The Ecommerce Influence Podcast

Quick win: How to maximize your time and grow your business without giving up all your time. Prioritizing and delegating tasks to get more done.

Key Takeaways:

• Putting the most important things first
• How to compartmentalize

Resources:

• Grab our FREE Founders Growth Pack
• Brand Growth Membership (Join today for $1 for 7-days)
• @BrandGrowthX on Twitter
• Review or subscribe on iTunes

Sick of expensive acquisition costs? This is how to grow a brand with organic TikTok (read: no ad spend).

This episode features the founder of a hemp cigarette company. And guess what - he can't advertise on Facebook or Google due to the nature of the product. So, he had to get super creative to figure out how to acquire customers and get in front of people.

After several failed attempts he found massive success with organic TikTok.

He did $500k in revenue in year 1 with no paid ad spend, and no employees while working full time at his agency. All because of their viral TikTok videos.

This is also an interesting vantage point because the brand made its own videos (and he was the one making them). So it's a little different than the other TikTok success stories with influencer marketing out there right now.

Episode Highlights:

• 7:33 How to launch a business when your ad account gets shut down
• 10:07 Marketing and positioning for a novel product
• 12:01 Do you start with product development or marketing?
• 13:50 How to identify areas you need to hire for
• 18:19 Content creation strategy: how to manage it internally
• 23:52 How to Grow a Brand With Organic TikTok
• 24:45 Why SEO is important again
• 27:00 Easy and quick ways to track influencer performance
• 32:19 Incentivising word of mouth
• 35:04 Thinking long term customer journey
• 39:52 Opportunities for growth in eCommerce right now

Resources:

• The Brand Growth Membership (Join today to get 7-days for $1)
• @BrandGrowthX on Twitter
• Review or subscribe on iTunes

Quick win: How to respect your time, your team's time & be a more effective and efficient company.

Key Takeaways:

• How to set expectations
• Using impact filters to have more effective meetings

Resources:

• Grab our FREE Founders Growth Pack
• Brand Growth Membership (Join today for $1 for 7-days)
• @BrandGrowthX on Twitter
• Review or subscribe on iTunes

Nora Wolf is a PR expert and specializes in getting brands tons of press. She takes a modern approach to PR and uses a mix of media strategies including a unique take on influencers as press.

She shares her tips and tools on how to get media for your eCommerce business.

Episode Highlights:

• 5:16 What's exciting in PR right now: getting back to live events
• 7:25 Running PR with a small marketing budget
• 9:24 Earned media vs affiliate marketing
• 11:13 How to know when your brand is ready for a PR strategy
• 12:21 Where to start when building a press list for PR
• 14:46 Tools to keep track of your PR lists
• 16:44 Writing content that gets picked up
• 19:49 The types of content that work well for PR
• 23:29 Shifting to be a story brand over a discount brand
• 25:33 Applying design thinking principles to your business
• 30:34 Avoiding burnout and staying focused
• 34:07 Influencers as media contacts
• 39:41 Channels that work well for an influencers using a media strategy
• 42:38 The biggest mistakes people make in influencer marketing
• 44:42 Metrics & KPI to track for influencer marketing
• 47:00 Using PR as social proof
• 48:50 PR & influencer marketing without having to seed product
• 50:31 Why you need quality content and good creative

Resources:

• Nora's Training: How to Get Press Like a Publicist
• Wolf Craft
• Wolf PR
• The Brand Growth Membership (Join today to get 7-days for $1)
• @BrandGrowthX on Twitter
• Review or subscribe on iTunes

Quick win: When things are going wrong in your business how can you take radical responsibility, shift perspective and ultimately solve the problem.

Key Takeaways:

• It's easy to blame, but where does it actually get you?
• Stop putting bandaids over issues - find solutions that last

Resources:

• FREE Founders Growth Pack
• Brand Growth Membership (Join today for $1 for 7-days)
• @BrandGrowthX on Twitter
• Review or subscribe on iTunes

How to grow a bootstrapped brand from nothing to 8 figures by thinking outside the box to drive organic traffic with influencers and TikTok acquisition.

Jason Wong started his first eCommerce business when he was just 15 years old. Since then he's become one of the top marketers and entrepreneurs in the space.

He's built a framework to build bootstrapped brands up to 8 figures using organic TikTok and influencer content.

He was one of the first to see TikTok as an opportunity. As a forward thinker, he has a lot of ideas on what the future of eCommerce looks like and where the opportunities for growth are.

Episode Highlights:

• 3:33 Jason's start in eComm (at 15!)
• 7:00 How Jason manages his competing priorities and many interests
• 10:06 Hitting $15MM in one year (without outside investing)
• 13:30 What's working with influencers on TikTok right now
• 16:58 How to find influencers and get quality content from them
• 21:05 The difference between Instagram and TikTok influencers
• 22:05 Building a content creation system for UGC
• 27:04 Tools & tips to manage and track influencer partnerships
• 29:58 Driving acquisition through organic TikTok
• 31:01 Where to start on TikTok
• 34:43 Are 10-minute videos on TikTok working?
• 36:12 Pairing organic TikTok with SEO
• 39:26 What the next opportunities in acquisition are: content & SEO
• 43:04 Wins with loyalty & referral
• 44:57 Personalization & tech opportunities coming to eComm

Resources:

• @EggrolI on Twitter
• Jason's Shopify Course: How to Develop and Manufacture Your Product
• The Brand Growth Membership (Join today to get 7-days for $1)
• @BrandGrowthX on Twitter
• Review or subscribe on iTunes

Key Takeaways:

• Taking time to get away from the weeds
• Using offsites as a way to get clear

Resources:

• Brand Growth Membership (Join today for $1 for 7-days)
• @BrandGrowthX on Twitter
• Review or subscribe on iTunes

The top questions from eCommerce owners right now - answered. (hint: are Facebook groups dead = no!)

These are questions that have come up either in the Brand Growth Membership forum or in our member's office hours calls recently.

This episode is designed so you can walk away with an answer and an action to take.

If you have questions you want to chat with us about check out the membership.

Episode Highlights:

• 4:54 What's the state of business - are we optimistic or pessimistic?
• 9:03 Austin's thoughts on the impact of Russia/ Ukraine war
• 13:51 Building a community on Facebook: are Facebook groups dead?
• 19:49 Raising capital & how to bring in a partner
• 23:35 Facebook shops opportunities to increase conversion
• 26:03 Personalization, quizzes & better lead capture

Resources:

• Training: How to Build a Quiz Funnel
• The Brand Growth Membership (Join today to get 7-days for $1)
• @BrandGrowthX on Twitter
• Review or subscribe on iTunes

Quick win: How to use landing pages to optimize for conversions by testing and creating a better experience.

Key Takeaways:

• Using landing pages to test site design
• Landing pages to improve ad performance

Resources:

• Brand Growth Membership (Join today for $1 for 7-days)
• @BrandGrowthX on Twitter
• Review or subscribe on iTunes

Tips on running and selling a business from an exit entrepreneur who never planned to sell.

How can you build a business that both you and future you will benefit from? This episode covers the steps to growing a business you can sell.

My guest (and friend) Jared Nations shares his lessons, tips, and learnings from recently selling his business. His story is interesting because his plan had been to keep running the business as a cash flow business and never sell. After a cold offer, he changed his plan and pivoted.

This episode gives you an inside view to what selling a business looks like and what you can do to prepare your business (even if you're not planning to sell).

Episode Highlights:

• 6:36 COVID impacts on business growth
• 10:52 Getting a cold offer to buy
• 13:51 The layers of building a deal to sell
• 15:03 Why you should position your business as a strategic acquisition when selling
• 17:34 What makes a deal successful
• 18:58 Running a business for growth
• 20:44 Learnings from the selling process
• 25:57 Not having a single point of failure that the owner is involved in
• 27:47 Building a business for the future you
• 30:45 Hiring while in an intense growth period
• 33:26 Creating culture in a remote team
• 39:04 How many meetings is too many meetings
• 42:01 Understanding what the people on your team value
• 46:17 Business models and mistakes when trying to innovate

Resources:

• @nations_jared on Twitter
• The Brand Growth Membership (Join today to get 7-days for $1)
• @BrandGrowthX on Twitter
• Review or subscribe on iTunes