The Ecommerce Influence Podcast

I have a fascinating episode for you today. This week, Andrew Foxwell sat down with Jason Moser, a senior analyst for the Motley Fool investment research team. You might be wondering why we are interviewing someone who helps people pick stocks for a living. It turns out, Jason's whole job at the Motley Fool is to research and analyze companies in the e-commerce sector and learn how they are innovating.

This is a big picture episode and they talk about a whole bunch of things. Andrew and Jason get into talking about Wayfair and Amazon. They also talk about the state of ecommerce, Shopify, Facebook, Instagram, and a bunch of other things. I think you'll really like this episode and I look forward to hearing your feedback on it. Enjoy!

Episode Highlights

• 6:05 How Ecommerce brands are innovating the marketplace.
• 9:00 The two trends you should be exploring if you're a growing ecommerce brand.
• 11:27 How creating your own version of Amazon's "Prime Day" can generate revenues greater than Black Friday.
• 13:52 What Shopify is doing to help their clients grow their brands.
• 17:20 The 1 thing Dollar Shave Club has done to grow their business and how you can use it to grow yours too.
• 22:26 What your customers are really looking for (Hint: it's not a discount).
• 30:00 The future of ad products on social networks and their perceived value for advertisers.
• 38:56 The one tip you should always follow if you plan to invest in the market.

Links and Resources

• Motley Fool - Money Podcast
• Motley Fool - Market Foolery
• Motley Fool
• Brand Growth Experts
• Foxwell Digital

Become a Member

If you liked this episode, you're going to love the Brand Growth Experts Membership. It's a community of top ecommerce business owners and marketers who I coach one-on-one to help scale up their businesses. Together we'll create a plan that will help you scale up your business, and then I'll help you execute it.

If you want to make sure you're growing as quickly and sustainably as possible, click here to learn more. Hope to see you on the inside!

Sponsor

This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo. If you're running an ecommerce business and sending emails to your customers, you should be using Klaviyo. It will help you find out who your best customers are and target them one-to-one to make more money.

I've been using Klaviyo since they were just two employees. Now they have a team of 150 and are rolling out new features almost weekly. If you aren't already a customer, head over to www.ecommerceinfluence.com/klaviyoand you'll get a free trial + priority on-boarding.

Today's episode was inspired by a conversation with a colleague about building audiences and stockpiling potential customers for use in Q4.

Last year, he said he put $10,000 into audience and list building for Q4. He expected he would be able to use those audiences but he had no idea when or the return on ad spend he would get.

He believed if he brought people in, told the brand story and got them in his remarketing and email lists, he'd be able to earn back his investment. Off of that $10,000 investment he made almost $150,000 and basically spent all his Q4 ad spend just retargeting those lists. Didn't do any prospecting.

This is important because right now is the time you should be thinking about your Q4 strategy. This is the time when the people who are going to have their most success through the holidays are starting their prep. And that's what this episode is going to be about.

Enjoy!

Episode Highlights

• 8:00 How running engagement ads with the intent of being "social" will help you build an audience you can re-target and warm up over time.
• 11:00 Why lead generation ads are a great way to learn about your customer while building a more qualified audience for Q4.
• 13:45 How providing value through Messenger ads could lead to a huge with in Q4 this year.
• 15:17 The importance of using the "view content" objective in a Facebook conversion ad as you ramp up to Q4.
• 17:00 Why now is the best time to work on dialing in your lead capture and how a quiz funnel may be the way to go.
• 18:13 The number 1 thing you can do to ensure you have a stellar Q4.
• 20:40 For those who are managing accounts or reporting results to others, here's how to set the expectation for Q4.
• 22:16 Not sure where to start for Q4? This is what you should be doing right now.

Links and Resources

• Brand Growth Experts
• Foxwell Digital

Become a Member

If you liked this episode, you're going to love the Brand Growth Experts Membership. It's a community of top ecommerce business owners and marketers who I coach one-on-one to help scale up their businesses. Together we'll create a plan that will help you scale up your business, and then I'll help you execute it.

If you want to make sure you're growing as quickly and sustainably as possible, click here to learn more. Hope to see you on the inside!

Sponsor

This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo. If you're running an ecommerce business and sending emails to your customers, you should be using Klaviyo. It will help you find out who your best customers are and target them one-to-one to make more money.

I've been using Klaviyo since they were just two employees. Now they have a team of 150 and are rolling out new features almost weekly. If you aren't already a customer, head over to www.ecommerceinfluence.com/klaviyoand you'll get a free trial + priority on-boarding.

Today's guest has a really cool business. He creates beautiful custom designed maps of National Parks, Mountain Ranges and Hydrology of states. And if you've ever been in an REI, you've probably seen his work featured in all their stores.

In today's conversation, we were able to catch up with Jared Prince and learn how his business has changed over the last year.

We brought him on to talk about the sustainable growth he's built into his business and how he has done it. He shares feedback from 6 months after attending both Intensives Andrew and I hosted in February. He shares what's been going well, and how he thinks about growing his business after 5 years.

Enjoy!

Episode Highlights

• 9:40 What happens when the PR "buzz" wears off and how to turn it around.
• 13:33 How building an email list and properly segmenting that list has helped grow business for Muir Way.
• 14:42 The one thing Jared says Facebook and Instagram ads are great at generating for business.
• 16:10 Launching a new product? Here's how Muir Way just made a big splash with their new release.
• 18:22 How Jared's role has changed within Muir Way as the business continues to grow.
• 20:28 How offering a chance to win the "right" prize for subscribing to an email list has improved Muir Way's subscriber quality vs just a discount on purchase for signing up.
• 23:51 The two ecomm remarking strategies Muir Way has not implemented and why they were not a fit for the brand.
• 25:56 How A/B testing of one small copy change led to a 5x difference in ad performance.
• 28:02 The one thing ecommerce brands should be talking more about when scaling their businesses.

Links and Resources

• Jared at Muir Way dot com
• Muir Way
• Brand Growth Experts
• Foxwell Digital

Become a Member

If you liked this episode, you're going to love the Brand Growth Experts Membership. It's a community of top ecommerce business owners and marketers who I coach one-on-one to help scale up their businesses. Together we'll create a plan that will help you scale up your business, and then I'll help you execute it.

If you want to make sure you're growing as quickly and sustainably as possible, click here to learn more. Hope to see you on the inside!

Sponsor

This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo. If you're running an ecommerce business and sending emails to your customers, you should be using Klaviyo. It will help you find out who your best customers are and target them one-to-one to make more money.

I've been using Klaviyo since they were just two employees. Now they have a team of 150 and are rolling out new features almost weekly. If you aren't already a customer, head over to www.ecommerceinfluence.com/klaviyoand you'll get a free trial + priority on-boarding.

Have you ever wondered what makes the difference between brands that scale and those who don't? A couple of months ago, I was asked this question on an interview with Kurt from the Unofficial Shopify Podcast.

After re-listening to the episode, I decided to share it with you. Kurt asks great questions and I outline my entire philosophy on growth. It's especially timely to talk about scaling given the recent sale of MVMT Watches to Movado for $200 million.

In this episode, we talk about defining a growth strategy, scaling your advertising, and how to hire the team necessary to get to the next level. I also share what I've learned from working with some of the fastest growing brands in the country.

Enjoy!

Episode Highlights

• 4:30 How Austin has helped many brands scale from $500k to $1MM.
• 7:00 Why it is so important to do almost every job in your business before turning it over to someone else.
• 8:27 The big differences between the Shopify brands that scale up and those that don't.
• 12:00 How to remove tasks from your plate so your business can scale.
• 14:20 These are the core KPI's that Austin uses to understand his client's scalability.
• 15:56 Understanding what your net promoter score is and why it is so valuable to ecommerce brands.
• 23:00 The point at which Austin regularly sees businesses die out and how you can overcome it.
• 30:17 Everyone wants to scale their business but it does come with a few downsides.
• 33:45 How PR has helped many ecommerce brands become successful before they ever were.
• 39:34 The questions you should be asking yourself to help you define your success.

Links and Resources

• Dean Jackson
• Unofficial Shopify Podcast
• Brand Growth Experts
• Foxwell Digital

Become a Member

If you liked this episode, you're going to love the Brand Growth Experts Membership. It's a community of top ecommerce business owners and marketers who I coach one-on-one to help scale up their businesses. Together we'll create a plan that will help you scale up your business, and then I'll help you execute it.

If you want to make sure you're growing as quickly and sustainably as possible, click here to learn more. Hope to see you on the inside!

Sponsor

This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo. If you're running an ecommerce business and sending emails to your customers, you should be using Klaviyo. It will help you find out who your best customers are and target them one-to-one to make more money.

I've been using Klaviyo since they were just two employees. Now they have a team of 150 and are rolling out new features almost weekly. If you aren't already a customer, head over to www.ecommerceinfluence.com/klaviyoand you'll get a free trial + priority on-boarding.

Mike Danner is the VP of Digital Marketing for Ancient Nutrition (formerly Dr. Axe) the largest natural health website in the world with over 20M visits a month.

Last year, they landed at #35 on the Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Companies in America list and was the #1 fastest growing company in Tennessee in both 2016 and 2017. To top things off, in March of this year they received a $103M investment for a minority share of their business. To say they are "scaling quickly" is an understatement.

I had the pleasure of getting to know Mike last year when I hosted a Private Intensive Workshopat their headquarters in Tennessee. He is razor sharp and very practical, which is on full display during this interview. He's become an expert on hiring (out of necessity), and shares the inner workings on how they've managed to keep the business powering through unprecedented growth.

This is an interview I've wanted to bring you for a long time. Enjoy!

Episode Highlights

• 7:12 How scaling your business will lead to your role in the business changing over time.
• 11:36 Why Dr. Axe was able to scale so quickly and overcome their failures quickly.
• 17:20 Here are the tactics that Mike is thinking of as he looks to 2019 and beyond.
• 21:10 The two reasons why you should be connecting/staying connected with thought leaders.
• 26:28 The one quote (of many) that Mike uses as a guide for success.
• 27:49 Mike's process for hiring incredible talent in places you'd least expect to find it.
• 30:37 The two hacks Mike uses (and you can too) to hire incredible talent.
• 37:46 The one question you should asking people in your network to find the right talent for your job opening.
• 45:40 The one thing you can do now to see results by the end of the week.

Links and Resources

• Ancient Nutrition
• Dr. Axe
• Drive (book) By Daniel Pink
• Drive (Ted Talk) By Daniel Pink
• Brand Growth Experts
• Foxwell Digital

Become a Member

If you liked this episode, you're going to love the Brand Growth Experts Membership. It's a community of top ecommerce business owners and marketers who I coach one-on-one to help scale up their businesses. Together we'll create a plan that will help you scale up your business, and then I'll help you execute it.

If you want to make sure you're growing as quickly and sustainably as possible, click here to learn more. Hope to see you on the inside!

This is part two of a two part episode on Youtube Advertising for Ecommerce. If you haven't listened to the first episode in the series, I would start there.

If you have listened to the first episode, I hope you enjoy the 2nd part of my conversation with Tom Breeze of Viewability.

We get into the details of who should be using Youtube Ads (and who shouldn't), the difference between advertising on FB and Youtube, a discussion about creative, and a lot more. I call this a 101 episode because I intend it to help you go from knowing nothing about them to understanding whether or not they would work for your business.

Enjoy part two of this very informative episode!

Episode Highlights

• 1:47 Telling your brand story on Youtube and how to get it right.
• 5:29 What level of quality your video needs to be successful on Youtube.
• 9:48 How much you should budget for testing Youtube ads and where to find the easy wins.
• 12:42 How Google will, fairly quickly, start to tell you where to find your converting audiences.
• 14:13 Want Youtube ad inspiration? Here are the brand's Tom thinks are doing it right with their ads.
• 16:25 Here is Tom's cascading video strategy & why it converts and also keeps users from getting video fatigue.

Links and Resources

• Viewability
• Tom Breeze
• Brand Growth Experts
• Foxwell Digital

Become a Member

If you liked this episode, you're going to love the Brand Growth Experts Membership. It's a community of top ecommerce business owners and marketers who I coach one-on-one to help scale up their businesses. Together we'll create a plan that will help you scale up your business, and then I'll help you execute it.

If you want to make sure you're growing as quickly and sustainably as possible, click here to learn more. Hope to see you on the inside!

For the last few months, I've been getting a lot of emails asking about Youtube Advertising. And for good reason. Andrew and I spend a lot of time talking about what's working on FB and IG and email, but very little time talking about Youtube Ads.

It's not because I'm holding out on you. Frankly, it's because I don't know a lot about them.

I've never run Youtube Ads and have always thought of them as a bit of a black block. To remedy that, I brought a best-in-class guest (Tom Breeze of Viewability) on the show to explain how you can use them to grow your business.

We get into the details of who should be using them (and who shouldn't), the difference between advertising on FB and Youtube, a discussion about creative, and a lot more. This a 101 episode because it will help you go from knowing nothing about them to understanding whether or not they would work for your business.

Enjoy part one of this very informative episode!

Episode Highlights

• 5:31 Why you should be paying attention to Youtube ads now.
• 7:53 Not quite sure of the placements and ad types on Youtube? Here are your best options.
• 11:14 The big difference between Facebook & Youtube audiences: why Youtube says their viewers are "leaning In" and looking to buy.
• 11:52 The 4 reasons people go to Youtube and how you can leverage this to connect with your audience.
• 15:13 How to tell if Youtube ads will work for you and your business
• 19:33 How Google develops what they call similar audiences to automatically help you find your audience
• 26:02 Why Youtube ads can be a great way to remarket to your other social traffic to give an omni present feel to your brand.
• 28:17 The importance of your brand story and how it is peril to a successful Youtube (or any) ad campaign.

Links and Resources

• Viewability
• Tom Breeze
• Brand Growth Experts
• Foxwell Digital

Become a Member

If you liked this episode, you're going to love the Brand Growth Experts Membership. It's a community of top ecommerce business owners and marketers who I coach one-on-one to help scale up their businesses. Together we'll create a plan that will help you scale up your business, and then I'll help you execute it.

If you want to make sure you're growing as quickly and sustainably as possible, click here to learn more. Hope to see you on the inside!

Intro: If your Facebook and Instagram Ads have been struggling recently, you're not alone. Performance across Facebook and IG has been down for a number of businesses over the last few months. Wallowing in despair can be therapeutic, but it won't get you anywhere. When things are going poorly, how do you turn it around?

In this episode, Andrew will walk you through what many of his coaching clients have been paying him to do recently...which is to help them get back on track.

You're going to learn steps you can take to turn your failing advertising campaigns around. He'll discuss how to assess what's working and what is not, share some tools and tactics to help understand delivery metrics, and talk about what is actually working now. Enjoy!

Episode Highlights:

• 6:28 The questions you should first ask when assessing your failing Facebook Campaigns.
• 8:25 The metrics Facebook uses as core signals when serving your ads.
• 9:29 The 4 metrics Andrew regularly reviews and the ideal benchmarks he's looking for.
• 11:15 Why your Facebook & Instagram campaign performance is likely getting held up in these two places.
• 13:12 Why you should be using the Delivery Insights tool and what you should be looking for.
• 17:52 Why relevance score is sometimes more important than if the ad is converting.
• 20:15 The placements you should be using and how you can test allocating spend.
• 22:20 From failing to scaling, here are the next steps to build your ads back up.

Links and Resources:

• Ecommerce Influence Podcast Episode 136
• Ecommerce Influence Podcast Episode 146
• Delivery Insights
• Brand Growth Experts
• Foxwell Digital

Become a Member:

If you liked this episode, you're going to love the Brand Growth Experts Membership. It's a community of top ecommerce business owners and marketers who I coach one-on-one to help scale up their businesses. Together we'll create a plan that will help you scale up your business, and then I'll help you execute it.

If you want to make sure you're growing as quickly and sustainably as possible, click here to learn more. Hope to see you on the inside!

Today's guest is no stranger to spending money on advertising. But as you'll learn, nowadays he's more focused on delivering an amazing customer experience than optimizing his ad spend.

Babak Azad is the former SVP of Media & Customer Acquisition at Beachbody. During his time there, his team spent over half a billion dollars in media and acquired over 10 million customers through their website, on Amazon, and over the phone. Those are some big-time numbers.

In today's episode, we discuss the danger of falling into the "Cost Per Acquisition > Lifetime Value Game" and share a few surprising things most ecommerce businesses are missing in their quest for scale. This is an exceptional episode with an exceptional guy!

Episode Highlights

• 6:15 Chicken or the egg: Babak's thoughts on pushing sales vs brand awareness to build a brand.
• 8:44 Why customer experience is not just about online UI and UX.
• 11:31 The one thing you must do to create a great customer experience.
• 12:00 How being different can increase your sales and improve your customer experience.
• 13:30 The surprising thing that most ecommerce sites are not focusing on.
• 16:00 How shout-outs, badges & leaderboards help Peloton dial in their customer experience.
• 23:30 The 4 buckets Babak uses for breaking up and creating a great customer experience.
• 25:00 Why you need to understand who you're serving and what they really value.
• 28:55 How niching down and clearly speaking to your core customer can really help you succeed.
• 31:47 These are the metrics you should be reviewing to track customer experience

Links and Resources

• Babak's Blog: Crafting Amazing Customer Experiences
• Brand Growth Experts
• Foxwell Digital

Join the Membership

If you liked this episode, you're going to love the Brand Growth Experts Membership. It's a community of top ecommerce business owners and marketers who I coach one-on-one to help scale up their businesses. Together we'll create a plan that will help you scale up your business, and then I'll help you execute it.

If you want to make sure you're growing as quickly and sustainably as possible, click here to learn more. Hope to see you on the inside!

I just completed a successful two-day Private Intensive here in ATX with a client. We floated down the Guadalupe River and even played a little Top Golf, but most importantly made some big improvements to their website.

In today's episode, I want to share a big win we got from those two days so you can replicate it at home.

Problem:The client had seen a 10% drop in conversion rate over the last month. The last 9 months were rock solid consistent, so it was very strange. A 10% drop in CR cost them around $35K a month!

Solution:We installed HotJar and activated the screen recording function. After running a Google Analytics for exit pages and watching screen recordings, we identified a bug preventing users from customizing the product they wanted. It was literally stopping people dead in their tracks! After identifying the bug, the devs fixed it in a few hours.

Episode Highlights

• 2:43 How a drop in conversions may be the result of issues (a bug) on your site.
• 4:46 Why step one should always be to confirm your inventory and that you are not out of stock on key products
• 6:27 Once you've used HotJar to record your site user's journey, here's what you want to look for.
• 7:12 What you should look at first once you've defined your top exit pages.
• 11:24 How a screen recording coupled with a screen shot can help your dev team quickly correct site issues and get you back to converting.
• 14:15 Recap: The 3 steps you can take to making sure your site is converting the best it possibly can

Links and Resources

• Hot Jar
• Brand Growth Experts
• Foxwell Digital