But before we begin, I want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode. Now, it’s safe to say that most of us have been doing a lot more online shopping lately and if you’re an E-Commerce brand, that means you might be seeing more first-time customers, but once they made that first purchase, how do you keep them coming back? That is what Klaviyo is for. Klaviyo, is the ultimate email and SMS marketing platform for E-Commerce brands. It gives you the tools to build your contact list, send memorable emails, automate key messages and more. A lot more. And that’s why more than 30,000 E-Commerce brands like Chubbies, Brooklyn, and Livingproof use Klaviyo to build a loyal following. Strong customer relationships mean more repeat sales, enthusiastic word of mouth and less depending on third-party ads. So, whether you’re launching a new business or taking your brand to the next level, Klaviyo can help you grow faster and it is free to get started. Visit Klaviyo.com/mywife to create a free account. That’s Klaviyo.com/mywife.

I also want to thank PostScript.io for sponsoring this episode. Now, if you run an E-Commerce business of any kind, you know how important it is to own your customer contact list. And that is why I’m focusing a significant amount of my efforts on SMS marketing. I sincerely believe that SMS or text message marketing is going to be a huge channel for my store going forward and I have chosen PostScript.io to be my text message provider. Now why PostScript? Well it’s because they specialize in E-Commerce stores and E-Commerce is their primary focus and not only is it easy to use but you can quickly segment your audience based on your exact sales data and implement automated flows like an abandoned cart at the push of a button. Not only that, it’s priceable too and you only pay for the messages that you actually send. So, head on over to PostScript.io/Steve and try it for free. That’s postscript.io/Steve. Now on to the show.

Intro: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle. So, you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here’s your host Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. Today, I’m happy to have David Herman on the show. Now, David is someone who I met at my buddy, Nick Shackleford’s event called Geek Out LA and I knew that as soon as I heard his talk that I wanted to have him on the show. Now, David runs Herman Digital LLC, which is a company that specializes in scaling direct to consumer brands online and he’s personally managed over a hundred million dollars in ad spend over the years and he’s advertised on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube and you can Tick Tock.

And he’s actually collaborated in the past with my buddy, Andrew Foxwell who has also been a guest on this show. Anyway today, we are going to talk about scaling E-Commerce brands with paid advertising and with that welcome to show David. How you doing today? Man?

David: Good man. How are you doing?

Steve: I’m doing good. I really enjoyed your talk at Geek Out man.

David: Yeah, thank you.

Steve: And give us the quick background story for the listeners out there who don’t know who you are and tell us how you got started with ads in general and E-Commerce.

David: Yeah, so I’ve been doing digital in some capacity since College back in 2003, 2004-ish. I kind of got started playing around with the social media of the time AOL Instant Messenger and MySpace and then…

Steve: Ohh MySpace hehe…

David: Yeah hehe. Gotta… Got a little bit in the Myspace days and in college I ran Myspace Pages for bands. For independent record labels

Steve: Cool.

David: So, I was the one messaging the people and doing all the promotions and things like that. I just got hooked I kind of was like, “This is such a cool idea.” And then eventually, you know as I Graduated college went through a recession. Realized, you know, this whole online thing was really a cool idea and then eventually work for a toy company in Torrance, California and was part of 18 International toy company was part of a team of like eight marketers all of them got laid off but me and I didn’t know what to do. And this was 2009, and so I started doing Facebook because that was like The Social Network that I know how to do for like marketing.

Eventually, got to a point where we had it a huge, huge following on Facebook and then the business pages came out and then we reverted to that and then Facebook Ads started and then I started there and I’ve pretty much been doing Facebook ads and ads online ever since and obviously scaling as we go and then getting with bigger brands, bigger brands and eventually just kind of going out on my own and then doing this pretty much solo or with a corner since 2014 so.

Steve: You know, it’s funny about this is you got kind of started during the last recession and actually, so did I. I started both my business during the recession. I think there’s something about the recession.

David: Yeah, it is. It forces you to think differently about what you’re dealing with because ultimately at that time, as you remember, like there was no jobs like no one was hiring and you know, we were young we didn’t have experience and that was the one area where there was no experience needed. And so, it was just sort of like a golden opportunity to get involved to see what was going on. And you know, as we as we head into, I guess we could say it’s a recession.

Steve: It’s a recession.

David: You know, I think that the same thing holds true. I think that E-Commerce… This is never a better time to be dabbling in it. Even if you’re working from home like pick up something, you know? Try it. Like, you know, there’s opportunities to get involved by spending 20 bucks a day on something, you know? It just starts with somewhere so.

Steve: Totally agree. I mean, I think like I’ve been stuck at home for four weeks now and I think as this happens to the entire US. People are just going to get used to shopping online even more than they already have and I think it’s just going to become a habit.

David: Yeah it is and you know, there’s part of me that likes it and then there’s part of me that’s all sad about it. Just because you know, there’s a lot of really good people out there that have them on pawn shops. And those will still… I think they’ll still always be there but it’s the CPM cost are never lower. The competition is naturally really not because you know, depending on when you listen to this a lot of the major retailers have pulled out of their ads spends. Uhm the politics? Most political campaigns have suspended right now.

So, in terms of the market, the only people you’re competing with are similar size advertisers as yourself meaning like smaller D to C right now a million dollars a day on ads but really spending money that you are in direct competition with and you have a better chance of being successful.

Steve: I’m just kind of curious. How did you get into the E-Commerce side? Did you ever sell any physical products yourself?

David: No, I’ve always just kind of worked with brands in doing it. Foxwell and I have been friends a long time. And you know, I was working with some small companies doing… Originally I was doing Lead Gen on Facebook ads different things like I did for college admissions, I did for mortgages and you know those kind of industries and then eventually, Andrew actually was the one who brought me on a brand and was like, “Hey, I think he’d be good at the E-Com side” And that’s when it really started and I got hooked.

Steve: Ohhh okay.

David: So he was kind of the one that pushed me along and that’s why him and I are such good friends. It’s really because of that, we worked together for so many years.

Steve: That’s awesome

David: And you know, this is back in you know, when the Facebook ads would just dirt cheap like you’ve launched an ad and we’d have a you know, 3 to a 6X top of funnel and feel like you’re on top of the world, you know.

Steve: Hahaha yeah.

David: Hehe. So, a little different now, but you know back then it was a different story so.

Steve: Maybe there’s days are coming back with everyone pulling that around hahaha.

David: I hope. I hope haha yeah.

Steve: So David, I want to talk about the case study that you presented a Geek Out LA because, you’re example actually made me kind of completely rethink my approach to Facebook ads and in a way that you could actually market kind of mundane products. So first off, can you just kind of set the stage for that company that you talked about what they were selling and what their ads look like before you took over?

David: Yeah. So, the company sells children’s books for the faith-based community. So, they… They’re geared towards young girls ages like 4 to 10 and the product itself. It’s basically five stories from the Old Testament of the Bible and it breaks down one woman from each of the stories and they’ve got whole concept behind it is to educate young girls about the value they have that they can find in these women if it’s not patient, it’s bravery or prayer or you know perseverance and things like that and the books are they were animated by former Disney animators. So, they’re really high-quality books made in the US just a really good product.

Steve: Is it a hardback book.

David: It’s a… It’s a five…. It’s a five-part series hardcover their $14.99 apiece. We sell a bundle for $59.99 and definitely what we sell primarily where people buy and so when I came into this project the agency that was running it before I came in, they were a television commercial company. That was what they say that’s was their skill set. And so, they dabble with ads and you know, typically creatives and media buyers they work well together but creative they’re probably not the best media buyers and media buyers probably aren’t the best creatives.

So, you know, they were running the ads weren’t terrible but they were running very like, you know, long form horizontal ads that didn’t really show off the product and you know, the imagery was like photos on white backgrounds very catalog feeling and it…

Steve: Just the books you mean??

David: Yeah, it just lacked. It lacks the true emotion. You need to connect with these books. And so, I came in a year ago actually and it was almost a year ago to the day. It was like March 20th. And you know, it was right before Easter and so we relaunched with a bunch of new ads and we just change the focus. We originally the ads just talked about what the book was. It was like this is Bible bells and that’s the name of the book and we miss it. Does this this this and this and it’s like it was like three senses and I was like, you know, no one’s going to connect with that because they don’t know the story. They don’t even know what this is.

So, we rephrased sort of the ad copy to be focused on something that a lot of parents would connect with which was Disney and princesses. And so, we changed sort of the problem and solution of the ad copy to be focused on that. So, the copy went how many Disney princesses can your daughter name? Now how many women of the Bible catchy name get your attention?

Steve: How did you come up with that? I mean, do you have a process in place?

David: So, you know it really boils down to just being really connected with our clients because for that the author of the book, you know, she was very open about like what she was trying to accomplish and we talked about it and you know, that was… It was something that Disney kept coming out and it was that was sort of like the hook for me to kind of take it and test it. It’s because of that like our books were made by a Disney animator, you know, and so there was that tie in already to it. And so that’s really why we kind of elected to go that route. And yeah.

Steve: I was just going to ask you what like what attracted to this project because I’m just thinking to myself like a book that sells for 15 bucks. I mean that’s going to be hard to get profitable right?

David: Right. So, I am a type of person that likes to take on challenges and not do the easy things because when I do easy things, I get bored. And so that was really one of the big reasons why and also, I think I really connected with the client and the clients are really good friends of mine now like, okay, I’ll go down and stay in San Diego. I go down to San Diego and just we’ll go have lunch well over dinner and we’re friends, you know, and so we were in it together. The project is I just recognize them and we just connected and the law. Lot of times when I look for projects to work on, I’m looking at the product but the product isn’t the only… the only like thing I look at when I’m talking to somebody it’s is this person and I, do we connect? You know, because it’s a relationship and you know, especially during these tough times. You need to have a relationship with somebody that’s going to be with you and be willing to work with you long term. Not just you know, like balance after your you stop being profitable for a week. But no.

Steve: Do you have any guidelines on… I don’t know that average order value or even the type of product that might work. Like obviously you wouldn’t take on a project that you didn’t think that you could improve upon, right?

David: Right. Yeah, I you know, the thing about working on different projects is like I’m looking at a few things one is what’s the competition in the market like for this product? Right? So, one thing I’m never going to take on things like sunglasses or things like iPhone cases, you know things like wallets, you know? The like things that are really really really hard to break in with because there’s so many of them out there and frankly there’s better world companies. There’s you know, it’s like you haven’t like I use, you know, my baseball glove wallet from FC Goods. Like that’s why that’s why we go to have a good buy their wallet. I like that thing but like, you know, that’s something that I’m always looking at when I called with products and like right now, I’m working with a company. Start your work at the company. That’s focused on a lot essential stuff.

And it’s like they’re things that we need in our households that are sold at like Bed Bath and Beyond and those kind of stores and I’m thinking to myself, you know, there’s a market for this because the market has shifted and so that’s a mindset and this currency I’m shifting about is going like I don’t want to sell wallet, but I’ll sell like hey how to unclog your unclog your sink. Because we can’t call plumber right now. So, people are going to be looking for this stuff. Right? And so, looking at changing the focus during different times of the year different times of our life cycle to is also important to be looking at.

Steve: So for the wallets example, is it just because it’s just that much harder to make stand out among the crowd?

David: Yeah. I mean in the… You know, a lot of times in say that scenario like the people that are in that space. Head like Ridge Wallet it’s another great example, like great wallet company, absolutely fantastic people that work there. They know what they’re doing. I’m not going to compete with them, you know? It’s like okay, you know the market right and it’s like the same thing with like sunglasses like looking at what Diff is doing right? Like Diff Eyewear is such a great company at what they do. It’s like in that market and blenders, right? Different blunders are kind of like the preferred and then you have… You know, you have like what you might call it, you know like the high-end right Wayfarers, you know, this is like there’s these markets where you just go. Yeah. I’m just not going to compete. You kind of go from there.

Steve: So, this Christian book like when they first came to you and you took a look at their ads and did you just kind of know right away that you could do a better job with it?

David: Oh, yeah. I said when I thought I saw the way it was set up. I saw the way I was targeted and I was just like yeah, there’s this… There’s a lot of opportunity here.

Steve: So, walk me through this like let’s say I was the client and I have these books and my ads right now are just pictures of books, I guess. Like what questions did you ask them to get all this information out in order to kind of formulate your ultimate strategy, which was it sounds like Disney. What was the ad copy again? How many Disney princesses do your kids know?

David: Yeah. How many Disney Princesses does your daughter know? How many women of the Bible does she know?

Steve: Right. And usually it’s zero, right?

David: Yeah yeah.

Steve: They know every princess but… Okay… Haha.

David: Yeah naturally and it again when I was… When we were talking originally it was a… All my connections all my it’s all referral-based everyone that I talk to… Everyone that I work with is referral-based. I don’t cold and I’m that’s just not something that I want to do and you know, it’s so far served me well that…

Steve: Actually, you don’t even have a website I noticed a kind of looked for it.

David: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t… I’d be in the… Honestly, I just eventually get one, if I absolutely need it. But the reality is it’s there’s not much of a need for it, if I don’t need it, right? You know, it’s like… I have a Twitter account and people hit me up on Twitter. And if they if they can’t figure that out then I don’t know if I’d want to work anyway.

Steve: Sure. I mean, it keeps out the riffraff right?

David: Right, right exactly so.

Steve: So, can you give us kind of describe what these discussions on how you arrived at that strategy because there’s always this disconnect and there’s a lot of creativity involved, you know. Yeah. So, if you have like some sort of process like if you were pretending like let’s say I was coming to you with these books. Like what questions would you ask me? Like, what do you have like a set methodology for arriving at the creative?

David: So, I look at a few things when I look at creative. I’m making sure that like our top of funnel creative is really focused on user-generated content and testimonials and also educates a bit about the product. So, it’s a mix of all three. So, it feels very in line with say a Facebook feed or an Instagram story. Where does it feel like an ad because again, you don’t want anything to feel like an ad you want something to feel… You know Joe Schmo down the street shot this video and is trying to sell you on it, right?

That’s a huge thing is to be focused on. Secondly, you want to always have some type of angle in your ad and hook whatever that maybe if it’s you know, like the Disney hook for example, or you know hook finding out like a problem like right now we’re running a lot of ads about being stuck inside, you know and those are working really well across the board because it’s just stuff that people are really eager about and really hungry about and it just engages and I shot a video for a shoe company yesterday that I run and I launched the ad basically it was my fiancé putting on the shoes sitting on the couch where you can clearly see that it was on carpet and it shows her walking around the house and walking down the steps always focused on the shoes.

And then I did the angle of outside. Right before she put her foot on the welcome mat to walk outside. I froze it. I froze the ad and then it showed her sitting down on the couch and saying and it’s saying, “You can still look cute in doors” and so like playing up that hook so to speak? And so, you know, that’s the kind of stuff that I’m really trying to be doing right now and just be very very focused on as we kind of go into this season because you know, the reality is people are they’re all looking for… People are still buying in the you need to give them an idea so to speak so…

Steve: Do you film this on just like your phone? Or?

David: Yeah. Yeah.

Steve: Okay. So, in general all of your video creatives are not professionally produced? Or?

David: Yeah, pretty much. Nobody really is. Yeah.

Steve: Okay. And then you mentioned this was a shoe ad. Wouldn’t shoes kind of fall in that same category as wallets? Or like how are these shoes different?

David: So, the shoes are just real. I mean our this is a coming. It’s been around a long time, you know? So it’s got a lot of… It’s got a lot of like old… It’s been around long enough where it doesn’t have don’t have to worry about the brand.

Steve: Okay. So, people know… Know will recognize the brand?

David: Yeah yeah. Or email lists or you know, three to five hundred thousand… It it…

Steve: Oh, wow. Okay, they’re huge well-established brand.

David: Yeah. I didn’t know no slouch here for that brand so.

Steve: So, you have your hook and then do you incorporate like testimonials in that top of funnel?

David: Typically, yeah. Yeah

Steve: And just trying to get an idea of your campaigns and we can talk about the Christian books if you want because since yeah, you’ve already… It sounds like that’s more public than the current company you’re working on, right?

David: No. It’s so the company… The shoe company is called the Inca shoes. It’s a shoe company that started… Man. Sort of a long time ago. It was a TV show called The Prophet?

Steve: Yeah. I love that show. Didn’t you worked with Marcus Lemonis?

David: Yeah. We… I worked, I work with the fashion group over there and I was part of the team. Foxwell was the one that actually brought me into work one of the brands on that show, then what ended up happening was got brought in to work on the show the work on a product that was going to be on the show. Ended up… Marcus ended up buying the company. So they needed me to run the ads and I started on that… I got… I was good at that for more and more things and then eventually I was working on like five brands for the team and it was really fun a lot of learning experiences too, you know? Kind of like coming into this whole thing and but yeah, it was a lot of fun so that that one brand of shoe company is part of that was part of that portfolio of companies and you know…

Steve: So when you’re launching that… So that video that you just shot like let’s say you’re setting up that campaign. How many different variations? Let’s just start from scratch brand new Facebook campaign, how many creatives do you have? Like what ad set? How many ad sets would you target or do like, how do you set all that stuff up?

David: So what I typically do my setups are it depends on the budget, but I’m always doing about a 70/30 Prospect in your remarketing split for my products because our goal is always selling top of funnel, right? That’s my goal on Facebook.

Steve: Are you shooting for a certain return?

David: And so yeah, I typically, you know, I want to see at least a 1.5 x return. Return on ad spend.

Steve: Okay.

David: For more… A lot of the companies I work with because I know that I can get a 3 to a 4 on remarketing so that is sort of like It’s like my sort of goal, especially as we head into, you know, very competitive season, you know? It’s always like you’re not getting 3 or 4 x’s on top of funnel anymore. It’s just it’s just not happening unless you know, you have a ton of other traffic coming to the site. So yeah.

Steve: Right? Okay. So how many creatives like minimum would you start with like in your testing for like your initial campaigns top of funnel?

David: Typically, I start with 2-3?

Steve: 2-3? Okay.

David: Yeah, because I don’t want to like give the system too many options to choose. I want I want to basically allow the system to make the decision would like not happen to have like 5 to 10 ads. Know what I mean?

If you sell an Amazon or run any online business for that matter, you’re going to need a trademark to protect your intellectual property. Not only that but a trademark is absolutely necessary to register your brand on Amazon. Now, I used to think that any old trademark registration service would work and that could even try to register my own trademark by myself on the cheap, but I was dead wrong. Securing a trademark without a strategy in place usually results in either an outright rejection or a worthless unenforceable trademark. Now, that is why I work with Stephen Wiegler and his team from Emerge counsel. They have a package service called total TM, which provides the same attention to detail and process that large law firms do at a fraction of the price. Now for me personally, I like Emerge Council because of their philosophy, their goal is to maximize IP protection while minimizing the price. So, before you decide to register a trademark by yourself or file for other I could protection such as a copyright or a patent, check out Emerge counsel first and get a free consult. For more information go to emergecouncil.com and click on the Amazon sellers’ button and tell Steve that Steve sent you to receive a $100 discount on the total TM package for Amazon sellers. Once again, that’s emergecounsel.com over at emergecounsel.com. Now back to the show.

Steve: So, when we talk about creative just to define the terminology the creative would be the video and then the copy would be the text above it. So just three overall variations?

David: Yeah, so your video or photo your headline and your ad copy and the copy that goes above the ad.

Steve: Okay.

David: That’s typically the three that you want to focus on. I pay most attention to my headline because that’s in big bold typically, but… Yeah, that’s kind of how I wanna do it.

Steve: And then your headline is would be just like the hook. So, what was the hook for that shoe ad?

David: It was you can still look cute at home.

Steve: You can still look? Okay. Yeah. And then how… What are some of your guidelines for knowing whether you should continue writing that ad or whether it should just cancel it right away? How long do you let one?

David: So, I let things run. It really depends on the brand, to be honest with you. Because there’s some brands where I need to let things run for 3 to 4 days beforehand? And then there’s certain brands where I know that it’s going to… It’s going to you know, after a couple days. I’m like, yeah, I know this is going to fail, right? Like it just depends on the brand and like the AOV right because I’ve got a company I work with where our AOV is 350 bucks like

Steve: Oh nice.

David: Yeah. Well not I’m not letting that… I’m not letting that ad stop after three days. Like those ads will run for 14 plus days before I start to make decisions because it’s a higher AOV.

Steve: Is there a minimum AOV that you kind of recommend when doing this stuff?

David: You know, I can kind of get in trouble by saying certain things because people will like take it out of context but I always say if you have enough product is under $49, you’re going to have a really difficult time. because just you know, like the idea of getting…

Steve: Unless your back end is really recurring, right?

David: Yeah, that’s if you have a lot of retention, you have a lot of email flows going and you really really have your product lined like honed in. No question. Would I be running more but in content in the context of like Facebook ads and assuming that the only thing you’re doing is running, you know, you’re running ads on Facebook and maybe you know, I don’t know Google your CPAs on Facebook are not going to be… if you’re $49. Gettin like 10 to 15 dollars CPAs is really hard to do so yeah.

Steve: So those books that were 15 each. I assume you just focus on the bundle?

David: Yeah, we didn’t say I never pushed non bundle stuff because we tried it like we tested those ideas but the AOV you know that it’s just too cheap. It just doesn’t work.

Steve: Were there any other products in addition those books or was it just that it? Were there any other cross sells or anything?

David: So, no. It was really just those frankly.

Steve: Oh? Okay.

David: So this in the thing, I’m always super transparent with people when I talk about this stuff because this is not easy and that product, last year, we did we scaled the brand so much last year and we sold out multiple times of the of the bundle and that’s no slouch when you’re selling a you know, 15 to 20,000 units of these suckers. We think we’ve hit sort of a wall. So, to speak with the lowest hanging fruit. So obviously our CPAs have steadily risen as the years gone because we’re going a mean I always like to tell my clients… It seems Brent. I always like to say the brand like, “Brent you got to think about this. We’re selling a book series to Christians?” and you know, we sell the like people who have Jewish of the Jewish faith because we it’s Old Testament, we sell to Catholics obviously and we sell to Mormons like those are the kind of the main religions that we focus on selling to and but we’re also targeting not only is it Niche we have to go after their faith, but we also have to find them that have girls ages 4 to 10.

So, you really narrowing down those the audience and you know that so we’ve had to constantly make changes. We’ve had to constantly tinker with things like we run a lot we’re running branded content a lot with like different influencers in the space. So, for example last week, we launched a branded content with a couple that does a they do like a variety show on Facebook, they have a like over a million followers and Facebook and they’re so good at what they do and they have young girls there and their faith based and just very family-friendly content. And so, we worked out a deal with them and they ran brand content and they allowed me, you know, they gave me full access to their account to basically tinker with it.

Make sure it looks good and will pass Facebook’s all a Facebook’s rules and we’ve been running that video now for a week and we put probably I don’t know 25-30 thousand dollars behind it? And it’s done really well. And so, at some points in the year, what we do is we take the focus off us and we just focus on remarketing and Lao branded content to pick up the people because that’s really what we want.

Steve: I was just going to ask if your top of funnel is it it’s a returning more than 2?

David: Not for them not on top of funnel. For top of funnel you’re looking at anywhere from 1.4 to a 1.8.

Steve: So, are they profitable on those? Are they breaking even at least? Or?

David: Yeah, we do well. Like we do really well, you know, and that’s because that’s just Facebook. We have other sources that were running ads and you know; the brand is really successful.

Steve: Well that’s what I was getting at right? That’s why I asked you like there’s only those one set of books, right? So, once they bought them, they’re done, right?

David: Yeah, and so we work on other things so we have like we have like a homeschooling series that we’ve launched, in conjunction, so we have other coil of digital product…

Steve: I see so those are hundred percent profit?

David: Yeah, so yeah, so we’re focused in a lot of different areas that outside of just this, you know, we’re doing we’ve done really well but it’s just been really successful. The product has been really successful and we’ve we also get a lot of like wholesalers that asked us to sell the books because that’s the thing people don’t realize with Facebook is like, you know, you’re selling if you have a niche product, there are wholesalers out there that want to buy your product to put in their stores right? Now, obviously, they’re not during this season. But like in a normal time, if you have a niche product, you should be looking at that and thinking of things like, “Hey, maybe we should run ads on LinkedIn targeting small business, you know small gift shop owners and try that.” You know? I know a lot of jewelry companies that do that where they have an entire business dedicated to ads for wholesaling, you know, so there’s always other things that you can do beyond just running Facebook ads that is successful.

Steve: So, these Facebook ads are you running that are generating 1.4 + return on ad spend. In a way, it’s kind of like lead gen in a way, right? Because the Major Prophets it sounds like are from the digital products and the halo effect. So, to speak wholesaler start reaching out because they found they found you somewhere through an ad and that sort of thing is that accurate? Or?

David: Yeah, sort of like typically it our slow months is when it is… One of the more focused on digital like this time of year like Easter like this is our season so like for us Bible Bells, the last three weeks have been fantastic sure, right because I bet it’s our season. It’s like usually in the summer months when kids are going outside and you know, this year might be completely different right? I mean we might be we might sell like this is the thing is I think we’re all in the same boat where nobody really knows what’s going on, were all like, well, this might work.

I don’t really know, you know. So like we’re just trying to all figure it out together about what’s really going on in the season and playing it up and making sure that you know, we have inventory for the summer right because we’re also it’s not that’s we don’t discount the product ever. Like we’re not a discount brand. We’re not discounting now or we don’t want to do that. We want to really focus on the product in itself because there’s a lot of value in the product and we have you know, so many customers testimonials so many like people that are excited about it. We’ve run facebook lives we get tons of people. It’s been a really successful in a lot of ways and you know for them, I’ve kind of come on and sort of like a CMO so to speak and really try to help as best as I can because it’s again it’s when you come into a product that you like the team and you like the product itself and you think probably has value. I do want to get more involved right?

I don’t want to just curious like media buyer Facebook guy in the same kind of goes with the shoe company is you know, I am not the CMO but I kind of like, I like to make direction that I shoot the content for my ads because I know what works best, you know, and so yeah.

Steve: So on the retargeting side, what type of ads you wearing? Is it DPA? or you running?

David: So we don’t run DPA for them because there’s just not enough product and it just doesn’t work.

Steve: That’s true. Yeah, there’s only one. One bundle. Yeah hahaha.

David: Yeah hahaha. We have run DPA but it just never works so what we focus on is the author of the book does a lot of media appearances. And so, we run a lot of those ads and then we run we get like we always ask our customers to send us like testimonial videos and we run those as our ads as well. And then I use I’ve got a guy that I use in Texas who does all of our creative… Our creative for us. He’s is really star at what he does and work with him. I’m shooting video and like all like we know we’ll get like these really grainy iPhone videos; you know from people and he’ll make magic out of them every time. So, he’s able to like kind of mess around with them enough for they come out okay, we can use in these ads.

Steve: And in terms of your retargeting periods, I guess like how far out. Do you retarget these people?

David: So, it’s an interesting thing because originally, we used to do a lot less but as Facebook has been really pushing and frankly what we’ve been thinking is actually making it a lot bigger window because we see a higher return that way and…

Steve: What is your definition of a bigger window like 30 days?

David: 30 days. 60 days.

Steve: Okay.

David: I’m going that route because ultimately the system knows better than you and I’m trying you know, there’s that little bit of me that’s still like oh the old school media buyer. That’s like I’m not gonna let Facebook determine what I do and don’t do and you know, it’s like, you know how it is. It’s like we’re all kind of the same boat or like fight you want to fight the system.

Steve: Well the trend now is to just let Facebook do everything right?
David: Yeah, and you know, I don’t I just I don’t, I don’t agree with it. I don’t I know that a lot of people… When I do that the system itself. I still can see where I can make it better, you know, it was like, okay, like I know there’s a lot of I’ve got a lot of friends my friend Savannah is really big on the power 5 and there’s a lot of my friends and I use them Power 5 something that you use it. But like I find that the Power 5 does have its limitations…

Steve: Can you describe to the audience what that is?

David: Power 5 is essentially what Facebook’s been pushing media buyers to do which is automation. Right? It’s so it’s less campaigns, you know, the old school way of doing things. Yeah. I’m sure your guests or your people listening. Are running ads and they’ve got like 25 ad campaigns running right? You have like 12 different prospecting and blah blah blah, you know, just that whole thing. And so, there’s like simplifying the add structure is one, automatic placements is another so letting Facebook determine where to show your ad, the other one is running like Dynamic creative testing so, letting people determine that and then like Auto bids or put they want you to do run auto bids. It’s basically everything is automated. Right?

Steve: Hahaha yeah.

David: Yeah and you know, what ends up happening in you know, it’s different for everybody. But what I find is, even for like a project like the book project Facebook will overtly serve our ads to like Facebook video feeds and I can crunch every number and tell you that Facebook video feed is a loser for us every single time. But Facebook will still serve our ads there. And so, for me, it’s things like knowing my customer knowing how they operate knowing exactly what they’re engaging with because our customers typically a 50 plus year old grandparent who buys these books for their granddaughters.

That’s who buys the books. And like does my does my 61-year-old mom which you know how to buy an ad on our Facebook video feed no, she wouldn’t because she’s watching videos on Facebook. Right? And it’s usually like news right like news videos. Is she going to want to click off Facebook in between a new story or in between like, you know, because that’s sometimes…? And so, when I think about the use cases of things that’s how like, okay. I know more than Facebook does on certain things and that’s the areas that I control. I can’t control what audiences, were for the most part. Because most of the time it’s going broad is what they say, but you know, I still like I’m looking at an account right now and my best performing audiences right now is 2% look-a-likes, you know so…

Steve: Yeah that’s happening you to it’s funny.

David: Yeah, and like that’s the issue is like Facebook will say going broad but there’s some projects where it’s not like they don’t get enough. There’s not like they get enough data, but they just for some reason or another they just don’t convert. They don’t work. So that’s why I always say power 5 works good with a caveat of like you really need to know your customer really well, and if you don’t know your customer and you don’t have a clue run power 5 and I don’t want people to take that to me, the agencies that are running power 5 exclusively or bad agencies. I think that again there’s a lot of value in it where you use the power 5 and just keep optimizing your creative. And that’s the only thing you change which is an is an interesting strategy and I believe it does work. But just for me personally having run ads for so long, I use elements of power 5, but not fully.

Steve: Sure. I mean it sounds to me and I’ve interviewed a bunch of Facebook ads people. It sounds like you get a little bit more involved with your clients and even have a vested interest in the success, right?

David: Yeah. I mean I and, you know, even from like a pricing modeling I’ve switched my modeling because I’ve realized that you know, there was always different ways of doing it for your percentage of ad span percentage of revenue. And I finally just said, you know, I really want to focus on retainer basis with bonus goals to hit…

Steve: In terms of conversions, you mean?

David: Converse it’s like. Yeah. So, like if the company could hit certain Revenue goals, I get bonuses. And because to me as a media buyer, but also as a business owner myself, it’s so much less stress on the business if because like, you know, I don’t know about you but like we had seasons where you know, you’d be sending out a hundred thousand dollar invoices to some of these companies. You’re like, yeah, this thing going to last right? Because like we would have, we would have liked if we can hit a 2.6 x return that means and the thing is if we would crunch the numbers, right? We’re whenever you do this death, you’re crunching the numbers and we like to do it for a lot of these companies because they don’t understand what they’re drop-dead row as its they go well as long as I can get 1X on Facebook. I’m good. I’m like are you sure like, have you crunch your cost of goods sold? Have you crunch these numbers? Oh, no. Actually, your number is more like a 1.5 that you have to hit to be profitable. So, it’s just you know, when it comes to the e-comm world and it comes to running media of ads. It’s so much more than just running ads on Facebook. Like there’s the creative execution that we do with our clients. There’s the…

Steve: There’s the backend, too right?

David: Yeah! There’s so… Like oh my gosh. It’s and that’s why I’m I don’t have a website. That’s why I don’t have a ton of clients right now because I just want to work with really solid brands that have really solid people running them that we can grow together and frankly, you know, I’m in a different mindset of wanting to be hustle. I’m not I don’t want to hustle anymore, you know? 35…

Steve: Because we’re old that’s why hahaha.

David: Right haha. 35 years old. I just I don’t want to do it. Like I just want to grow brands and have in the successes with certain people and there’s a time and place to have fun. Like typically what a lot of us in this world. Do I’m sure you do it is we like to take on a lot of projects right around holidays and like that are fun projects and like we know they’re like one-off stuff but we’re like, “Hey this could work. It could be kind of fun to play with it.” And so, we do that a lot where we’ll take on a project for like October till January and just to see if we can do it. We do that a lot and I actually picked up a project right now that is it’s actually a friend of mine that’s animator that isn’t working and like situational kind of thing and we’re going to sell some product and he has a bunch of ideas or like let’s just try it. You know, it’s like it doesn’t hurt to try something and see if it sticks.

Steve: So towards the… So we’re about to come into the time limit for this interview and I just wanted to have you comment on the different platforms since you advertise on a whole bunch of things like Snapchat, And are you advertising on Tick-Tock too did I read that correctly?

David: Yeah, so I haven’t I haven’t I’ve got ads turned off right now always be transparent but I have run ads on Tick-Tock now come an e-commerce standpoint. But yeah.

Steve: And Snapchat still liable. I mean are people still on that?

David: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know snap it’s all about Snapchat discover ads not snap ads themselves. I find that the snap ads aspect of the… So, like for your listeners, there’s there are there are a few different placements on Snapchat. There are snap ads which are going but that go between stories. Then there’s Snapchat discover, which is kind of like Snapchats, you know, Newsfeed personally and those are more like an editorial play and you can get more of your story out there. The snap ads are just like Instagram story, right? So, you have to if you have an ad that’s crushing on Instagram story. You should test it on Snapchat. Just to test it. But yeah Snapchat is it works really? Well, I’m a fan. I’ve been a fan of Snapchat for a very long time been running ads pretty much since Snapchat wants their pixel two years ago two and a half years ago.

And then they don’t think one is I steal bullish on Pinterest Pinterest edits. Yeah. I not many people play with them. But the thing about Pinterest is you have to play long tail and you need to stand that on that platform. If you are if you’re you need to be always ahead of the game. So, like you should be running ads right now for things to do for the 4th of July. You should be running for things to do for middle of summer to get your kids off of the streets, you know, you should be writing on that kind of stuff. And its very image focused more that everything else so.

Steve: Yeah so our store’s in the wedding industry, and we find that people just use Pinterest to pin things that they’re gonna shop for eventually. So there could just really long lag time actually.

David: Yup.

Steve: Uhm between someone pinning something and actually making a purchase.

David: Correct. Yeah that’s what it’s about, man.

Steve: Every other platform is different and uh, it’s fun stuff.

David: Yup yup.

Steve: So David, thanks a lot for your time. If people want to get a hold of you… Or if they want to use your services, where can they actually find you? Since you’re not clearly visible like on the web, right?

David: Hahahaha. So, I’m on my Twitter it’s @Herrmanndigital.

Steve: Okay yeah cool.

David: Yup.

Steve: Oh well, thanks a lot David.

David: You bet.

Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now I get a really great vibes and I love his approach with how he helps E-Commerce businesses grow. For more information about this episode, go to MyWifeQuitHerJob.com/Episode314. And once again, I want to thank PostScript.io which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce with a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at PostScript.io/Steve. That’s Postscript.io/Steve.

I also want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode, Klaviyo is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce Merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned cart sequence, a post purchase flow or win back campaign. Basically, all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So, head on over to mywifequitherjob.com/klaviyo and try it for free. Once again, that’s mywifequitherjob.com/klaviyo

Now I talked about how I use these tools in my blog and if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store head on over to mywifequitherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini-course just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.

Outro: Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com

But before we begin I want to thank PostScript.io for sponsoring this episode. Now if you run an e-commerce business of any kind, you know how important it is to own your customer contact list. And this is why I’m focusing a significant amount of my efforts on SMS marketing. I sincerely believe that SMS or text message marketing is going to be a huge channel for my store going forward and I have chosen PostScript.io to be my text provider. Now why PostScript? it’s because they specialize in e-commerce stores and e-commerce is their primary focus and not only is it easy to use but you can quickly segment your audience based on your exact sales data and implement automated flows like an abandoned cart at the push of a button. Not only that it’s priceable too and you only pay for the messages that you actually send. So head on over to PostScript.io/Steve and try it for free. That’s postscript.io/Steve.

I also want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode. Now, it’s safe to say that most of us have been doing more online shopping lately. And if you’re an e-commerce brand, that means you might be seeing more first time customers, but once they made that first purchase, how do you keep them coming back? Well, that’s What Klaviyo is for. Klaviyo is the ultimate email and SMS marketing platform for e-commerce Brands. It gives you the tools to build your contact list. Send memorable emails automate key messages and more a lot more and that’s why more than 30,000 e-commerce Brands like Chubbies Brooklyn and Livingproof use Klaviyo to build a loyal following. Strong customer relationships mean more repeat sales enthusiastic word of mouth and less depending on third-party ads. So whether you’re launching a new business or taking your brand to the next level Klaviyo can help you grow faster and it is free to get started. Visit Klaviyo.com/mywife to create a free account. That’s Klaviyo.com/mywife. Now on to the show.

Intro: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle. So you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here’s your host Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. Today, I’m happy to have Nick Shackleford on the show. Now Nick is someone who was introduced to me by Ezra Firestone and I am super glad that he did Nick runs structured social which is a company that specializes in the growth of e-commerce Brands and he is a master of paid media. He spent over 85 million bucks on Facebook and he pioneered well-known products like the fidget spinner. He’s also known for helping one of his clients clear 10.7 million dollars in sales in just 35 days with online Ads and besides as agency Nick also runs an event called geek out LA which I had the pleasure of attending.

And it had some of the best content that had ever seen at an event. He’s also going to be a speaker at the seller Summit 2020 over in Fort Lauderdale on May 6, and I’m really looking forward to having him there. Anyway today we’re going to talk about scaling e-commerce brands with paid advertising and with that welcome to show Nick. How are you doing today Man?

Nick: Yeah. I’m doing well, it’s funny because I know sometimes you work from an office and at home. I’m obviously at my home right now. Nobody is allowed into LA and that’s a little bit of an overstatement. But I told my entire Team “guys, just do not come in” work from home. This is it just going to know on Italy they’re shutting everything down. So I’m very thankful that we’re obviously a little bit more ahead of the time. So things are all good on our end, but just working.

Steve: Yeah. Absolutely man. So hey Nick for people who don’t know who you are. Give us the quick background story. Tell us how you got started with Facebook ads, start from the beginning.

Nick: I’ll go I’ll go as far as back as relevant. So before I jump into paid media everybody that’s kind of like the court at the round is like the internet doesn’t discriminate and that’s I think that’s an absolute fact. So I was actually a professional soccer player and I realized if you’re in America and you play a professional sport the last sport you should play if you want to make any real money is a lacrosse, but right close behind it is going to be soccer, man. I realize it was definitely a Boyhood dream to do that. But as soon as Understood how expensive it is to live in Orange County / La I realized quickly. I needed to Pivot.

So in 2013-2015, I achieve my dream of playing professionally. And as soon as I realized what student loans were after I graduated from st. Louis. So I am an Orange County kid graduated from the Missouri st. Louis. And as soon as I jumped out of professional sports, I walked right into what I like to call a millennial consultancy. So I break it down. I did date myself. So I am a 90s kid. And through and through but what I realized was a lot of these individuals were Shifting the purchase power. I purchase power for us were how do we get and this was specifically for Pepsi. So as Pepsi was trying to grab all these new parents that are having young kids coming to their shops.

How will we able to communicate with them? And how can we promote at the time was there syrup because Pepsi they have the bottles and the syrup side. I was on the syrup side at a restaurants. How do we develop campaigns to get more Millennials into the doors? That’s where I spent my time and I’m a young kid sitting at the table with a lot of old veteran male marketers a couple of females there and it just for whatever reason as anything I said, they’re like, well that’s interesting. Let’s dive into that more and little by little we started doing our own. This is one of the organic Facebook side, but we are producing videos pictures incentivizing them to share that was probably at the time where Facebook really cared about organic reach, but that was my fairy first I knew it Facebook was and obviously I’m a MySpace kid, but Facebook, I got to enjoy it as a college kid and be a little bit as my career started.

Steve: Cool. And so how did that evolve into physical products?

Nick: Oh actually went right into the second opportunity where a woman named Rachel gave me that first nod at Pepsi that’s on the organic side. There wasn’t really any real play there unless I wanted to go corporate which they would have sent me to New York when my lady was like no. Sorry, baby. Do that you’re gone forever. So let me quickly me to Pivot into Performance Marketing. Unfortunately, or fortunately, however you look at it. I was little bit spoiled. So the very first brand I got to work on was Apple. So this is something that I love love talking about. The only KPI I ever had was how cheap we can get the views.

Steve: They didn’t care about conversion and return on ad spend or anything like that?

Nick: Nothing nothing. So you think about this is when Apple Tim Cook just announced a lot of the new push. Was moving away from traditional media into paid media and we’re talking launching the iPhone, the Iwatch, the iPad Pro we were running the same exact spots on TV with millions of dollars to spend across a pack Let’em , the UK North America South America. Look we were just dropping budgets. And this is how we did it. We would choose in back with a we have the Rachel frequency tool and you choose how many dollars would it take to make sure that we hit every single person in that country.

That was the budgets. So we, I learned very very quickly like oh my gosh what I think it broke a limiting belief of what money meant because I grew up modest like parents divorced fairly really early. My mom was a front office. My dad was an HVAC guy and I was like, oh I’m gonna be destined to be after he plays sports equipment going to be a college coach or a high school coach. And as soon as I saw these dollars in Facebook and learned how much money was being spent that was it for me. I knew there was Money to be found

Steve: that’s ridiculous. Are we talking like hundreds of millions of dollars here?

Nick: Easily, every single campaign to be launched a penny on the country. Now, you don’t need millions of millions of dollars to Target all of turkey, but for those larger markets like you’re definitely spending upwards of 10 to 50 million dollars.

Steve: Hahaha. Oh my God, that is so ridiculous. So so how did that stint at Apple lead to fidget Spinners?

Nick: Oh, okay, so there is no congruence. But the only main part was at the time I was building my relationship with their partner who’s fairly silent on a lot of the socials. But his name is Jake Schmidt, and he we don’t each other for about seven years now. He’s about five years younger than me. So I’m 29 is a little bit younger and he hit me was like, hey Nick, I’ve been trying to push this thing through influencers and I saw trendy because back in the day if you were on Instagram early and people are doing like these growth Bots are follow for follow like for like trying to grow big as they can. Jake just happened to be followed and liked by a brand that was selling 3D printed Bridget Spinners, and he was like, what is this?

And at the time there was a likes to grab was a bunch of these tools out there and he just kept following back and he ended up finding that you can buy a bunch of these fidget Spinners from China and we ourselves can sell them and they were 3D printing of the quote is kind of low and as soon as he found it Feels Alright, how do we fix this? So we did our very first influencer camping before we knew how that was kind of working out with a gentleman who did a wall sit and if you Look at the brand digitally on Instagram. It’s still alive and still definitely living and there’s a very first image of a man doing I would say he’s like an older team doing a wall sit as long as the fidget spinner spins and I couldn’t tell you why this worked but I think it was just the first time I was been it’s been done for that product and these kids went wild

Steve: and that led to like millions of dollars of sales right for your fidget spinner.

Nick: It would have.

Steve: Oh it would have. Okay.

Nick: What did we understand, understood two things, so Jake at the time goes ahead you run paid media. I was running Facebook already for Apple. So I knew the buttons and you were to click we’re getting $2 to $4 conversions on a 40, 35 dollar product.

Steve: That’s ridiculous. How? how? how? how?

Nick: We had two major angles in, we definitely dealt with the trouble when at the time but we are taking a the ADD and ADHD angle stop the fidgeting, right? So we showed a main video that’s definitely still up there of a kid tapping. We still the problem like that at its core in hindsight. We definitely weren’t smart enough to do this at the time, but we were showing the problem tapping our feet clicker pencils biting our nails and then we said like those solution was our fridges, right?

Steve: So you’re talking to parents at the time?

Nick: We thought we were talking to parents and that was probably one of our bigger issues of how we couldn’t scales because the kids that we were communicating or we were creating content for kids, but the kids had no money.

Steve: Hmm Okay.

Nick: So the sort of seeing it in engaging the liking and sharing but we had to convince mom and dad to make that purchase. So then we went a little bit Upstream of do you want a little bit of your free time back? How do you get the kids from stop bugging or fidget you put them put them to bed make them quiet grab our toy. Well the issue with that is and I don’t know how this kind of got viral but we ran into our first time we found out what Chinese New Year meant meaning nothing in nothing out and we continue to sell and that was the first time that we had in our experience. And again, I was a soccer player. This is not my path that Jake was obviously trying to start products has as this is but this was the first success one we ever launched.

It was very difficult to know how to respond and keep the consistency of tone that we know now there’s tools out the Wazoo to use but try DMing 13, 14, 15 year old people and then deal with the parents and they’re not having credit cards. It was it was wild

Steve: is that ultimately what made you shut that down or?

Nick: We will go too deep into why we ended up giving up a majority of the company to someone looking to help us as though we thought at the time and took the company into a direction which in hindsight was not the right direction. He wanted to create a connected fidget spinner device. Which I still currently have in my car, but just with that phrase alone. Do you think people needed a connected fidget spinner?

Steve: Are you implying like there’s an app and you can control it through the app or something like that? Is that?

Nick: absolutely

Steve: okay interesting.

Nick: So at the time we knew it was a trend right? fidget. It was it was the yo-yo I call it. That was a yo-yo of the time and that’s why I still love it because it’s a very relevant and I always like to make the joke that if it wasn’t for us Toys R Us would have went down much quicker

Steve: ha ha ha

Nick: because it wasn’t they were the number one order like them Target. Bed, Bath and Beyond and Best Buy were the ones who wants to buy it and so We did a good we had a great little run. I realized real quick two things. I rather scale and solve the problem then develop the product and that’s kind of where Jake and I’ve kind of found his Niche and kind of what we’re talking about today is how was I able to start a product making good, A little bit of my money and why don’t I just continue to go make products? Well, I’ll tell anybody until I’m blue in the face. If you have no idea what you want to do or be or grow up to do join an agency because you’re gonna learn two things really quick.

One, you’re going to learn how to work with people and to you’re going to learn the industry that you like the most.

Steve: Okay

Nick: And that’s it.

Steve: So you have no desire well, at least at the moment to start a physical products brand because that’s not your expertise or?

Nick: So, Correct from the start I have no desire to start a brand but I have a lot and lot of desire to partner with those that have a great product. So that and that’s kind of where we are today is I I’d rather not spend and my genius or my ability to scale build a company in areas that aren’t perfect for me. Meaning, if you come to the products and you have no brand identity of no proven sales. You have no converting page to be very difficult for me to implement what I know because minimum the Brand’s we work with are spending a hundred two hundred three hundred thousand dollars a month.

Steve: Okay. So Nick, I know you work with a lot of Brands today. And what I was hoping to do is maybe get your opinion on a strategy. Let’s say for a company that might make like mid six figures maybe low seven figures or do you work with those types of companies?

Nick: Absolutely.

Steve: All right.

Nick: Those are all of the brands that have two things that we like one, they’re probably small enough to implement a lot of the tactics that are more direct response and the not so super establishing their brand that they’re not willing to take more of a direct response direct-to-consumer play and they’re also going like there’s some things that are working. There’s some angle there are some product they definitely have viability.

Steve: Okay. So let’s just start. I know I know you worked with a bunch of Brands. So let’s start the so let’s say a company comes up to you and says, hey we need help on the media buying end. What do you begin? What questions do you ask? How do you get started?

Nick: Great question. I usually try to ask them. Okay, what are your margins were working. Why is that important to me? Because when every person comes into me, I think I actually wrote this email today. I asked them I didn’t ask them. What’s your advertising budget? I go how much are you willing to invest in marketing? That was only what you can frame this because right now it’s investment and learning and what direction you should take your problems. Why I believe that is because right now Facebook is still the only tool that can give you enough learning and understanding and control over the direction of your product.

But it still takes time to figure it out because there’s a lot of variables price point, the conversion rate and the quality of traffic. So those three very high level the buckets. You need to be pulling on a levers, the bucket you need to be feeling of the leveraging to be pulling.

Steve: So what would you say that the necessary margins would have to be and what would you want the average order value to be for example?

Nick: so thank you for being the second part up. So second part would be AOB so I need the margins to be no, no less than 25% I need my AOB to be at least 50 to $60.

Steve: So margins are you talking about net margins or gross?

Nick: Correct, Net because on average. Say, more brands, I’ll say oh say more Brands and I like to say is don’t invest up to 30% of their marketing spend. So I’ll remember that so A brand that is looking to grow needs to be investing at least 30 percent of their gross revenue into marketing to continue to grow it. So if we’re able to know that they have at least 25 to 30% Margin. It’s a wash and we can continue investing to me that if the product is good enough that repurchased rates going to come through.

Steve: All right, so their gross margins are like 66 percent. That means they’re still making a third they spend 1/3 and advertising it cost them a third and then they make it third so that sounds about right?

Nick: Yes, and then we can continue to invest because now we know that this product is a has a little bit of repurchase rate built into it, which is why I love baby products, Beauty products, consumables, pet specific products those products that already have a way of this is eventually going to run out. I just need to make sure that they enjoy this experience as much as possible. So they don’t have to pay to reacquire them.

Steve: So let me ask you this are there types of product that just won’t work like mundane commodity products are those generally not going to work?

Nick: well to this one one that I’m active investor in one that I love thoroughly. It’s called Miraclebrand.co one that you know of

Steve: yes, because I just saw the ads for and I thought they were excellent. So let’s talk about that one a little bit actually so describe what the product is.

Nick: Absolutely. It’s a miracle brand is a silver technology sheet and towel. Now you’re going like okay. Why is that important? Hm microbial. It’s a lot fresher for longer. You have to wash it as much I can eat as many USPS as possible. Right? Well, I started doing a little bit of research. I love this for two reasons. One, The team behind it are great Founders. Two, The Branding is beautiful and three, the creativity that you can have with this is unlimited right? Who needs to wash their clothes often kids are going to college. Maybe you’re a bachelor. Maybe you’re a single mother. Or maybe you’re too busy. Maybe your are a nanny.

There’s so many different angles you can take with this product, but we didn’t realize that that time is what’s the frequency in which someone’s buying this product multiple times. So now we have an issue of LTV and AOV and repeat purchase rate. Now our average cost that we’re selling a great bundle for about 170. Okay our average I think on any day is between $100 and $200 depending on how much you’re spending on ads and it’s tough because we know we’re not getting that repeat purchase rate as much as we need to. On average it’s six months to a year because you’re not refreshing towels.

Steve: Right. So let me ask you this. Then when you’re talking about your ad spend do you factor into account the lifetime value of the product when it comes to what your return on ad spend that you’re looking for?

Nick: We try to we try to now it’s not a perfect science because I think there’s too many tools and there’s not communicating across attribution levels, but we try to understand at least what the repurchase rate is within the first 60 days or 90. and all that all that allows us to do is understand how much more money we can spend or how much money we need to pull back from. For instance, There’s a brand that we work with called kokunot they sell hair serum. They sell face serum. And on average these women are going through it between 30 and 45 days. So guess what We’re putting a lot of our re marketing budget or not, putting our budget depending on whatever the strategy is for that month.

Well the budget could be put into Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or Pinterest. Around 30 to 40 days or we can just not choose to remarket. Just let Facebook be an acquisition Channel and let email do the nurturing so we don’t have to communicate at all of their. Now, I wouldn’t do that holy but I definitely would different types of discounts on remarking on pay channels versus remarketing on on email channels.

Steve: So why not run both them simultaneously the same offer?

Nick: you could but there’s definitely a different value that’s associated with I have to spend money to acquire a customer that might have already purchased from me.

Steve: Okay

Nick: On a discount well now I’m having to pay again to acquire that customer and pay and give up a little bit of margin. Is that repeat purchase for me?

Steve: Sure. Okay. Okay

Nick: So, you might not want to write you might not want to run an offer on paid traffic knowing that you already have that customer. You should just build a better flow or have a better communication, better way of segmenting communicating them

Steve: So back to the sheets example, I mean in the traditional sense, it’s kind of like a mundane product right? It’s sheets. So so how do you make that product interesting?

Nick: Okay. So how do we make the party concerned depending on the person that’s communicating about it. It’s sheets like there. It’s almost like toilet paper. Like how are you community what now to it was kind of a hot commodity

Steve: Yeah, it is right now

Nick: Sheets might even be a hot commodity these days. Who knows? But there’s a I know we’re dancing on a creative that we’re going to show at Seller Summit, but the type of luxury we’re trying to show what that product and the mundaneness of what it actually Is, is where the humor is right? So if we’re having someone because we’re talking about these sheets are very very high-end were charging people between 79 new hundred and $979. How or why is someone’s going to communicate why are someone’s gonna want to purchase this or we have to cleverly and articulate wash it less live better and be a little bit more Royal when you live in your sheets.

Steve: If you sell an Amazon or run any online business for that matter, you’re going to need a trademark to protect your intellectual property. Not only that but a trademark is absolutely necessary to register your brand on Amazon. Now, I used to think that any old trademark registration service would work and that could even try to register my own trademark by myself on the cheap, but I was dead wrong. Securing a trademark without a strategy in place usually results in either an outright rejection or a worthless unenforceable trademark. Now, that is why I work with Stephen Wiegler and his team from Emerge counsel. They have a package service called total TM, which provides the same attention to detail and process that large law firms do at a fraction of the price. Now for me personally, I like Emerge Council because of their philosophy, their goal is to maximize IP protection while minimizing the price. So before you decide to register a trademark by yourself or file for other I could protection such as a copyright or a patent, check out Emerge counsel first and get a free consult. For more information go to emergecouncil.com and click on the Amazon sellers button and tell Steve that Steve sent you to receive a $100 discount on the total TM package for Amazon sellers. Once again, that’s emergecounsel.com over at emergecounsel.com. Now back to the show.

Okay, and so that obviously involves some sort of video creative. What I’m trying to get an idea is like there’s a lot of people who are listening to this podcast right now and they’re probably selling some mundane products. Some people are just selling on Amazon and they want to start selling on their own site, but they’re looking at their products and the like hey, these are just kind of products. You can find an office store for example, or you’re selling sheets. What is what are the what are the things that you ask the brand in order to formulate a really good ad campaign for them?

Nick: Interesting. So this kind of you kind of go down like the USP list. If you are that’s not super special scientific. Other than like does your brand have the ability to have a little bit of humor in it? Because it is the mundane. It’s really difficult to sell socks stances very well this why do they do very well this is because they partner with professionals or partner with active athletes Etc. But if you’re trying to sell glasses for instance, and there’s no major value proposition around it humor is the easiest way of go.

About you’re going to buy this. Anyways, you might as well buy it from us and we’re going to make you enjoy this a little bit on the way. I don’t have a specific strategy or way of setting that up because it really comes down to what the brand wants to want a wants to embody. Like it’s humor the right call for you. If not, it’s really difficult for me to say

Steve: I see that brand that you scaled to was it 17 million and 35 days wasn’t that like a sock company?

Nick: It was it was it was it was a dog socks

Steve: Oh it was a dog socks Okay.

Nick: So the main brand is called Pup Socks was they were sister brand called Face Socks in the main reason we scale. This was of a very very simple phrase “your pup on socks” that was literally the type of career that we ran and it was not clever. It was not cute but it was extremely direct

Steve: was this a video creative?

Nick: No, it was an image

Steve: It was an image.

Nick: We actually would joke about this. So if you if you search it’s on Buzz, it’s on Sumo if you just did 1 million at 4X It’ll pull up and we have the exact screenshot of the audience are red text with your pup on socks. It was a dog with an arrow pointing to sock

Steve: and that’s it

Nick: Okay, but the Simplicity of like that’s communicating exactly what it is that you are going to buy and guess where they’re going to land on that page to make that purchase. Why this worked so well, obviously it’s a gifting product for sure. But as soon as he landed on the page and the fact that it had to be a custom upload of an image that they already have a fond memory on or it’s an animal that pulls on the heartstrings like they’re going to make that purchase looking to convert through on average or conversion. It’s about 4 plus

Steve: Wow. Okay, I guess this yeah for an animal lover. I can see it working.

Nick: Oh my God, who sells socks for $32?

Steve: that’s ridiculous.

Nick: I don’t know why but it’s been able to have sold a lot of ridiculous things like that. That makes absolutely no sense. But I’ll go back to the question you brought about how do you be clever about the mundane?

Steve: Okay.

Nick: It’s not it’s not as easy as you think it is because it does take a little bit of Creative Juice to sit through and come up with how am I going to communicate the value of this paper or pen or pencil? And the only way you can really do is looking through a lot of Amazon reviews why people are using it. There’s a lot of people that are commenting on our ads at think they’re funny and they’re probably not but the fact that they brought up someone had to have that thought. There’s a lot of different ways of going about of gathering information of what you should do to communicate against

Steve: Can you give me an example of how an Amazon review gave you inspiration?

Nick: Yeah, absolutely. So with Miracle specifically the main question was you may great sheets, but where’s a comforter and the number one trending a, The number one trending product outside of our silver sheet. Also, the silver sheets was silk sheets and then silk sheets everything every product that was frequently bought with was pillowcases or a comforter. And so that just put us down this awkward path of going “shit guys, I think we need to sell comforter” because look at all of our ads were showing her sheets showing the comforter and people are asking where can I buy that comforter looks so comfy. We never sold that product before and we allowed that to shape the next product we developed which should go live on our Kickstarter the end of the month

Steve: which is a comforter and pillowcases?

Nick: which is just a straight comforter.

Steve: straight cover

Nick: that was because of manufacturing issues, but we would have went we would have went pillowcases as well

Steve: Actually. I was just thinking that because you mentioned before that people buy sheet set, but then Anything else those are pretty good upsells right? Comforters, pillowcases

Nick: It made a lot of sense to his plus that’s that’s another higher ticket product that people can see the value or the quality ins

Steve: and what about in terms of the creative. So with Miracle sheets and it’s really hard to show an ad on a podcast I guess but you guys want the humor route.

Nick: We did

Steve: And can you talk a little bit about how much that campaign costs to film how much generally you spend on just like the creatives before you even run a campaign?

Nick: Sure. Great question. So the team that we had helped us out was called Common Thread Collective great founder team that I was very very thankful to be a part of for the last year and a half or so and we knew they were able to create a Content but I wouldn’t say cheap it was a relatively cheap because a lot of the stuff is still pretty costly that campaign of you smell like sheet, which is if you can Envision me as an English grandmother Queen, that’s exactly what it was coming across as in this was a $15,000 shoot all in. Now, we did two, two cuts. You get to see the other one

Steve: I did. I think I’ve seen all of them now at this point.

Nick: Okay? So yes, hopefully you are in my remarketing circle. There is no discount code. So go ahead and stay on this way. The humor out was easy to come across because a I think they’re creative team is very remarkable and B the cost of getting new assets knowing me because I’m running the account. I’m actually in a day to day. It was really difficult because we had no spokesperson. We had no like Avatar or person that could definitely speak to what this product was and so by embodying both her and him at the time like we should definitely link to that.

Steve: Yeah, I’ll link to the ad underneath the podcast. Yeah.

Nick: Thank you so much because it’s really hard to get across but they were communicating a lot of the things that was questioned by our customers of why is this product so expensive and what is it going to do which if you watch the ad they just talk through the USPS, wash less, smell fresher and was the last one, anti microbial those three, but they do it in a way of going like the high classes was communicated by who the person was and then the humor of it pull people in if you look at the comments people are loving the ads and running clicking and buying which I hate.

Steve: So when you do a shoot like that you said it was 15 grand how many actual creatives do get or is it just that one video?

Nick: No, they do. So what they call it’s like little bit of a transactional Content real. So I usually do a longer 35 to a minute piece and then within that minute piece depending on the variables. This is really now that I’m in the business of like selling content. It really comes down to deliverable assets they can use top middle bottom of funnel. So that I think when we were when it was delivered because it was a little bit ago. They gave us 25 assets or maybe 15 assets the longer piece still images obviously cuz you’re going to gather that with a second shooter and then the different hooks that they communicating with this has to be cut into vertical and this has to be cut into square.

Because you don’t you don’t necessarily always shooting Square because sometimes the scene might not be permitting it but you’re trying to make sure that if I do have to cut it for platform which squares for feed or 9 by 16, you do want to have the subject in the communication of the whole entire ad with in that square set. So we just did a scope of content and we’re delivering for 29,000. We’re delivering 45 assets.

Steve: 45 okay. So can you talk about how you use those assets in the ads like what do you use for top of funnel middle funnel and bottom of the funnel?

Nick: correct on the as on the on the Miracle brand specifically?

Steve: Yeah. Sure. Let’s use that one. We’ve been talking about that brand.

Nick: Sure. So Miracle, we got the long-form piece of Grandma walking in and that was just we ran for two different things one on PPE which is put a page post engagement and we ran that against a conversion ad so we let that same exact post duplicated into same exact conversion post. Duplicated into a page post engagement so that we’re just acquiring people that like and comment on

Steve: so, I’m sorry. So do you always start out like that to get some social proof on the ad before you run it as a conversion ad?

Steve: If we in budget permits not all brands are able to allow us to spend on this but we knew what we had and it’s unbelievable viral ad and so the brand owner and me knowing that some my dollars involved. I knew this was the right path to take with it.

Steve: So, can you provide some guidelines? Like, how long did you run that engagement add before you convert it over?

Nick: The day I lost my conversion can be in the day. I lost my PB

Steve: really? Okay. What’s the rationale for that?

Nick: Well, I didn’t want to spend I didn’t want to spend on I didn’t want to spend on just acquiring people that might just be window Shoppers. I wanted to have the ability to have conversions from day one.

Steve: your PPE Ed also generates conversions. I would imagine, right?

Nick: right not as much as you think if you’re telling Facebook y’all want you to give me engagement. They’re going to give you engagement. They’re not going to yes. I hope that the my ad is good enough. The clicks and likes and comments are cheap enough, but oftentimes of all the money I’ve spent on this like I spent a shit ton of money on this platform and there’s definitely not a time nowadays where I’m running a PPE campaign to get conversions, especially for a product that costs over $100.

Steve: Okay

Nick: Right. Now this Strat this is a strategy. I would have taken the fidgets Spinners back in the day because it was a viral ad and we were able to get more reach so yes, they might not be converting with the amount of shares comments and abilities for us to follow up with those are sitting in purchases too

Steve: I see so this PPE Ad I imagine you only run it for a short period right or do you just keep it going?

Nick: Yeah, you run as long as you want. It’s just too bad that the budget is between five and ten bucks a day. It’s nominal.

Steve: Okay. All right. And is there some sort of guideline you’re trying to hit in terms of social proof?

Nick: I’m not no, there’s no specific on that. I’m trying to go for the more people. I know they can comment Engage The more opportunity that I could have my customer support team reach out. Potentially provide a promo code. So if we if we continue to see engagement stack on the ad, it’s only going to help two different things one relevancy score basement views it as a better piece of content. We might get cheaper delivery cheaper CPMS. But if you’re if you’re running yourself and you’re trying to look at hey, I would like to allocate some engagement budget if you will?

How do I measure this is working check your CPM to CTR. Like if you’re if it’s consistently not moving up or down or if it’s moving up maybe that dollars aren’t worth and just put it back in your conversion campaign. But if you are seeing that your delivery is getting little more little more cost-effective. Your PPE is definitely influencing the fact that you’re hitting better people and having higher engagement higher click those and longer watch times.

Steve: Can you provide some guidelines on what like a good click-through rate is?

Nick: no, but there is there is a video that we did talk about ADA attention interest desire and action if you’re looking at I think it’s your three second impression 3-second video views / Impressions. You want to have that at least 30% you want to have a 30% three-second view rate to Impressions.

Steve: Okay.

Nick: I have one video I just did is in Bangkok is called the Ada calculation, look that one up.

Steve: Okay. I’m just trying to get an idea of which metrics that you’re focusing on especially in the beginning of the campaign when you’re just starting it out for the first time.

Nick: Yeah, again, we’re looking at cart things. I only get paid if I make money so I don’t report on conversion I won’t report on there’s never been a client that asked me how many likes or Falls that I get from that man always be like, so did you make me money? You know, so we look at we look at our average cost per cart. So average cost per cart at prospecting and average cost per cart checkout. And the reason why now, there’s a little bit of variance in this some people run sliding carts or sliding shelf for a check out. So that might be a little bit easier to get you some people do a check out where it automatically pushes you into cart.

So that might assist or my change the value of a cart to you. Those are all correlations that you need to obviously understand. So if I were to give you any jumping off point when you just launched a new creative, first get a baseline on cold traffic going to go prospecting what your average cost per added cart is at profitability, right? If you need a 2X and your average cart is 13 bucks. Like you definitely need to know that that maps to a $26 or that’s like two times as cheap as your cost per purchase, right?

Steve: So in general, do you have some guidelines on what percentage of the add to cart people actually will actually buy the product? I know that varies but

Nick: man I don’t even know I don’t even want to put my name on a guesstimate right here. Okay, because it’s going to vary by industry.

Steve: Well, let me ask you this. Are you optimizing for add two carts in the beginning?

Nick: Never. We don’t optimize radicals because again just like the engagement piece will give you out of carts. And why is it I don’t know. I really don’t understand why but I used to be a really big tactic and strategy that people are using the like hey, you need a quote unquote season your pixel. Brother, I promise you that is not something that we ever need to worry about you go for conversion from day one

Steve: interesting. Yeah.

Nick: Because you your unless you’re only ship with unbelievable strategy on abandoned carts or a text message follow-up. It’s just not going to back out. We’ve run those tests optimized for conversion optimized it for carts. You’ll definitely get cheaper carts. But that gross does not back out.

Steve: All right, so you’re optimizing for conversions and then you’re getting some add to cart numbers here. How do you know what the correlation is from? Add two cards to purchases. How do you make that estimate that you just described earlier?

Nick: Absolutely. So I wish I could pull it up on my computer right now because I have this document. It’s literally a simple correlation document of the average amount of average amount of cost per landing page view. That’s there’s cost per click and then there’s one more step into like actual landing on a product page. now, this is all assuming that they’re dropping onto homepage. Not a product page, or maybe everyone just wanted to a product page, but on average you need to have your metrics of cost Braddock cart to your cost per initiate, check out your cost per purchase. You’re going to get obviously your carts your initiates in your purchase.

It’s needs to be as close as possible to a 25 percent increase from your cart value. To initiate into your purchase. So 25% should be the variance across the entire funnel and if it’s up and down a little bit you’re probably looking at a mixture of cold traffic and warm traffic, but you have to segment those two because they perform significantly different

Steve: interesting. So when you run your campaign, so what is the landing page look like?

Nick: Well typical home page. I have no pride. No preference around this a lot of the brands that we work with unless you’re selling a single product. It’s going to look like a normal home page

Steve: interesting. The reason why I ask is because a lot of people these days are running ads to a I guess a special landing page that just kind of showcases that product like a kind of like a long form sales page. and you know, maybe they might be collecting emails or whatnot on that also, but that one page is kind of like a little mini funnel where they buy there’s upsells that are to that product or whatnot.

Nick: I totally hear you. I think I think there’s you have multiple approaches if you’re a single SKU store. I think that’s smart to pull off. If you have one single hero product and not real not really buying intent for your secondary of support, supporting products that make sense as well. But if you’re if you’re looking to build at least DP remarketing or anything dynamic in terms of remarketing, driving straight to store and allowing them to shop more.

It’s still very very viable option you’re able to fill these buckets of audiences. We do have some brands that run just to a single product funnel. They don’t get the luxury of building or \ letting these people window shop.

Steve: Right

Nick: So but that is a strategy. Maybe we run top of funnel for single products and all the remarketing if they didn’t make a purchase or they fell off too soon. Put it back to your store.

Steve: I’m just curious for the sheet company. It’s that sounds like a single Product Company right the miracle brand?

Nick: correct So they have well they have sheets. They’re betting their pillow cases. They have a bundle So that’s its generally two, you have bedding, you have towels. Okay. So look at the landing page. It’s a dual product landing page, depending where you go from that. It’s going to be a single product.

Steve: Okay. So what is the what is the middle of the funnel look like what type of ads are you running there?

Nick: A lot of social proof. So we have a lot of UGC and we a lot of what we like to call. I don’t want to..

Steve: So UGC stands for user-generated content for those who love you who are listening.

Nick: So we have a lot of user generated content from the demographics that we really care about. So about single guy, a single mother, a mother with a lot of families and older I would say more like a nanny Aunt figure but they’re all communicating the same exact value proposition is that it’s just a different delivery.

Steve: Okay, so you just try to get so these are from purchases. I’m guessing that you’re asking for testimonials and whatnot. And you’re trying to get different demographics.

Nick: Absolutely. That’s I think as soon as we started implementing males talking about the product and adding little bit of humor like guys, you know, you’re not wash your sheets, you know, you don’t have to wash this at all. Like that’s it’s pretty straightforward. But it’s really what needs to be heard.

Steve: So in terms of audiences and we can talk specifically about this sheet company. It seems like sheets apply to everyone right? So, who are you targeting or how are you setting up your audience’s for this?

Nick: I’ll definitely tell you that we’ve moved significantly far away from doing very Niche or micro-targeting. We’re very Broad and everything what I mean by that is the only changes were doing to audiences are going to be the amount of the bids that were actually doing if we’re bidding for AOB or bidding for two AOB on cost cap campaigns. That’s a little bit more like the nerdy media buyer. But I’m definitely not sitting you’re choosing audiences that no one’s ever heard of are stacking audiences that are like 3 or 4 or 12 deep to get one specific audience.

Because Facebook has told us and we’ve seen this the more broad the allow you let the more you allow Facebook to choose who to send this to the better. Now, the changes is whether you’re going to go a look like audience versus just a broad audience broad interest audience. We still do interest testing consistently, but it’s not at not at a tremendous amount of budget. That’s just for to see what we can drum up a little bit of Interest

Steve: interesting. So I imagine for the she company you could probably run that wide open, right?

Nick: Really. We love the brands. We love the products that don’t have to be necessarily explained everybody and that’s applicable like it has a wide appeal wide market. Because we know by our branding, We Know by our price points We Know by the people in our content like we’re going to start segmenting them out. I don’t need an audience to do that for me.

Steve: So for your user generated content, you’re just retargeting back to the homepage or no?

Nick: No, it depends on depends on for this specific product. It would be home page because homepage acts as a collection because there’s only two paths that you can go but generally speaking if we’re running to a product that has for running to a brand that has multi SKUs. We’re dropping the back on the collection or product page depending how the site setup is. What I really hate doing is when I remarked it back to a product page and they don’t have the ability to do any frequently bought with or they’re just stuck on that one product.

Maybe they need to see it. Right that’s all stuff that needs to be tested. But I I just hate running some of that jumped onto a landing some of the jumped on my product page. I put them right back to the product page why you should put him to the cart or you should put it back to a collection because there’s probably other things that they’re looking for. For or maybe they need to Discount specifically just and there’s so many different thought work going through

Steve: So how do Dynamic product ads fall into play then because that kind of violates your premise, right? Because with DPA you’re sending people back to the product

Nick: Right DPA. So if we depending on how you want to structure that store, so we run a lot of our DPA pages of just people that’s Add to the Cart initiate check out and we’re dropping right back to cart. So they had to view product plus added to cart. Where do you drop them back to cart view product plus added cart initiate check out you’re going to put it back to carts. You can’t go to prostrate to check out.

Steve: I see. Okay. So you’re literally dropping them back to the shopping cart page.

Nick: Yeah, because the three going to add it there like now if you’re if you want it. And how segmented you really want to go and how much money you have to spend but that’s the real question because some people aren’t going to need to segment that deep of going I want just home page visitors segmented from collection page visitors section from product page visitors section from add to cart inclusive of initiate check out. Some people don’t have the budget to run through that so what they would end up doing similar what you’re talking about is, okay all people that added a cart that’s a sink. That’s a bucket like that’s a bucket of maybe viewers from Day 1 to 30 put those together.

But if they haven’t added it to cart, let’s just put it right back to the product page. It’s really up to the choice of the how much budget the brand has to spend.

Steve: Okay

Nick: But I do what I do like about product Dynamic product ads, which don’t get talked about often. Is there a brand right now that I’ve been working with called Get Caro, and they’re looking at pulling in like Dynamic creative off of your product page. That isn’t just like that that crappy product on white. So if you’re if you’re To do Dynamic product ads you’re able to pull in a lifestyle image. If you set up your product feed to do so on Facebook.

Steve: I’ve heard about people doing this. They have multiple creatives in their product feed and they can even use GIFs or GIFS, right? Yep. Is that something that you’ve been doing with your brands?

Nick: yeah, we’re running a lot of Lifestyle products. So we have speak speaking specifically on one Posh Peanut, is a baby brand and those the best performing creative is the DPA of Lifestyle images that image is just the one on their product page

Steve: interesting. Okay

Nick: because it think about it right like why would I want to run just a strict protocol white when I can still build that same audience and run a video an image a GIF my own care. So maybe I can create my own Carousel from the collection and run it back to the same audience. Now DP is obviously very effective because it ”dynamically do that for you, but you can still set that up by yourself.”

Steve: Can you run videos? Dynamically?

Nick: You can run. I think it’s a slight. I think they call it slide show. I don’t think it’s streaming video.

Steve, Ah Okay, because I know you can switch up the images and you can use GIFs or I don’t I always screw up it is GIF or GIFs. I don’t know, whatever. When do influencers come into play?

Nick: I think this is I believe influencers in three different type of three different main topics one if your brand that feels as though you’re so congruent with that influencers audience, but you aren’t in that influencers audience and it would be it would make a lot of sense for her to introduce you or him or her sorry him or her to introduce you to the audience. That’s when they come into play. If you have a new product that you want to launch and you don’t necessarily want to live on your site or you know.

You’re like I want I want to launch this with a with some of that proven the space or some of those real authority to speak about the quality of this product and that you yourself going from like I’m the brand look at me look at me and that credibility of that new product launch would that influencer my land a bit better? do that. And also if you just are struggling with getting a bunch of good pieces of content. We’re going to create it for you. In the funnel, if you want me to talk specifically in the funnel, they’re applicable top middle and bottom.

Steve: Okay

Nick: Because provide that social proof of going like hey and let’s be let’s be very specific on influencers. Like I’m not talking the Khloe Kardashian’s and the Kylie’s like I’m talking Cindy Lou from Utah cuz she’s a she’s got a bomb mommy blog and women listen to her and she’s got 50,000 followers.

Steve: So you mentioned that you use this top middle and bottom how do you kind of distinguish because it seems like a lot of people are going to be seeing the same ads then right?

Nick: Well, it kind of depends because if you’re going to get the if you’re going to get content from an influencer, what part of that tells you like? Oh, that’s a hundred percent top of funnel. You don’t know that like you just don’t know when you get that content back. You’re going to give him the brief. You’re going to be like I need you to talk about these main value propositions because this is what are women or men or loving about it or asking about it and you’re not going to get like a clear reason about okay that has to live top of funnel because that’s it’s not true. It’s an absolute and you can’t speak in absolutes and paid social

So something is going to work at minimum bottom of funnel. I’m definitely going to try that top of funnel to see if it convert on new traffic. Everything should be segmented anyways.

Steve: okay

Nick: But if you are wanting to think about this cleanly give them give them three things to talk about. For miracle sheets, We believed that the fact that someone didn’t have to wash it frequently was a really important value proposition. Okay, so we have the influencer speak about just that you didn’t have to wash it and then her life was easier and that that she didn’t have to worry about the smell and the second was, smell and but we didn’t let her go deep into on the first because she’s talking about not watching it. The next was it smelled better for longer. Now, Those are hooks that can A, reinforced why some would buy but it also could convince them initially while they would buy top of funnel. So see there’s two applications on both top and middle funnel

Steve: Okay, and you just have to experiment to see what works.

Nick: I really I know a lot of people when you jump on a podcast We jump on these things that you sees things in absolutes. It kills me because I’ve seen too much and I know for a fact that there’s nothing absolute especially pay social and especially right now, like there’s why are people buying things at their buying right now at a fear? out of boredom? They’re at home. They have more Wi-Fi. There’s so many questions.

Steve: So I remember you saying this at your event, you have to hit you try to hit all the different angles just to see what works all the different hooks right? When you’re when you’re generating your paid ads. Hey, Nick, so if I’m like a six-figure company or a low seven-figure company, like how much money would you feel that you would need to just kind of get gather data on this entire process excluding the creative.

Nick: Excluding the creative. I think if you gave me $15,000 to develop five grand across three clear angles. You can create content for and write specific ads tied to it. Now. I wouldn’t go as deep into making specific landing pages. But if the brand or we have the ability to do that, I think $15,000 will give you enough directional information that you could buy to then invest more or go in that direction.

Steve: Okay. That was kind of like my next question. How do you know whether it’s working or not? I mean

Nick: Yeah, so we have we have two things. So we have a correlation export that shows and this is like our Bible so brand comes into us. We do the same audit of like, okay. First of all, where they where they knee hurting the most in the funnel. Is it top, middle, bottom? Are they even spending that we do our best to not talk to Brands. They’re going like hey, we have this great idea. We want to launch it because we just know that that’s going to be investment that’s going to be at least 30,000 to invest in. They need a website. They need content. We have to test that content. We have to iterate that content just because the price point makes sense.

I digress but there if a Brands coming into me and they go like we already have a great product. We’re making sales on Amazon. We have some great feedback, but we don’t have any own audiences or paid or paid angles that were running. What do we do? Five grand a pop / angle build up top and middle and bottom of what I’m not saying of do full videos, but at least a congruent story with different versions of copy will be enough for you to go like, okay. Does this mother angle work? Does the bats or angle work or does it college angle work? And then from that we kind of develop more content around it.

Steve: Okay. Hey Nick. This is a good lead-in to where can people find you. And what do you do?

Nick: Well, jeez if you guys can see who’s on coming Seller Summit. This is

Steve: ha ha ha.

Nick: This is I am, we are making the trip out here from California to Florida. So we are braving the flight to do so, if not find me on Instagram. I am Nick Shackleford and I am trying to build up the Twitter a little bit but it’s still slows. But I love paid social. This is I wouldn’t do anything. It’s like if I was asked with something that’s more like Nick, when you got all the money in the world. What would you do? Same thing. I just probably would have a nicer computer.

Steve: Hey didn’t even mention Structured Social. Come on.

Nick: I know I know it’s knowing how great your audience is like there’s people are smart enough to find if they wanted so I’ll let you do that talking but if you are interested in what we do, we are at Structured Social just as is and we love what we do. So thank you very much brother.

Steve: Cook, Nick. Thanks. A lot of coming on the show man, really appreciate it.

Nick: Of course. See you soon.

Steve: Hope you enjoyed that episode as I mentioned earlier. Nick was a speaker at my annual e-commerce conference called the Seller Summit and he knows his stuff when it comes to Media buys. Now, I know that I will be listening to this episode again to catch all the little details. For more information about this episode go to my wifequitherjob.com/episode311.

And once again, I want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode, Klaviyo is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce Merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned cart sequence, a post purchase flow or win back campaign. Basically, all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitherjob.com/klaviyo. Once again, that’s mywifequitherjob.com/klaviyo

I also want to thank PostScript.io which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce with a few clicks of a button. You can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at PostScript.io/Steve. That’s Postscript.io/Steve.

Now I talked about how I use these tools in my blog and if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store head on over to mywifequitherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini-course just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.

Outro: Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com