The Take Traction Show - Ecommerce Marketing Advice

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Building a true following on social media is no easy task. And the truth is, there aren't any shortcuts. It takes a lot of great content over a long period of time to build a following of people that really care about what you do.

Providing you're already doing this (or you've at least got a game plan), there ARE a few things you can do to help get your Facebook page off the ground.

Over the past month we've been experimenting with Page Like ads on Facebook and we've been amazed by the results; getting page likes for as cheap as $0.01! That's literally as cheap as it gets.

Want to find out exactly how you can do the same? Tune in to today's show.

• Episode #32 – How to A/B test Facebook ads on a small budget

Our podcast content is free, but we just have one favour to ask: If you like the show then make sure to subscribe but most importantly, please leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. You really have no idea how much it helps.

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Today's show was born out of frustration. Frustration from seeing so many brands running crappy giveways on Instagram.

You know the kind I mean... they partner up with another brand to giveaway a product of theirs. They then publish an image on their Instagram accounts and in the description they outline how you can enter into the competition.

It's usually something like:

1. Follow us on Instagram

I'm not here to tell you this doesn't work. It does! But there's just so much more you could do!

Imagine putting in the exact same amount of effort but getting 5 x the results. That's exactly what you can do when you apply the strategy outlined in today's podcast.

Enjoy!

Links and Resources:

• Giveaway tools:

• Gleam.io – my personal favourite. Cheap and super effective

Our podcast content is free, but we just have one favour to ask: If you like the show then make sure to subscribe but most importantly, please leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. You really have no idea how much it helps.

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If you haven't heard someone talking about A/B testing in the past 5 years then it's time you come out from under that rock.

A/B testing has been a huge topic of conversation amongst marketers for a long time now. And there's a very clear reason why: A/B testing generates better results.

10 years ago, A/B testing wasn't something the average Joe could do. It required either a very advanced and pricey piece of software or your very own development team. For people like you and me, it was just something heard people talking about but couldn't really ever try for yourself.

Well, this is 2018, and the landscape is a little different my friend. A/B testing has become a native feature to thousands of online tools and now, even Joe doesn't have an excuse for not running some experiments from time to time.

One of those tools that has now created native A/B testing features is Facebook Ad Manager.

Previously, running A/B tests for your Facebook ads could get quite messy, sometimes requiring you to manually create hundreds of ad sets, one by one, just to run a couple of experiments.

Not anymore. That's all changed since the release of Facebook's split testing feature and their dynamic creative feature. Now you have absolutely no excuse to not be testing the sh*t out of every ad you put out there.

And why wouldn't you want to do this anyway? It is a guaranteed way to get you better results!

Want to learn more about running experiments on Facebook? Tune in to today's episode.

Our podcast content is free, but we just have one favour to ask: If you like the show then make sure to subscribe but most importantly, please leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. You really have no idea how much it helps.

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Now on video too! Watch on Youtube now.

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This week we're having a bit of a switch around with our show format. As of today (and for the forseeable future), we're going to be creating shorter, 10-30 minute podcast episodes with just one topic.

Recently we've been playing with longer-form, segment-based episodes that run for as long as 2 hours. We did this because we really enjoy making the podcast and wanted to play around with different segments. What went wrong? Well, nothing actually. It was awesome! BUT. It just took way too much time to do each week.

Each podcast required at least 2 hours of preparation, followed by 2 hours of recording time (3 if you include set up) and then 2 or 3 hours of post production and publishing on different mediums.

That's 8 hours... a whole working day!

Now, unfortunately, since we don't make any money from the podcast, it simply isn't feasable for us to keep this up. Hence why we've switched to this shorter, my actionable format.

While we may be making the show shorter, it's still important for us to be making it better. That's why we've decided to begin recording video as well. Now you can watch all episodes with video over on Youtube. Head over there now to check it out and please don't forget to subscribe!

Our podcast content is free, but we just have one favour to ask: If you like the show then make sure to subscribe but most importantly, please leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. You really have no idea how much it helps.

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• 0:08:07 – Opinews

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This week we've got a great few segments coming up for you:

In this week’s Opinews:

• Walmart breaks into the Chinese market... AGAIN!

In today’s feature we're going to be sharing tips and tricks for you to win more business on Upwork.

Why? Well, we strongly believe that freelancing is a great gateway into building your own business. It allows you to work on your own terms and gives the the freedom and flexibility to be able to spend more time working on your side hustle. If you've ever thought about freelancing but been too worried about being able to get enough business, the tips in today's show will guarantee you close business everytime. 

Well... maybe not every time. But we've managed to close about 1 in 10 job applications by applying these tactics and it's helped sustain us for over two years now.

If it wasn't for the ideas we share in today's show, we simply wouldn't be able to do this podcast, let alone all the other projects we've got going on at the moment.

So, pull out a pen and paper, sit back with a glass of wine, and get ready to find out how to nail some contracts.

Enjoy!

• Upwork – Our favourite freelancing platform. We've generated over $200k from this platform in the past couple of years, which has helped support many of our other business ventures.

Our podcast content is free, but we just have one favour to ask: If you like the show then make sure to subscribe but most importantly, please leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. You really have no idea how much it helps.

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• 0:26:52 – Opinews

• 2:29:15 – Amazon PPC summary – This is a long show and if you're trying to set up your own Amazon PPC campaign I would highly recommend you listen to all of it. But if time isn't on your side, you can always skip to this point to listen to me summarise everything I learned from Cristian in today's show.

Today's riddle: A sundial has the fewest moving parts of any timepiece. Which has the most?

Think you know the answer? Let us know over at facebook.com/taketraction.com. The answer will be revealed in next week's episode.

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This week we've got a great few segments coming up for you:

In this week’s Opinews:

• Shit hits the fan in India as the government releases their new ecommerce policies. Will Amazon and Walmart survive these heavy restrictions?

Amazon. The beast. The mammoth. The giant. Can't live with it, can't live without it. And as they say, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Amazon PPC has always been a very powerful way to increase your sales through the platform, but since their TOS banner users from giving out coupons in exchange for reviews in 2016, Amazon PPC has never been more important to get your product off the ground.

In fact, that's exactly what we've been doing this week! On Monday our first load of inventory arrived at the Amazon fulfillment center in Dallas, Texas. Since then it's been go, go, go to get our first white-label Amazon product up and running.

To do that we've applied all sorts of different techniques and we're still doing so. But one of the most important of them all is Amazon PPC.

But we've actually been preparing for this moment for the past 9 months.

You see, nearly one whole year ago, Cristian and I began work on a new project with a cleints of ours. The client in question came to ask asking if we could build out profitable Amazon PPC campaigns for a number of SKUs that he was managing.

Despite having zero experience with Amazons advertising platform, Cristian and I agreed to take on the project for a couple of reasons:

1. We have a lot of experience on various other advertising platforms and we were convinced that with a bit of experimentation we could very quickly understand the platform.

We both jumped into the research together but I very quickly veered away from the project as more work came in from other clients.

Cristian, however, has spent the last 9 months working on the platform almost every day, entending his knowledge and understanding of Amazon PPC and ultimately running very profitable campaigns for said client.

In today's episode it's time for me to get back up to speed. I'm going to pick his brain for absolutely everything he has learned about Amazon PPC and we'll piece it all together so that you will be able to follow along step by step and build your very own profitable Amazon PPC campaigns.

We'll be discussing:

• How to do keyword research for Amazon PPC – Where to find seed keywords, what tools to use for better keyword research and how to structure your results.

As mentioned at the top, this is a very long podcast so if you run out of time at any point, skip to 2:29:15 where you'll be able to hear me summarise everything I learned from Cristian in this episode in less than 5 minutes.

Now, pour yourself a glass of wine, sit back and prepare to learn everything you need to know to launch your next big product.

Enjoy!

• Links from our Opinews segment:

• 99designs.com – The place where you can get hundreds of submissions for your design project for less than $300.

• Paid tools:

• Junglescout – They have two tools, the product tracker/researcher web app and the extension. When you use the extension in your browser on a search results page on Amazon, you'll see a small icon in the bottom right of the popup that looks like a cloud. This is a great way to find out what keywords your competitors are using. 

• Merchant Words

Our podcast content is free, but we just have one favour to ask: If you like the show then make sure to subscribe but most importantly, please leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. You really have no idea how much it helps.

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"It's who we are that defines the business model we choose" – Tweet this!

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This week we've got a great few segments coming up for you:

In this week’s Opinews:

Before jumping into the main feature today, we'll be adding to last weeks feature, sharing a story of how we nearly lost $8000 and 4 months of our lives after a close shave with a Chinese freight forwarding company.

Then it's time for today's main feature: Should you go all in on one business? Or should you have multiple businesses?

We'll be discussing the ins and outs of each business model to help you work out which one is right for you.

Here's a brand new segment for you guys! Tune in to hear about some of the weirdest things people have sold on ebay and see if Cristian can beat me in today's gameshow.

Our podcast content is free, but we just have one favour to ask: If you like the show then make sure to subscribe but most importantly, please leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. You really have no idea how much it helps.

For more, head over to taketraction.com

• 0:11:00 – Opinews

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This week we've got a great few segments coming up for you:

In this week’s Opinews:

• Amazon Prime Day wrap up.

In today’s feature we’ll be discussing our recent experience with Chinese suppliers and how we managed to avoid getting screwed over along the way. We'll go over:

• How to find new suppliers.

Here's a brand new segment for you guys! Today we'll be discussing failures. It's important to talk about failures. We spend so much time hearing about the successes of others that we tend to forget that most successes are preceeded by massive failures. Today Cristian will be sharing a big failure of his that ultimately cost him 6 months of his life and a couple thousand euros.

Had a failure yourself? Come on, you know you have! Share it with us over at facebook.com/taketraction and we'll read it out in next weeks show! Listening to this long after it was published? It doesn't matter! Come and share anyway. We'd love to hear from you and share your story with our listeners.

• Amazon courses:

• My Wife Quit Her Job – Steve Chou created this Profitable Online Store course with great reviews for just $1500.

• Alibaba – Source almost any product from China and find the right supplier for you.

Our podcast content is free, but we just have one favour to ask: If you like the show then make sure to subscribe but most importantly, please leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. You really have no idea how much it helps.

• iTunes

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0:8:00 – Opinews

0:50:40 – Feature – How to use discounts THE RIGHT WAY

1:30:46 – Game show – Funded or Fake?

2:00:42 – Riddle – If Teresa's daughter is my daughter's mother, who am I to Teresa?

Head over to facebook.com/taketraction.com to discuss this episode and give us your answer!

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Today we're launching a brand new podcast format. After starting the Opinews show on Fridays we realised that we really enjoyed doing a mix of things, not just a feature show.

So we've decided to do exactly that by combining the two together and throwing in a bunch of new segments on top of that. We'll be playing quiz show games, discussing books, creating audience segments and much more.

Stick around to see what new segments we'll be throwing in there and leave us a message on our Facebook page if you have any suggestions.

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This week we've got a great few segments coming up for you:

• In this week’s Opinews:
  • Online mattress retailers, Casper, is selling ‘sleep’ in their latest publicity stunt – The Dreamery

• Episode #3 – Trigger marketing for epic growth.

Our podcast content is free, but we just have one favour to ask: If you like the show then make sure to subscribe but most importantly, please leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. You really have no idea how much it helps.

• iTunes

For more, head over to taketraction.com