What Does eCommerce Marketing Look Like In 2022

welcome to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson a show that brings you regular interviews tips and tools for
building your business online
[Music]
hi and welcome to the ecommerce podcast with me your host matt edmondson welcome to season number nine of the
e-commerce podcast can you believe we're on season nine already it is incredible
if you are a long time listener to the show a huge thank you for supporting us throughout the last nine seasons and if
you are a new listener welcome welcome to season number nine things as they say
are gonna get better yes i think there's a song about that all of this week's notes and links can
be found at ecommercepodcast.net forward slash now in the future you'll be able to
take a selfie and get paid for it did you know that well okay you know we know the world
changes fast but maybe not that fast that we are actually getting paid to take selfies but
it is always fun isn't it to think about what could happen in the future so in
today's show we'll be talking about what e-commerce might look like in does
that sound exciting don't go anywhere hey there are you a business owner here
at orion digital we know first hand that running an ecommerce business can be really hard work as the online space
gets more competitive it is becoming even more challenging to stay ahead of the curve we totally get it so we want
to help you succeed by offering a wide range of services from fulfillment marketing customer service and even
coaching and consulting just so that you can do what matters most save yourself the time and the money and let us handle
the day-to-day tasks this way you can run your business without having to worry about the boring stuff so what do
you say are we a good fit for each other come check us out at oriondigital.com and let us know what you think
thanks for joining us on the e-commerce podcast it is great that you are here now whether you are uh just starting out
whether you're new to this whole e-commerce thing or whether like me you've been around since noah
and have been around a little while the goal of this show is simply to help you regardless of what stage of your
e-commerce journey you're at let me tell you i've been around e-commerce for a long time and i learn stuff every time
we talk to amazing guests yes we do because that's how we do this show every week
we mix great show sponsors with phenomenal guests who are experts in their own field with their own stories
and insights with principles that can help us start adapt and grow on line and today
is no exception right here season number nine to kick us off we have a fab
conversation with kenny gray uh who is the founder of great media now
great spelt g-r-a-y-t because it's a play on his surname took me a little while to figure that out i'm not the
sharpest tool in the book sharpest tool in the box when it comes to things like that but i did finally
figure it out now kenny is a digital marketing guru who has successfully scaled multiple e-commerce brands uh to
consecutive six and seven bigger months yes he has now he provides holistic
perspectives and solutions that break through the digital space his ability to
anticipate changes in the market analyze the back end user experience and ensure
the strategic vision is executed on all front impeccably
makes him a valuable asset to any business now kenny and his team are passionate
about helping businesses find that one-of-a-kind message and today you will see that oh yes you're going to pick
that up in spades let me tell you he is here today to provide some insights on
how to create search and social ad strategies that boost awareness and
drive conversions kenny's ability to be able to utilize facebook and
other social media channels because there are more out there on there has been proven to scale e-commerce
businesses and shopify stores alike so great way to kick off season nine here
we go first episode of the new season here is my conversation with kenny gray
so with us today is kenny gray founder of gray team media uh i pronounced that
right great team media so it's actually a play on words it's going to be great media uh so last my last name's gray uh
it was a quick decision we added a t it's a play on words uh i am learning
that a few people have to figure that one out yeah i and and kenny i'm one of them because we're a little bit slow uh here
so it's great media okay i see what you've done there i think it's probably just the way it's written in my notes to be fair uh so you and your teammate says here
are passionate about helping businesses find that one-of-a-kind message uh we're gonna today talk uh you're
hopefully gonna provide us with some insights no pressure you might want to make a list of the things that we're expecting uh provide some insights on
how to create unique creative strategies that produce effective results to help scale revenues uh build brand
awareness and enhance the user experience whilst getting all of that whilst getting the highest return on
investment that is no small it's a mouthful yeah
so we're going to talk about uh facebook we're going to talk about social media we're going to talk about e-commerce all
that good stuff kenny great to have you on the show thank you so much for joining me all the way from
sunny orlando florida thanks for watching how are we doing today you know what it is sunny but we
are in the s today so it's not as uh you know sunshine and warm as it
normally is i know that's different for everyone else but still a little cold
okay now help me out here because i live in a country that talks in centigrade not fahrenheit
so what's what's degrees fahrenheit is that is freezing right
uh yeah it's pretty cold yeah yeah it's getting uh you know if maybe if we were a little more north
there's potential to snow but yeah we got enough sunlight and everything here it's very unlikely it's going to happen
in florida maybe if you were to go a little north to georgia i know a lot of people are getting snow right now but
it's chilly we're you know it's right there about to be a freeze we've got to cover some plants
rinse water wow well you know you have my sympathy the same temperature here if i'm honest
with you it's just about freezing today um but uh we just don't have the sunshine we have the grey so you know
uh yeah yeah absolutely absolutely i can imagine and are you are you sort of um
what's the word from someone who's from orlando uh is there a special name or landanian all
and i don't know yeah i don't think it's be it would be you know city-centric uh
i would say i'm a floridian so okay uh we kind of if you have it all with the
state okay it's a floridian okay because in liverpool where i am at the moment the
phrase is scouser are you a scouser which is what you would call someone local oh okay yeah no we don't have any
fun terms yet now you need to make one up that should i know
like florida man or something like that which is the it's not always the best uh white
media so yeah we can definitely create something much more interesting i'm sure yeah anyway
that's not the purpose of this podcast the reason i was that are you are you born and bred florida are you an import
what's your story uh so i have a lot of family up in new york new jersey i was originally born in
upstate new jersey uh and we moved down to florida when i was like a year old so i pretty much grew up in central florida
um originally ocala which is horse capital of the world very big deal
really meaning there's just a bunch of wood for it sure uh you know it's beautiful out there
just a little bit more slow than most cities um and then yeah i've been in orlando for about years or so now
wow okay and so i have to be honest with you my default orlando is disney world right it is to
everyone and then it's not even orlando that's like kissimmee it's a little more south of where you would consider
orlando city limits or uh it's just one of those places where you got so many different neighborhoods
it's really spread out so yeah disney's probably minutes away we're not
big park people we don't really tend to go over there it's a lot of tourists a lot of crazy minivans driving on the
highway yeah yeah uh it's fun every once in a while but man the prices over there have just gotten crazy so even then it's
like unless we're getting some free tickets it's like we can wait yeah yeah yeah we can wait i like that yeah yeah
and it just i mean it's that was the last time i was in in orlando actually we went to disney world and universal so
that was i guess about years ago it is really fun every once in a while too especially if you have a family and if
you have you've never been uh i mean it's beautiful they do a really good job just even down to the landscaping
walking around it's so manicured over there oh it's unbelievable it is very magical i'll give everyone
yeah and they like you say they they do a good job unbelievable especially for younger kids oh yeah um
so you're i mean obviously you're not involved with disney you're but you are in orlando and you run uh great media
not great media but great media right um and how long have you been doing that
uh so great media has been around for about a year and a half now um so long story short i'll try and keep
it brief i uh i kind of got into the digital space with nbc sports at the golf channel uh learned a few things
there and then got a job with a smaller agency where i started media buying then i started doing email sms building out
websites basically i just wanted to learn more and more take on more of the projects eventually
i was like yeah i'm just going to break off and do some freelancing you know i made a couple connections had some
referrals uh let me branch out gave me a little freedom uh and then you know business was good things just kept
rolling in uh and eventually you know um i'm sure anyone in the digital space can relate
where uh you get to a point where you have to be in the business every single day you're watching all the numbers so now
i'm just like all right this is like impossible to you know live a life so let's start building a team so now i'm
training my own media buyers we got copywriters working with other teams for you know creative
um you know partnerships with other agencies basically trying to diversify and not just have me as the sole only uh
button clicker so uh yeah a little more of a boutique agency right now but we're growing little by little
we're lending some great contracts and i'm just excited for everyone on my team to kind of see the growth
now this is it's interesting you talk about that as a journey you know and i i see this a lot where
um you start out doing something over here you then go freelance or self-employed or um you
start out on your own little venture and it starts to work it starts to get successful and actually you then start
to build out and i've always found my history uh in my e-commerce businesses some of
the best agencies to employ are actually the freelancers who are just at that point where they maybe need to start
hiring people oh yeah and because they've proven they can do it they're enjoying some success but their
prizes prices aren't crazy that's what i was about to say i was like i think a few got a few people got
in with me at a value buy and now it's like we have to revisit it and i'm just
looking at all the numbers and i'm like man i seriously you know undervalued what i was providing for that brand
uh but no you're right and then it's also based off of work so sometimes you're like i'll take that fee because you know i have a system down for this
one and we only work on it like one day a week and it's performing you know really well so that's a tough one to figure out and
to get your pricing right too yeah yeah yeah no it's just the freelancer's dilemma isn't it how much
do i charge i must have about one phone call a week from somebody freelancing going how do i know what to charge matt
uh and it's just a really interesting problem um but it's great i mean the business is going it's great you're
obviously involved in media doing something right to have to employ people and you know you for me the test when again whenever you
come to an agency one of the tests is you know how many what's your team like where where are you on this curve what's
the pricing like but how many customers do you have that have sort of that have stayed with you
for that that for me is one of the big key tests of an agency getting customers is one thing getting customers to stay
with you is something entirely different right um and so repeat customer always a good
thing uh when you're when you're looking at agency uh that said this is not a
podcast on how to run an agency but if you run an e-commerce business there's some things to definitely look at when
choosing an agency to work with because you will be you will be working with agencies uh running an e-commerce
business i have no doubt that said right now one of the things that you mentioned uh or alluded to when
you were self-employed and it was just you you are the guy checking the numbers all
the time and this is one of those things when it comes to like facebook and social media ads and google ads and all
that sort of stuff i've heard people mention this a couple of times and it's probably worth digging into a little bit
it is is it worth saying kenny right here at the start that when you come to do these
kind of ads when you kind of if you're doing it yourself which a lot of people do if they're starting out it's not a case of you can set it and leave it um i
heard you talk about constantly monitoring the numbers is that is is that like one of the key
what's what i'm looking for one of the key principles uh if you're going to run your own ad campaigns is you've got to
get your head around the fact you're gonna have to watch it on a regular basis uh you know what that's a really tough
point and there's a few principles especially when it comes to media buying and you're doing paid advertising um you
definitely want to know your numbers and you want to really know how to interpret those numbers so reading the data is
huge that's the big thing that you know my mentors at the golf channel helped me out with because we did a lot of
reporting and basically you know what's your source your medium what do the numbers tell you you know all the way from impressions to your click-through
rate to your cpm like how much are you paying for traffic because you know at the end of the day it is a traffic game
you know you built a store you need to get people there you got to make sure you're getting the right people into your store
so um those little metrics and being able to read those are gonna be huge uh and then anybody who knows anything
about media buying they're gonna say you know you want those people who are managing in your business and spending
those thousands of dollars to you know where's the money going do you have everything set up correctly uh you
know you might notice an error even if it's you it might be me like
we're all really great at what we do but people still make mistakes so you know you might set something up
to launch at p.m then you check the next morning the numbers aren't exactly what you're thinking so then you start
to you know dig into however you set up your campaign structure you're like i forgot to check
off this demographic and this is kind of what i was going for so it might be a little things like that but yeah you
might be looking day to day but the other side of that is you also want to launch your campaigns and you want to
let you want to give them time to develop to grow and learn with the ai on
whatever platform that you're using uh and a big thing that we always say is uh you know whatever's going on this week
isn't going to be the same as the next week or the next week after that so you know just looking at data from one
monday isn't going to tell you how mondays perform uh you need to build up a giant data set to say okay you know
what on mondays this type of demographics normally doing this they are either more likely or less
likely to engage but that's going to take time so you kind of need to just kind of step back let the numbers roll
in uh and now with all the tracking issues you don't even know if you're getting conversions right away unless you have a maybe a third party system
working uh maybe some utm parameters um maybe some custom script but even that's
not like a hundred percent solution so uh you might want to really just get a little granular sometimes but you don't
want to stress over it either okay so i've got lots there lots of notes
already uh you can see me scribbling away if you're listening to the podcast by the way and you're like what is a utm
what is a click-through rate we're going to get into that a little bit and we'll explain these terms as we go along um
but i thought it was an it's an interesting comment there kenny you know you're talking about these sort of different things that you you need to do
you've got to know the data um you've got to monitor those numbers but you've also got to give it time to
develop and grow your paid media campaigns for the ai to sort of have an effect
i guess and then you obviously talked about tracking issues which you know unless you've
not you know been on the web for the last six months tracking issues i assume you're talking about like the ios
changes for facebook yeah that sort of stuff that sort of kicked yeah okay so
i guess a question i like to ask when we talk about marketing and obviously you're
you're very cleared clear on sort of your the facebook side of things are paid social um i guess
should i stay it's a basic question but should i still be considering facebook advertising
in the advent of ios changes and the tracking problems that we have at the moment um or
or should i just be like abandoning it and finding other routes uh i wouldn't say abandoned but it's
still one of those top platforms people are you know maybe more on instagram now versus facebook but people are still
using all of those networks um so i wouldn't say abandoned but maybe diversify you might want to go for an
omnipresence approach uh you know instead of putting percent of your budget into facebook because you know
four or five years ago you could you know launch your campaigns and get decent conversion rates a great return
on ad spend so your money was well spent it was worth it um now you might want to dabble more in google for your
retargeting for you know try and fill in um you know those search queries that
you know users are going to be entering it really depends on your brand uh your niche
so in some cases tick tock might be great play might be a great play but a lot of these are going to be a big brand
awareness play and what i'm actually seeing is really big right now is messaging your email your sms getting
that hard data uh and being able to communicate with them uh you know provide some value and
then get them to convert with something they've already signed up for it so you already got them to make a small yes by
signing up for your email or your sms so i'm just providing more value of
something that you already asked for and we can actually hold that data and we can retarget heavily because you gave me
your phone number your name and your email which are that's really what took the biggest hit with all of these
tracking issues it's your bottom of the funnel audiences your website visitors people add to cart you can't do your
opinion cart sequence through uh you know your ad mediums as uh easily as you used to be able to so you might only be
getting of that audience and what everyone's seeing lately is that's really just not going to cut it
so um so how's the the way you do facebook uh i mean diversify which is great but
the way you you talked about facebook advertising then is it i get the impression maybe that you've changed the
methodology so before the way you would do it before is probably different to the way you would do it now is that oh
yeah you would definitely be going for always going for conversions previously which we still are for the most part but
maybe the ad creative might reflect something that might be more um you know entertaining or educating just uh the
whole idea when you're running those ads is you don't want to interrupt the user's experience on that platform
that's what facebook wants that's what users want and at the end that's what you as a business will want because uh
same idea when you're watching television when the commercials come on you're immediately checked out uh unless
uh what i am noticing they're using uh you know if there's a big show or a lot of uh a very popular cast they're
starting to use them in advertisement so you kind of get tricked for a second you're like oh is this you know part of the programming uh you know seconds
in you realize it's an advertisement but you're already invested it's more entertainment centric so same idea with
the the news feed whether it be facebook or instagram or especially on tick tock you need to you know make tick tocks
don't make ads yeah so it's just you know as people are scrolling you have to remember you got about three seconds to
make an impression and get your point across or they're already going to be swiping right past you
yeah yeah so if that's the case which i get and i i understand you know
you're on facebook you're on instagram you're on tick tock as a user i don't particularly want to leave that platform to go and do something else because
you've interrupted me so that people are now making you know they're coming up with different
concepts different ideas aren't they for me to engage with you mentioned the adverts that
um tic toc type videos what are some of the what are some of the effective strategies that i can employ as a
business user um that are good ad strategies at the moment you mentioned entertainment maybe
dig into that a bit more or dig into one or two others yeah one of the big things i'm we're using and i'm seeing a lot of brands use
is more you know user generated content and that doesn't mean you have to go and get micro influencers or big influencers
you don't need to be paying these large price tags um but basically something that feels
like your creative should feel more native to the platform so uh you know again we're seeing all these
memes we're seeing these uh you know statistics or you know something that's right like if you're into sports like a sports cast
um little clips like that that'll really grab your attention right away or if it's like product or service uh centric
it might just be uh the quality might be just from someone's phone going through the website showing you how it works um
unless i don't know maybe less of a corporate clean approach less disney as we were
talking about less manicured uh and more just like hey i'm just an average person and this is how i'm using it uh and then
you might also use little snippets of whatever trend might be going around um so i mean i think tick tock browsing
around on there is a really you know good uh resource just to kind of see what everyone's doing what everyone's
accustomed to because if you hop on those trends really quickly then people are like okay what's your version of this trend what's your version uh you
know seconds into it you're like oh your version of it is an advertisement and you already got them so uh it's just
another touch point it's a level of brand awareness and you provided a little entertainment so
you know you got your name out there and that's the whole point yeah yeah that's really that's really useful you mentioned user generated
content which we've talked about a fair bit recently on the show um and you but you mentioned that you don't have to go
to the extent of um or the expense of micro influences so how would you get that user generated
content uh well you can always outsource it to an agency like us um you could always
just make it yourself order the product yourself um you know give it your best shot obviously some of these creators do
a really good job they uh they have like the right octave the right uh pacing they really understand
how to you know make these viral videos if you will um but at the site same time uh we've
used some where you know i might just send some to one of our account managers and she'll just record stuff how she
sees fit so sometimes just letting it be a little bit more natural and organic actually might work out in your favor
versus uh you know i need a whole studio production here we gotta time everything right
yeah i've noticed that eh i've noticed um a lot of the ads i'm seeing now are i
call them the selfie ads do i mean they're all low production it's like i've got my phone i'm going to hold my
phone out here or do i mean something it's not polished it's not slick i've not got a big studio i've not got
perfect lighting and actually i'm noticing them more and more
and it seems to be that the conversion of those is more and more effective and it because then that they're tying into
that sort of social media feed you you you don't feel like you're being interrupted as much because it's sort of
consistent with where you're viewing the message which actually makes a lot of sense doesn't it actually if i'm on facebook
or if i'm on instagram create content that feels like i'm on instagram and people will engage with it
um why why have we it's an interesting question isn't it why is it taking us so long to figure that out well it sounds
remarkably intuitive to me but it it it seems like a i don't know as a brand over the years i
guess we've tried to do bigger better and all that sort of stuff and we've missed this simple principle what why any insight as to why we would do that i
think it might have something to just do with everyone wanting to be famous on social media
and these prince building so you kind of get i mean we're going we're based off of the you know the masses of what's
going on on these platforms right so um yeah we're just seeing more and more people put in their best version
and that creates more competition what i've noticed some of these creators are putting out really funny or educating
content where you know they can compete with the big dogs uh you know some people might choose to spend their hour
of free time scrolling on some of these social media platforms versus uh whatever new
d-list uh shows coming out on netflix yeah it's like yeah these these guys are doing a
great job here so i'll just stick to that that's a really interesting point because i think
um i noticed myself actually every now and again don't get me wrong it's not every day
but every now and again if i'm having like a lazy saturday morning i can lose an hour on tick-tock and not even
realize that i've lost an hour on tick-tock oh yeah and it and i'm just drawn into
that whole platform or even instagram you know and it's it's it's fascinating how even me
you know someone who's been around a little while it's starting to use these platforms as a source of entertainment now rather than
you know like you say go into the big sort of polished place i remember kenny maybe it's different from when i grew up
there were three channels on tv i'm showing my age now the three channels you actually physically had to get up
and press a button if you wanted to change that you had to walk across the room to change the channel
and now with i mean yeah it's just wrong on so many levels
it's almost you know how how dare it um but now with so much choice coming in it
still seems to me that emerging out of it are still one or two platforms that are doing really well
like tick tock like instagram and we we are now using these channels where entertainment is a matter of seconds
rather than a matter of hours does that make sense yeah definitely i think each platform kind of serves its purpose and
i think everybody you know they have their own purpose for using it right like facebook i personally use it for
you know the groups the community stand in touch with family i'm not really out there to you know scroll through the
feed and read everyone's political opinion so i've tried to clean that list uh and then on
and on instagram i'm you know looking at memes i'm looking at you know the you know sports people that i might follow a
little bit more of an entertainment value and then any close friends of any type of sharing uh you know please don't
over share we don't need that many photo collages but amen
and then another piece of all of it like i'm seeing that all of these platforms are kind of forming their own micro
communities or you know sub communities kind of i mean almost like a reddit but a little bit more flashy
um but especially you go on instagram or tick tock you could go you could just search garden you're gonna find millions
of videos about gardening tips on taking care of your plants uh cooking uh you know hardware automobiles almost
anything so there's all these sub-communities inside of these platforms where people can engage uh and
then that's where the algorithm comes into play to really cater it to uh interests that are gonna peak to that
individual user yeah no very much so yeah brilliant okay
uh don't go anywhere kenny and i will be right back carry on our conversation about all of this how to do this
marketing thing effectively on social media right after we've heard from this week's show sponsors
hey there are you a business owner here at orion digital we know firsthand that running an ecommerce business can be
really hard work as the online space gets more competitive it is becoming even more
challenging to stay ahead of the curve we totally get it so we want to help you succeed by offering a wide range of
services from fulfillment marketing customer service and even coaching and consulting just so that you can do what
matters most save yourself the time and the money and let us handle the day-to-day tasks this way you can run
your business without having to worry about the boring stuff so what do you say are we a good fit for each other
come check us out at oriondigital.com and let us know what you think
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[Music] so kenny before the show sponsors you we
were talking about the type of content and making sure that the content that we use uh in our paid media is relevant for the
platform that we're marketing on um if it's a case of um
before you know the changes in a year or two ago we would um
we would i guess promote a product right so we would just go this is a product it's bucks buy it click here
do we still do that kind of advertising or is it a case of actually we're changing our ads slightly and so at the
purpose of our ads or the mechanism is slightly different now
i definitely think there's more competition and you need to maybe not to be rude just apply a little bit
more thought in your process as you're creating your campaigns um so you have a product or i think
that's right i think that's sensible yeah it's just that they should always be like that but yeah you're right about six years ago you could just be like hey
i got this you know protein powder you want to try it and for some whatever reason people are just buying everything off of uh you know facebook ads
um but yeah now when you kind of figure out your product your service whatever you're trying to you know put your name out there for um you know try and really
narrow in on you know what is the problem uh and what solution does your product or your service provide and then
you want to try you know different angles um whether it be fun whether it be uh i don't always love fear mongering
but you might wanna you know you don't wanna miss out on this or you know um you might wanna play like a health
angle uh just really you wanna test all those different reasons why somebody is going to buy your product um and
you know you want to keep it simple but in some cases you might have an apparel brand uh like we're working with this
one apparel brand uh he's a big fitness influencer uh there's not a huge angle
there do you like wearing t-shirts we're not gonna use that in our headline uh it's just more like hey this is uh this
guy's brand uh this is a you know a fitness company uh you can pick nike
adidas under armour all that or you could support this other smaller influencer who's very heavily involved
in this fitness community uh and then that has slowly built over time so that's something where we use facebook
instagram google um probably going to start tick tock this year we're just kind of moving budgets around
and kind of getting the back end situated uh and we've pretty much have gone from spending you know two to three
hundred dollars a day to now two thousand to three thousand dollars a day but we still have a six times return on
ad spend if not more uh we grew that email list from to about
so every time we send an email or an sms uh we're easily seeing like a
day uh and that one we just keep it very simple there's not too many crazy tactics um
there's just maybe a few things on the back end kind of building that list uh product testing and then coming out with
recurring products especially like apparel don't rely on selling that same t-shirt
over and over and over you have to have fresh stuff that's uh even comes back to when i used to work in the mall in
retail we would get boxes of new clothes every week there'd be something new for people to buy you know so then when
units aren't moving you move them over to the clearance you're gonna you know more than break even just because those margins are great um but it's being
really dialed into those numbers seeing what's moving you know continuing to test uh and that's how we kind of got
them from doing a hundred two hundred thousand dollar months and now we're easily doing million in gross
revenue every month which is incredible right i mean he must be stoked i mean it's great for him yeah
yeah yeah yeah well it's not a bad problem to have yeah i guess the um
so when it comes to then the campaigns that you're doing and you're working on those campaigns and the audiences that
you're targeting so i get that if somebody has purchased from me before i can show them in an ad maybe
through remarketing the latest newest t-shirt right and as my audience grows i can text them i can you know sms
them i can send them messages i can send them emails i can use retargeting as to sort of show them new stuff and get them
engaged that way what do you do though um if you're
just starting out right and you and you've not got on your email list you're sort of starting from
scratch what sort of audiences and ad strategies should i be thinking about which helps me build up to
where i need to be yeah if you're just starting out maybe you have a smaller budget obviously like
i said before you want to try and go omnipresence route if you can get on all platforms that's great
um it's not gonna work out for everybody and that's okay because even just facebook alone uh it's still a great
place just to start building your audience start getting brand awareness there's still a ton of users on there so
it's still a great platform to test all of your angles and just kind of see what's going to get you bytes on there
and then for content you might not be going straight for the purchase maybe you provide more value or
educational content at first you know you get a couple blogs put together and if you don't want to write them
honestly you can find a freelancer to do it for like five or ten bucks they can you know you can throw a few things at them they'll rewrite it you just have to
structure it out on a page if you're not a big developer you can use something like click funnels or
zipify and those are really easy page builders so yeah first you want to build the audience you want to provide value you
want to start building those lists up so you know really strong for an offer you might be offering discounts at first
just keep in mind you're going to eventually start pulling back on those you don't want to train people to get discounts so your first campaigns might
be like here's five reasons why you might want to go on the keto diet uh we've done a few things for that for a
couple keto snack brands uh usually always gets a really great click-through rate so now you're already audience
building you're getting your name out there um we might be doing something um uh you know a little more educational
like this is what's in um your normal snack foods every day if you're used to eating chips or snack cakes
and here's what this product has almost no sugar and this is why sugar is bad for you so
basically kind of holding their hand through the journey teaching them a little bit about something and hey i actually have a
product that's going to solve that problem for you that you didn't even know you had so the educational content so the you
know five steps to why keto is the best diet on the planet or whatever it is um i'm not saying that keto is the best diet yeah by the way
but this might be the content that you put out there so i'm creating an ad with that you know five steps to
everything you need to know about the the keto that adds purpose and the read the whole
i define success on that ad by how many people it sends through to my website right so i'm starting to build that
right you might not be looking at conversions for that particular campaign so just know what your efforts are and
what you're going for for your objectives so that one in this case like an educational audience builder type campaign
uh you're kind of looking for more type of uh really great engagement metrics
basically you know how many link clicks uh your cpms which is pretty much how how much did it cost for it being so
when you say cpm just explain what so yeah cpms are pretty much the rate at to re your ad to reach a thousand
impressions so uh impressions you can make multiple impressions on people you can only reach
people once so you know impressions might have a higher frequency so you might hit the same person a few times so that's just
kind of like a general uh you know metric they follow um so basically that's a good traffic indicator so say
your cpm is over a hundred dollars that's going to be really expensive to reach all of those people so either your
targeting's off your creative's off or maybe facebook just hates your ad account and your landing pages so all
little levers that you have to kind of go down the list and try and uh edit but yeah other than that your
click-through rate so how many impressions you get and how many people actually click on your link that's going
to be huge you want those to be you know way above average because you're not going for conversions you're not going
for you know straight to shopping uh it should be an easy click honestly it's a blog it's what people are you're i'm on
there to be entertained i'm providing entertainment uh so if you're getting a really low click-through rate it's
pretty easy to say all right this isn't what people want to read so easy test you know it's done after that
um and then you know your cpc your cost per click how much are you paying it's a good indicator if you're targeting and your creative are on or if they're off
so you've you've drawn people into the website with some educational content you understand clearly what the
objective for that ad is and what are some of the things that people should also think about because a lot of
people will just leave it there but are there things that we should then think about on the website i mean the obvious thing to me kenny is
i really want that person to give me their email address right so what are some of the things that i should be thinking about some of the strategies
that i should be thinking about on site if i'm using paid media to promote educational content uh yeah no that's huge
especially you're already spending money to get people on your website so you want to give your best first impression
especially since cold traffic is huge right now compared to retargeting so i mean before we even get to the pop-up
you want to make sure that your website is actually well manicured and it's up to standards because where everyone's
used to shopping on huge websites like amazon so your shopping experience already has like a standard whether you
realize it or not so if you were to go to another website and you get to their checkout and it just doesn't feel right
you're usually sometimes you're going to back out and you're just like i don't want anyone to steal my information or my credit card or anything like that so
it's important to have you know every fine detail on your website you like you don't want lower met some text anywhere
on your website and it feel incomplete i still see it today it happens i think it's happened to me too but you know practice what you
preach but uh yeah uh but it's still it's like an indicator where people can pick up on that because you know we're
people are conditioned now people have been online for a long time so they know what to expect so you can't like you
can't get one over on them as easy as you used to um so first of all that user experience
yeah you want to make sure it's well put together your brand is right out there in front you know a great shopping
experience basically um but yeah for the pop-up uh basically you want to you don't want
to be too pushy i would say don't ask for too much information right away you're good with either you know just
get the email that's fine maybe ask for a first name uh if you're not going for email maybe go for the sms or your the
phone number um and then it doesn't always have to be a discount you could always do like a pdf like a free workout guide a free
health guide really uh i mean a free guide almost
anything i don't i would say the only thing it does almost doesn't apply to is apparel unless you're into a certain
niche but uh basically you can provide free content other than that you know you offer off whatever makes
sense that doesn't hurt your margin uh i would say if you're going the percentage route you definitely want to make sure
that you're you have like a recurring order type product or service because if it's just one and done and you're just
offering a discount uh then you're just giving someone a discount and they're going to be gone so if you're doing like supplements or
apparel you basically you want them to get past that threshold make a conversion with you build up that trust and loyalty
so you might the margins might be a little tighter on the front end that first purchase but over time as they are
worked into your email and your ecosystem and they keep getting hit with your ads they're going to keep spending money they won't always have discount
codes so then that lifetime value of the customer continues to grow so kind of similar to what i was saying with the um
the fitness apparel brand uh over time those lists grew so now every time that we you know have a new drop or something
new is happening and we can promote it to them we see a huge turnout great conversions
huge gross revenue day every time that's really interesting the um
i've seen the the content strategy work very well and this is true for e-commerce businesses as well especially
if you're selling um high-end or repeatable products that maybe other people haven't tried like a keto snack bar for example educating people around
keto is probably not a bad idea or five things you wish you knew about keto they go to your website there's a pop-up
which says listen you know download our free guide to everything keto and get off your you know your first order
whatever it is and then that's a great way to sort of send cold traffic to build your email list and then you onboard them with um emails and you know
sequences and all that sort of stuff and you play a bit of a long game but it can work quite well um
for e-commerce businesses is there still um a place to try just
here's my product buy it now kind of i was just about to say uh you know know what you're selling know how people are
going to be shopping for it because because you don't always need to play an angle you don't need to provide blogs
because uh you know people aren't that dumb so you can honestly at a certain point um
especially with apparel i've realized just like a shopping experience or a carousel of you know all of the new
clothes that are you know maybe relevant to the season or a new drop or maybe best sellers uh just straight to the
point sometimes people like that just you know don't try and get me with a fancy photo shoot uh you know our you
know you're not gucci or anything so we don't care who's in it uh just show me you know the new styles that you've come
out show me all the new colors uh and if i like what i see i'll click and i'll shop so uh sometimes you just gotta put
it right in front of their face make it easy again it's just kind of simplifying the whole experience it's not that
people don't wanna see ads it's just you know if they they want to see something that they're interested in and they
don't want to have to jump through all these hoops so if you're just doing like a carousel with a you know a few of your best sellers from your you know your
inventory sometimes that works best just because it's straight to the point um you know one company we're working with
is you know car detailing products uh people know what you know car wash products are we don't need to try and
sell it that hard maybe provide maybe while we're better than the competitor but hey this is what it is if you want
to come check it out and you have interest in that you'll come check it out and shop just because yeah you're the new kid on the block i kind of want
to see what you got yeah yeah yeah no the bottom line then is test right but
throw a few things out there and see what happens and test all of them and actually again my experience here for my
for what it's worth with my own e-commerce websites is you want to do all of these yeah you don't just want to pick one and you want to test them and
and sometimes one works well and then i mean and like you say it ebbs and flows isn't it and things are changing and
then you don't even realize one helps out the other um you know for example you know you were on facebook instagram
google and tic toc uh you know facebook and instagram you know great brand awareness great audience building uh
tick tick-tock not as many conversions as the rest but still really good clicks great uh brand
awareness great views uh and then on google you might have very strong retargeting because it's still the most
used platform and that's what people are searching um you know the biggest you know uh flow for a user is you know i
see it on social media and then you go and google it i want to learn more about this product because now i'm interested
and what are the other options out there what are the other brands so you know having your seo dialed in or having um
you know your retargeting search branded campaigns dialed in are going to be huge because you still you want to stay
relevant it counts as another touch point you know i see your video on tick tock or users using your product that's
a touch point now i get hit with an ad providing a little bit more content on facebook another touch point now i go
and google it and now you're right there at the top of the search results now you already have three touch points
so yeah this is where you have to think of your chat of your marketing activity in multiple channels don't you sort of in in terms of your outreach yeah
because you could turn it off and then the other fails so that's one thing where you're like well google's great we'll just keep google on but then it
starts to decline but the only reason google is doing well because you were getting a ton of reactions and
engagement on facebook or instagram yeah yeah exactly exactly you mentioned a
couple of times about how um i can re-market or read or in effect
and show you the same ad more than once and this i think is is an interesting thing which has come out
more recently that um or people talk about more recently is i don't know if you've got any specific
benchmarks which you follow like if i'm selling um i have sunglasses on my desk
i don't know why i have sunglasses on my desk because it's definitely not the summer um but if i'm selling sunglasses
um how many times should i be showing you my ad before i go actually ken is really
not interested because it's not just once right oh yeah no so let's say you have a you
know a decent um you know cpc you're not paying too much for clicks your cpm your your cost
to reach thousands of people is pretty low so basically all of your engagement in
platform metrics look pretty good but no one is biting um so at that point we might even take a
step back we might look at how much we have spent so then you might try and see it might be a creative issue it might be a
targeting issue but generally once we spend about three to five times the price of that product um
we pretty much say that test is done yeah especially if there's no results
we're just like we gave it a fair shot i ran through you know the system hit enough people uh we didn't even get any
add to cards or conversions then you know your targeting's off you might need to try some new uh creative uh if you
feel strong about the creative and you don't think that's the problem just because for example this one sunglasses
those are pretty straightforward we know what they are we know what they do so you don't really need to play too many angles there so then it's like we might
just be reaching the wrong people um it's just uh you want to go from each level from you know your creative to
targeting to maybe even your budget and system so it might be a time of the year thing there's some people who run ecom
stores only during um you know uh the christmas season just because you know people are buying all types of random
things just to fill up stockings and for presents or get you know random gifts uh which they normally wouldn't perform
well throughout the rest of the year so there's no point in running them one of the um one of the interesting
things that i think i've picked up over the years is the um you take something like black friday
which is obviously a big sort of sales period uh for most online businesses right it's like okay well everyone knows
what black friday is and everyone's in a buying mood at sort of this point right
um and i see a lot of businesses just sort of coming out and going right well it's
black friday i'm now going to start running some paid ads but it seems to me that that whilst it makes sense to try and promote
at that point in time um it makes sense to maybe start that process a whole lot sooner because
you've got to build your cold audiences you've got to know you know what's working what's not working and black
friday is insanely competitive for ads so you want to sort of work all this stuff out ahead of time um is that is
that a fair strategy i mean i'm just thinking the reason i'm asking is you mentioned the store that maybe just sells around christmas i'm just thinking
would they just run ads at christmas or would they run ads at different parts of the year to try and get their christmas ads to work no that's a good question
and it comes up every year with uh almost every brand because people are maybe a little um a little shy to spend
but pretty much like you're saying um no it's not gonna be a good strategy if you just go and run ads during like a
holiday or a peak season because that's what a lot of brands are doing uh and they already have their whole most of
the time they have their whole system and back-end dialed in uh so pretty much your cpcs it basically the cost to reach
all of your traffic during these peak sales and seasons it's just going to go up naturally because there's more
competition and there's only so many users there's only so many placements they can do so like you were just saying
you want to start way ahead of time um so honestly we didn't even spend as much with most of our brands this past
christmas just because we saw the cost keep rising the tracking issues uh so what it really came back down to was
email and sms because we own that data we already have a relationship with them um and then you also got to think like
people are out doing stuff for the holidays uh maybe it's a little different now with uh you know the lockdowns and everyone's sick but it's
always a little different so instead of just trying to hope they stop on your feed and interrupt their entertainment
scrolling we're going right into their inboxes or right into their text messages so we
have like a direct line to them like hey you already signed up for this we have something that you want it's on sale so
those performed really well but yeah you want to be building throughout the whole year some people might be breaking even
every month and then you're going to make all of your net profit there in qjust depending on what you sell if you
have your back end dialed in and what products you're offering um so it all kind of works together so it's not like
you can focus just on one piece and or just rely on one channel or one product so
uh you know you want to kind of diversify you want to kind of offer a variety
a lot of it is funny because it comes back to the retail days it's just kind of like what else can you sell to them
how can you get your aov up how can you build a good experience you know how do you keep them coming back because uh
most times you don't want to rely on just that first front-end purchase uh the lifetime value is going to be huge
for most brands who are going to make it like um i know you brought it up before but we have a few brands we've been working
with for i think four years now uh and as you don't know most agency models are
around three to six months and usually the brand drops off maybe they go to another agency usually people start
bringing all the jobs in internally so i'm really happy with my team and our brands that we've had our
you know our clients for about three or four years and they're happy with everything and they're seeing significant growth to where you know we
don't need to hire a bigger better you know whatever might be perceived as a different agency and we don't need to hire internally
because we have everything dialed in yeah that's a really good point and i
i'm intrigued actually where this whole thing's gonna go with um you know with the paid media in terms of
audience building and conversion and all that sort of stuff because the landscape seems to change on a fairly consistent
basis it's the only thing that i can be sure of is that i can't be sure of anything and so you know it's going to
change it's going to develop it's going to sort of um it's going to grow where are some of the
sources that you go to to sort of stay on top of things you know some of the learnings you know are there sites that
you look at or their blog feeds or their youtube channels i don't know what where do you where do you go to stay on top of
all the stuff that's happening yeah it's tough besides the e-commerce podcast of course of course every uh every morning
uh [Laughter] um of course besides that well well
first to the first part you were just saying how are you know where is it going to go i think the biggest thing people need to realize is you know focus
on the brand and building it you know as your own community and focus on you know delivering a great experience with so
many options being out there and some there's just so much competition you need to you know have your customer
service dialed in have the product dialed in uh ads are going to be a part of it but if you want to go for the long
run and not just run some ads and drop ship a few products to try and make a couple bucks you know focus on the brand
and building out your business uh the back end's gonna be huge um but for where i kind of stay up with
trends um it's kind of odd because i've used the platforms to stay up with everything you
know i follow some of the right people i'm i'm part of a few groups where i kind of everyone's sharing and
exchanging their ideas or what's new um i work with several different agencies where you know we help each
other out and kind of talk about what we're noticing um i love all the conferences i love watching all the
videos uh youtube is a great resource no matter for whatever you're trying to learn if
you find the right channels like affiliate world conference i love all those case studies um and then just kind
of getting experimental on your own um if you can if you have the opportunity to be spending money for these clients
and you know testing for these brands uh it's an opportunity to get granular get into the data and learn for yourself
because a lot of these big other you know big media buyers or people in the digital marketing space uh they're doing
the same thing and probably figuring out the same uh you know techniques and strategies so by the time you see even
hear about their case study from like a year ago it's not even relevant most of those old strategies won't work anymore
in the new um you know ecosystem inside of facebook especially with all the tracking issues uh you know you can't
cheer everyone as easily from cold to middle to the bottom of the funnel like you could before so it's more
um click some but when i tell my staff i'm like if i know we have a little bit of budget to work with uh you know i'm
telling them to click buttons click around change some settings see what happens just uh i think being
experimental and curious is going to help you a lot more yeah just watching the results right
measuring them yeah pretty much what gets measured gets managed etc etc
um so i guess
i guess one of my you've mentioned this before a couple of times and i just want to clarify what you mean with your
terminology make sure your back end is dialed in i mean what what do you mean when you say make sure your back end is
dialed in oh yeah everything from on your website to you know how you have your categories for your products um
what products are you coming out with and you know from when you first start to maybe a few years later the quality
might change so you know is that being uh illustrated on the page or you know demonstrated uh in some cases are your
blogs up to date are they showcasing are they providing more value to uh basically keep users on your website
longer is it easy just to find something is uh you know contact us return refund policy
your terms and conditions what's your back story so everything going on behind the scenes it
doesn't you know it might just be set and forget for a while but uh that your your automations from
your abandoned cart sequence to your follow-up to uh you know trying to engage with your unengaged audiences in
there um i mean everything from the whole user experience so when you get on that website all those little menu buttons
that we see that are you know very polished and if you're not sure go to nike's website go to adidas you know go
to these huge brands that you know spend millions of dollars on it and just kind of you know you can
you can hack some of their ideas it's like this is a great idea i like that all right this is a good idea for the section uh obviously not word for word
but uh you could take little pieces of it and just kind of how they establish themselves and it kind of builds like a
subconscious trust as you're on their websites and you're kind of browsing or shopping as a user
yeah that's very good point very good point well listen kenny thank you so much for being with us on the show it's
been a great conversation um i have again lots of notes lots of things to think about and i think my one of my big
takeaways today is actually what you're just talking about at the end there make sure everything's joined up because it's
not just the case of now you can run an ad put a pdf download on there and you know make a gazillion books you've got
to make sure all of these touch points are now connected up thank you and and they're all working harmoniously together oh a bit more complicated but
it's definitely doable right would be my would be my willpower and
keep it simple you'll have to go crazy um you know one of those facebook sayings out at their office is just you
know done is better than perfect but you know get something done yeah absolutely very agile thinking get
something done um kenny listen how do people connect with you how do they reach you if they want to connect uh
with either you or the agency with what you're going on there yeah if anybody wants to um connect uh if anybody you
know needs a little bit of help or some guidance you can go to uh greatmedia.com
and that is g r a yt media.com uh again i'm learning i you know it's
kind of like the color with the t but yeah uh there's a big red button on there you can schedule a call with me i
can either help out or you can just chat i'd love to hear anyone's ideas too and the other problem you've got of
course is a large portion of our audience is british and and and obviously if you're english distilled
reach out to kenny i'm sure it looks you but we spell gray differently in the uk of course yeah i know you know what we
talked about you know so bad reference so american color gray uh
[Laughter] listen uh we will put obviously all the
links to kenny to kenny's agency regardless of how you spell it uh we will put all the links to kenny and
kenny's agency in the show notes we'll have the transcript and all that sort of stuff there so uh do head on over to
there and uh check it out so kenny thank you so much for being on the show really great to have this conversation uh i
hope the weather picks up for you uh in orlando that's not you know cold too much longer
i'm sure yeah i'm sure it's going to pick up fine it's florida we got maybe two or three weeks of this and uh we'll be in the pool in no time
yeah i won't and yeah thanks for having me this was fun great speaking with you
brilliant thanks kenny well a huge big thanks to my very special guest kenny what did you think
to that episode wasn't it just jam-packed full of good stuff
and of course if you're listening to this in the car and you kind of think i need a way to be able to get access to
those notes matt have you got away funnily enough i have you can get them for free
at our website ecommercepodcast.net forward slash to be able to access all of the notes the
links and the transcript from today's show for free no email required just head on over there and download them and
review them at your own pace because there's a lot of good stuff in there and you're going to want to get those notes and of course
as i now say at the end of every podcast if that's not enough for you we have another fantabulous guest next
week oh yes the legendary aj davis uh who is coming on to talk about the case
for conversion rate optimization yeah i think if you look at customer expectations are
changing over time their experiences intersecting with other parts of their lives or other stores are changing over
time and so if you are not experimenting if you're not trying new things you will
be stale you will become flat and so if you want to be growing and if you want
to stay up on the not just the latest and greatest but the things that actually make it easier for customers
then you've got to be experimenting because it's not static it's not one and done it's not check i did cro xero is
the decision to iteratively approach how your customers experience your site and
so if you're not taking multiple swings at the bat if you're not stepping up and trying new things consistently with an
intent to learn about your customer so you can apply it elsewhere like that you just will not succeed as a
business in the long run [Music]
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