eCommerce Evolution

Molly Pittman is a bit of a legend in the digital marketing space.  Bartender turned marketing intern for Ryan Deiss, turned VP of Marketing for Digital Marketer, turned entrepreneur - Molly’s story is an inspiring one.  And she flat knows her stuff!

In this episode, we dig into some real gems.  We do go pretty deep on what’s working now on Facebook, but we also talk about the benefits of building an in-house team vs. the benefits of an agency.  We talk about entrepreneurial lessons and what life is like in Amsterdam (where Molly currently lives).

Here’s a look at what we cover:

• Why being fluid might be the most important entrepreneurial trait…and why it’s important for digital marketers
• Why curiosity and fascination are crucial in our current marketing landscape
• What is CBO and how it’s impacting Molly’s Facebook ad campaign and what you should do about it.
• What are the 3 facets of Facebook’s new Quality Ranking and how to optimize your ads
• How low quality rankings can dramatically drive up costs or get your ads shut down
• Plus more

Charles Livingston knows a thing or two about rapid growth.  He turned a supplement offer into a 12 million per year business. And now his Coffee Company - Lifeboost Coffee has grown 1,000% in less than 1 year. 

What’s the secret to this kind of growth?  Good Marketing and becoming a “yes” company.  

Charles is also known for having his picture displayed in every single Ezra Firestone presentation.  And this isn’t any old picture. It’s a shirtless pic of Charles all swole up wearing a stethoscope. Yes, there’s a story behind this that we dive into in the podcast.  

More importantly, here’s a breakdown of the keys to rapid growth we breakdown on this episode:

• Become a “yes” company.  How saying yes more has led to a shockingly low 1.5% refund rate for Lifeboost Coffee.
• Why clarifying your message is key to scale. ‘
• How to find your hook and your hone in on a powerful positioning statement
• How to engineer a great customer experience framework
• How to charge a premium and make customers gladly pay more
• How to encourage subscriptions and improve your “stick rate”
• What’s better - building a brand on Amazon or building a brand off Amazon?  
• Plus more!

I recently saw Rachel speak at an agency event in New York City.  I was blown away. Rachel has quite the resume.

Forbes listed Rachel as one of its “30 under 30 Who Are Changing The World”, Fast Company named her one of "The Most Creative People in Business", AdAge named her one of "The Most Creative People of The Year," Entrepreneur named her one of the "50 Most Daring Entrepreneurs," Inc named her to the “Female Founders 100,” and the list goes on and on.  After being the Global Director of Digital and Social Media at Gap Rachel traveled the world for 100 days and then founded MikMak, the first native commerce platform for the social video generation. 

Here’s a look at what we cover:

• Why big companies like Facebook and Google and Amazon are at war for first party data. 
• Why Rachel believes in the philosophy that if you give up your first party data, you give up your brand.
• Rachel believes that today’s funnel starts at the consideration level first and that true brand building and loyalty start after the first purchase.  
• Lessons from Kylie Jenner and Native Deodorant
• Rachel’s thoughts on Twitch and how it might be a glimpse into the future 
• Social is the world's largest mall and point of end checkout...are you treating it that way?
• Plus much more!

Matt Clark is the Chairman and Co-founder of Amazing.  Amazing is the company behind the most successful info product/training course of all time - Amazing Selling Machines.   He and his partner Jason Katzenback also run SellerCon - one of the leading events for Amazon Sellers.  

In this episode we take a quick look into what’s new on Amazon and then we dive deep into a subject I’m quite passionate about - making better decisions.  I’m not sure of another skill more valuable than this one. This doesn’t need you need to always be right...you just need to get it right. We share a great Steve Jobs story in the podcast to illustrate this point.  

Here’s a look at a few of the topics we cover:

• Confirmation Bias - and getting it right vs. being right
• Mitigating Risks - with lessons from Sarah Blakely and Richard Branson.  Here Matt shares how he wasted $1million in Ad Spend when he could have tested with only $20,000.  Also we discuss the the Fire bullets, then cannonballs framework from Jim Collins.  
• Diderot Effect - This deals with how to handle success and how success can lead to bankruptcy.  We also discuss 2nd and 3rd order consequences.  
• Keep a decision log - Why and how and what this looks like for Matt. 
• Some of Matt’s favorite books on the subject
• Plus more!

If you’re currently running ads to cold audiences - whether that’s on Facebook, YouTube, Google Display Network or anywhere else - you need to consider where you’re sending that cold traffic.  Do you send it to your home page? Product detail page? Those options can work, but you need to test sending traffic to pre-sale content.  

What is pre-sale content?  To explain, I brought in one of the foremost experts on the subject, Lindsay Marder.  

Lindsay Marder is a self-proclaimed content marketing nerd.  She served as Managing Editor for Digital marketer for 4 years.  Now she’s working with brands to spread their missions and engage with customers.  She’s also the Co-founder of Digital Strategy Bootcamps with Molly Pittman and John Grimshaw.  

Here’s what we cover on the show:

• What is pre-sale content?  
• Why pre-sale engagement content is PERFECT for cold traffic, especially paid cold traffic.  
• Real-world examples including the legendary 5 make up tips for older women - page used by Ezra Firestone and Boom by Cindy Joseph.  
• How Third Love used pre-sale content to show women everywhere that they were putting on their bra all wrong.  
• How do you identify topics using free Google tools and some simple online research?
• How to let customers write your ad headlines and content headlines for you. 
• What can you learn from 5-star and 1-star reviews from your competitor’s products (this is so brilliant).  
• Dos and Don’ts for the page itself
• Plus more!

What’s the ultimate metric you should measure to grow your business?  Smart direct response marketers might say Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) or Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).  Advanced direct response marketers might say Lifetime Customer Value. But what does John Grimshaw say?  Well, you’ll have to tune in, but I’ll give you a hint? It’s CVV.

John Grimshaw is traffic Marketing Director at Smart Marketer.  He runs a consulting business called Data Centric Marketing. More importantly than any of that, he’s wicked smart.  

I LOVE this episode.  Here’s a quick look at what we cover:

• What is lifetime customer value (LCV)?  Why it’s important and why it’s so tough to calculate.
• How should you calculate LCV and why it’s such a head-scratcher for most entrepreneurs.  
• Why LCV is often a flawed or imperfect metric and why Customer Value Velocity (CVV)  is a better metric for scaling your business.  
• Real world example of how to use CVV to scale?
• Why you should ignore the canned Lifetime value metric in Google Analytics (but we got nothin’ but love for GA in general.  Just not this metric.).
• John’s favorite tools and resources for measuring CVV.
• Plus more!

Building an irresistible culture.  Creating raving fans. Treating your customers like friends of 10+ years.  These are some of the philosophies that’s taken LiveBearded from a single product lifestyle business to now a leader in the men’s personal care space. 

The only thing more impressive than Anthony Mink’s beard is the culture of raving fans he and co-founder Spencer Bryce have built together. 

Mink has gone from traveling to 30 countries in 7 years to now having a warehouse, office and an incredible team.  

This episode is critically important to any eCommerce company.  Especially as competition heats up and more and more products are becoming commoditized.  

Here’s a look at what we cover:

• Why culture is the most valuable asset you have
• How adding value should be your objective ...but this doesn’t always mean cash value.  
• Why every touch point matters and how to create memorable experiences
• How Live Bearded has created its own mottos and lingo that fans have adopted.  
• Treat your customers the way you would a friend of 10 years
• Your main job is to build raving fans
• Some crazy Live Bearded stories
• Plus more!

Kiri Masters is the founder & CEO of Bobsled Marketing and marketplace institute and host of ECommerce BrainTrust. Author of Amazon Expansion Plan and new book Amazon for CMOs.  We talk Amazon a lot on this podcast.  I wanted to have Kiri on to discuss her philosophy both in how to expand and how to manage growth.  We discuss some really interesting topics including:

• What CMOs of big brands know about Amazon that we don’t
• Who you need on your Amazon team
• How to assemble your own all-star Amazon team?
• How to take advantage of the full Amazon stack rather than just focusing on one area.
• Plus more!

Arri is a whizkid of sorts when it comes to messenger marketing and SMS marketing.  At the ripe old age of 22 he’s leading his team at Conversmart and has worked with some pretty impressive brands including Tuft & Needle, Poo-Pourri and the Beard Club just to name a few.   

I know very little about SMS marketing for eCommerce so I was super excited to have Arri on the podcast to learn how he does it.  We both spoke at Ezra Firestone’s event in Seattle a few months ago. I was so impressed by his talk that we immediately scheduled a time to record the podcast.  

Here’s a quick look at what we cover on this episode.  

• Some stats around mobile usage related to text messaging that are important to note?
• How does SMS marketing compare to email marketing
• What are some of the top ways eCommerce companies should consider using SMS marketing
• How to grow SMS subscribers
• Most common SMS campaigns and tactics with some real examples
• How to combine SMS + email + messenger for mind-boggling results

To date, this was one of my favorite episodes to record.  Partially because I love Amazon and love hearing behind the scenes stories from people who’ve worked there.  Brad does share a couple of great stories. 

Mostly I love this interview because the advice shared is pure gold.  Brad Moss has a unique perspective on business and growth. At Amazon he served as the first business lead over all of Seller Central.  To say he’s had the inside scoop on seller central would be a gross understatement.  

 I met Brad at an event in Miami.  When I found out he was a former Amazonian I was eager to find out a few things - 1. A good Jeff Bezos story.  2. What is was like to work there. The stories he told when we met and the stories told on this episode did not disappoint!  

In this episode we cover some pretty powerful lessons including:

• How Amazon thinks about and deals with areas of the business that stop growing.  As you might guess, they don’t have warm and fuzzy sentiments here.
• How Amazon looks at analytics…this is truly brilliant.  Understand how Amazon decides what data to measure, and what to change to get better results.  This is part of the key to Amazon's speed and their ability to scale successfully.
• Two mindset shifts that Amazon looks for in their employees that will help instantly make you a better entrepreneur.
• A few funny (and potentially painful stories) about how little Amazon celebrates successes.  These stories underscore the Bezos mantra that “it’s always day one.”
• Top mistakes Brad sees Amazon sellers making and how to avoid them.
• Plus more!