The Sugatan Effect Podcast

Deividas and Kristaps catch up on all things influencer marketing after their last podcast 6-7 months ago. Now things are a bit different. They discuss the process that goes behind making $350K/month in influencer marketing, Kristaps breaks down his exact process for emailing 400+ influencers in a week, shares some of his favorite influencer outreach tools, platforms, and more.

In this podcast, Deividas is joined by Saul Colt, the self-proclaimed smartest man in the world, to talk about non-traditional forms of marketing. Saul shares his stories of successful marketing stunts (from skywriting to a naked fashion show for a belt company), talks word-of-mouth marketing, and describes how to approach personality-based marketing...

In this episode, Deividas talks with Emma - Sugatan's new PR consultant on her background, how she gets things done, and what's it REALLY like to be working in PR. Emma shares her stories from working in different ad agencies, her process on how to get magazines to write about you (without you having to ask), and the importance of storytelling within your brand. Be sure to also keep an ear out for what Emma recommends to those just getting into PR...

It’s been almost 2 years since Kris founded Sugatan. And now, to take us back, Kris and Deividas share stories, lessons learned, successes, and failures in testing creatives and running the agency. She explains some of the most important conversion-driven principles when it comes to creatives, different marketing tactics, and biggest lessons learned running the agency.

Deividas and Holly (Sugatan's video ad director) discuss what goes behind creating the winning video ad. Holly talks about her process, standard operating procedures, and lessons learned being with Sugatan and scaling businesses for the past 2 years. She explains how to get your video ad to stand out, and some of the best video practices for brands to scale.

Deividas and Kris are back at it again. This time, they come around to discuss how to start a brand new eCommerce business from scratch, the importance of a proper workflow, and how to plan for success. Kris explains her new contextual process for finding the winning eCommerce product, and how she would plan everything out step-by-step...

Deividas and Arnas discuss generating $12M in monthly revenue using Facebook Ads, testing different creative types, their mindset change, and more. Arnas explains what changed since the last time they spoke (when they were discussing how to spend $80K profitably in Facebook Ads), discusses some of the biggest potential needle movers in the industry, and the importance of thinking big...

In this episode, Deividas and Jure catch up for the first time since Jure’s visit to Lithuania.

Jure, the CEO of WeScale and all-around expert in influencer marketing and eCommerce scaling, first reached out to Deividas in 2019 with some advice on scaling his business. 

And now, he’s back to talk about all things influencer marketing, how he got his start, eCommerce scaling, and more.

When Jure first got his start in digital marketing, around 6 years ago, it was a completely different scene. Back then, he was just trying to learn digital marketing, spending up to $22 a day, and getting little to no mobile conversions (because sites weren’t even optimized for mobile back then!).

Now, Jure shares his experience with scaling up from $0 to $50 million in just under 4 years.

He talks about the process behind the secrets of his success: influencer marketing and localization.

Jure also explains his secret sauce for working with influencers - the content creation process, and how his approach to influencers’ content has changed since then. 

He realized that in terms of content creation, if the influencers created the content themselves, the agency could start using it for ads.

He explains how he went all-in on user-generated content, and even decreased the budget for in-house production.

This move, as he found out, was well worth the ROI...

So, he started sending influencers the products and told them what kind of content they needed. Before, influencers didn’t want to start pushing the products to their followers. But now, Jure would start receiving 10-20+ pieces of content from each influencer. Content which he could use as high-quality ads.

Suddenly, he had gone from wanting to produce up to 100 pieces of content per month, to producing over 200+ high-quality and converting content instead.

Eventually, the content they received from influencers started performing much better than the in-house content they were using before.

After this, Jure starts to talk about the 2nd half of his success: localization.

Deividas agrees that, in theory, localization sounds like a lot of work.

Jure, meanwhile, explains how he was “forced” into localization.

Because he had started in Slovenia, he realized that there weren't a lot of people in the country to begin with (only ~2 million)! 

So, he quickly branched out to Croatia - as the payment methods were similar. From there, he translated all the landing pages, reached Germany, and that’s when he started scaling quickly…

Only to encounter even more issues in Germany.

People weren’t used to buying products via cash-on-delivery (COD) there and would return a lot of the products delivered. Jure learned that he had to handle unexpected challenges while scaling on the go.

Jure also discusses his experience with other sides of scaling up. Including outsourcing, logistics,  localization, and going glocal - global with a local approach.

He also talks about putting out fires as an agency-owner, and how he’s had to react quickly when they’ve suddenly lost 40% of their sales in just 15 minutes.

Now, moving forward, he and Deividas talk about their goals for 2020: how their mentality and process changed, lessons learned, and what they hope to accomplish in the future.

Kris Sugatan and her right-hand Ad Buyer, Eimantas Spitrys, have a candid conversation around what it takes to become a really good Facebook Ad Buyer, how long it takes to master the game, what are the success factors that contribute to a successful account, and bust all the myths that are out there about Media Buying. 

When Sugatan was looking to hire a new Ad Buyer, we had around 35 applicants for that position. Eimantas stood out from all of those people, even though he had been doing it for less than a year, at that point. Discover which qualities were the most important ones for Eimantas to take this position and why he is so great at what he does. 

Here’s what we cover during episode #28:

• What makes Ad Buyers one of the most important roles in any eCommerce business?
• Why is being an intern at an agency first, is the best way to learn?
• What Eimantas thinks about working alone vs. at a small agencies vs. at amazing Sugatan
• Why is Sugatan soooo amazing to work for?
• The truth about factors that lead to successful eCommerce businesses
• Do you know what the main benefit of hiring an agency is? HINT: they’re bringing with them a body of knowledge of not just one account, but of multiple accounts
• The secret to building an agency trifecta: high quality video ads/creatives, email marketing, and CRO
• What you must do to become a really good ad buyer: fine tune your intuition 
• Build a successful ad account + get a min. of 2x ROAS in Ads Manager by testing, testing, testing (audience, campaign structure, creatives, etc)
• The secret to finding your most successful ad, according to Eimantas is running 70-100 tests per week
• Don’t fear that your ideas aren’t good enough! All ideas have equal value prior to testing
• Perfect spelling is the way to go on ads, right? WRONG! Misspellings work - sing me up vs. sign me up generated 75% of sign ups 

Thanks for listening! And most importantly – apply the acquired knowledge to your business!

Find Eimantas:

• Eimantas on Facebook
• Eimantas on LinkedIn

Find Kris:

• Kris on Facebook
• Kris on LinkedIn 
• Kris on Instagram

Links mentioned in this episode:

Udemy

eCommerce Growth Hacks | Facebook Ads, Creatives, Email & More | by Sugatan

Previous 3 episodes:

John Hagan – Attribution Models, PR and Getting From 8 Figures to 9

Deividas & Kris – Scaling eCommerce Brands During Covid-19

Erika Zeigyte – Behind The Scenes Of Hiring A-Class Team Members

     In this episode, Deividas has invited John Hagan, the Director of Growth at PURELEI, back on the show for his second visit on the Sugatan Effect Podcast. John has worked with brands that have over 100 employees and has helped to scale them over 8 figures.

     Deividas & John touch on their annoyances that the current pandemic is bringing to them. Luckily, they are both able to earn money working from home, but they’re still human beings with social needs and habits, which are currently limited. 

     What are some of the most common misconceptions about attribution? Is it really such a big problem as some companies portray? John gives us his two cents about this controversy. Also, it seems like Deividas is up to something. He says that the person, who solves this issue, might have billions rolling in his bank account. John had a meeting with the director of global media at Adidas and he discovered that no one, not even multi-billion companies have been able to solve this issue.

     They compare direct response campaigns against brand identity campaigns. How do you balance these two? Which one is better and in what situation? Are they even comparable? John just happened to be reading a book about this particular topic and once again expresses his opinion about these two types of campaigns. Interesting fact - you can make a baby, named Branded Response.

Here’s what we cover during episode #27:

• How COVID-19 is interfering with their lives
• Direct Response vs Brand Identity campaigns
• The one problem, no one in marketing business has solved
• John’s journey of building an attribution model
• Insights from Adidas marketing
• Who is the North Star of attribution, according to the director of global media at Adidas
• What’s the bible of attribution? The best literature on this topic, according to John
• Deividas is getting suspicious
• What is econometric modeling?
• Benefits of data driven companies and should you hire a data analyst team?
• Will brands, which have scaled during the pandemic, keep their status after it’s over?
• How did Deividas get achieve big revenues using the pandemic to his advantage?
• Donald Trump’s email subscription

Follow John:

• John on Facebook
• John on LinkedIn
• John's podcast series

Find Deividas:

• Deividas’ Facebook
• Deividas’ Linkedin
• Deividas’ Instagram