasses, all your colors, everything is hunky dory, but your pink sunglasses for some reason they're in kitchen or home and garden. And so you didn't put them there, but somehow they got there. Amazon reclassified them for some reason, the AI messed up the image assessment and they went, okay, this is a pair of gloves, and so it gets recategorized. This happens awesome fairly often as well. And so now you've got a child ASIN that's in the wrong category, and maybe you're not allowed to run ads on that category or who knows. There's just so many different things. And so really all it is is a security system for major and minor issues that collectively cost you money.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so interesting, and I were talking offline about this. I gave the comparison of think about a store shelf of physical store shelf, supermarket or store, whatever. Yeah. Love this analogy. If you want your product to sell, there's a few things that are really important. You want to be in the right section of the store, on the right shelf. You want to have your product pulled right to the face, whether the angle is good. This, I used to work at a grocery store when I was in high school, and so we'd always face the shelves. You want to turn the labels the right way and get it to the edge of the shelf. It needs to look pretty. You want to make sure there's not something blocking the view of a particular product. And like you said, you want to make sure it's in the right place.

What if you had a great product, but in a couple of stores, the stock boy was confused and he puts your product on the wrong end of the store, and now you're not next to your competitors, people that are looking for your category, your product, they don't see you. Now you're screwed. And so I think you've got to think about all these angles of you're a merchandiser in this case, you're a marketer, you're a brand owner. How do I keep my products on the right shelf visible, and how do I make sure that they can fly off the shelf? I want them to.

Danan Coleman:

Yep. That was the best analogy I've ever heard. And so to put this in the context of Amazon and Orphan A would be you sell sunglasses in the beach section, but your pink bear of sunglasses are over with the fruit and vegetables. So nobody

Brett Curry:

Going same color is the fruit. So it's over

Danan Coleman:

There. Yeah, exactly. Your pink sunglasses are with the pink grapefruits or yellow sunglasses with the pink grapefruits or whatever. And so that's in the wrong spot. So therefore people, when they've come to see your sunglasses, won't see them. They're not there, right?

Brett Curry:

They're on Amazon,

Danan Coleman:

They're in the store, they're just

Brett Curry:

Elsewhere. Yeah. It's like, no, it's fine. It's here. There's inventory. It's on Amazon,

Danan Coleman:

But it's in

Brett Curry:

The wrong spot. No one's going to buy it there.

Danan Coleman:

And the same thing goes for browse notes. So let's say you're just in the wrong browse node. Now that one, there's a lot less likely for people to be unable to find it, but if someone's specifically searching in sports and outdoors and your product is in, I don't know, pool pumps, whatever that category would be, well, that's actually probably also sports and outdoors, but let's say grocery, well, you might have a problem with people finding you because they're not searching that category. So anyhow, there's all kinds of weird little issues that can happen. Like your buy box suppressed, the product page is still there, but your buy box is suppressed. Why Amazon doesn't tell you unless you're looking for other indicators, other data points to go, okay, so I've got a buy box, not authorized issue here. Oh, look, this browse node's different. Oh, it's a CD category. That's why.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's super interesting. It's one of those things where this is definitely not a, Hey, I've got a really great product. I made sure that it got to the Amazon warehouses. Now all I got to do is run my ads and hope for the best. Hey, my product got to Walmart. It's all taken care of now.

Brett Curry:

And don't worry

Brett Curry:

There a whole bunch of stuff. Yeah, definitely. But don't worry, Amazon's still happy to

Danan Coleman:

Charge you for those ads. Yeah, yeah,

Brett Curry:

Exactly. And charge you storage fees. It's in the wrong place, but we're going to charge you storage fees and all

Danan Coleman:

That. Absolutely. Yeah.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. That's amazing, man. So I know there's a lot more we need to be looking at as well. Any other highlights there? And then talk about the tool you've built, because no one enjoys the manual process here. If you've got a few SKUs or a few ASINs, it's probably fine. But any other noteworthy things? And then talk about the tool you've built.

Danan Coleman:

Dimensional Weight can be a good one. I think it's gotten better over the last few years, but I've heard, so Amazon's got the system, they put the product there, it laser measures everything. You get your dimensional weight, and if anyone doesn't know what that is, that's basically the size of the box, plus the length, height, width, plus the weight of the product gives you your dimensional weight. So if you're selling one inch squared lead balls, it's going to be different than one inch squared lead feather thing.

Brett Curry:

Right, right, right. Yeah, makes sense.

Danan Coleman:

So that's something that where you can have a pretty big issue where let's say a box is crushed and now it's a one inch wider, but not necessarily one inch shorter. And that puts you into the oversized category. Well, now you're paying, let's say 30 cents more for every unit that gets fulfilled and you're selling a hundred a day. That adds up after a little while. And you'll never know. You'll never know, because Amazon just doesn't say, by the way, we're charging you more now because we notice that your box Yeah,

Brett Curry:

Change your dimensional weight. Yeah. So there you go. They just start charging you.

Danan Coleman:

Exactly.

Brett Curry:

Exactly.

Danan Coleman:

Amazon the shoot first and ask questions later. Amazon doesn't ask questions.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, yeah. We'll just keep shooting. Okay.

Danan Coleman:

Yeah. Right. So I mean, there's a lot of different issues that I check for. So this is called Catalog Defender, by the way. The website is just being built. It's partially functional, but you can also go to eCom triage.com and then get ahold of me and we'll do an audit and see. But the main things right now are, and our favorite, actually I'll go over our favorite one right now, is our image tab where you can get all of your products just listed down a list and then every image on that. And so you can quickly scroll through the images and go, wait a minute, why is there only three images there? Or, hang on a sec, this is a duplicate image over here. And so that got a lot more love than I actually anticipated that it would because, well, I don't know why. Should probably ask my customers why they love it so much, but

Brett Curry:

That's super important. You've got to have the right amount of images and quality images and not duplicate images for something to actually sell. And so critical that you're keeping an eye on that.

Danan Coleman:

And then the other thing that I would say is super important and a very undervalued tool in all of Amazon in all aspects would be a change log. So when we detect it, we push that data into a change log, and when it gets fixed, we push that data into a change log. So if you're a small brand, this doesn't really matter to you. If you're a big brand and you have brand managers or you're an agency or brand managers, that's one spot that you can go, this took eight days to resolve this issue. One of the things that I was a big supporter of at Managed by Stats was a statistical change log. So when you did some major action, you actually entered in today I did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it put a line on the graph, and then you could see a date coincident change of whether your statistics went up or down a result of that change.

Brett Curry:

Interesting.

Danan Coleman:

Freaking nobody else has that, and I do not know why.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's super important. We use this on Google Ads all the time. There's a spot to market change in the account.

Brett Curry:

And

Brett Curry:

That way as you look at the graphs and the performance, you can see these change big change markers where it's like, Hey, we launched YouTube here, or we changed our bid strategy for Performance Max, or we split the feed here for these whatever big change market. So then you can see the before and after

Brett Curry:

In

Brett Curry:

The data. So super, super important. And then you can also with that change log, see, okay, did this change to this asin? Did it make a difference or not make a difference? Right. It just allows you to keep track of those things.

Danan Coleman:

Yeah, exactly. And it's amazing. I think that's super important because then you don't actually know whether what you're doing is working specifically, especially if you are doing multiple things.

Brett Curry:

Right. But

Danan Coleman:

I mean, this is what I'm working on today is negative review, removal, catalog, defender, and then I'm actually thinking about building individual AI tools for dedicated purposes. Because what I'm finding is that usually a seller needs or wants to solve a specific problem. And a lot of times, if you need that done, you have to go to an agency that does a whole bunch of stuff, right?

Brett Curry:

Yeah.

Danan Coleman:

I want to try and help people solve an individual issue and then boom, it's done,

Brett Curry:

And

Danan Coleman:

Let them get on with their sales life.

Brett Curry:

It's amazing. It's amazing, man. Well, this has been fantastic. We are officially out of time. Really appreciate you coming on. And so basically we got the negative reviews, we got the catalog defender. We can learn more about both of those at e-com triage.com, correct? Yep.

Danan Coleman:

Correct.

Brett Curry:

How else can people connect with you? Yeah, go ahead.

Danan Coleman:

LinkedIn is a great way to connect with me. So Danon Coleman, D-A-N-A-N. I'm pretty active there, but it doesn't actually matter to me what you need. Just let me know what help you need, and if nothing else, I'll point you in the right direction.

Brett Curry:

It's amazing. Yeah. And that's one thing I've learned about you D and a lot about a lot of stuff you're pro when it comes to all things Amazon. And so yeah, you're stuck with something, reach out to I look develop, he's probably got That's awesome, man. And then also check out the e-com growth show. And with that, Dana, thanks again, man. This was awesome. Thanks, dude. Look forward to chatting again and maybe having a taco together again in the not too distant future.

Danan Coleman:

I'll never say a no to tacos. That'd be a cardinal sin.

Brett Curry:

Exactly, exactly. Thanks, Fred. All right, man, really appreciate it. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear more from you. If you've not done so already, leave us a review on iTunes. If you found this show helpful, please share with somebody else that'll make my day, make Dana's day as well. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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TikTok Shop right now is bigger than Amazon or Shopify was from launch. That is what TikTok Shop is right now." Bold statement? Maybe. But Jordan West, founder and CEO of Social Commerce Club, has the data to back it up. With CPMs dropping 26% last year while ad spend increases, and creators with under 10K followers generating $250K in monthly sales, we're witnessing the early stages of what could be the biggest disruption in e-commerce since Amazon itself. In this explosive episode, Jordan breaks down his exact three-phase playbook for scaling from zero to $100K per month on TikTok Shop, reveals why big brands like Estée Lauder are struggling to adapt, and shares the underground strategies that are creating millionaire creators overnight.

—

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

—

‍

Chapters: 

(00:00) Introducting Jordan West

(05:18) The Exponential Growth of TikTok Shops

(10:48) Understanding the TikTok Shops Ecosystem

(14:12) The Power of Social Search

(16:16) Understanding Social Commerce

(19:34) Misconceptions about TikTok Shops

(24:33) The 80/20 Rule for Viral Content

(26:16) Best Practices

(31:36) Making It From Zero to Viral

(33:20) The Tiktok Shop Playbook: Phase One

(38:18) The Tiktok Shop Playbook: Phase Two

(42:44) The Tiktok Shop Playbook: Phase Three

(46:21) Exploring YouTube’s Potential in Social Commerce

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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/ 

Relevant Links:

• Jordan’s LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/jordan-west-marketer

‍

Transcript

Jordan West:

TikTok shop right now is bigger. The exponential curve that we see right now is bigger than Amazon or Shopify was from launch.

Brett Curry:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today we've got a returning guest. We've got a long time friend on the pod, and we're talking about one of the hottest of hot topics TikTok shops. What do you need to know? What are some misconceptions? What's the growth playbook? And we're going to zoom out beyond that as well and look at social commerce as a whole. What's YouTube up to and what's going to happen in this space? And so my guest is Jordan West. He's the founder and CEO of Social Commerce Club. He's also the host of a fabulous podcast, scaling your E-Commerce brand. And so we're going to get into it, but with that, Jordan, welcome to the show and how's it going, man?

Jordan West:

Brett, so nice to be on here. Last time you and I met a couple months ago, you came on my podcast. It was good. It was actually very, very well received. I looked at the download numbers and I was like, oh, people really like brand. They like YouTube. People like talking about this kind of stuff. Yeah,

Brett Curry:

Yeah.

Jordan West:

I should put some money behind that one. So secrets to Scaling your e-Commerce brand. We've been around, it's like 650 episodes now.

Brett Curry:

Whoa.

Jordan West:

I'll tell you, if there's one thing that I am good at, it is finding something and then just doubling down, doubling down, doubling down, which is why TikTok, TikTok Shop, I am telling you I haven't been this excited about something in a long, long time

Brett Curry:

And with good reason, there's merit behind it. We're going to talk about the data. We're going to talk about the case studies. We're going to talk about the stories that'll motivate you to go hard into TikTok shops. But first, I got to hit the pause button. 650 episodes, is that what you said? 600 episodes?

Jordan West:

Yes, yes, yes. Holy, how so? There's a couple of things that I do every single week I take, and just so you know, it's very, very selfish. I just take all of the different things that I'm learning in our different businesses. And all I do is I consolidate the learning in a podcast. And in LinkedIn, if you guys follow me on LinkedIn, I'll post multiple times a day and it's just selfish, everyone, just so you know. I'm just taking what I'm learning and then putting it out there. That's the only reason that I do this. And then it just happens to help people. And I kind of forget when I'm on this side. I forget that there's, for us, it's like we're in the thousands of downloads per episode. I'm like, oh yeah, that's right. I was at Shop Talk recently and you, I'm walking down and people like, Jordan, I listen to your podcast all the time. I watch your podcast. I'm like, oh yeah, I forget. I do it. Honestly, I just forget that I do it because it's just a matter of consolidating all the learning that I have. That's why I do it.

Brett Curry:

Such a great way to look at it. What do you want to learn? What do you want to add to your business? What expert do you need to get to know? Do a podcast on that. And now you're creating media that your marketplace is going to enjoy. It's going to attract people into your network and your learning, and you can share the learnings with your team. And same with LinkedIn. I love that approach. Super, super smart. And yeah, quick funny story that's related. So we're about 300 episodes in on e-commerce evolution. I'm not as prolific as Jordan West. Now you set the bar up here. I got to see what I can do to up my game. Maybe there's been a few times where this is a grind. It's also a grind to do a podcast when you're running a company and hiring people and running marketing and all this stuff. And so there's been one time in particular where I was like, I got to quit the podcast. It's just too much of a grind, too much of a hassle. I go to a trade show and three or four people stop me and say, I love the podcast, man. Keep up the good work. It's so good. And I'm like, oh, okay. No, this is part of why I do it. And so I've been doing it ever since. And

Jordan West:

I also have to say, so last week I had Curtis Matz on my podcast. Curtis is the founder and CEO at Portland Leather Goods big company. Awesome.

Brett Curry:

I met him in Austin just a couple weeks ago. Great guy.

Jordan West:

Yeah, Curtis is awesome. So I had him on when they were little too, and he came back on and they were going to do two or 300 million this year. Pretty good company. But

Brett Curry:

Think maybe pushing four, I think I heard pushing four. But either way insane

Jordan West:

To me, once you're over a couple hundred million, I mean, what's another a hundred? Here's the thing that Curtis and I talked about that I think is really interesting for everybody who's listening to this, especially if you're a brand owner. Curtis has been absolutely grinding at building a personal brand this year.

Brett Curry:

And

Jordan West:

I asked him, I said, what's the number one reason you do it? And he said people. He said, the reason why I'm doing this is for the people and the kind of people that come in when I post on LinkedIn and I say, Hey, I've got an open position. A players that come through are just phenomenal. And yes, I have to S through, but those people that are the learners, that's who I'm always going for. I'm like, if you are listening to all of this new stuff, you're probably my kind of people.

Brett Curry:

Totally. It's a great call out. Great call out. Okay, awesome. So now everyone's motivated to start their own podcast or it is a grind, but we love it and we do endorse it. So with that, let's dive into TikTok shops. And so Jordan Dazzle us. Wow us, motivate us. Why should we consider TikTok shops? What are you seeing with your agency clients and the brands you're investing in? What's going on with TikTok shops right now?

Jordan West:

Alright, here's your soundbite. Brett TikTok shop right now is bigger. The exponential curve that we see right now is bigger than Amazon or Shopify was from launch. Wow. That is what TikTok shop is right now. People will make fun of it on some of the bigger brands will make fun of it. So from a

Brett Curry:

Wait, unpack that a little bit or define that a little bit. So TikTok Shops is bigger now than Amazon was after launch, or what do you mean specifically?

Jordan West:

Exactly. So it is bigger than Amazon or Shopify was when they launched, and it's not even close the exponential curve. None of us understand what an exponential curve looks like. It's really difficult for us to wrap our brains around. All we know is we see it afterwards and we know we're like, oh, that's what exponential growth is, right? AI is one of those things right now that we're like, everyone's like, oh yeah, I was sitting in my backyard of a different house that I have, and I was sitting back there with my brother-in-law and we have to redo the roof, right? Oh, great, we have to redo the roof. I'm like, I'll bet you in three years that there's going to be a robot that goes and does that. And he's like, oh, no way. No way. I'm like, then you don't understand an exponential curve because if you look today, oh three PRO is released. It is scary, intelligent, what oh three Pro does, and again, we're at the bottom of an exponential curve, the same thing right now with TikTok shop. So when you see that curve starting to rise and you understand what that looks like for people who are not watching it, is this exponential hockey when we understand that we're at the bottom of it on TikTok shopping,

Brett Curry:

Social commerce. So you think we're about to hit that inflection point

Jordan West:

Right now? Absolutely. I don't even think we're even close to it on TikTok shop. I don't think that people are getting trained right now how to purchase, right? They're getting trained how to socially purchase. We've done it for a while with Facebook, but we haven't really Facebook and sorry, meta never really cracked the code on Social

Brett Curry:

Promise, right? They tried a few years ago social shopping, and I think Zuck was just ahead of his time a little bit there that it looked promising, it made sense, it didn't work. But TikTok shops has kind cracked the code. Now, I want to clarify a little bit. So you think we're just getting started with TikTok shops, is that because, I mean, it's huge. So the number of users was hundred 30 million users in the US or whatever the users are there.

Jordan West:

It's 180 million are on there for 60 minutes or more a day.

Brett Curry:

Holy cow. That's insanity. So are you saying it's really just beginning to explode though TikTok shops because people are still not buying mass on TikTok shops. So of that 180 million, there's only a smaller percentage that are actually buying. And so there's all that upside there.

Jordan West:

Yes. Because the trust factor is not there yet. And also the affiliates aren't quite there yet either. So I will tell you a leading indicator that tells me that this is the biggest opportunity ever. CPMs dropped last year by 26% on TikTok.

Brett Curry:

No way.

Jordan West:

So what does that tell you? To me, that doesn't tell me that that's a demand issue with advertising because advertising dollars have only gone up. What it tells me is that it's a supply issue in a good way. Sorry, that there is more supply that is driving CPMs down. What me? Super excited. I was on a webinar yesterday with Triple Whale and Fin Loop, and they were going over these stats. To me, I'm just a huge nerd when it comes to this stuff. And I was looking at some of these numbers just being like, nobody realizes right now still 70 to 80% of all spend, and this is from Triple Whale who has tons of stats out there out there. Hopefully you don't have a triple oil competitor as a sponsor of this or anything.

Brett Curry:

I don't. No, but I'm friends with a lot of them and friends with Triple oil. Love those guys.

Jordan West:

Wonderful. So in the stats that they see, 70 to 80% of all ads spend is happening on meta. Just think about

Brett Curry:

The disruption and their purview is like D two C brands. So D two C brands, 70, 80% is on meta. Yeah,

Jordan West:

Totally. The amount of brands that have tried TikTok and been like, well, I'm just not getting the right attribution, right? Oh, attribution isn't working. All of that is going away. By the way, in the world of ai, mms are going to be so cheap and we're going to be able to measure all this stuff. Well, that brands are going to realize, oh, there's all of these 180 million people that could be discovering my products over on TikTok that aren't yet.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it totally makes sense. And it's one of those things, and we experienced this a lot on the YouTube side of things, where billions of users long engagement time is 40 some minutes a day. Average session for YouTube users are both behind TikTok, it seems. So there's a ton of supply there. There's really no reason that it shouldn't work other than if your approach is wrong, your creative is wrong or something like that. Same is true with TikTok. It has the users, people are addicted to it. So if you can get the right message there in the right way, there's zero reason it shouldn't work. And so if it hasn't price some fundamental reasons for that, which we can unpack. And so yeah, so it's about to hockey stick, even though it's been growing rapidly so far.

Jordan West:

But really when you look at it, you're like, okay, so the top brand is doing 15 million a month, right? That's not that big. It's not that big. That's not that big when you compare it to an Amazon or Shopify

Brett Curry:

Brands that's on Amazon or whatever. Yeah,

Jordan West:

It's not that big. And that's why brands are ignoring it. And I'm like, go ahead and ignore it at your own peril if you want to ignore it. And especially big brands, look at, I'm just going to name them. Look at Estee Lauder. They just laid off 6,000 people in q1, 6,000 people. They laid them off for a reason. They are having a hard time penetrating that market. It is a very difficult market to penetrate, and they are having a very difficult time. They own a ton of different brands and they laid 6,000 people off. That is wild. And it continues to happen. It's continuing to happen in the space for brands that are not changing. P and g just happened to them too, and I think it was around 6,000 as well. Now, AI I think is part of that, right? AI's part of that,

But I do think that these old dinosaurs are having a very difficult time moving over and thinking about social commerce. I'll tell you why, Brett, the reason why they're having such a hard time with this is that they don't get to say yes or no to the content that comes out. I sat in a boardroom recently, TikTok shop headquarters are in Seattle. I live just as Vancouver. And I went down there and I went down for a coffee, by the way. That's what I was told, that it was a coffee. I get in and there's a boardroom of 30 or 35 people.

Brett Curry:

I thought you went over to seven

Jordan West:

Coffee. There's your coffee. Sit

Brett Curry:

Down, we got questions for you. Yeah,

Jordan West:

Look, I didn't have a presentation or anything. I was just like, okay, so we're just going to do q and a or what's it going to look like? Don't worry, I'm really good on the spot. So it was good. But I was with the global key accounts team. So this is brands that do 4 billion in a bus and they have to be across. They can't just do 4 billion in the states. It has to be in multiple markets, right? Really big high-end team. And they said, what do you do when a brand, one of the biggest pushbacks that we get from the global key accounts team, from the, sorry, global Key accounts. Brands, is that they want to say yes or no to content. I'm like, okay. So the salesperson to me says, yes, absolutely you can, but you can't. You can't. You can't. I'm sorry. You just have to say yes to all of it or no to all of it. And that's why they're losing. That's why the big brands are losing. Yeah,

Brett Curry:

I mean, think about it this way. Are you going to say you want to say yes or no to Amazon? Product reviews pretty limited there. If it's fraudulent or whatever, illegal or malicious, you can get that removed. But other than that, those reviews are going to be there. So that's the way it works. And shoppers want those reviews and they trust those reviews and they look at those reviews. And the same is true on TikTok. People go there for product recommendations. I was talking to my 17-year-old daughter just the other day, and I was trying to convince her to use TikTok less just for her own mental health. She's very healthy, she's an amazing student, all these things. But I'm like, Hey, spend less time there. And she's like, well, but I search for stuff there and that's where I even crazy details, crazy stuff I want to find. I search on TikTok. I'm like, okay, makes sense. And so that's where people want to consume content. That's where they want to get product recommendations. So you can avoid it, but you're avoiding it at your own app peril.

Jordan West:

So this is really interesting. Let's go into social search here for a second. This is really interesting. All of the stuff out there right now is AI search is going to eat, Google AI search is going to eat Google. It's like, yeah, probably. I'd search for so many things using CHA bt,

Brett Curry:

But

Jordan West:

For the upcoming generation, social search will crush Google. It will absolutely crush Google. I mean, you see it on YouTube and I consider that social search. Social search. I think that's one of the places that's where I put money. I put money on my podcast on YouTube just because it's a great place for people to discover the podcast. And we get tons of subscribers just from putting a little bit of money behind it because that's where they're right. I'm talking about D two C here, but the same rules apply and social search is massive. So a brand that we work with, we started working with them last August. In August, we ran a study on TikTok because they're a global key account brand. And we ran a study to see how many searches they had on TikTok. The answer was zero. They didn't show up, nobody was searching for them on social search on TikTok. We ran that same study after bringing them to over 2 million a month on TikTok, and they had 880,000 searches in the previous two weeks. We ran this in December. Whoa. It's crazy. Crazy. Think about that. Think about all of, and then the halo to everywhere from that, it is the discovery engine. It's also, I think about these big brands, p and g, Estee Lauder, all these big brands. Do you know how much money they spend on product research and marketing research?

It's crazy.

Brett Curry:

It's a pretty meaningful line item. So we're talking about tens of millions of dollars a year. Yeah,

Jordan West:

Totally. And my bet is that a lot of that is going to go away with social commerce because you put the products out there. Now people, what they have to do, the reason why I love TikTok shop so much is I own brands over the years. That's the thing that we did. I ran brands. I love building brands. One of the things I hated was working with influencers. I despise working with influencers. The reason is because you never know what you're going to get. You can pay a thousand dollars for a post and be like, oh, is this going to be good? At least I like the CPM model. I think that there's a really interesting CCP M model like, well, because then you're paying for reach. So if the video works, I'm paying for it, no problem. Totally. But I'm not just randomly paying for something to go out there. That's the scary sort of part of working with influencers. So when TikTok shop came, I understood it immediately. I was like, this is the first time that we've aligned incentives. And how many salespeople do you hire? You're always aligning comp, the incentives with what you want to get out of them.

That is always what you do. And it's the same thing with influencers. You want to get sales out your

Brett Curry:

Influencers, show me the incentive, I'll show you the result. And it's very true here as well.

Jordan West:

And so all of these creators on TikTok shop are only incentivized to make money. Rarely are you paying out big commissions, right? Sorry, big retainers. Very, very rarely. And so let's think about this. You are completely incentivized. They are just trying to sell your product. And so what they're going to do is they're going to get really creative and they're going to think about the different ways to sell your product and what exactly is unique about the product to sell. And so now you get all of this market research, you're like, oh, it was when they said, use the eyeshadow under your eyes. And that's a cool use case. I dunno. I dunno makeup. But what I'm telling you is there's all of these different ways with a shoe brand that we work with. They came up with catch phrases, Brett, there's catchphrases that the brand now uses. There was a product for with a shoe brand that we work with, a very big, well-known shoe brand. It was a dog, the product, nobody was buying it, absolutely no one. And then the crazy thing is that they from this product ended up going absolutely viral on TikTok selling out completely. Now Sydney Sweeney is representing that product and it's now one of their core products, the ultimate influencer of our day right now. What is

Brett Curry:

This product? Can you mention this product?

Jordan West:

It's shoes. I don't dunno if I can mention the brand, but

Brett Curry:

You can probably search on TikTok for Sydney Sweeney and Shoes and you'll see it. So there you go. Yeah, so check it

Jordan West:

Out and you'll be like, Sydney Sweeney represented this shoe brand. It was incredible. Such a great play. But guys, these shoes were sitting doing nothing. They were dogs, absolutely. But this person came up with a really unique hook for this shoe, and it just ended up going absolutely viral. And again, then they got Sidney Sweeney on. Wow,

Brett Curry:

Crazy, crazy.

Jordan West:

This would've never happened. They never in their wildest dreams would've been able to do that through some kind of focus group, which is why I'm obsessed with talking to the big brands and all the time, I cannot wait to tell people about some of these huge brands that we're working with because it's really, really fun. And you'll be like, oh, this old chap is coming into the social commerce space. Interesting.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, yeah, I love it. But talk about real time feedback, unvarnished truth. This is people taking action and voting with their attention span and with their wallet on what they want to pay attention to, what they care about. Focus groups are nice but misleading and kind of old and old approach, so get real time feedback. You can get that on TikTok for sure. So I love that. What are some misconceptions, because I talk at a lot of events as to you, I'm usually talking about YouTube or Amazon, but TikTok comes up a lot. I hear all kinds of wild things sitting over a lunch or dinner table or talking in hallways and stuff, but what are some misconceptions about TikTok shops that we need to bust and clarify?

Jordan West:

The misconception is that any old Amazon brand can come over and sell on TikTok. The biggest misconception that I see with all brands is that they think it's a demand capture channel. It's a demand gen channel. This is why so many agencies don't understand it because they come from Amazon world. You and I have talked about this. A lot of them have been trying to acquire us because they don't understand how to demand gen,

Brett Curry:

Right?

Jordan West:

When you come from direct to consumer, and I have to say when for me, coming from direct to consumer in apparel is, and not cheap apparel is the most difficult thing you can possibly do, right? Totally agree. Coming from there and trying to sell on TikTok shop is like, awesome. This is so easy. So

Brett Curry:

Easy.

Jordan West:

Yeah, you're just generating demand.

Brett Curry:

But

Jordan West:

I think that one of the biggest misconceptions is that it's just easy and that it's just going to work. It's like, no, it takes a long time. We tell people, when people come to us, we're like, are you willing to light 50 K on fire? It might not.

Are you willing to? Now one of your competitors has done pretty well, but you need to be willing to light $50,000 on fire or we can't talk because this is one of those channels. I recently was with the top TikTok shop agencies, the other ones, there was four of us in a room and we were talking and we're like, so how are things going? They're like, well, things are really, really good. And I'm like, well, how good. They're like, well, I would say we're about as good as the average all star baseball players batting average. Awesome. So about 400.

Brett Curry:

So yeah, yeah, three, maybe 400. Yeah, 400 is like Ted Williams type stuff. So

Jordan West:

Just remember that this is a brand new channel that we just don't know. Now what you get out of this channel is phenomenal. I just got off of a workshop that I was presenting on and I was talking about this, and I think that this might be the biggest takeaway that people get from this, Brett, is that that content, even if you light $50,000 on fire, let's just say, right? I'm being hyperbolic here, but let's just say that you light $50,000 on fire and you get back $20,000 in sales or something like that. You still have all of this market research and all of this content now that you can repurpose across other channels. YouTube being one of the main ones. How much inventory is now on shorts? Think about all of this incredible content. I think of TikTok Shop as the content. TikTok shop content particularly is the content that moves across channels. TikTok is a Rubicon, so a Rubicon being a door that you can enter, but you cannot leave. It's a one way door. TikTok content is a Rubicon. It can travel wherever you wanted to travel. You want to travel to Meta?

Brett Curry:

Yeah.

Jordan West:

Awesome. We're obsessed right now. So one of the things I didn't tell you before at Social Commerce Club, which is the agency that I run, unless they're a huge brand that's working with a performance agency that they just can't get out of the contract, we're actually not taking on anyone that doesn't work with us across channels.

Brett Curry:

Wow. Yeah, I

Jordan West:

Know.

Brett Curry:

Crazy because that's smart. I mean, you've got the greatest opportunity to influence real growth if you do it that way.

Jordan West:

Totally. And all of the brands that are working with us are crushing where they're seeing all of their channels up here. And you and I know this consolidation play in the agency world. The reason why we're doing it is so that we can actually help brands with their entire business.

This is the reason why you and me and people like us are doing this sort of thing because it's so important for all of the areas. And so I picture these creators. First of all, a year from now or two years from now, every single brand is going to have a creator community. And if they don't, they're not going to be around. They're going to have a creator community and they're going to be leveraging that creator community. I tweeted about this yesterday. I had a UGC creator quote me, $450 for one post and $50 a hook. I'm like, no. In the world of TikTok, that will not happen. It just will not happen because TikTok shop, they're just going to do it for free and they're going to probably make five videos. We try it. Social commerce club. We try and get five videos out of every single TikTok shop creator. Interesting. Sorry. Out of every sample we send out, that is our goal. That is one of the big metrics we do that we

Brett Curry:

Run every week. Why is that? So why five pieces, and then what are you doing to ensure that? I love this angle. Okay,

Jordan West:

So let me walk you through the numbers. So we know that we must live in some sort of mathematical, whatever this world is that we live in, but there's weird things that happen with numbers, and the Pareto principle is just one of them. We know that 80 20 works all the time. You can just look at an end. You can continue to go down on 80 20. So the more videos we get, so let's say that we seed to 200 influencers and we get five videos from each of them. We're getting a thousand work at that point. We're getting a thousand videos from them from there, 200 of those videos are going to be pretty good. So 200 of those videos are going to be good. Now take the 80 20 of those 200. So now we're looking at 40 videos of those will probably go viral. The more videos we get, the more chance we have to go viral. That's just how it works.

Brett Curry:

Makes

Jordan West:

Sense. It's just the numbers of what works and

Brett Curry:

Why the PA principle works. The 20 rule is so one out of five might work at all. So if a creator only creates four, they might not have gotten to the one that actually works yet. And so those all four are a bust at that point.

Jordan West:

So the numbers are really important. Putting in the numbers, the 650 podcast episodes, this is where this comes in handy, right? You're like, I'm just going to put in the reps. Most brands will send out a hundred samples and be like, TikTok shop doesn't work. I'm like, you're right. You're right with that attitude. You're absolutely right. That's where I get fatherly.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, exactly. Not with that attitude. It won't. Yeah. So that's amazing. Let's talk about this for a second then. I want to get into some X factors in a minute of what really moves the needle in results. I'm sure it's a numbers game, of course, but what product categories, what product offers, what tends to work well on TikTok and what tends not to work as well on TikTok? What's your experience there?

Jordan West:

So in general, now there are exceptions to this rule. High A OV does not work high, high A OV does not work. Now, mind you, I cannot tell you which brand this is, but we are working with one of the high A OV electronics brand that I think is going to crush their A OV is going to be around 400 bucks, but really fun product that you want to buy on TikTok shop. Now, I've seen Dyson. I wish that we worked at Dyson. It'd be a sweet logo and just very fun to work with because I love their products. I've seen Dyson starting to crush on TikTok shop. Think about how Spencer Dyson are. So there

Brett Curry:

Are exceptions to every rule,

Jordan West:

Exceptions to every rule.

Brett Curry:

Couch, oovs, like AOV is over a hundred, or what are you considering high OV here?

Jordan West:

I would say anything over 200, I wouldn't touch Ninja's. Done really well. So Ninja has sold their creamy, which is round the $200 mark and done a really, really good job. Bunch of the influencers at Social Commerce Club, sorry, creators at Social Commerce Club work for Ninja as well, and have done really, really well. So they're in this multimillions of dollars a month in sales, so it can work, but I wouldn't go there first if I was a big Got it.

Brett Curry:

Totally makes sense.

Jordan West:

Yeah. I would work with TikTok, shop creators to create content. So we do that at Social Commerce Club and be like, Hey, let's not go all in because we have to send these massive samples too. Really big backpack company came to us recently wanting to work with us, and their cost of goods is like a hundred bucks per backpack. And I was like, eh,

Brett Curry:

Tough man.

Jordan West:

I don't want to send that many out because your post rate is only going to be about 80%. So 20% of those aren't even going to post. So that just happens. That's just part of TikTok shop, unfortunately.

Brett Curry:

Yep. Yep. Great. So hi ov, avoid that. Any particular categories or impulse purchases, which that's lower A OV and stuff like that, but what categories work versus don't work, generally speaking?

Jordan West:

So supplements is an interesting one. If you are a supplement brand, you're going to have a hard time working with an agency, because I actually saw recently on the TikTok shop chat, somebody's like, Hey, I've got 20 supplement brands. Don't want to work with them anymore. Anybody want them? Because it's just a grind. It is a grind because let's be honest, 90% of supplements are bs. Right?

Brett Curry:

Right. That's

Jordan West:

True. And so you're

Brett Curry:

Trying to, I take a lot of supplements, but most of them are garbage. Yeah,

Jordan West:

Totally. And so you have to wade through and figure out what is a good supplement? What do I actually want to stand behind? And creators are kind of getting sick of working with supplements. Now, another reason why supplements are so tough is because there's so many guidelines that will get your account shut down if you're a creator and you talk about the supplement. So they're just like, I don't want to touch it. That's why it's getting difficult to sell supplements there. Now, can you Absolutely. Some of the biggest brands out there are supplement brands. Goalie is still one of the top ones, right? They've done an awesome job, but also they sell great stuff, goalie. We all know and trust Goalie already. So there's already that factor. So supplements, I'm sorry, you're just going to have a more difficult time doing that, right? Yeah, you can try. You can try, but it's just going to be a lot more difficult. So just so you are aware,

Brett Curry:

Right? But things like beauty, fashion, maybe food and Bev, some of those categories tend to work well, right?

Jordan West:

Yeah. We have a new beauty brand, fairly well known who came to us. They were doing 6,000 a month. We've gotten them this month they'll probably do 200 K profitably. So again, people are like, oh, those aren't big numbers. It's like, well, actually they'll have 30 million views. Do you know how much in media value that is? Crazy. Amounts insane. And every other

Brett Curry:

Channel is popping. It's low cpm. That's an insane amount of money.

Jordan West:

Yeah,

Brett Curry:

Totally.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. And you've got now, if you're selling on Amazon or on your own Shopify store or whatever, to buy those 30 million views on YouTube or on Meta or on tv, forget about that. It's a massive, massive budget. Massive.

Jordan West:

Probably had a $30 CPM to buy those views

Brett Curry:

Depending on where you're buying. Yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe you get it down into the single digits if you're buying certain YouTube areas or like Amazon DSP or something. But if you're buying premium stuff like YouTube Select or Hulu or Netflix, $30 CPM for sure.

Jordan West:

So people don't get this, Brett, these are premium placements. These are in the feed.

This is all premium inventory and it's organic inventory. The thing that we didn't talk about before was the ability then to take that content use. There's a tool that I like called Funnel that identifies the content. Then you can whitelist that content right in there. So you just ask for whitelisting one click over into meta, right? And then there's awesome. I mean, you'd be able to speak more into whitelisting on YouTube, but there's very simple ways to whitelist on YouTube as well, right? This content, and this is the way of the future, and this is how brands are going to succeed.

Brett Curry:

Totally makes sense. Walk me through some, what are some of the X factors? What are some of the things that need to be true about your brand, about your product? Is it feature driven? Is it something new and novel? Is it something that's just really visual? What are some of the X factors that can help determine whether this is going to be a success or not?

Jordan West:

So that's the crazy thing. You can sell boring products on TikTok shop, right? I made a whole YouTube video on this. Here's how you position boring products, and actually boring products do really well. It's what the creators do with it. It's the little bit of the value that you give to the creators and the little bit of direction that you give to them that really make your product go and it doesn't need products, don't need X factors, they just don't. That's great. I could probably sell a pencil on TikTok shop. I've often thought I'm like, I want to become a TikTok shop creator. Just I can show people, Hey, here's how you do it. Here's how you're going to go about this. Storytelling is a really big one. People who tell really good stories, they crush.

Brett Curry:

Nobody thinks they're selling, telling that story that lands it's benefit oriented, and then yeah, it can be something simple every day and can still work. So it's amazing. So

Jordan West:

No X factor. I hate to tell everyone the X factor is your creativity.

Brett Curry:

Good. That's good. Yep, yep. So your creativity, the creative's, creativity, creativity, totally makes sense. So walk us through high level. What does the TikTok Shops playbook look like? So how am I starting, how am I hopefully not completely burning my 50 K or whatever, but how am I starting? How am I finding influencers? How am I seeding products? How am I testing, iterating, learning, and then how am I eventually getting to viral success?

Jordan West:

Totally. So let me walk through the zero to a hundred K playbook. There's three phases to this playbook, okay? So number one is make sure your products are set up correctly, right? This is a massive part of this. So make sure that your products are set up very similar to Amazon, where you want to make sure that you have the ability to use to sample. So if you were using a bundle, sorry, you're trying to sell a bundle, which I highly recommend that you do, don't just try and sell $15 products. Try and bundle those products. You don't want to send your bundle out to them. You want to the creator, you want to send out one product to the creator, and then they talk about your bundle. So making sure that stuff like that is set up correctly. Making sure that your listings, your TikTok shop listings are pretty and are going to convert. So there's a bunch of stuff. I won't get into all of that, but making sure that all of that is set up correctly is really important. Then using, I do not recommend this movement out there right now of people manually reaching out to people. I'm like, there's no value in manually reaching out, use a bot.

So I recommend reacher. I've been an advisor to theirs for quite a while. They're awesome guys. They're really building some cool stuff. I recommend using them, or Yuca is the other one that's out there. Reach out to as many influencers as you or creators as you possibly can. So again, two different things. Creators, influencers.

Brett Curry:

So you're reaching out to them, offering them product, seeing if they're interested. What does that outreach message look like?

Jordan West:

Totally. So sorry, before that, one thing that I want to make sure that people understand is that you can syndicate your reviews from D two C over into TikTok shop. Really important that you do that, because what you're trying to do at first is build up all of this social proof that you don't have yet. So if people know, oh, good, there's 7,000 reviews that they have from D two C that you move over there with. Awesome. Judge Me is a really good one. It's like 15 bucks a month. It actually will scrape all of your Amazon reviews and move them over again. Nice. I did not give you that advice. I think it's somewhere grayish in terms of service. Just know that you can do that

Brett Curry:

One, but you need the social proof there for the

Jordan West:

Influencers and for the shoppers. Exactly. So the biggest thing that you're actually trying to do is you're trying to sell to the influencers at first. So what you're trying to do is be like, Hey, by the way, we've sold X number of millions of these over on Amazon, over on Shopify. We're new to TikTok shop. We would love you. Look like you've got some great content and that you can really help us out here. We'd love to offer you X percentage to be able to do this. Now, be as generous as possible at first. So offer whatever your even is without running ads. See what that is and offer that. If you can offer 40% commission at first, do it like, Hey, look, I'm going to offer you 40% commission, and if your videos also let them know if your videos do well. We're going to put ad spend behind your videos right now. So greater

Brett Curry:

Visibility, greater audience growth for you potentially as an influencer. Is that kind of part of the benefit there or the pitch to them?

Jordan West:

Totally. And get in on the ground floor, all of the things, all the messages that you would use in multi-level marketing, just use here. Get on the ground floor, get your friends involved. I

Brett Curry:

Love that. Love that. It's hilarious.

Jordan West:

So one of the things that you're going to want to do though at first is make sure that you have two different levels of commission set up. One for organic and one for ads. Really important that you do that. You do not want to also give them 40%

Brett Curry:

On ads because ads, you're funding a lot of that reach. So that needs to be a lower commission.

Jordan West:

Totally. And as more and more creators get on there and more people create content on TikTok, it's just harder and harder to go viral. And so you'll want to spend a decent amount of money on ads. Now when you get to a certain point, there's a screenshot that I shared this morning. It was like $3,500 worth of ads spend for like $55,000 worth of sales. That's crazy. Crazy. That is what happens when you start getting this flywheel going. That's like a 14 return on ad spend. Just wild numbers doesn't

Brett Curry:

Anywhere else.

Jordan West:

They're not crazy numbers, but it takes a while. You need to be patient. These things take a while to be able to happen and snowball. So just know that this takes a while. So that's all part of phase one is getting those Got it messages out there. You want to be on it. So as soon as they say yes and make sure at this point too, I don't know how detailed we can exactly get here, but I'll try and get into some of the gotchas. So one of them is making sure that you don't auto approve samples. Make sure you want to, when have a cast a pretty wide net, there's going to be people that say yes that you don't want, right? Right. Cast a wide net. See who wants to take the sample and then approve them from there, right? But don't be too picky. Definitely not too picky at first. I don't ever go after any creators that don't already have GMV. They have to have GMV. They have to have produced some revenue for somebody before I'm going to go after. Makes sense?

Brett Curry:

Yep. Yep.

Jordan West:

So that's the first phase.

Brett Curry:

That's all phase one.

Jordan West:

So yeah, what's phase two? So phase two now is seeing what works and pouring gasoline on that fire. So now you've gotten to your first thousand sales in phase one, and now you're looking and seeing, okay, who do I now want to recruit for? A couple different things. One is brand owned content is awesome, and what you can do is you can actually work with some of these creators, give them a retainer and a percentage of sales to start posting on your brand handle. So that's one that TikTok is going to be pushing a lot in Q3 this year. From what we've heard, they're going to be pushing brand owned handles a lot, and so this is where you can start to hire a creator to do that for you, for your brand handle. So start identifying some of those creators now. Start putting money behind creators that are doing well and let them know.

By the way, if you do 10 videos for me, I'm going to put minimum a thousand dollars behind your ads, behind your content. That's where you start to get this flywheel going. Start to then take those people and put them into a brand owned community. Like I said, every single brand is going to have a brand owned community in the future. We have a massive, really high GMV creator community at Social Commerce Club that we have curated and is incredible. Start to take those people and put them into your own brand community. You can use Discord, you can use WhatsApp. I like WhatsApp personally. I think it's the millennial in me that likes it. Discords a great option as well though. It's just the engagement on Discord isn't quite as high to be totally honest. People have a million discord. Discord

Brett Curry:

Is kind of messy. I don't really enjoy being on there personally,

Jordan West:

But it's like being in another Slack group. You're just like, oh, another Slack group. I just can't keep up with all these. Oh my gosh, yes. So this is something to do at this point, and then this is where you're going to identify. So at first, I forgot to mention in phase one, you're going to pick your top three skews. After this, your top three products after this is where you're going to start to pour gasoline on one of them. Go after one of them as your Heroku, right? You'll find out which one works really well, and then you're going to go after that. This is where you're going to start scaling,

Brett Curry:

But I like that versus just testing one because you may be wrong. That may not be the one that takes off or catches fire on TikTok. So try three, then zero in on your hero product.

Jordan West:

Totally. And if you're a huge brand listening to this, try 10. Just try again. Try some of your products that might not be working because people might not be searching them on Amazon or caring about them on D two C. Just try. The worst thing that you can do is you sent out a bunch of products that weren't moving anyway, and you got some good content out of them. This is where you're going to want to start to build your relationships, and you're going to want to start to ask about whitelisting across other platforms. So again, this is why I am so obsessed with this where I'm like, no, you're not brands. You may not work with us on TikTok shop unless we have the whole thing, because otherwise you are wasting all of this incredible content. That's the only content you should be using is all of this creator content listed. The studies

Brett Curry:

Are you're only get a fraction of the benefit. You're creating all this content. You got all this gold that's being created here, you got to redeploy it or else you're not getting max value.

Jordan West:

Well, meta just put out a study, and there's actually five of them, five different case studies. The sort of average across the case studies is that whitelisted ads, the CPA is 50% lower than brand ads would you not do? Why would you not stop literally everything you're doing right now and go whitelist every single ad that you have because people buy from other people that they like know and trust, not from your brand. Nobody wants to buy from your brand. Maybe they do, but they would much rather buy from somebody they like know and trust and a third party that is talking about Totally. It's the same principle in everything. This is the way that SEO works, right? This is why still the number one signal in SEO is backlinks because

Brett Curry:

It backlinks, even when Google denies it, it's still backlink. It is a vote of confidence from the rest of the internet right there. Social

Jordan West:

Proof, social proof. There's no better way than for you to do that. That's why people like Brett and I go on each other's podcast to say, Brett, you are an awesome guy. I just gave you some of my social proof over and I'm hoping you're going to do the same, Brett.

Brett Curry:

Yes, exactly, exactly. But it makes a huge, huge difference. So I love that. Okay, I think we're ready for phase three then.

Jordan West:

So phase three is where we get a lot of brands into, which is really fun. So this is a hundred thousand dollars a month plus. This is where you are going to now go out to an even bigger creator community. So this is where I like to start sending out. So if you had a hundred thousand dollars a month, this is where I want you to start sending out 500 samples a month to only the highest SGMV creators because they can see how much money people have done on your particular skew, right? Or on your particular product id. PID is as people internally always call it, I'm like, can you just call it product id? I hate the word pi. Pi, but PID is also where you house multiple. You can house multiple skews in a pi. So anyway, there's all that boring. You can cut that part out.

Brett Curry:

No, let's leave it in. The occasional touch of nerdiness is great. We want that.

Jordan West:

So this is where you're going to start to go after a lot of high GMV creators and then pour gasoline on the other ones. So now throughout all of this, we're using different kinds of ads throughout. So at first, during phase one, we're using product shopping ads and video shopping ads. Product shopping ads are essentially Google Shopping ads. So if you think about them like that, they happen on search. Again, social search is massive. So they're happening over there and we're just leaving it wide open. We're doing video shopping ads, which are basically spark ads, whitelisted ads from these creators. We're just getting permission to use them and we're doing those in phase one. In phase two, we're going to start to set some target return on ad spends and see how much better we can get as far as the amount of efficacy that we're getting from those ads during phase one.

Don't care. Just don't care. You're just trying to get to a certain level where other creators want to work with you. During phase three is where we're going to transition into GM v max and GMV Max is like, it's their AI on steroids that's working for you. Once you get to that certain level into phase three, that's where I recommend going into GMV Max. Now, the problem is you do not choose where your ad spend goes with GMV Max. So I recommend using that at the end. It's like a very automated system. This is where during phase three, you now want to start identifying other products that could potentially work and start seeding those products as well. Interesting. That's the really high level playbook for you.

Brett Curry:

So I love that. It was really a very clear breakdown, and it'll be all be in the show notes. We can see it, but it sounds like ads are actually a pretty important component of this, right? Did you ever see someone excel with TikTok shops without the ad component?

Jordan West:

Nope. Nope, nope. Ads have to be a

Brett Curry:

Part of that You use at every stage, or mostly like stage two and stage three or phase two and three.

Jordan West:

No ads need to be a part of it the entire way through the entire time, the entire way through. Unfortunately, you just cannot just send product out and hope it goes viral.

Brett Curry:

Totally makes sense. Totally makes sense. Love it.

Jordan West:

Once you pour ads onto it, creators want to work with you, you're going to get into the algorithm a lot more, and it's just the way that it works. It's unfortunate too, for organic YouTube, it's the same thing, right? There was a heyday and maybe, and also if you hit the algo absolutely perfectly right on organic YouTube, you can do this. For the most part, you need to promote that with ads to get it into the algo and start working for you. It's just the way, I hate that that's the game, but that's just the game.

Brett Curry:

It's the game. It's the game. Totally makes sense there. Totally. It makes sense. Well, let's step back a little bit. First of all, this has been fantastic. Thank you, Jordan. We're about out of time, but I want to talk about one final topic here as we wrap up, or one big topic and then a subset. So social commerce, you and I are both very bullish on this, obviously. I think we're really in the early innings. It's going to take off. I think meta is going to solve it. I think Google's going to solve it, or YouTube rather, with YouTube affiliate and YouTube shopping and things like that. But what are you guys doing right now with YouTube? So I know your focus is mostly TikTok shops, but you guys are doing some cool stuff on YouTube as well. So tell us about that.

Jordan West:

Totally. So we're beta testing something right now with a few really big brands that I, I'm so excited about, and these are creator ad reads, right? Within YouTube videos. The big issue as everybody knows is trying to actually get ahold of these creators and then negotiate with them. So we found an awesome partner that we are working with right now that does this using ai, and also there's all of the brand safety issues, all of this kind of stuff. We are seeing some insane, insane results with this right now. Nothing. You guys have seen

Brett Curry:

You paying them those creators on a CPM basis. So you're using this AI tool to find them. Then you're paying them on a CCP M basis or commission

Jordan West:

Them on the CCP M basis. Exactly. And the AI is taking care of all of the measurement and everything in the background. Wow. The cool thing is, is that you're actually only paying for the first 30 days of CPMs. Interesting. And YouTube gets better over time or the right videos. Do the right videos get better over time? They get the long tail on those videos, massive long tail on those videos. So it ends up being, so let's say you're paying like a $50 CPM at first, your CCP M ends up usually coming in at about half of that. The actual effect of ccpm plus, these are incredible reads, and they don't show up as ads. They're not skippable, right?

Brett Curry:

Yep. It's in the content, the creator, it's Mr. Beast. I don't know that he does that, but other creators being like, Hey, this is the thing I use and this is why I love it, Ridge wallets. It's how Ridge Wallets really initially got their hockey sick growth, and now they do a ton of stuff, biggest spinner on meta stuff like that, but they did live Nvidia reads with influencers or with creators on YouTube. That's kind how they took off.

Jordan West:

So to me, this is our foray at Social Commerce Club into YouTube until the YouTube, until YouTube figures out how to replicate what TikTok Shop has done. I just want to talk to that. They're working on it. They're working on it. I think they'll get there, but they're not there yet. For sure. I'll tell you why I'm scared about it is because their platform, YouTube's platform is not built for virality in the same way that TikTok is. We have a TikTok shop creator that has less than 10,000 followers who produce $250,000 of GMV last month, less than 10,000 followers. That's not the way that YouTube works, right?

Brett Curry:

Think the algorithm not that aggressive. You don't go that viral that quick. Yeah.

Jordan West:

Last time I checked, you have to have 10,000 followers to even be in the affiliate program versus TikTok. It's like anyone can go be a TikTok shop creator, and it's incredible the amount of people that are making careers out of this and literally paying their house off. It's wild. The people that are doing this YouTube has not yet figured that out, and I have talked to 'em many times and told them, here's your issues that you're having right now, is that not anyone can just go on there and do this. Right? And maybe that's on purpose. I don't know. I don't know. I think that it's going to be a really cool channel. I'm bullish on anything Google does. They do, right? So I

Brett Curry:

Think they'll figure it out. I mean, the creators are there, the viewers are there, the watch time is there, all the components are there. So unless YouTube just completely screws it up again and again, I think they're going to eventually nail it. But you're right, and content doesn't go viral as quickly. Back to my 17-year-old who I'm trying to convince to spend less time on TikTok, she's like, YouTube shorts. I think this is going to sound real professional, but I think the work she used was it's booty cheeks compared to TikTok.

Jordan West:

I've never heard that term before.

Brett Curry:

Isn't it funny? She's like, okay, that's a weird way to say it, but okay. She's like, no, TikTok learns you so quickly and the content is all really valuable and what I want, I don't get the same thing on YouTube shorts is what she said. So I think YouTube's got some things to figure out there, but I am bullish on it. I think they will figure it out. And so man, I love what you're doing within Nvidia live reads. Is that something you can share that source? So that's probably a little bit proprietary there, the AI tool and what you're using to manage all of that.

Jordan West:

As of right now, I'm going to keep that one between. Totally get it totally between you and me. So the interesting thing actually, we were actually, I was doing some sponsorship kind of stuff with them and I realized, and they came to me and they said, Hey, we have all these giant brands coming in and we thought that this tool could be used without an agency and actually it needs an agency.

Brett Curry:

Interesting, interesting.

Jordan West:

It needs somebody monitoring it and the AI cannot yet say approve these things and the brand safety is really important. So there has to be someone in the middle. So it's either a full-time person on your team or an agency. Right. Doing it. Totally makes

Brett Curry:

Sense. Totally

Jordan West:

Makes sense.

Brett Curry:

Awesome. Well Jordan, this has been fantastic, man. I absolutely love what you guys are up to. Love watching your journey, love doing the podcast swap with you. Super fun. And so if there are brands out there that are like, man, I need to get on this TikTok shop train, but I need someone who knows what they're doing to guide me through those three phases, how can they get in touch with you? Who should get in touch with you? And then how else can we get our daily fill of Jordan?

Jordan West:

Let's go to LinkedIn. I am very active on LinkedIn and Twitter, so you can go there and just search for Jordan West marketer over there. But we work with two levels of brands. So we work with the bigger brands on a full service sort of basis. You can go to social commerce club.com. That's the classic agency offering. There's something actually recently that we just launched right now that is in beta. It's called Tick TikTok Shop os Plus. The idea is that we actually walk smaller brands through who should not be hiring an agency who need to be doing this stuff on their own, right? These are brands under 5 million ish generally, and this walks them through their first six months of scaling from zero to a hundred thousand. We meet every single week. You can tap into all the resources that we have as an agency, but it's more of a done with you type of program. We are like, every single brand we talk to about this is like yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Because they want to learn the muscle. They just don't have the strategy or the expertise to do it, and we do.

So very

Brett Curry:

Excited about that.

Jordan West:

Love that,

Brett Curry:

Love that. And what's that called One more time? And that's all@socialcommerceclub.com.

Jordan West:

That's all@socialcommerceclub.com. That's called TikTok

Brett Curry:

Shop OS Plus. Amazing. Love it. Jordan, Wes, ladies and gentlemen, Jordan, really appreciate it, man. Ton of fun. Can't wait for round three or four, whatever it's going to be when we do this again.

Jordan West:

Absolutely. We not nearly as much time in between this time, Brett. Okay.

Brett Curry:

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Let's make it a regular segment. That's what we got to do. Love it. Awesome brother so much, Brett. Absolutely. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. What would you like to hear more of on the show? And if you've not done so, we'd love that review on iTunes. Makes my day, helps other people find the pod. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

‍

What does it take to build a skincare brand that not only survives but thrives for over two decades in one of the most competitive markets? In this powerful episode, Stefan Kalu, CEO and owner of Dr. Brandt Skincare, shares the remarkable journey of how a dermatologist's vision became a $100M+ beauty empire that pioneered the "doctor skincare" category. From surviving the tragic loss of their founder to navigating COVID-19 and a complete brand revamp, Stefan reveals the strategies, mindset, and bold decisions that kept Dr. Brandt at the forefront of innovation while staying true to their core mission: "Take the doctor home with you."

Key Topics & Insights:

• The Power of Product Positioning - How Dr. Brandt created an entirely new category by bridging clinical authority with accessible pricing, and why their "needles no more" philosophy resonates with customers 25 years later
• Surviving Without Your Founder - Stefan's incredible story of becoming CEO, then owner after Dr. Brandt's unexpected passing, plus how they evolved from a dermatology brand to "integrative dermatology" without losing their identity
• Retention & Loyalty Mastery - Inside their $49 Glowgetters membership program and how they've built products so effective that customers become "addicted" (their microdermabrasion hasn't changed formulas in 25 years!)
• R&D Innovation Secrets - How they work with University of Miami and their "Dr. B Experts" network across dermatology, nutrition, and psychology to create breakthrough products (including a micro-needle mimicking cream launching soon)
• Digital Transformation Under Pressure - How COVID forced them to pivot from 35% to 65% digital sales while executing a complete brand revamp, and their strategies for competing in today's content-saturated landscape
• Purpose-Driven Business - Why Stefan created the Dr. Brandt Foundation focusing on mental health and self-care before it was mainstream, turning tragedy into meaningful impact

Chapters

(00:00) Introduction to Dr. Brandt Skincare

(03:27) The Unique Aspect of Dr. Brandt Products

(07:10) Notes on Product Positioning 

(09:31) Balancing Clinical Authority and Accesibility

(12:21) Longevity and Staying Relevant in the Skincare Market

(16:16) Strategies for Customer Retention and Loyalty Programs

(21:21) Innovative Research and Development Practices

(26:55) Attracting Customers & Storytelling in Marketing

(30:59) Stephane’s Journey to CEO

(36:14) Mental Health Advocacy and The Dr. Brandt Foundation

‍

Stephane Colleu:

It's so important when you bring new people, they need to understand the history of the brand. They need to understand the DNA and what's really the value. I would say value of the company, yes, but the value can evolve, depend on the years, but the value of the brand.

Brett Curry:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG commerce. And today we are exploring the longevity, the growth, the innovation, the storytelling of Dr Brandt skincare. I love this brand, I love this category. You are going to learn a lot as we explore the story of how this brand has stayed relevant offline, online for multiple decades. And so lots to unpack. We're going to talk about product positioning. We're going to talk about r and d, we're going to talk about storytelling. We're going to talk about all kinds of ways to connect with consumers and how to increase loyalty and retention. It's going to be a fun conversation and so I'm delighted to welcome to the show, the CEO Dr. Stephane Colleu. And he's got an amazing story, just a charming individual. I can't wait to dive in. And so with that, Stephane, welcome to the show and how's it going?

Stephane Colleu:

Thank you Brett. Thank you for having me. I'm very delighted to be there and to be able to speak about our story and our journey and especially mine with Dr Brandt because I've been with the company for 23 years.

Brett Curry:

23 years. It's amazing. And yeah, you guys have stayed relevant for so long. I'm a huge fan. I've loved the skincare, haircare, personal care. I've loved those categories from a marketing and business standpoint. And so excited to unpack your story. But tell us, for those that don't know who Dr. Brandt is or what products you sell, give us a little bit of the background. What do you guys sell? What makes you unique?

Stephane Colleu:

Absolutely. So first and foremost, we've been one of the pioneering doctors skincare line in the beauty industry. It was early in 2000 that we can see the first doctor skincare line. And we were one of them. And it was very innovative at this time because for people who maybe don't remember, it was very basic. You used to be the mass and the prestige and that's it. And then suddenly there was this doctor skincare line that came out that provide very efficient with instant efficient products. And also the price point was quite a very good starting point for the consumer side. And this is where we start having our own success. And lucky enough, we have been scouting at this time early by Sephora that gave us a huge visibility and being distributed with Seron. And that's where the story started on the commercial side because initially the concept started with Dr. Brandts himself, with his own medical office, 1996, he starts selling his own products and knowing that he didn't want to recommend certain product, that he don't feel he was efficient enough. And then when he saw the potential, this is why he created a concept which was very revolutionary. Take the doctor on with you. So very simple. What I do, I'm trying to mimic what I do the best in dermatological procedures and take the doctor home with you, with Dr. Brian. It was the beginning of the advent for early in 2000.

Brett Curry:

I love that. Take the doctor home with you. We'll unpack that a little bit, but do your products, you kind have like a Botox alternative or compliment, microderm abrasion some of those things. Can you describe the products just a little bit and what makes them unique?

Stephane Colleu:

Yeah, really, and I think I should maybe highlight this point. We're still a private company today, which is pretty exceptional. Meaning that we, what we want, and I think in Amir for that to protect that we try to sell products that we believe in that truly deliver the promise inside of products. And Dr. Ba was so visionary, it became one of the most well-known dermatologists in the world. Why? Because it was the first dermatologist to use as anesthetic side, the Botox of the fillers. And he became the masters and started being part of the board of the biggest pharmaceutical company and tried to develop new ingredients and laser, new technique of injection. And he became the king of Botox. Having big celebrities now become Evangela. Everyone used to go in his medical office. We used to have two medical office, one in Miami and one in New York.

But also we used to do r and d with the biggest pharmaceutical company, which was for me very interesting because we were working on potentially new laser new ingredients, new delivery system that will be approved by the FDA, which is the food drug administration. And just because of that, we can see the future potentially before even the big corporation. And it was very inspiring for me and the team to dig in and to find news, idea new concepts, new innovation in terms of products. And Dr. Brian, like to get back to your question, was the first kit care line to bring your Microderm vision. And if you have told anyone early in 2000, you would do your own Microderm vision in your own bathroom, people would tell you it's crazy. No

Brett Curry:

Way. Yeah.

Stephane Colleu:

And Dr. Ben, I think what he was very smart and wise what he did, he used the same pharmaceutical, great crystal using his own medical office and these products became a masterpiece, became an iconic bestsellers. And as of today, this product is still sold after 25 years without changing any ingredients. That's amazing because they work and people is addicted because when a product course why you would change. And that was the beginning of the venture having the micro, and of course Dr. Van was one of the first in Caroline to invent Botox like products. Obviously it was the one we inject the most Botox in the world, but we wanted to create something for people first cannot afford an ejection, but we love to minimize expression lines. So also we try to be very truthful with our promise. We're not saying that every wrinkles will disappear, especially their wrinkle cannot disappear.

But expression lines, we have the technology in the delivery system to minimize expression lines. And that's why we created the release was our first Botox. And then a lot of Botox like products has been duplicated in the market, but we were one of the first to provide this new innovation and to be the trend, et cetera, in terms of Botox like products. And it came from Dr Brandt and that was the proper of the Brandt. Take the doctor home with you so you can have your own Botox like products that could be a continuity of what you do in a medical office and use that to minimize expression lines during the day. And for people who doesn't like the needles does the wrong process or cannot afford it, you can use a similar products that give you also the kind of similar effects. And that's why we try to provide to our customers, our patients and to the skincare market.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's so good man. And one of the things that I'm a firm believer in as a long time marketer, a long time entrepreneur is that product positioning and brand positioning means so much. And my favorite definition of positioning is what a product does and who it's for. But really bringing that to life in a visual way, a way you can really hold onto. And so this idea of bringing the doctor home with you, it's awesome, right? It communicates, hey, these aren't just standard results. This is not just your over the counter moisturizer, this is doctor grade stuff, the stuff you'd have to pay big money for in a doctor's office, but you get to do it at home. And so how do you guys think about positioning? How do you think about that line and how that influences other products? How do you guys view product positioning?

Stephane Colleu:

It's a good point. So when the story started, it was with a uniqueness to differentiate ourself and obviously it was to create this line, which is ours called we used to do today. It's called Needles No More, which is truly instant gratification products,

Brett Curry:

Needles no more. I love that. Yeah,

Stephane Colleu:

That's truly inspired directly from the medical office. That's why we have a Botox, we have a micro patient, we have an oxygenation, we got also no more baggage, which is poof and minimize inflammation around your high products instantly. And these products can be combined with your current skincare regimen even if you don't use DR Brandt's products for the rest of your portfolio. But as we have been evolving as a skincare line obviously was very important to start to create some collection that respond to the needs of oily and combination skin. That's why we got the al line that's focusing on pores for all in combination skin. We got also another line called Bright this way that is more focused on pigmentation and also brightness and uneven skin textures. We got also another one, it's called DTA dare two edge, which is more for mature. We give improved collagen elasticity and firmness the skin. So we got a variety of collection, but also we decided for a good purpose not to have 6,100 skew. We barely have 29 skew

Brett Curry:

Based

Stephane Colleu:

On different collection. So it's still very concise and for the purpose just to really focus on a very strong products assortments that allow us to target the right message with the right audience and not to overwhelm ourself and also the customer

Brett Curry:

Totally makes sense. And it's all about all of those products fit that line of bringing the doctor home with you and so that they all fit. And one thing, I know you guys talk about the tension between balancing clinical authority. So this is scientifically backed stuff, but also being accessible, right? Because we kind of think clinical authority, very expensive, very high price stuff, it's Beverly Hills, is Miami, something like that. So this clinical authority but with an affordable price tag. So how do you keep that tension? How do you view that tension?

Stephane Colleu:

It's a very good value point because obviously when Dr. Boy was there, Dr. Boyn had the philosophy that I'm trying to respect every day since we lost our bill, beloved Dr. Fred brand since April, 2015. And his message was the following one, I think a product should not exceed over than 1 50, 200. And why? Because if you can spend more, you can come to see me and I can give you a laser or whatever and I can fix exactly what you do. Because being more than 23 years on a dermatological field, I'm telling you I'm pretty amazed what the technology and how we've been evolving. Meaning that today if of course you see the right doctors, I can mostly solve any skin disorders or what you're facing because we truly have anything that can improve your skin type or the disorders that you're facing. So if you need to find a complimentary products, because I think obviously it's very important, you need to have your skincare regimen and this is what Dr.

We believe it's the same thing if you go to the dentist, you want to whitening your teeth. Yeah, you can whiten my teeth and I can pay for that, but if I don't clean my teeth day and night, I'm not going to do something very healthy for myself. It's the same thing for the skin. And because of that, we establish a price point that us today, if you look on our website, our price won't go from $35 until one 50. And sometimes our margin could be lower because obviously the DNA of this brand is to provide a very good formula. And I think if we have something that we truly achieve over this year is to have a very good reputation about our quality of other the products. And sometimes we spending little bit too much on a formulation that probably anyone would do it from the business side. But that's our way also to differentiate and that's what we believe as long as we afford, we're still pushing into this direction despite some time might not take a lot of sense if you want to get the best of the margin, but that's not our philosophy and we're trying to keep it like this. It always been since day one and I'm so happy we can still doing that after 25 years.

Brett Curry:

I love that. And the price point resonates obviously with consumers and your focus on not profit maximization, although nothing wrong with that obviously, but you really want to deliver a great product and delight customers. And so let's talk about the longevity for a minute. So been around for 25 years, even longer if you consider Dr. Brandt's clinic starting in 1996. But it's just hard. It's hard to stay relevant. Bands usually only popular for a few years. Products go out of style. What has been the key to your longevity and how do you stay relevant year after year, decade after decade?

Stephane Colleu:

This is a very good question and I'm going to try to answer from my own perspective and getting the chance being involved with this brand for now 23 years. I would say first people, I think if you're lucky enough to have people who have the passion and make it pause here, passion could be good and bad on a daily basis, trust me, managing people. But truly speaking, based on all these years that I face, when you have people and you're surrounding people with passion when you need them the most, when there's the most challenging time, you better to be surrounding with people who are passionate and they really believe on everything they do every day. So I think one of the reasons that we've been able to do it's to have this quality of people around this brand. The second aspect, I think after it's how you entertain and you remain truthful with the brand DNA and the identity of the brand.

And for me it's so important when you bring new people, they need to understand the history of the brand, they need to understand the DNA and what's really the value, I would say value of the company, yes, but the value can evolve depending on the years, but the value of the brand and this needs to be very well explained and I learned that. And believe it or not, I was very amazed about Esella order, Esella order. Every time I heard someone speaking about Esella order, they always try to remind themself what Este Lauder should have done if she would sit on my chair. And since I heard that it was 15 years ago, I said, wow, everyone should think like that. What Dr. Ben would think, because Dr. Ben was innovative, Dr. Ben was very bold. Dr. Ben was very cosmetic in a very unique way in so many way a sense of humor who was very known for and all this characteristic needs to be maintain. If you want to make sure the brand can resist on any challenges, you need to remain truthful with ourself, your identity and everything else. And then if I can say the third one, we have been, I would say lucky to be scouted by Sephora. Sephora has been one of the major retailers we're sitting in Alta, well

Brett Curry:

Totally, those two are the top retailers really, right?

Stephane Colleu:

But yes, they sell top on the prestige markets here they are. Otherwise you have Walmart and CVS, which is more the mass, but it's not the case anymore since the COVID happened. But just to give you also some insights working with Phora, you have to do a market week every quarter and every quarter you have to defend yourself. Whatcha going to launch in new innovation. And we were a private owned company and we were not the first year to be launched. So every quarter to do that for more than two decades has been exhausting but also very rewarding as well because one of the reason to answer to your question actually believe getting every quarter and to reinvent yourself, making sure you get the best of the best as being able to keep us in our, despite challenging time and having a high competition and such a congested market environment, it help us to maintain the level of high expectation that we should be able to deliver if we want to be lucky to still sell through all these big retailers channels that we have been selling our brand. Now things change lately with the digital, but getting back to your question, I think for 20 years, having every quarter to have a market tweak when you need to defend, if you go into be able to have co-eds or marketing or support from your own main chain of distribution was a challenge. And I think he helped us also to give our best every day, every year, every quarter.

Brett Curry:

So good. Yeah, there's no free rides. It's not one of those things where once you're in, you're in, you've got a constantly show that you can deliver, that the customer wants your product, that it's innovative, that it's good, all those things. And so again, kudos to you guys for being so relevant for so long. I know part of that goes back to retention of individual customers. So that's something you guys have excelled at getting a customer, retaining them, you've got loyalty programs and I know the Glow getters membership is super interesting to me. So talk a little bit about that. How do you guys view customer retention and loyalty programs and what have you done to increase the LTV and to get customers to stick for longer?

Stephane Colleu:

So it means first you need to understand better how you talk to them. And obviously today with digital, the beauty of it, you can segment and get a better understanding which one you would like to talk with based on what you have to offer or which kind of products you think you'll like to address that fit exactly with the kind of profile. So the beauty of the digital today, you get the data and the data allow you to be more specific and more driven in a way you want to speak and whatever you would like to speak about the products or what will be the offers. So that's not an easy exercise that you need to master. The more you master that, more you please and more you entertain a relationship. On our side, we're doing that today, but still we have a lot of space for, because I want to customize, I want to personalize more and more and this is what the doctor Skin Caroline should do, being able to personalize everything we could offer outside the product itself.

Because today you're talking about resilience, I don't want to jump to get back to the first initial products, but the market has been shifting a lot and to answer to new expectation from the customers and from the retailers, we decided to revamp the brand during the COVID, which was a very bold move. And we did that because we know that was the only way to answer to the new expectation from the consumer and the retailers. So getting back to your question, being more digital driven, allow us to segments, bringing some program, getting the loyalty program is one of them, the getters, it's something we want to speak with them because it's a kind of subscription program. And the subscription is very interesting also because people is willing to pay to get obviously a better offer on the long term, but give us the ability now to speak in a very different way than I would say the loyalty program or the current Sierra meeting. So all of that is a great way. Now what you do have also it's when you work with retailers, they do have this database, but unfortunately they're not access to the brand. So it's a question of negotiation. When you can get special VIB, which is the special people who spend the most in Sephora, you can also be part of this kind of program that allows us to have a different way to tackle the communication with this kind of customers.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, man, that's so good. Can you unpack the Glow getters membership? What does that cost roughly? I know that's something that could be changing over time, but how does that work and then how do you get more people to take advantage of that?

Stephane Colleu:

So you pay $49 and you are part of the program of glow getters and it give you a very good way to have a discount of the products itself. So then you can replenish yourself with, I would say a better offer. And at the same time you get direct communication from the brand that allow you to have access or different events or different package of being aware and having a products before anyone else. All these kind of advantages that we try to build that give you something very special and very unique that no one else can have access. That's the purpose of the locators.

Brett Curry:

It's amazing. And then how are you promoting that and then how are you increasing the take rate of the membership?

Stephane Colleu:

So still how we do that, obviously it's to use pay media, pay media to target audiences that we do it. And that's what we do with our agency to target the kind of profile. And sometime what I like the most me is to convert. To convert people already there on data and to convince them to the Gators. That's quite not an easy task to do it, but that's where we're trying to do and to execute because for me it's very valuable when you have a gloated set and it can increase this

Brett Curry:

Community. Yeah, totally makes sense. And I know you made a comment in the beginning that hey, if I'm using a Microderm abrasion product or I'm using this Botox like product and it works, why would I ever stop using it? And you're not constantly jacking up the price, you're still saying within that range Dr. Brant envisioned the products to be in. And so I know that's a big part of customer retention is it's a product that works and it's priced well. And so that makes a ton of sense. How do you then view product r and d? Because you've done a great job of defining your product position, staying true to that as you've launched in new lines, you got products that just absolutely work. How do you view r and d?

Stephane Colleu:

So the r and d, for us, it's definitely being innovative because this is what we've been known for and for that we need to master this piece. So how we do that, there's many way to do it internally, we have a process, obviously first 25 years of expertise that give you a lot of insight that you can use. The second one is we're working directly with the University of Miami since Dr. Brandt is not involved in the brand. And we also working with, we call the Dr B experts. This is a group of experts that we agreed to work with and maybe I should do a step back for the audience to make sure they understand the full journey of the DR Skincare. It could be

Brett Curry:

Great. We love that. We'd love that

Stephane Colleu:

Because we Dr. KinCare for the people who joined the show for 25 years and we were one of the first p Dr. Skin Caroline. And what happened is 2015 tragically we lost our bill, beloved Dr. Frederick Brandts in April, 2015. And it was quite difficult. Imagine a brand that is private owned that depending on his name, and that was obviously the visionary, the leader, and it was quite a difficult way to think how we pursue the best way. We'll have to probably to replace him with another doctors. But as I explained earlier, this guy was a genius, was very unique in so many way. And I don't think you can replace easily a person like this. And at the same time, I know this is what I learned with Dr Brandt, you need to challenge the status quo. And I saw already the holistic wellness approach that was studied on the food industry and also on the dermatological fields.

And this is what I decided that to pursue. And he was part of the philosophy of Dr. Biden already because he always explain your skin, you need to take care of the inside and the how you look good, you feel good and you feel good, you look good, very easy. But he works for everyone at the end of the day. So when we did that, we decided to become more than a dermatologist, Carolina and we call doctor brand. And today if you see our tagline is called Integrative of dermatology and integr of dermatology. For people who does know dermatology, it's a branch medicine that would take care and target skin disorders. And integrative is the tendency to unify separate things. And what that means, it's we're going to combine non-conventional therapy and I think it brings all the different fields of medicine. So today as we're getting back, to get back to your question on NPD, we're taking our inspiration for dermatology but for nutrition, for biology, for psychology, dermatology, and also we have a nonprofit organization focusing on mental health and self care.

So we build a different can of skills of expertise that we call the Dr. B experts. That was the nickname of Dr Brandt called Dr B. So we kept it like this and we said the doctor B experts and all these people allow us to find different venue to come up with ideas and direction that will be great for the consumer that allow us to evolve above and be beyond the dermatology brand. So getting back to your point, 25 years is good. We go also on mini show that shows different kind of delivery system, raw materials, but we're working with University of Miami as well. And last but not least, I think today that's the beauty of it. I think we discussed that earlier is the data, the data today, the data, it dictates a little bit what the consumer is looking for. Obviously our data is not as big, so I won't say that the data is dictating me what my NPD is, but I need to take into consideration certain parameters and this is what we do.

But the same day, in order to create uniqueness, we need to come up with things that no one heard about it. When we talk earlier, we said with Microderm vision no one knows what it was and we're one of the first Botox likes we're one of the first. And right now I'm very excited with bringing a new technology that will be launched in September. You will see it's something that will mimic the micro needles. I don't think it has been seen on the retail. It's very unique. You go on the cream and inside the cream you have the micro sponges that will heat your skin and hitch it but in a very uncomfortable but comfortable way at the same time. But the beauty of that, it'll open your pores and you're going to deliver very deeply collagen ingredients that will improve quite drastically in 48 hours. The collagen, the elasticity and the film nests very exciting about this new products coming up.

Brett Curry:

Amazing, amazing. I love that. And man, it really shows also in some of the awards you guys have won. I know in style, allure, travel and leisure, did I see that Oprah, didn't Oprah recognize one of their

Stephane Colleu:

Products many, many times We've been very lucky and fortunate that over these years a lot of people from the industry, despite, I'm going to tell you officially, we cannot afford an advertisement. We never put ads on magazine and anything else. And usually when you put ads it's easier I should say, to get some reports. So we got so many awards over the years just based on the products, on how the quality of the products. And so very happy that also continuing because like I just said, we just launched Rev months ago, we already received four five awards, which I was very surprised to get it so early. So it's very encouraging and also it's the beginning of the journey of this new revamping with our customer.

Brett Curry:

That's great. That's great. What have been your primary vehicles for customer acquisition? So how have you gotten the story of Dr Brandt and your amazing product line? Have you gotten that out there? How are you attracting customers? What's worked the best there?

Stephane Colleu:

Few things. First, when you're lucky to work with retailers, sometime you get access to things that they can give it to you. So they get some data, they can give you end caps inside the stores that showcase the products. And for that you need of course to be recognized, you need to negotiate depending on the terms of the people you're speaking with. On our side as a brand, there is two different way. One is the pay ads. Of course that is very important because you still need to chase new customers and the only way to do it is to have a relevant storytelling with paid media that can resonate. But that's not an easy exercise. It's very congested, it's very competitive. And the cac, which is the click power spanning customer getting more expensive every day.

So that's why we're forced also to make sure the organic side is very important. And for that today, I know I'm sure your auditors knows that, but the streamline it becoming more powerful every day and TikTok is one of them. I know Amazon is already there, but I think it's going to increase significantly how we streamline our products and having our own shopping inside. So that's something we're trying to get much better on a social and organic because we saw the power of streamline and the YouTube. So we try to educate. Educate is very important because I think it's a point of differentiation we can do better than the others. And the second one is to show a bit that system money or before and after that can showcase the quality of the products are delivering. So that's be our mantra that we're trying to push much more than what we have been doing the past few years. And now with this neuro revamping, this is something we're going to accelerate in the next months. That's so good. That's so good.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. And how do you guys view any philosophies to approaches to how do you tell great stories? How do you bring the benefits of the product to life? I know you mentioned before and after and I know you've got the doctor be experts and things like that. But any other thoughts on how do you tell the story in a powerful way?

Stephane Colleu:

Mia? I think I love to show when you can show a drastic result before and after. I think that's the best way because a visual will tell more than anything that we try to tell then after how you can tell the story, which is very interesting is today I would tell you this is what is so unique and the time we're living, I think there are no really rules because you can see a mic whole influencer that is going to resonate with not really a big audiences and she's going to have a better a I than potentially someone who get to million. Why sometime I don't have the explanation to be honest with you. So I think today I think it's to have a good understanding of who can talk about your products and how you're going to select these people. It's not an easy exercise, it's a conversation I'm having every day with the team and then can translate the story that could be customized in the way that where we're going to see the channels because we all know that TikTok request a different kind of content that if you do

Brett Curry:

YouTube it does, YouTube does totally, totally different.

Stephane Colleu:

So it's much more work for the brand nowadays. You need to customize constantly and adapt the content based on YouTube, based on TikTok, based on Instagram, based on the pay ads. And that's an exercise that you need to do mostly every day and build all the content that you should be enough for you to make sure you can capitalize and get the Hawaii. So I think that's the challenge of any brand lately, how you do that, how you push, how far, how much money you spent to make sure that is relevant. At the end of the day, I don't think there's a kind of recipe and I think the more difficulty is when you're not at $100 million company, how you navigate with all this cotton and spinning and that's an difficult task.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, well said. And then I think yes, sometimes it's finding those micro influencers, sometimes it's finding lots of different people to tell the story from their own perspective and that's going to resonate with certain audiences and so you guys are doing a great job of that as well, which is really impressive. So that's great. And then I would love to hear the story, so you've been with the brand for 23 years, you're the CEO been the CEO since 2015, is that right? 12,012. And so talk about that. How did you rise from helping with the European expansion and things like that to now being the CEO and CEO for a long time of the company?

Stephane Colleu:

So here's the true story, 24 years. I joined the company in 2002 and I studied on the US markets, I became market manager and I became pretty fast and been very key to become the national sales director and then a new management came on board. It was a very kind of nice way to ask me, but I took the challenge because international expansion did not exist. It is a true story. And I studied, I came with my small luggage in France and I have no clue what I was doing. And it was the beginning of SE to scouting international brand to bring it back in Europe and I was one of them. I think I was very, very lucky to be French. So I understand the French style and the demands and I can smooth the American branding with how it will fit with the European market.

And it was at the time that Ceara was willing to do anything to push all this more brand. They were doing extremely well in us and this is where jojo started. And I've been very key to expand in 35 countries in three years from 2005, 2008, then after they gave me the far east. So I was still managing all this international expansion from Paris until I became the new president and CEO in 2012. So during this time it was not an easy also for our brand for people to understand who was aware about the skin. Carolina. I went through five different C meaning every two years, two years and a half. Management and president was mostly dismiss. And I survived because I was the cashflow of the company to be honest with you. So when I came it was a big challenge. It was not an easy task and I was very happy to find a way to bring a vision and to explain to Dr.

Boy and you're acting in be like a startup, but you're already a brand and you don't realize that. And I realize how big it was with the two medical office, the RD and the skincare line. And I put all these entities as a trilogy and I put a vision that the vision and from the consumer, the consumer and from the goods and we can go that with the practice. And it was a very virtual positive circle that put us to explore ourselves and our size three times until 2015 and 15. This is where something very unexpected. We lost our bill of founders, Dr in 15. And just to get back and being completely truthful with your audience, because I know this is a question that has been asked for me for so long, I became by coincidence, the owners of the brand and it was the only way to save the company because at this time there was no one, the bank didn't want to backups.

It was a lot of people and a lot of praise. And I think I wanted to keep on what we were doing. It means the legacy of the brand and no one truly cared this time there was no backup, nothing was anticipated. So I decided to figure out how to convince people from the estates and becoming the new owner of the brand. I was lucky that everyone has been backed me up. I mean my team in skincare line, but also the bank. And this is where I became also the owners. And then after a new adventure study for me, I needed to prove the rest of the world that this brand can survive without Dr. Brandts, which I know we do because it's difficult. It's difficult

Brett Curry:

Without the founder and with the name, the namesake of the brand.

Stephane Colleu:

And this is where we bring this new vision, the integrity of dermatology, how we should evolve. And I think we'll try to do as best as we can. And then in 1920 the COVID happened, but we're mainly driven by brick and mortars, motor distribution, which was so hard for us. So I'm not going to lie to you. For people who sometimes saw our brand much less, we suffer a lot because of the COVID, because we shut down our brick and mortar and we were not as strong as a digital as we should have been. We knew that we were in a process of building our digital and during this process and the COVID, this is where the study to do the revamping, which was crazy, but I think there was the only way to make sure we the ability to pursue the next 10, 15 years. And I'm so happy because I'm telling you, the past two years we have been shifting. We're mostly driven at digital at 65% now. It's amazing. It's amazing. The Rev thing is it just ending this year? So now we mostly revamped the whole brand and a very happy that we multiply by twice for the past two years, our website, which show me that the consumer has been very well welcoming, this new revamping on top of chasing new customers. So this is where we are, but there's been my journey with the brand.

Brett Curry:

It's an amazing journey from kind of getting pushed out to saying, Hey, okay, I'll help you in France. And then you became the cash cow of the business, five CEOs come and go. Finally you become CEO become owner. And yeah, it's tough to lose the face of the brand for sure. You stepped in there and then COVID for a retail focused brand. Come on. I mean glad you had some digital focus already, but I know that accelerated things and was not a welcome news. And so kudos to you man. Entrepreneurship is hard, running a brand is hard and you guys just seem to answer the challenge no matter what the challenge is. So kudos to you guys for that. And then one thing I want to kind of close with because I know this is near and dear to your heart, and it's a really cool thing you're doing. You guys talk a lot about mental health and mental health. It's popular now or it's acceptable to talk about now. You guys really leaned into mental health before it was popular. So talk briefly about that. Why did you decide to do that and why did you decide to do that at a time when it wasn't all that acceptable?

Stephane Colleu:

But thank you for letting me know to speak about it because it's very close to my hearts. When I lost Dr. Brown, as you can imagine, I was very close with him. He was like a motto, was a friend. He was the godfather of my kids. And I just tried to educate myself and educate, understanding what depression means, and I have no clue. And when I dig in, I realize what people start knowing today. This is a dramatic statistic and I saw how many people are depressed, but no one used to talk about it.

Brett Curry:

And

Stephane Colleu:

At this time I decided I cannot hide how he passed away because internet was already everywhere.

And it was at a time where also company needs to chase. How are you giving back to the community, how you define yourself? And I told everyone, no guys, it's very easy. This is part of our story. We should not be ashamed, but I think we should find a way to embrace it. Let's correct the doctor Brandt, foundation, and we're going to focusing on multi life. And at this time it was very bold because a lot of people told me, and I did my checking, if you look on the beauty industry, you got Mac who did an incredible job about HEV eight on the nonprofit organization is the one who raised more money every year. We got also a state order with the breast cancer and we got over causes that also is discussed. But at this time in 15, no one talk about health and self-care. So I decided to create the Dr. Brenton. Our first action was to do what we knew the best is mostly doing marketing action to s the conversation around health and self-care. And this is what we have been doing. And now we're going to celebrate out 10 years of the Dr. Brand Foundation. This year of 2025, this is where we are. So 10 years that this foundation has been created. Great. So great man. And

Brett Curry:

Yeah, some people could have hid from the story or run from the story or just hope people would forget about it. You guys leaned in and said, no, let's honor the legacy. Let's do something about this. And so he started the foundation and kudos to you guys. So with that, we are out of time, Stephane, but really thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for being transparent. Thank you for talking about all the great things you guys have done through the ups downs, the twists and turns of building a brand. And so kudos to you guys and keep up the good work.

Stephane Colleu:

Yeah, thank you. And thank you for having me, Brett. Thank you so much.

Brett Curry:

Bye. Absolutely. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear more from you. If you found this show helpful, powerful, please share it with somebody else. And if you'd like to leave a review on iTunes, that helps other people discover the show. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

‍

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:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

I love it.

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

Irish triplets.

Brett:

Okay.

Miki:

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

Brett:

It's insane.

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

By "their vibes".

Brett:

That's awesome.

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

That is crazy and amazing.

Miki:

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

Brett:

Unfathomable, yeah.

Miki:

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

Brett:

Yeah.

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

Yes, so true.

Miki:

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

Brett:

Amazing. And it's called WILD, correct?

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

Yeah. Nobody wants healthy pizza. That sounds cardboard.

Miki:

Exactly.

Brett:

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

Miki:

AB testing, literally like email, subject heading.

Brett:

I love that.

Miki:

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

Brett:

Fascinating.

Miki:

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

Brett:

It doesn't matter, yeah.

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

Yeah.

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

Yes.

Miki:

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

Brett:

You're like, this is amazing.

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

None of that.

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

Patent pending.

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Brett:

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Brett:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

They take up the whole fridge, exactly.

Miki:

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

Miki:

Hi, Stan.

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

For sure.

Miki:

Yeah.

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

Like the Bellagio fountains?

Miki:

Bellagio fountain.

Brett:

I got to see that, then.

Miki:

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

Brett:

It's a curiosity play, yeah.

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

Yeah, totally makes sense.

Miki:

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

Brett:

It's a healthy tension.

Miki:

A healthy tension, yeah.

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

Nice. Royal flushes.

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

They're so engaged.

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

Not yet.

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

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

Miki:

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

Brett:

You get an insane press on it.

Miki:

[crosstalk 00:46:07] ...

‍

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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