eCommerce Evolution

Prime Day is one of the biggest shopping events of the year.  We now fully expect Prime Day to land in June of 2021 (at the time of recording this podcast we were still uncertain of whether it would be June or July).  OMG’s Amazon Director, Chris Tyler and Amazon Specialist Amber Norell join me for this week’s episode to break down what we’re expecting for this year’s Prime Day and what you need to do to get ready.  

If you do nothing as an Amazon seller, you’ll likely see some lift in sales for Prime Day.  If you use some of the tactics we discuss in this podcast, you could generate some record sales days for your brand.  Here’s a look at what we cover in this episode.  

• Prime Day discounts and coupons - which is usually better and how to structure your offers.
• Amazon Live! - a perfect complement to your Prime Day deals
• Lightning Deals
• Amazon posts
• How to maximize your storefront for Prime Day
• Does and don’ts to get your listings ready for Prime Day

Plus more.  Listen to the full episode or read our complete Prime Day Blog here.

Matt Clark knows what it takes to scale a business.  He’s the CEO of Amazing.com the creator of the most successful information product of all time - Amazing Selling Machines.  

He’s also the co-owner of Lifeboost, a company that he and his business partner Charles Livingston have grown from just $17k per month in sales to over $2 million in monthly sales in just a few short years.  So that begs the question - How did they do it?  That’s what we dive into in this episode.  We discuss their keys to scale both from a marketing and a product development standpoint.  Here’s a snapshot of what we cover:

- How focusing on the hook, headline and offer in their ads allowed them to scale from a few thousand in spend to over $400,000 in monthly Facebook spend.

- Their simple approach to testing and optimizing that doesn’t require any fancy software or split testing tools.

- How they are building their business to sell to the right investors

- How they forecast and measure to make sure they are constantly improving and hitting targets

- Mistakes they made while expanding their product line and their new approach to developing products

- How to better listen to customers

- More!

Myth: marketing texts are annoying.

Truth:  bad marketing texts are annoying.  Good text messages foster customer loyalty and drive sales.  

Ready for the 4 Keys to powerful text marketing right now?  While text marketing isn’t overly complex, there is certainly a right way and a wrong way to approach it. 

81% of all shoppers have signed up for text messaging from a brand.  Customers are clearly open to receiving texts from you.  If you approach text marketing strategically, your customers will even welcome your texts.  Arri B is here to show you how to effectively do that.  Here’s what we cover in this episode.  

• Choosing the right text platform

• No list, no bueno.  Learn the most effective ways to build a list fast.

• Using your text list to build community

• What to text?  Learning an effective content strategy for your text campaigns

• Optimizing and split testing 

• Plus, more!

How would you like to generate a whopping $250k in sales on a new product launch without running Facebook ads and without offering deep discounts?  Sound impossible?  It’s not.  It’s the magic of Gated Launches.

So what’s a gated launch?  It’s a product launch that’s only available to VIPs or top customers.  While it may sound complex, it’s really not.  It does take some work to build a VIP community. But, if you do it right, it’s actually pretty easy to maintain.  In this episode Jordan West, founder and CMO of Little and Lively, a children’s apparel brand, breaks down how his gated launches have generated as much as $120k in sales in the first two hours after going live.   

Here’s a look at what we discuss in this episode:

• The psychology behind gated launches and why they are so powerful
• How to build a healthy, vibrant VIP group that is low maintenance
• How to foster the proper buying mentality in your VIP group
• How to harness VIP feedback for new product development
• The secret of using personalized 1-to-1 videos
• Plus more

If you’re like me, then you're fascinated by the stories of “tech geniuses.”  I never get tired of hearing the origin stories of great tech startups and geniuses behind them (The Social Network is still one of my favorite movies).  In this episode I interview Shawn Livermore, author of the new book Average Joe: Be the Silicon Valley Tech Genius.

Shawn’s new book uncovers some of the magic behind blockbuster tech products like Gmail, Dropbox, Snapchat, Ring, Bitcoin and more.  We bust some long-held myths and underscore how you can learn from the success of tech icons.  Here’s a look at what we cover:

• How moving slow is the new fast in some key areas
• How believing you have to be a genius to succeed in business (even tech)  is a myth
• How to properly incubate ideas and allow your brain to work the way it works best
• The story of Gmail and it’s creator Paul Buchheit 
• The story of Polaroid and how to innovate

How quickly can you find the following key metrics from your business?

Contribution margin. 

Inventory turn ratio.  

Return on inventory (the other ROI).  

If you struggled a bit finding those answers (or if you just want to go to the next level), you need to listen to this episode with John Canetta.  This episode was super fun for me and the content is what separates eComm companies who just get by vs. those who thrive (and end up with big exits).  It’s a must-listen for serious store owners.   

You HAVE to know your numbers.  And your P&L may be lying to you and you don’t even know it.  

• How his hedgehog concept allows him to consistently hit 80% margins vs. 40-50% like some of his competitors.
• His piggybank metaphor and how it shapes his decision making
• Marketing is fun, but operations are where your profits are
• Understanding your numbers and making it SIMPLE - 
• How to look at and use Post Aggregate Gross, Contribution Margin, and Return on Inventory to hit his goals
• John’s 3 keys to business success

Brennan Agranoff was building spreadsheets at age 13.  He learned a little HTML in High School.   Growing up playing club basketball in Oregon with Nike HQ in his backyard, Brennan saw the appeal of custom socks as a young teen.  So he launched his first eComm brand called HoopSwag at age 13.  Brennan is a master of creative growth ideas.  He combines that with an intense focus on product and process development and automation.  We talked about both growth ideas and process automation at length in this episode.  

• How creative gifting has opened up his Micro-micro influencer approach
• How to go from VA to automation
• Always asking “how do I remove myself from this?”
• How Brennan shares a similar philosophy to Amazon to automate anything repeatable
• The comparison of good code to good process development
• The power of good mentors
• Plus more

If you sell a great product, then no doubt you’re getting referrals.  Referrals are great, but just waiting for them to happen on their own is NOT a formula for rapid growth.  Referral programs are a proven, but underutilized strategy for growing eCommerce brands. In this episode, I interview Arlen Robinson, referral marketing specialist, podcast host, and co-founder of Affiliate Software. We dig into some powerful points to help you take your referral marketing and affiliate marketing to the next level.  Here’s a look at what we cover:

• What’s the difference between referral, affiliate, and influencer marketing and how they each impact your business.
• To incentivize or not to incentivize?  Understanding the when, why, and how of referral incentives.
• Creating a viral loop to get customers into your referral program
• Tools and approaches to make it easy
• Plus some real-world case studies

This eCommerce power couple is ON FIRE.  They are cranking out AMAZING products on Amazon and growing fast.  More importantly, they’re having fun in the process.  

More surprising and impressive than the growth is that they’re married, work together and, wait for it...still like each other!  

We uncover some really powerful lessons in Amazon growth, business growth, and maintaining healthy work relationships.  I hope you enjoy listening to this as much as I enjoyed recording it!

Here’s a look at what we cover:

• How to pivot and grow
• How being in the right role to compliment each other is super important (whether you’re married to your business partner or not)
• Mistakes in hiring the wrong people and how to get this right
• How to know when and how to “let it go” and not get your feelings hurt
• How Tenacity and passion create the ultimate 1-2 punch
• Learning from your successes - a great tragedy is business is succeeding and not know why you succeeded.  
• Knowing your super power and using it consistently

Facebook is still a land of opportunity, but it is NOT currently smooth sailing.  The most powerful storm right now is, of course, privacy concerns.  Namely, the iOS 14 update and how it will impact advertisers' ability to track and optimize campaigns.  Facebook’s ability to track users everywhere online as they did in the past is going to be severely limited.  Whenever I talk to Facebook advertisers right now, uncertainty is the best way to describe their outlook on the platform.   

In this episode, Bob and I tackle some really key issues facing Facebook advertisers right now.  How do we continue to scale and maintain CPAs in the face of privacy changes?  What kind of video ads are working right now?  What data do we focus on and optimize toward when some data is taken away?  Bob is the author of a brand new book - The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising (4th edition).   And he owns a company that specializes in creating authentic video content called feed stories.  

• Spend 80% of your time on your offer and on your creative
• What is the conversion API and why you need it
• The power of interview-based video ads
• How you should think about audience targeting right now
• How targeting based on engagement metrics such as watch time on a video ad can be just as effective or MORE effective than retargeting landing page visitors.  
• While Facebook is pushing for shorter videos Bob is finding success with :60 to :90 videos consistently
• How changes in online platforms is creating a renaissance of sorts for marketers