If you're a regular podcast listener, you'll know that I've been involved with something called the 5 Minute Pitch. It's a show where we offer up and coming ecommerce entrepreneurs the opportunity to grow their businesses. This season, we had 32 people make their pitches to us for the chance to win $50,000.

Going into the second round, we've whittled down the contestants to 17. You can watch the final three pitches from Round 1, as well as the deliberation episode on YouTube.

Today, I'll be talking to someone who made the cut. Dawn LaFontaine owns and runs Cat in the Box, a company that sells stylish cardboard boxes for cats. She was featured on the very first episode of 5 Minute Pitch and got a "yes" from all 5 judges.

Dawn left quite an impression on me with her presentation. She has such an infectious personality and a good business story that I thought it would be great to share that with our listeners through an Under the Hood episode.

In this episode, she and I discuss some strategies she could use to drive and convert traffic. These include:

• Getting into interruption marketing by targeting Facebook groups that are cat owners
• Looking at the subset of those cat owners who are homeowners

Join season two of 5 Minute Pitch by filling out and submitting the application form.

If you're interested to get onsite advice from Mike and have your business be featured, sign up for the EcomCrew Roadshow today!

Join this month's giveaway and get the chance to win an annual Premium subscription for free.

Finally, if you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!