eCommerce Hack: Drive Insane New Customer Acquisition with Your Hero Product

with Taylor FramefromFocus Funnels

Discover how Focus Funnels' Taylor Frame uses hero product identification and focused acquisition funnels to scale eCommerce brands to six figures. Learn the systematic approach that's generated over £300 million in ad spend, from identifying your hero product through sales data analysis to building long-scroll landing pages that answer customer questions before they're asked. This data-driven strategy helps brands stop overcomplicating their marketing and focus on what actually converts cold traffic into profitable customers.

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Ever wondered why some eCommerce brands effortlessly scale to six figures whilst others struggle to break through the noise? Taylor Frame from Focus Funnels has managed over £300 million in ad spend and discovered the answer lies in one simple principle: stop trying to sell everything and focus ruthlessly on your hero product. His agency has transformed over 100 brands into six-figure success stories using what he calls "focused acquisition funnels."

Taylor's journey began in corporate America, selling marketing technology to giants like Restoration Hardware and Gap. He noticed a massive gap in the market - smaller eCommerce brands couldn't afford enterprise-level tools but desperately needed sophisticated marketing strategies. This realisation led him to partner with Focus Funnels, where he spent 18 months working two jobs before making the leap to full-time entrepreneurship. Today, his agency serves brands from startups doing £50,000 monthly to established companies generating £7 million per month.

The Acquisition Blind Spot Most Brands Miss

Before diving into tactics, we need to understand why most eCommerce brands fail at new customer acquisition.

"Most brands are pretty good at selling to their existing customer base," Taylor explains. "If you're doing 50k a month, you've really gotten pretty good at that. But what they don't understand is I need new people. But I need those new people at a relatively either profitable or break even."

This disconnect creates what Taylor calls the acquisition blind spot. Brands become comfortable selling to people who already know and trust them, but struggle to convert cold traffic into profitable customers. The result? Stagnant growth and an over-reliance on existing customers who eventually churn or reduce their spending.

The heart of every eCommerce business is new blood - fresh customers who haven't heard of your brand before. Yet most acquisition strategies scatter their focus across multiple products, diluting their message and making it impossible to measure what actually works.

The Hero Product Discovery Framework

Taylor's solution begins with identifying your hero product through systematic data analysis rather than gut instinct.

"The first thing that we do when we partner with a brand is we start to look historically at the last three to six months of sales data, and we start to say, okay, what are people consistently buying from you for the first time?" Taylor reveals.

This isn't about finding your best-selling product overall - it's about discovering which product new customers gravitate towards. For brands with extensive catalogues, particularly in fashion and apparel, this analysis becomes crucial.

The Hero Product Criteria:

  • Consistently purchased by first-time customers
  • Demonstrates clear value proposition
  • Solves a specific, identifiable problem
  • Has evergreen appeal (not seasonal or trend-dependent)
  • Profitable enough to support acquisition costs

Once identified, this hero product becomes the foundation for all acquisition efforts. Rather than trying to convert cold traffic across multiple products, brands can focus their entire marketing message around one proven winner.

The Problem-Solution Bridge

Step two involves articulating why someone should choose your hero product over every other option available.

"Every brand solves a problem," Taylor notes. "Whether it's a dress or a baby swaddle or a new pair of pants or a jewelry brand, every brand solves a problem. Most people just don't know how to formulate that framework of problem solving in a way that gets people to purchase stuff."

Taylor uses the example of a dress brand to illustrate multiple angles:

  • Fits every body style (inclusivity angle)
  • Made with high-quality materials (longevity angle)
  • Extremely flattering design (confidence angle)

The key is testing these different problem-solution frameworks systematically rather than assuming you know which resonates most with potential customers. Each angle becomes a potential "hook" for your acquisition funnel.

Building Your Focused Acquisition Funnel

Taylor's focused acquisition funnel operates as "a mechanism to acquire new customers with proven data and hopefully profitability." Think of it as a machine that runs 24/7, with one specific job: bringing new people into your brand as cost-effectively as possible.

The funnel consists of three core components:

1. Ad Content and Creative
The copy, creative, and messaging used in advertising. This reflects your chosen hook and speaks directly to the problem your hero product solves.

2. Media Buying Strategy
The techniques used to serve your ads to the right people at the right time. This involves audience targeting, platform selection, and budget allocation.

3. Landing Page Experience
The destination where potential customers land after clicking your ad. For most clients, Taylor builds everything natively in Shopify to maintain simplicity and improve attribution.

What makes this approach powerful is the consistency of messaging across all three components. The same hook that appears in your ad creative gets echoed throughout the landing page experience, creating a seamless customer journey.

The Long-Scroll Landing Page Strategy

One of Taylor's most effective tactics involves creating product pages that function as "mini websites."

"Answer the questions that the customer is going to have before they have the question," he advises. "Most people are shopping on their phones, they don't like to click around. There's a reason that there's no clicking on Instagram. It's swiping and scrolling."

Using a nursing bra as an example, Taylor outlines the questions customers typically have:

  • How does it actually work?
  • How does sizing work across different body types?
  • What's the difference for nursing versus pumping?
  • How do I know this will be comfortable?

By addressing these concerns proactively within a long-scroll format, customers can get all the information they need without leaving the page. The result? Higher conversion rates and fewer abandoned carts due to unanswered questions.

Testing and Scaling Your Acquisition Machine

Once your focused acquisition funnel is built, systematic testing reveals which hooks and messages resonate most with your target audience.

"Maybe it's the fact that this dress fits a lot of body styles. Maybe that's the selling point. We'll test that and it's all backed by data," Taylor explains.

This data-driven approach allows brands to make informed optimisation decisions rather than guessing. When cost per acquisition rises above profitable levels, you know exactly what to fix - the sales hook, media buying strategy, or landing page experience.

For established brands, Taylor employs a hub-and-spoke model where the eCommerce site serves as the hub, with multiple acquisition funnels (typically 5-7) serving as entry points. However, each funnel follows the same focused approach: one product, one clear hook, one optimised experience.

Starting From Zero

For new eCommerce entrepreneurs, Taylor advocates for realistic expectations and strategic patience.

"You're looking at least a six-month runway before you start to see some real momentum," he reveals. "And by real momentum, meaning we're doing like 10 to 15k a month consistently. We're getting new customers in the brand. You know, we've got all the kinks worked out on the messaging, the product, the fulfilment."

New brands face a choice between two approaches:

The Sweat Equity Route: Direct outreach, influencer partnerships, social media hustle, and organic relationship building. This requires time and energy but minimal financial investment.

The Investment Route: Paid advertising and professional marketing. This accelerates results but requires capital and carries more risk.

Both approaches benefit from the hero product strategy - focusing all efforts on proving that one product can profitably acquire new customers before expanding to additional products.

The Agency Advantage

Taylor's team manages multiple clients across various niches, creating a unique learning advantage.

"The minute we find something that's working, we apply that to all of our customers," he notes. "There's a massive amount of insight and knowledge transfer that's being applied to these accounts."

This cross-pollination of insights, combined with the experience of managing significant ad spend, allows specialist agencies to achieve results that individual brands struggle to replicate internally.

However, Taylor emphasises the importance of choosing the right agency partner: "We are very open and honest about whether or not people are a good fit. If you come to us and you're not a good fit, we're going to tell you that."

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Through years of experience, Taylor has identified recurring mistakes that sabotage acquisition efforts:

Acting Bigger Than You Are: "People are acting like they're multi million dollar ecom shops and they're doing 100k a month. You don't need to roll out a new product every three months. There's unlimited upside for you if you can crack the code on two or three of your core products."

Chasing Shiny Objects: New platforms, tactics, and tools constantly emerge, but success comes from mastering fundamentals rather than constantly switching strategies.

Overcomplicating Simple Concepts: "The marketing strategies that we use are not new. These are things that have been tested for 200 years. But what's rad is when you apply them properly and you execute them the right way and you have an eye on the data, they work."

Your Next Steps

Ready to implement your own focused acquisition funnel? Start with these actions:

  1. 1
    Analyse your sales data from the last 3-6 months to identify which products new customers buy first
  2. 2
    Define the core problem your hero product solves and brainstorm 3 different angles to test
  3. 3
    Audit your current product page and list every question a new customer might have
  4. 4
    Create a long-scroll landing page that answers these questions before they're asked
  5. 5
    Start small with testing - one product, one hook, one optimised experience

Remember Taylor's core philosophy: "You can have a lot of complexity and sophistication when you're doing one to five million dollars a month in revenue. Pretty much any time before that, you can keep your shop very simple, but you have to be effective."

The brands that scale successfully aren't the ones with the most complex systems - they're the ones that master the fundamentals of turning strangers into profitable customers through focused, data-driven acquisition funnels.


Full Episode Transcript

Read the complete, unedited conversation between Matt and Taylor Frame from Focus Funnels. This transcript provides the full context and details discussed in the episode.

Matt Edmundson


00:00:06.960 - 00:03:03.200


Well, hello and welcome to the E Commerce Podcast. My name is Matt Edmondson, and this is a show all about helping you deliver E commerce. Wow. Yes, it is.


And to help us do just that, today I am chatting with Taylor Frame from Focus Funnels about revolutionizing E commerce. No biggie. Then we're gonna be talking about focused acquisition funnels and all kinds of good stuff today.


Yes, we're gonna be talking from Taylor Frame from Focus Funnels. We're gonna get into funnels.


I'm looking forward to this one because we've not really talked about funnels that much on the show before, so this is gonna be very exciting.


But before we jump into that, let me remind you, if you haven't done so already, to subscribe to the newsletter, all you've got to do is, is go to ecommercepodcast.net, put in your name, putting your email address, and when we get the show going, when it gets launched out, we send you an email with the notes, with the links from the guests. They all come to you. It's all easy peasy. You don't have to jot things down. It's just all there. So make sure you sign up for that.


And of course, if this is your first time with us, a warm welcome to you. It's great. We're getting so many new listeners at the moment. I am super stoked. So welcome to the show. It's great to have you on with us. Yes, it is.


And before we get into it, let me just say that this show is made possible by the fantastic ecommerce cohort.com e commerce cohort is a monthly membership, E Commerce membership that you can be a part of. And in there, all kinds of great stuff happens. Let me tell you, they have expert workshops every month, which is awesome.


We also have the live recording of the podcast. Yes. So if you love the E Commerce podcast, you can join E Commerce Cohort.


You can watch the live recording, we stream it out on this very special private link on YouTube. You can comment, you can ask your questions, you can do all that sort of stuff.


So just saying, hashtag, just saying, why not come and join us in cohort e commerce cohort.com that's available to you. And prices start at just 14.99amonth at the moment. So check it out, see how you get on.


Now, let's talk about Taylor Frame, the go to guru behind Focus Funnels, a powerhouse in the e commerce growth world. Oh, yes.


Now with a knack for turning over 100 brands into six figure success stories and juggling a whopping, jaw dropping, eye watering, $300 million in ad spend. No small change there. Then Taylor's the wizard who transforms e commerce chall into triumphs.


He's all about honest, transparent strategies that empowers entrepreneurs to take their businesses and their lives to the next level. Taylor, that's one impressive intro. Dude, welcome to the show. How are we doing today, my friend?


Taylor Frame


00:03:04.160 - 00:03:08.880


Today is beautiful. Excited to be here. Thank you so much for the great intro.


Matt Edmundson


00:03:09.520 - 00:03:31.980


Wow, it's good to have you on the show. All the way from sunny California.


I was just bemoaning before we hit the record button that at the time of recording it is like minus 4 degrees where I'm at at the moment. And it's. That's centigrade and it's what, 60 degrees where you are in California right now. Fahrenheit, obviously not centigrade.


I don't know what the two figures are translated, but basically it's a lot warmer for you than it is for me.


Taylor Frame


00:03:32.540 - 00:03:37.740


Yes, I think. Yeah, it's definitely nice weather out here. This is the best time of year to be in California.


Matt Edmundson


00:03:38.140 - 00:04:08.510


Okay, Okay. I was in California in. When was it? April. April. No, June. That was beautiful. That was stunning actually. And hanging out with.


I was talking to you about Jared, Jared Mitchell. I was hanging out with him and his family in California and going the beach, watching him surf because there's no way I can do it.


But it was great to be there in a beautiful part of the world. So thanks for coming on, man. Are you in like a log cabin or something? It's got that kind of log cabin kind of vibe going on.


Taylor Frame


00:04:09.280 - 00:04:57.690


Yeah, yeah. So this is an office that I built in my backyard. I've been working from home for the last 10 years actually in my career.


And our agency is actually all remote. So we, we source talent all over the us everyone's remote, which is really cool.


One of our big tenants is like, hey, when you work here, we want you to live your absolute best life.


And so that increased, like, with increased flexibility and work from home options and we have a disposal, we allow people to, you know, move in and out and structure their day and their life so they can optimize everything. And that's a big part of what I've done by working in, you know, here at the house.


I can pop in, be with the kids, help my wife with things and still be very present, but also get the things done that I need to.


Matt Edmundson


00:04:58.090 - 00:05:03.230


That's amazing. 10 years, man. You're like, well ahead of COVID times then. Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:05:03.230 - 00:05:08.470


I mean, when Covid hit and everyone's like, oh, we got to work from home, I'm like, this is nothing new for us. We've been doing this forever.


Matt Edmundson


00:05:08.550 - 00:05:10.310


This just took it in our stride.


Taylor Frame


00:05:11.270 - 00:05:18.870


Yeah, yeah. Covid. It was funny. We were incredibly busy as an agency during that time because everyone started shopping online.


Matt Edmundson


00:05:19.110 - 00:05:19.830


Yeah. Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:05:19.910 - 00:05:26.070


And so that was. Everyone was out baking bread, and I was like, man, when do I get to bake some bread? I don't have any time to do any of that.


Matt Edmundson


00:05:27.190 - 00:05:53.620


Yeah. I just got. I'm too busy working. What's wrong with it? The world has gone mad. No, it was very much like that, wasn't it?


When Covid hit, we sold one of our e commerce businesses, sort of mid pandemic, because everyone was just, you know, frothy. Yeah. It was just crazy for online businesses. It was like, oh, yeah. Every other business in the UK had to shut down.


Unless you were a medical company or an online business. Right. It was just incredible times. Incredible.


Taylor Frame


00:05:53.860 - 00:05:54.740


It was incredible.


Matt Edmundson


00:05:54.900 - 00:06:15.720


This is my shed, by the way, that you're streaming into right now. I also built a cabin down at the bottom of my garden. I did mine about six years ago. They're not about 10 years ago.


All made with recycled wood from an old warehouse. We moved warehouse, and so I took all the old wood shelves and built this cabin out of it. Because you do. I love it. Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:06:15.800 - 00:06:37.690


As one does. You know, super funny you mentioned that.


The windows that are in this house, this is actually a door that I turned sideways, and it is from the house that I grew up in in Old Town. Old Town, Pasadena. I grew up in Pasadena, which is outside of Los Angeles. And these doors are from 1919.


Matt Edmundson


00:06:38.410 - 00:06:38.890


Wow.


Taylor Frame


00:06:39.050 - 00:06:48.250


And so they're over 100 years old, which is kind of cool. The house I grew up in.


And then, you know, my parents demolished it and built some larger house, but saved the doors, and now they're here in my shed.


Matt Edmundson


00:06:48.490 - 00:06:52.090


That's fun. So if you ever move from that house, you've got to take those windows with you.


Taylor Frame


00:06:52.410 - 00:06:54.250


I've got to take the whole shed with me.


Matt Edmundson


00:06:54.410 - 00:06:54.850


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:06:54.850 - 00:06:57.130


Yeah. It's going to be really problematic.


Matt Edmundson


00:06:59.290 - 00:07:13.510


First world problems. I don't quite know what I'm doing. That's fantastic. The. The.


The working at home thing, though, and working with a remote team and the fact that you've been doing that for 10 years. Very ahead of your time.


Taylor Frame


00:07:13.750 - 00:07:14.150


Right.


Matt Edmundson


00:07:15.270 - 00:07:37.990


And I mean, that's a whole separate podcast we should maybe do on how You've done that successfully. But your company, Focus Funnels, how did you get involved in that? What, what started that? Just, just.


I'm really intrigued because it's, you know, Russell Brunson and I connect with clickfunnels. You know, it's the first time I'd ever really heard of it. But I'm curious how you got into it.


Taylor Frame


00:07:38.790 - 00:09:24.540


Yeah, so I, I was working at a big, you know, Fortune 500 company that was selling to a bunch of really large e comm shops. So I had clients like I was one of their sales reps.


So I was working with like Restoration Hardware and Gap and Men's Warehouse, just massive online retailers. And as I, that's kind of how I got exposed to E commerce. You know, the principles, the theories.


And I was on the marketing side at that point, selling them marketing technology. And so that's how I kind of dip my toe into the water.


And then from there I realized that there was just a massive group of underserved e comm shops that were in that small to medium business range. Right. And they couldn't afford these enterprise level tools that I was currently selling.


But I was like, there's gotta be a way that I can tap into this market, serve these entrepreneurs and help them live a really good life.


And so through common connections I got connected to my current partner and him and his wife, they were running literally kind of like a freelance shop called Focus Funnels at the time. And I partnered with them and I said, hey, I think we can really do something here. And so for about a year and a half I worked two jobs.


I worked in corporate America full time.


And then in the mornings and evenings I would side hustle at Focus Funnels, getting us clients, bringing in a lot of kind of enterprise level expertise, experience, systems, processes. And from there we started to create this momentum.


And after about a year and a half we were making enough at Focus Funnels that I could leave my corporate job and still support my family. So we made the jump and from there it's been, it's just been an amazing journey.


Matt Edmundson


00:09:24.540 - 00:09:28.220


Yeah, sounds like it. Are you still business partners with the original company?


Taylor Frame


00:09:28.940 - 00:09:34.540


Yeah, we still, my partner and I, we've been going, it's almost seven years now, strong, which is awesome.


Matt Edmundson


00:09:35.020 - 00:09:44.010


Fantastic, fantastic. So just for those that might not know, just explain briefly what Focus Funnels is. Is.


Taylor Frame


00:09:45.050 - 00:11:06.920


Yeah, so we are an E commerce growth agency. We really focus mostly on e commerce brands, but we've also worked with anybody that needs to take someone on a customer journey.


And so Funnels is just a fancy word for take somebody through a process that gets them to know your brand or service and then get them to take some sort of concrete action. And so we have become funnel experts at helping E comm shops, coaches, consultants, local businesses scale their services and scale their revenue.


What makes us really fun and a little bit unique is we are, we're full stack, meaning we look at the whole customer journey, from the content to the creative to the copywriting to the media buying strategy, all the way down to the landing pages or the website, all the way through to nurture marketing, whether that's SMS or some sort of engagement marketing.


So we really look at that whole flow and optimize the entire customer journey where we find that a lot of our competitors will focus like just on the media buying or just on the creative or they just do the website and you have huge misses when those are broken out in your industry. You need to look at the full funnel to really get the true optimization. So that's what we do for E Comm shops.


Matt Edmundson


00:11:08.600 - 00:11:42.000


So the, I mean it's fascinating listening to you talk about this Taylor, because I love this whole phrase of the customer journey, you know, understanding the customer journey and taking customers on a journey. I'm a big fan of this kind of language. It sort of floats my boat for better expression and so I'm intrigued by that process.


Do you predominantly work with established ecom brands or if people are starting out, do they come to you? Is it. Where's your sweet spot?


Taylor Frame


00:11:43.280 - 00:12:19.770


So we actually service a pretty broad group of customers right now. Probably 20% of my customers are brand new startups doing less than $50,000 a month in Shopify revenue.


And then probably 40% of my customers are in the 100 to 500k range of monthly revenue. And then I've got a subset of customers that are doing well over, you know, a million to $7 million a month in, in revenue.


So I kind of, we serve all three of those segments.


Matt Edmundson


00:12:20.250 - 00:12:22.410


You got a wide range favorite brands.


Taylor Frame


00:12:22.650 - 00:12:41.810


Yeah. The interesting thing is there's, there's different triggers you have to hit at those different stages of growth.


But our favorite ones are the brands that are doing like 50 to 100k a month, have a great product and they're like, we're ready to really grow this thing.


Matt Edmundson


00:12:41.970 - 00:12:42.370


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:12:42.370 - 00:12:46.210


And those are the brands that we can have just meteoric success with.


Matt Edmundson


00:12:46.450 - 00:13:50.280


Yeah, yeah. Because they've got. It's interesting, isn't it?


I, I'm always aware that when, I mean we talk a lot about, you know, people that are starting e commerce businesses on this show because I want it to be accessible. You know, I.


If you're starting out in E commerce, I don't, I don't mean to listen to an episode and go, none of that applies to me, therefore, I'm out. Matt, thanks, but no, thanks. But I'm also aware that the majority of the listeners are in that sweet spot. Right.


They've been doing E commerce for a little while, and they are, you know, they're. They. They're wanting to grow. They've.


They've got a good customer list, a couple of thousand people at least, you know, and they're ready to start making some changes. So let's talk about that a little bit. This is your expertise, Taylor. So I come along to you. I've got, I know, 50 to 100,000 people.


50 to 100,000 people. Fifty to 100,000 bucks a month in revenue, and you're talking about the full stack.


What are some of the things, some of the triggers, some of the key things I need to think about in that. In that income bracket.


Taylor Frame


00:13:52.210 - 00:14:28.680


The first thing that we do when we partner with a brand like that is we start to look historically at the last three to six months of sales data, and we start to say, okay, what are people consistently buying from you for the first time? And this is. People call this a tripwire. I kind of like to call it. You know, a tripwire is like we're trying to trick someone into the brand.


I don't like that phrase as much, but technically that's what it's called. It's a tripwire. We like to call it just an offer that. That really gets people sold on the value that you provide as a brand. Right.


Matt Edmundson


00:14:28.680 - 00:14:29.080


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:14:29.080 - 00:14:37.400


So step number one is we have to find out what is your tripwire or your hero product that people are always coming in to buy.


Matt Edmundson


00:14:37.560 - 00:14:38.040


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:14:38.040 - 00:14:41.560


For some shops, that's super simple because, you know, they have five SKUs.


Matt Edmundson


00:14:41.720 - 00:14:42.280


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:14:42.280 - 00:15:25.990


Like, we know what the hero product is. Some shops have hundreds of SKUs. It's a lot more technical, you know, especially in fashion and apparel. It's like a dress company.


We work with a lot of dress brands. It can be really difficult to know, okay, what is my hero product? And. And there's seasonalities and then trends inside that.


So we're really good at helping brand owners, first and foremost, identify what's that core product that we need to build your brand on. Okay. So that's step one. Step two is we then start to formulate how is this product solving a problem?


Whether it's a dress or a baby swaddle or a new pair of pants or a jewelry brand, every brand solves a problem.


Matt Edmundson


00:15:26.310 - 00:15:26.870


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:15:26.870 - 00:15:35.430


Most people just don't know how to formulate that framework of problem solving in a way that gets people to purchase stuff.


Matt Edmundson


00:15:35.430 - 00:15:35.990


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:15:36.710 - 00:16:36.180


So we're really good at that. We walk the client through it. So we've identified that hero product. Then we start to identify, why should I spend money on this product?


Out of all the options in the E Comm world, why should I buy this one? Okay. Step three is we then build an acquisition funnel based on that finding. And now we can start to get data.


We can start to say, all right, we're going to test three different hooks. Like, let's take a dress, for example. We're going to build three different sales hooks around this dress. One, it fits every body style.


Two, it's made with really high quality products, so it's going to last a long time. Three, it's really flattering. You're going to look damn good in this dress. Right.


So we're going to test those three different hooks all the way down from the content and creative into the media buying strategy all the way down to make sure that the landing page and product page and echoes that customer journey. Same message. Right?


Matt Edmundson


00:16:36.180 - 00:16:36.740


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:16:37.140 - 00:18:01.940


And then we start to test that. And maybe it's the fact that this dress fits a lot of body styles. Maybe that's the selling point. We'll test that and it's all backed by data. Okay.


So step one, identify that hero product. Step two, why is this product unique? What problems does it solve? Step three, test those theories, back them up with data. Now we can start to scale.


Right? And here's why we focus on a singular or a set of core products.


At the start for these brands is now we can get really granular on what is my cost per acquisition, what's my ROI on this one product. And now we can take that all the way down to the cost of goods sold, the lifetime customer value.


Right now we have an actual funnel that translates into the business and is backed by data. So. So the minute that we go above a certain cost per acquisition on this one dress, we know we're not profitable. Well, now we can fix it.


And we know exactly what to fix. All right? Either the sales hook is broken or the media buys strategy needs optimization or there's something wrong on the website. Right.


And so by focusing on a very set funnel, now we have the data and the insights to make informed decisions as opposed to being like, well, we don't know why people are buying stuff. Let's just run a different campaign. Does that make sense?


Matt Edmundson


00:18:02.100 - 00:19:44.270


Yeah. And I'm loving it. And I'm sort of sat here nodding, sort of listening to you talk, thinking. It's interesting that you pick the hero product.


So what I like about this, Taylor, is you vastly simplified. So if I have four, I mean, the beauty company I sold had over a thousand SKUs. Right.


But there was definitely one product that accounted for the majority of. You know, you. You definitely saw the. What's the word? The Pareto principle. You definitely saw that in. In some of the brands.


You know, you had one brand that outperformed the other brands, and in that brand, you had one product that always performed. So I. It's a case of your put. You're perfecting this funnel around that one hero product.


There's a few bits of terminology that I want you to define, if that's okay, just to help us get our heads around this. So. But I'm loving this principle because like I say, it simplifies. And I. I'm a simple man, Taylor. I like. I like simple.


I am so, yeah, I think most men are not stereotype too much, but I, you know, so simple works for me. And I'm loving this. So you talk about build an acquisition funnel.


You know, you understand what is what, why people are buying that product, which is that, you know, it sounds. Just rolls off the tongue. I understand why people are buying this book. It's not actually that straightforward necessarily, but we can.


We can figure it out. But build an acquisition funnel on this finding. When you talk about an acquisition funnel, just walk me through what that is.


Let's define that so people can conceptually understand what you mean, if that's okay.


Taylor Frame


00:19:45.160 - 00:19:55.400


Yes, yes. So we have kind of. We haven't patented the term, but we call it a focused acquisition funnel. It's a play on our name, focus funnels.


Matt Edmundson


00:19:55.400 - 00:19:55.880


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:19:55.880 - 00:20:45.680


But it also describes exactly what we're building. Okay, so an acquisition funnel is a mechanism to acquire new customers with proven data and hopefully profitability.


So think of it like a machine that continues to run. And when you think about it like this, it's now a system of your business. Right.


And that's why we go with hero products or stuff that's more evergreen, because we want this acquisition funnel to be running 24 7, 365 days a year. And it has one job. It's to acquire a new customer as profitably as possible. That's why it's called an acquisition funnel.


Matt Edmundson


00:20:45.680 - 00:20:46.040


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:20:46.040 - 00:21:19.800


We're not trying to sell the same product to your existing customers. Right. The heart of every E Comm shop is new blood. We need new humans in this brand.


And so what we do is we come into a brand and we say, all right, most brands are pretty good at selling to their existing customer base. Like most brands are pretty good at that. If you're doing 50k a month, you've really gotten pretty good at selling to your core customer base.


You're selling them. But what they don't understand, what most brands struggle with is I need new people.


Matt Edmundson


00:21:20.120 - 00:21:20.600


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:21:21.000 - 00:21:34.720


But I need those new people at a relatively either profitable or a break even. And that's where people fall apart. So this acquisition funnel is. It's just a mechanism of acquiring new customers as profitably as possible.


Matt Edmundson


00:21:36.080 - 00:21:57.200


And is that so let's say I sell, for the sake of argument, 10 products. One of them's doing super well. And I have a Shopify site selling my 10 products. Right. And the acquisition funnel, are you using Shopify?


Are you creating that? Because in my head I still, rightly or wrongly, Taylor, I still have things like click funnels over here, you know.


Taylor Frame


00:21:57.200 - 00:21:57.600


Yeah.


Matt Edmundson


00:21:59.430 - 00:22:14.310


Just. Is it, is it, is it like that in your thinking? Is it a separate thing? Is it built on the Shopify site? I might. Is that confusing people?


It's like, no, we're going to do something over here. It is one product. They buy one, they buy three on an offer bump or something. But that's what we're thinking about.


Taylor Frame


00:22:15.430 - 00:22:27.120


So think of a funnel in three steps. There's the ad content that we're going to use in the advertising. So that's the copy, the creative, the messaging. Right.


Matt Edmundson


00:22:27.520 - 00:22:28.040


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:22:28.040 - 00:22:34.720


Then think of the media buying strategy. So this is the techniques that we're using to serve this to the right human.


Matt Edmundson


00:22:35.040 - 00:22:35.520


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:22:35.520 - 00:22:45.040


Okay. And then at the bottom of that, think about the landing page or the product page.


So for most of our customers, we build everything natively in Shopify.


Matt Edmundson


00:22:45.360 - 00:22:46.000


Okay.


Taylor Frame


00:22:46.480 - 00:22:50.560


There's a couple of reasons for that. One, it keeps things really simple.


Matt Edmundson


00:22:50.640 - 00:22:51.200


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:22:51.530 - 00:22:59.850


Two, the data tracking and the attribution is a lot easier to manage. Right. We don't have to buy a bunch of expensive, complicated tools.


Matt Edmundson


00:23:00.010 - 00:23:00.650


Yep.


Taylor Frame


00:23:01.130 - 00:23:42.580


And three, we found that Shopify product pages rank and convert better than using some sort of third party app or tool that optimizes your landing page. That when you look at like E Comm trends, there's a reason that certain things are set up the way they are.


For example, Amazon, like Amazon has tested millions and millions of variations. They have unlimited budget to test conversions. Why does their site look the way it looks? It's because that works the best. Right.


So what we've done is we've taken a lot of those principles that are tried and true and we just apply them at scale for our brands.


Matt Edmundson


00:23:46.120 - 00:24:58.440


Again, the thing I like here is it's simple. So you're building funnels, in effect on the same system on the same platform. And so there's no separate systems because every.


I think if you're turning over 50 grand to 100 grand a month, my first problem is going to be, well, if I'm over here on click funnels or whatever that you know, I'm supposed to be using, how do I get the data from that into my warehouse management system? You know, there's all kinds of problems all of a sudden, isn't there? Totally. So the landing pages that you're building, I'm super curious. Right.


You've talked about how the messaging needs to be consistent between the content, the media buying and obviously the landing pages are three steps to the funnel. And we've talked about that before on the show. You know, this consistency of messaging makes a big difference to conversion, to advertise everything.


It just, it just works. What do you see working well at the moment where landing pages are concerned? Because I think people break out into a cold sweat.


It's like, well, I've got design landing page, what do I do? I don't know. And so it's like, what are some of the things? I mean, obviously you're not going to tell everyone your ip, that's totally fine.


But some of the principles that you've seen working, Taylor.


Taylor Frame


00:24:59.000 - 00:25:32.170


Yeah. So what we find is that most product pages, they need to be designed as mini websites. Okay, okay.


And what it means is like, look, if you have a really compelling founder story, that's a core part of why you built what you built.


Like, let's say we work with a lot of female entrepreneurs that's like actually like 80% of our customer base is female owned and operated E Comm stores. And a lot of those women have developed products based on some sort of experience in their own lives.


Matt Edmundson


00:25:32.250 - 00:25:32.810


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:25:33.130 - 00:25:55.690


A lot of it has to do with we work in a lot in the baby space. So one of my favorite brands, they make these really intuitive, super cool nursing bras. Well, nursing bras are one, usually very poorly made.


Two, they're typically clunky and don't work that well. And so they've like, really innovated. And these are women that have had multiple kids and tested all these different designs.


And so, like, they're brilliant nursing bras.


Matt Edmundson


00:25:55.950 - 00:25:56.350


Mm.


Taylor Frame


00:25:56.670 - 00:26:06.030


So on the product pages, we tell that story. So when you hit the product page, because most people are shopping on their phones, they don't like to click around.


Matt Edmundson


00:26:06.350 - 00:26:06.910


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:26:06.990 - 00:26:16.910


There's a reason that there's no clicking on Instagram. It's swiping and scrolling. So that's what that's. Once again, Instagram is unlimited money to test this stuff.


Matt Edmundson


00:26:17.070 - 00:26:17.550


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:26:17.550 - 00:27:12.430


So when you go to a product page, you want it to be a long scroll. And the second theory or strategy I'll share with everyone is answer the questions that the customer is going to have before they have the question.


So with a nursing bra, for example, there's a ton of questions that come up. One, how does it work? Right. How does it fit? How is the sizing? Can you show me, like, how does it work with different body styles?


And I'm going to be nursing versus pumping. Those are two different strategies of feeding children. How is that accounted for?


So we've built really long product pages that go through all of these things. So by the time you scroll through this product page, we've answered all your questions, we've educated you on why this product so amazing.


We've talked about key psychological triggers that get you to purchase. So by the time you go through that product page, you're purchasing that bra.


Matt Edmundson


00:27:12.590 - 00:27:13.950


Yeah, yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:27:14.360 - 00:27:17.600


So once again, it's like, it's simplicity. Yeah.


Matt Edmundson


00:27:17.600 - 00:28:16.180


Well, it's keeping it. I think the thing that I love about this, and again, it's something that we've mentioned a multiple times.


Well, I certainly mentioned it multiple times. If you're.


If you think about the webpage that you've put together from the point of view of a new customer, which is why on the show, like, why on the e commerce podcast, I'm always asking questions like, well, if I'm new to E commerce or I'm starting up a business, what does this mean? And we'll get into this in a little while. It's because I'm aware that actually people coming are not going to have a clue what SEO means or CRM.


Right. And so it's on us to then explain what that is, because, you know, it just makes it accessible for everyone. So what you're doing is you're.


You're putting yourself in the customer's shoes who's come to your website. They don't really know what you stand for or why you're doing what you're doing.


And so you're answering those questions, you're helping them, you're giving them all the information that they want, so they're much more likely to buy it. So it's a. It's a pretty straightforward strategy in a lot of ways, isn't it? But it's. It's amazing how many people don't do it.


Taylor Frame


00:28:16.820 - 00:28:17.620


Oh, my gosh.


Matt Edmundson


00:28:17.620 - 00:28:25.780


You know, and I'm not. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm on the world's expert in this field at all, because there are.


I'm just as you're talking, I'm thinking, oh, we should probably change that on our website.


Taylor Frame


00:28:28.660 - 00:29:03.730


I'm so here and I get so frustrated looking at a lot of the gurus in our space that talk about this stuff and they talk about so much complexity and they confuse so many people. And look, you can have a lot of complexity and sophistication when you're doing one to five million dollars a month in revenue.


Pretty much any time before that. You can keep your shop very simple, but you have to be effective. This is where people miss. Right.


Is you have to do simple things, but they need to be very well done.


Matt Edmundson


00:29:04.130 - 00:29:04.690


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:29:05.090 - 00:29:22.290


And that's where we come in is like, we come into so many brands that have. That are doing amazing momentum, but they can't crack this code because they're just confused. They're trying to do too many things at once.


They're over complicating everything. The marketing strategies that we use are not new.


Matt Edmundson


00:29:22.690 - 00:29:23.090


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:29:23.090 - 00:29:25.410


These are things that have been tested for 200 years.


Matt Edmundson


00:29:25.860 - 00:29:27.020


Yeah. Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:29:27.020 - 00:29:49.460


But what's rad is when you apply them properly and you execute them with the right way and you have an eye on the data, they work. And like, that's where.


That's why we've been able to spend so much, is because brands will come onto us and be like, well, look, I only have like five grand a month to spend. I'm like, yeah, maybe for the first month, but once we prove this, you're going to get every. When you can to pump through this thing.


Matt Edmundson


00:29:49.540 - 00:29:49.980


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:29:49.980 - 00:29:53.460


Three months in, they're like leveraging their house because they're like, let's go.


Matt Edmundson


00:29:55.270 - 00:29:59.110


Let'S crank this bad boy. Because why would you not. Right. If the results are coming out?


Taylor Frame


00:29:59.110 - 00:30:00.070


Because it works like.


Matt Edmundson


00:30:00.070 - 00:30:20.490


Yeah, yeah, man. I love. Nothing to do with the. The funnel side of things, but I just, I love that you felt comfortable to use the word rad. That's rad.


It's Just that it's the first time I think I've heard that on this podcast. It's a first. So funnels and rad. Rad funnels. Maybe. I. Yeah, I mean, I'm a pro.


Taylor Frame


00:30:20.640 - 00:30:31.960


Product of my environment. I grew up in Los Angeles. I'm a beach kid. I grew up with punk rock and skateboarding. It's just hard. I can't get rid of it.


Matt Edmundson


00:30:31.960 - 00:31:02.730


No, no. And neither should you. It's remarkably charming and I think it took me straight back to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, that kind of thing.


So that's brilliant. So a question that I've got for you then, Taylor, on this. Um, we're building the site on Shopify. We've got a landing page. So the ads coming to.


I'm just looking at a product here. Let's pick a product because I have lots of products on my shelves. So this product here, right, this is called Sudar. It's a face serum. Okay.


Taylor Frame


00:31:03.530 - 00:31:04.570


Love face serums.


Matt Edmundson


00:31:04.570 - 00:31:48.440


Oh, yeah, these are great. And this is actually a secret. Hush, hush. I mean, by the time this podcast.


Well, no, actually this is, this podcast is coming out sooner than I expected. In January, February, next year, we are, we are relaunching the Sudaria brand. It's okay, we won't go into too much detail, but secret.


And so I'm kind of curious, right? I've got my Shopify site. I've got a product page that is, you know, the general product page on the website.


Am I then building a separate landing page for each of those three hooks? So in effect, you can buy the product on that landing page without going to the key product page, if that makes sense.


So this is just one of those terminology things I just want to clarify.


Taylor Frame


00:31:48.920 - 00:31:55.800


Yes, yes. Okay. So this question is, it depends on how much money you have. Okay.


Matt Edmundson


00:31:56.520 - 00:32:03.720


I just love that answer. Four pound, 50, maybe $5. Let's go with exchange rates.


Taylor Frame


00:32:05.330 - 00:32:28.690


So let me, let me quantify. That is a lot of brands come to us and they're like, I want to do these really crazy A B tests.


And I'm like, all right, well, when, whenever we're doing these type of tests, they burn through budget and they cost money. Right. So if we're going to be testing like three different landing pages, that costs money.


And potentially one or two of those landing pages are not going to work.


Matt Edmundson


00:32:28.850 - 00:32:29.410


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:32:29.570 - 00:33:57.680


So if we have some wiggle room, then we will build multiple landing pages with different hooks and we'll test those. If we don't, if the brand is really tight and we just don't have the wiggle room to spend extra money. What we'll do is we'll test one hook at a time.


And a lot of the testing is happening in the ad sets on the creative on the ads and then the landing page. We echo those different call outs in the different sections. Okay, so now we can test like let's take your face serum for example.


Let's say one of the hooks is it's all natural. Okay. Because we don't want to put chemicals on our body anymore. So if we're using that hook, our ad creative is going to be all about all natural.


But then when you hit that product page at the top, we'll change the header, you know, the main hero image and a lot of the stuff it on those all natural things. But then it's business as usual. Now we're going through a bunch of the different selling hooks. Right?


Let's say our selling hook is this reduces wrinkles on your skin in 60 days. Like we see noticeably different with this face serum. Well, we're going to test that a ton of different types of hooks in the ad sets.


And then once again we'll come back to that product page of budgets. Really depends on how much budget the brand has. If we can build multiple pages, that's more effective.


But it's also once again going back to simplicity. You don't have to do that.


Matt Edmundson


00:33:57.840 - 00:34:33.310


Yeah, no, I love that. And again, it's a simple answer. And again it just reminds me that as people, we look sometimes for the most complex solution first.


And actually what I'm loving hearing is no, no, we're going to take the product page, we're going to design the product page around a hook that we're going to test. We're going to test that hook and then we'll see how we get. And then we're going to move to the next one and we're going to test that.


And that means we're going to change the product page, which is your landing page. And we're just going to until we figure out which one's the best one.


Unless you've got deep pockets, in which case we'll do three ones and it's not a problem at all.


Taylor Frame


00:34:33.630 - 00:35:00.590


Yeah, we can, we can test multiple things. Here's something I see over and over again is people are acting like they're multi million dollar ecom shops and they're doing 100k a month.


It's like what? Like you don't, you don't need to act like that. Yeah, like you don't have to roll out new product every three months. Right.


You're doing $100,000 a month. There's unlimited upside for you if you can crack the code on two or three of your core products.


Matt Edmundson


00:35:00.830 - 00:35:01.310


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:35:01.310 - 00:35:14.790


So focus. Like we just love to chase shiny objects.


And, and this is actually another like huge pain point for me is I look at brands and, and they're lulled into agencies that are selling these shiny objects.


Matt Edmundson


00:35:14.870 - 00:35:15.350


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:35:15.830 - 00:35:40.490


And most these agencies are awful. Like they don't deliver value. They can't. They're not managing that much money.


And like you look at an agency like us, we keep things really simple and when we get on calls, like I'm not using complex marketing terms to make people feel silly or like they don't understand this stuff, but it's the simplicity that allows us to manage like $300 million in ad spend.


Matt Edmundson


00:35:40.570 - 00:35:43.770


Yeah, right. Yeah. It's a chunk of cash by the way.


Taylor Frame


00:35:44.410 - 00:35:45.450


It's a lot of money.


Matt Edmundson


00:35:45.450 - 00:36:19.940


I'm sure Mr. Google and Mr. Facebook are very happy with you. Thank you. I think is what they're saying. But yeah, it's fine. I like simplicity.


Simplicity works for me. And you can measure things quite well. So you've got your funnel up and running. Your acquisition funnel is working super well, man.


Lifetime value is going up. Because our follow up campaigns are great. You know, we're getting people back to buy more products, et cetera, et cetera.


Do you then move on to product number two, the second best selling product or you just literally know we're just going to focus on the hero product and just put all our eggs in that basket for now, dude.


Taylor Frame


00:36:20.980 - 00:36:41.660


Yeah. So once again, it depends on where are we at in this stage of the brand.


For a lot of these ones, really focusing on that hero product is, is 9 times out of 10 the best place to focus. Right. If we can get a profitable purchase on a new customer, we've cracked the code we need to run.


Matt Edmundson


00:36:41.900 - 00:36:42.540


Yeah, yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:36:42.540 - 00:36:45.420


I mean saying, you know this like, oh, it's gold. If you could go.


Matt Edmundson


00:36:46.460 - 00:36:56.490


It's the holy Grail, isn't it? It's what Indiana Jones was chasing for in the crusade, you know, the last crusade. It's just, it's what, is what he was after.


Know how do I get a profitable first customer?


Taylor Frame


00:36:56.570 - 00:37:33.470


Yeah. Now for a lot of our brands we'll start to stack in additional funnels is they'll come to us, we'll crack the code on that one.


And they're scaling and getting some good stuff and they're like all right, what's next? I'm like, well, let's do it with your second best selling product or your third best selling product. Right.


So then we just, I look at it as a hub and spoke model where the hub is the E Comm shop and we're trying to build as many entries into this brand as possible. But once again, we keep it.


We, we usually tap things out at like five to seven acquisition funnels because once again, we have to make sure that these things are constantly working.


Matt Edmundson


00:37:33.870 - 00:37:34.350


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:37:34.910 - 00:37:48.840


And so that takes a lot of effort and time and testing and things break because ecom breaks. And so we typically tap it out with there with like our top selling customers. But like those customers are doing know, $5 million a month in revenue.


Matt Edmundson


00:37:49.480 - 00:37:49.800


Right.


Taylor Frame


00:37:49.800 - 00:37:57.720


So they have budget where we're able to spend and spend to fuel these funnels. So once again, it matters on where you're at in that journey.


Matt Edmundson


00:37:58.040 - 00:38:15.280


Yeah, no, it's in is one of the things that always astounds me is just the amount of work involved to keep your ads working. Well, it's not like it's not a case of set it and forget it, is it? It's not like you. I'm just going to set that over there.


Taylor Frame


00:38:15.280 - 00:38:15.640


That's.


Matt Edmundson


00:38:15.810 - 00:38:52.610


We'll set a budget, it'll work now for the, for the rest of, you know, until Christ returns, it's fine kind of thing. Yeah, you, this, you keep coming back, you keep editing it, you keep updating that, you keep monitoring it.


Some of the really profitable ones stop being profitable after a while. That level of monitoring and having hands on in there is something that I think you have to, you have to do daily, don't you?


You have to be in there every day, which is a big deal, I think. And it's one of those things when you choose an agency.


Actually these are some of the questions I'll be asking, like how often are you in there monitoring this stuff? You know?


Taylor Frame


00:38:53.170 - 00:39:24.110


Yeah. So for most of our customers, once again, it depends on the budget.


We find that most campaigns need to bake for 24 to 48 hours before we really know if it's a winner or a loser. In that time, we are making a ton of tweaks, but also we're coming to the table with vast amounts of experience on how to scale campaigns.


So a lot of times people, you know, I'll be in a sales call and people are like, well, you know, my uncle does Facebook ads. I'm like, oh yeah.


Matt Edmundson


00:39:27.230 - 00:39:31.630


That'S awesome. I do Facebook ads. I've Done them in the past, I'm never doing them again, but I have done them.


Taylor Frame


00:39:33.150 - 00:40:14.390


So I love that. I'm like oh really? Like how much budget is he managing and how many accounts is he doing?


And, and so one of the things that's a big misunderstanding is one, we're managing massive amounts of budgets every single month. And two, we're doing this across multiple niches of 50 plus customers. So we have a really good sense of what is exactly working.


And the minute we find something that's working, we apply that to all of our customers. Right.


So there's massive amount of insight and knowledge transfer that's being applied to these accounts and that's a huge benefit of hiring the right angel. Right agency.


Matt Edmundson


00:40:14.470 - 00:40:15.070


Yeah, it is.


Taylor Frame


00:40:15.070 - 00:40:32.240


Right. And so that's a big part of us is it's like really high customer service.


But then two, it's in the account making the tweaks, making the changes, but with, with expertise and skill set behind it. Not just throwing spaghetti at the wall of that analogy.


Matt Edmundson


00:40:32.720 - 00:40:45.040


No, totally. I mean when we, I can tell you for the beauty business that I sold, we did all our own internal advertising. We made a decision to go to an agency.


Taylor Frame


00:40:45.840 - 00:40:46.320


Yeah.


Matt Edmundson


00:40:46.640 - 00:41:48.360


And we weren't spending loads, we were spending maybe 30, 40 grand a month with Google. I mean it's some people that might be loads. Do you know, Jimin is still healthy. And so we decided to switch to an agency.


Well, geez, the difference when we pick, we picking the right agency. It was like these guys, the level of expertise was so much bigger than what we had. You know, we sort of started doing Facebook ads and Google Ads.


When you, when anybody could do it and make money, you know, it was back in the day when it was a piece of cake, I'd do that. Yeah. And then like everything, it gets complicated and you need experts, don't you?


And so I understand this process now for companies which have, you know, you've got a bit of money, you've got a bit of budget, you can have a bit of a play. I'm setting up a new skincare brand, I'm launching my skin serum. Let's assume I've not got any experience.


Let's assume I've not really got any budget. What if I'm starting out in E Com? What should I be thinking about that's different maybe.


Taylor Frame


00:41:49.610 - 00:43:22.820


Yeah. So this is, this is a tough one. There's two levers you can pull. One lever is I invest money. Right. The other level is it's sweat. Right.


You've got money or sweat. And when I think about sweat, I think about street Hustle.


This is literally going door to door online and trying to get people to purchase your product and leave, leave you reviews. So you're DMing people, you're doing all the sweat equity stuff because we have an amazing set of tools. You don't have to buy ads at the beginning.


Yeah, it makes it way easier and you learn way faster. But once again, it's, it's these two levers. Do I want to pull the sweat lever or do I want to pull the money lever?


And so when you're thinking about starting a new brand, it's like, how can I get momentum and prove my model as quickly as possible? And what I mean by that is we need to understand why are people buying? This is my price point where it needs to be.


Am I solving a problem and is it repeatable? Right. And if you can answer those questions, then you've got something. And now you can pour some gas on that fire. Right?


So as you're starting out, you first need to find out like, okay, is there anyone willing to buy this product that I'm creating in the marketplace?


And if you can do that, especially organically and get some momentum from friends, family, Instagram posts, all this stuff, influencers, then boom, you've got something and then you can start to really invest in growth.


Matt Edmundson


00:43:23.940 - 00:44:14.160


And how do you, let's say I come to you and say, listen, Taylor, I just, I can't be fast with a direct message because like you, I was working a full time job. This is my side hustle. You know, I'm, I'm thinking about all these other things. So I'm going to invest some cash, right?


I've got, I don't know, ten grand. I'm going to throw ten grand at it. Where do you, where do you start? With a site that is new, that has no reviews, no real track history?


I think, I guess the reason why I'm asking this is, I think it's just good set expectations for some people sometimes. Do you know what I mean? And yeah, and so I don't know if you've got an experience of that.


You know, how do you literally build from no email list other than my mum and my dad are on it, maybe Jermaine. It's that kind of, it's that kind of position.


Taylor Frame


00:44:15.760 - 00:44:59.620


So we've built a lot of brands like this and you're looking at least a six month Runway before you start to see some real momentum. And by said real momentum, meaning we're doing like 10 to 15k a month consistently. We're getting new customers in the brand.


You know, we've got all the kinks worked out on the messaging, the product, the fulfillment. You know, everything's kind of humming. You want to give yourself six months at least. And that's if you're really diligent on it.


I think a lot of people come into this and be like, look, I'm going to put this thing online and people just show up, you have to. And that's just like, I always shake my head. I'm like, who told you that.


Matt Edmundson


00:45:01.540 - 00:45:01.860


You.


Taylor Frame


00:45:01.860 - 00:45:11.780


Have to find a way to acquire customers? And so, like, that's the biggest thing.


Whether you do it with sweat or whether you do it with money, you've got to figure that piece out at the beginning.


Matt Edmundson


00:45:12.020 - 00:46:58.540


Yeah. And I like that.


So six to nine months, really, you've got to be willing to go invest a bit of time in this for six to nine months and you're going to start to see. You see, the problem we have, Taylor, is there's people on YouTube going, oh, I did this and I made 10 grand overnight.


And you're like, yeah, you're the one in the 20,000 million people that actually managed to do it and made a video out of it. But the other 20,000 million people. Yeah, that just didn't work, did it?


No, no, no, no, you were the lucky bugger, is probably how we would say it in the uk. But it's.


And so we have this sort of these false expectations that actually, if I do this, then if I build it, they will come, you know, the Field of Dreams type thing. And if I'm slightly. Full disclosure, full integrity. When we started our beauty business online, that's exactly what we did.


But this was at a time when that actually worked, doesn't anymore. And so, yeah, having those sort of realistic expectations, it's going to take a bit of time.


It's going to take either sweat or it's going to take some, you know, a bit of cash to sort of throw at some things. You can learn it yourself. You're probably better off getting an expert in.


If you can afford it from day one, your return on investment is just going to come quicker, I think. But even then, it's no sort of guarantee of success, is it? How early in the conversation do you get involved where people are creating a product?


So let's say I want to create a new face serum and I've got a few ideas. Do you get involved in the product creation with some testing and you can go to the market and test a few things.


So we think this might work better than that. Or is it. No, we sort of. Once we've got the product done, then we come to you.


Taylor Frame


00:46:59.660 - 00:47:37.280


Yeah, once you got the product done, you come to us. We can guide on some things around, like how you're thinking about that product, but it's mostly just from a marketing perspective.


Once again, we're very focused on new customer acquisition. Scaling E. Com brands, that's like our bread and butter. We're really, really good at that. And we try to stay very strictly in those bumpers. Right.


So if someone comes to us, hey, I want your help. I'm like, thinking about the marketing strategy. I'm going to develop this product. Like, yeah, we can do that, but that's not our core expertise.


Matt Edmundson


00:47:37.520 - 00:47:38.480


Yeah, right.


Taylor Frame


00:47:39.200 - 00:47:46.880


You want to come to us when you're like, hey, I've got this brand. We're get. We're getting a little bit of momentum now. I want to take this thing to the moon. I'm like, all right, buckle up, let's go.


Matt Edmundson


00:47:46.880 - 00:49:30.260


Yeah, it's going to get bumpy. Dorothy. I'm a big fan of the. I use that phrase a lot.


I've noticed tonight, just listening back, I'm a big fan of the new customer acquisition idea we had on the site. On the site, on the podcast a little while ago, a chap called Oliver, Oliver Spark from the analytics company, and it's totally escaped.


I'm very sorry, Oliver. It'll come back to me. But Oliver was the CEO of a company called the White Company here in the uk.


I don't know if actually it's international, but it's a big deal. It's a big, massive, massive company. Turns over hundreds of millions here in the uk.


And he was the CEO for a little while, and when he came in, he took it from like 5 million a year up to. I think he needed to get it up to 60, 70 million a year quite quickly. I mean, it was quite a big jump in scale.


And he said the one thing that he did was he relentlessly focused on new customer acquisition. So he understood. He spent a bit of time figuring out how many new customers he needed to reach his target goal.


And actually his whole analytics suite is based around this single concept to the point where actually, full disclosure, he's been.


He's done a bit of stuff for us behind the scenes on one of my E commerce sites, because I was really curious after that conversation to see what it was like. And so I can't give you the details yet because frankly, we've not had them. We've not had that conversation.


But I know that they're working on some stuff for us right now. But I really loved his whole focus on, like, well, Matt, you want to get this company from say, 3 million to 5 million.


Yeah, that's easy to say, but what that actually means is you've got to go and get 28,426 new customers. How are you going to do that?


Taylor Frame


00:49:30.740 - 00:49:31.220


Yep.


Matt Edmundson


00:49:31.220 - 00:50:05.150


Right. And so this new customer acquisition thing is such an important thing and I love the focus on that. Listen, Taylor, I'm aware of time.


I already sucked the life out of you so far. So I'm kind of, I'm intrigued and I'm sure people are intrigued by what you do.


Maybe want to find out more, maybe look at some case studies, which I'm sure you have on your website and all that sort of stuff. If people want to reach out with you, if they want to connect to you, what's the best way to do that?


Taylor Frame


00:50:06.110 - 00:51:06.990


Yeah, I appreciate that, Matt. So go to focus funnels.com now. Focus funnels and Funnels with an S at the end. Focus funnels.com and we have everything right there.


We've got case studies, we have descriptions on what we do. And then there's a. We even have a little podcast with some of our, oh, fantastic. Favorite customers. Yeah.


So a lot of stuff to learn and engage with there. And there's a site, a part of the site that says hire us. And on that you can submit some information and set up a call with my team.


And here's one thing I will say is we are very open and honest about whether or not people are a good fit. Like, if you come to us and you're not a good fit, we're going to tell you that. So one thing I say on, on all of my.


My podcasts is like, set up a call with us. Just come chat with us. We do not do pressure sales. We're not going to guilt trip you into anything.


But if we do feel like we've got something, when we're definitely going to be like, let's do this together. Like, let's build something together.


Matt Edmundson


00:51:07.150 - 00:51:07.590


Yeah.


Taylor Frame


00:51:07.590 - 00:51:24.150


So.


But no, no matter what happens is you're going to walk away from a conversation with my team with a lot of knowledge, insight and better educated so you can make the right choice for, you know, whether it's a partner that you need. So FocusFunnels.com, hit us up. We'd love to hear from you.


Matt Edmundson


00:51:24.390 - 00:52:00.630


Fantastic.


And we will of course link to Focus Funnels in the show notes as well, which you can get along for free with a transcript on the website or in just whatever podcast system you're listening to this on. It'll be in the podcast notes. Just go check that out. But listen, Tony, thanks. Great to meet you, man. And thanks for coming on the show.


Love what you guys are doing. Love the simplicity of it.


It's just, it's just nice to just draw it back to the simple principles of marketing and so thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. Love what you guys are doing. And yeah, big shout out to you, man. Appreciate it.


Taylor Frame


00:52:01.430 - 00:52:02.710


Pleasure. Thank you so much.


Matt Edmundson


00:52:03.430 - 00:53:26.060


Well, what a fab conversation that was. Also a big shout out to the the sponsor of the show, of course, E Commerce cohort. Remember to check them out ecommercecohort.com go have a look.


Come join us in the Mastermind in the membership. Why not see what's going on now?


Be sure to follow the E Commerce Podcast wherever you get your podcast from because we've got yet more great conversations lined up and I don't want you to miss any of them. And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the very first person to do so. You are awesome. Yes, you are created awesome.


It's just a burden you have to bear. Taylor's gotta bear it. I've gotta bear it. You've gotta bear it as well. Now the E Commerce Podcast is produced by Orion Media.


You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app. The Team.


The wonderful, beautiful, just all round amazing team that makes this show possible includes the talented Sadaf Baynon, the extremely funny Tanya Hutzilak. Our theme song was written by Joe Josh Edmondson.


And as I said, if you'd like to read the transcript or the show notes, Visit the website ecommercepodcast.net where, incidentally, you can also sign up for the newsletter. If you haven't done so already, come and join the thousands of people that have. Why not? So, without further ado, that's it from me.


That's it from Taylor. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.

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Taylor Frame

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