Hey! What's up y'all? Affiliate World Europe!
How we doing? Good? No?A little bit of energy? Hey!
Can I get some dance music?No? Not a dancing crowd? Alright.Well, I feel pretty happy to be here. I feel like that!
It's the kind of energy I'm trying trying to bring.I feel like, come on, I feel like this dude right here,
who was, I think maybe shopping for his wife.Maybe found like a nice thing he thought
she was gonna like, grabbed it.Yeah, no? Not going? Alright.
Hey we're gonna do some business stuff.Why don't we get started.My name is Ezra Firestone.
I'm pretty happy to be here if you can't tell.I really like doing events like this,
so thank you so much for coming out.One of the things that I think you should remember
when you're at an event like this,is that what it's about in life is relationships.
That you're gonna get tons of good content,but the best thing that you can
get from this event is a connection to someone else.Every major leap in my business
came from someone I met at an event.So make a friend or two.
Everybody stand up for me.Come on get up.
Put your hands on your hips,and just rub elbows with
the person next to you.Alright you can sit back down now.
That's what it's about that's why you're here.That's why you came to Affiliate World
to meet somebody, and from now on,no more touching, okay.You're in your own personal bubble
and you got to keep your hands to yourself.Another thing to remember is that this is good to better. If you made it into this room, you're in a good spot.Take your hand put it over your head.
Turn it away from you.Pat yourself on the back. Come on now.If you made it into this room
you're in a really good spot.So it's good to remember that
you're already in a good place.My name is Ezra Firestone. I build brands online. I have a hundred people who work for me.So I build teams and our brands are doing pretty well. This is one of our brands here.Boom by Cindy Joseph. It's a cosmetic line
that is geared towards women over 50.In the last 4.5 years, we've generated 86 —
oh damn, look at this. Wait for it. You ready?Bam! What you know? Anybody else had flames?
Have you seen? Let me ask. Have you seen flames?Come on. That's pretty good.
We've done $86.4 million in the last couple of years.So I don't tell you that to brag,
but in this industrythe way that you show you know what
you're talking about, is you show offlike how much money you made.
So we are making lots of money and I know that'slike what you're interested in, is how
you can grow your business, how you cangenerate more revenue, and I'm going to
share with you some ways to do that, butI'm also going to give you a bigger
picture frame that you can holdfor what you're doing in the world,
because my viewpoint is that the game isresource generation. We want to generate
resource and then use that resourcetowards causes that we find noble.
Taking care of our family. Taking care ofour community. Serving the world. So I'm
gonna show you how we do that andhopefully, you can learn from it.
I get the opportunity torelate with thousands of entrepreneurs
every year, and one of the bigproblems that everybody talks about is
how to scale ads profitably. That'swhat everybody wants to talk about and
if you look at the lineup from this event,there's a ton of content on how to do that.I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about
ads, but I think that there's a biggerpicture afoot if you want to be
successful and grow a brand to 8-figures,and so what I'm going to do is
I'm going to share with you some of theother problems that our community is
facing as people report to me when Italk to them, and I'm gonna give you my
playbook for how I scale brands as I mentioned.I have a hundred people working for me.
I'm just some guy off a couch in Brooklyn,who started in ecommerce 12, 13 years ago.
If I can do this, you can do this.I didn't start with any money.
I started from the bottom now, we here.For real. So I'm gonna share with you
some of the ways that I lookat business holistically, and hopefully,
rather than – there will be tactics andstrategy, but rather than just tactics
and strategy, I want you to leave with anunderstanding of the larger frame of how
you need to view your business in order for it to grow.So some of the other problems that people are facing, money and funding.People who get to a couple million dollars a year,
tend to need money to fund their inventory,money to fund their ads, money for hiring.That's a problem when you scale.
Hiring, sourcing, training. Not doing everything yourself.It's a big problem that people face and
do not know how to overcome.I'll talk to you a little bit about thatDiversification. Most people in this room
have one source of income or one channel of traffic.Diversification across the board is an issue,
and growth plateaus.People get stuck. People get stuck
at $300,000. Hey! What's up?$1 million, $5 million, $10 million, and $20 million those kind of like the plateaus you'll see in business.And then most importantly, and I can recognise this from across the room at these events,everybody is f*cking
– pardon my language, stressed out.Everybody's overworked, underworked out,
not eating properly, not sleeping properly,grinding, hustling, sacrificing,
and that is like the prevalent messagein entrepreneurship right now, that you need to work 15 hours a day. That is terrible advice.It's a marathon. It's not a sprint.If you run yourself into the ground, you
are no good to your friends, family, loved ones.You've got to approach this with a
long-term view. Most people are lookingtwo months out. Most people who have a
longer-term view are looking 12 months out.I'm trying to be doing this for —
we figured out how to use the internetto make money and generate resource,
which is kind of cool and I'm trying todo this for as long as I can. I'm
looking 10, 15, 20 years out, and I wantyou to do the same. So what's the play?
I get to ask this question.Alright dude. Sounds pretty cool.
What do we actually do? Here's what you need.You don't know that you need this, but this is what you need. You need brand assets.You don't need customers only. You don't
need products only. You don't needtraffic sources only. You need brand
assets, email subscribers, pixeled audiences,Facebook Messenger subscribers, text
message subscribers, customers.You need groups of people, who are paying
attention to you those are assets for your brand.The money that you invest in
advertising is generating a lot more than a customer,and by the way, I am talking about this
from the frame of you as a person,are going out and generating
visibility for your own offer,because I think that if the game is resource
generation, the best way to do that is tobuild value for yourself through selling
your own thing, whatever that is.Ebooks, services, physical products like I do, but
brand assets, you need a group of people,who are actively engaged with you over time.
So that when you run a sale or a launch they respond.What generates brand assets?
Content. That's it. That's what you need.Content that you use to engage
buyers, subscribers, prospects, and fans, sothat when you have something to offer
them, they know who you are and they like you.Hey I just lost my confidence monitor.
If you could bring that back for me.The way it works up here, by the way,
for those of you never did this dance,you get the slide that's on the screen,
and then you also get what's coming next.It's really helpful. If you lose that,
it makes it harder. I mean, it's not impossible.It makes it a little harder.So how do you get that content?
What's up dude? You want a fist bump? Yeah.Hey but we don't explode the rock.
Don't do it. Don't explode.You could jellyfish. You can't explode.
So how do you get that content?She's trying to explode, but we don't do that.
We stopped doing that like back in 2012,after like the Tropic Thunder movie.
We stopped. I've been saying this for years.It's truer now than ever.The faceless brands are dying.
The purposeless brands are dying.The purposeless brands are only on Amazon.
You hear this a lot in terms ofyour entrepreneurial journey, but you
don't hear this that much in terms ofyour brand. In terms of your business,
the first step is figuring out the why.What's your mission? What's your story?
What's your purpose?What are you doing in the world
beyond selling something?Mission.Millenials, if you sell to them, they are
now the — if you look at, in America where I live,Millennials are now the biggest part of the population. It's my generation. We have eclipsed the baby boomers.Baby boomers were the biggest,
there's about 84 million of them.They've been slowly dying and so, there's
less of them now right and millennialsthere's more of them. Well millennials
care a lot about why. How things are made,why they're made, where it comes from.
So if you don't have a mission, somethingthat you're doing beyond trying to sell
people stuff, you're not gonna make it to8-figures if that's your goal, which
for me, it's like, I got a lot of peopleto take care of. I grew up on an intentional community. I got 60 hippies who need taking care of.So if I'm gonna make hundreds
of millions of dollars in revenue, which then leads tomoney that I can put in my pocket
and use towards stuff,I need to have all these things in place.
So what's your mission?If you look at Everlane. Everlane is like,
I want to be them when I grow up.Anyone shop at Everlane?You need to shop at Everlane.All the dudes in here, if you want
to know about fashion, check out Everlane.They got the cuffs, you know how everyone's cuffing.
Everlane's got that if you want to cuff your pants.Maybe you don't.
This guy does.So Everlane, what they're doing is they're bringing radical
transparency. They're saying, hey, nobodytells you where this stuff's made,
how much it costs to make it. We're going totell you where we make it, why we make it,
exactly how much each garment costs.At Smart Marketer, my mission is to serve the world unselfishly and profit, and I think that's a description.I think if you are serving
the world unselfishly, you will profit.At Boom, we're the first pro-aged
cosmetic line for women over 50.Everyone is saying anti-age, anti-wrinkle,
botox, tuck it in, tighten it up, dye your hair.Everyone is telling women that
their value is declining as they age,which is a bunch of bullshit.
Men don't receive that conditioning.So we have a pro-aged cosmetic line that is about
celebrating you as you are now.Our mission is to offer a different
viewpoint to people who are experiencing agingand being told that that is wrong.What do you stand for? What do you believe?
Here's what we believe at Boom.We believe that you're perfect just the
way that you are. Whatever size you are,whatever shape you are, whatever texture
your skin is, whatever colour,and we believe that makeup is for fun.
You need a mission statement.Something that you believe as a brand, that you can
get your customers to repeat back to you.That's the game.And what's the tagline?
Tagline, and don't worry, we're gonna getinto some really cool marketing stuff,
but you might think this is trivial.You would be mistaken. This is how you
get a content business to work,and I'm gonna explain that as we continue to go. For Boom, it's about women, it's about beauty, it's about time.Smart Marketer,
serve the world unselfishly and profit.Everlane, know your factories, know your costs.
Always ask why.The tagline should explain the mission and the story in one sentence.If you can't do that you do not
have a clear mission or story.You must have this, because this is what people are gonna tell their friendswhen they tell people
about your brand, you guys.You guys want to do a picture?Every major brand has a tagline.
There's a reason,because it works.Okay, now you have the why.
Let's talk about the how.I call it the engage and filter method. We go out to
buyers, subscribers, fans, prospects, peoplewho don't know about us,
people who do know about us.We put video content and article content in front of them that they're going to be interested in,that relates to experiences that they are having.
What you are doing as a brand is communicatingwith groups of people, about
collective experiences that they are having,commenting on those experiences
through content, adding valueto their life, getting them to subscribe
to you, and ultimately selling them something.With Smart Marketer, I talked to people
who have internet businessesabout that experience. I offer content
about how to do that better and then Iultimately say, hey, I have apps, I have courses, I have software, and they buy from me.With Boom it's like, hey this experience you're having of aging is interesting.Menopause, gray hair, skin changing,
let's talk about it. Let's talk about what we think about it.I don't talk about this. I get women who are having this experience to talk about it.Put that in front of people.They consume it. They subscribe to me.
You know a subscription is just watching your video.You can follow up with people who
consume the video.You want to scale a brand, don't try
to just sell people stuff. Engage them first.This is the game. The sales cycle is much longer in
today's world. People are starting on their mobile phones.They're on the toilet.
They're on their lines at the bank.They're watching a little bit here,
a little bit there, and then you follow upwith them and over time, they decide to
buy from you on their laptop or desktop computer.They start on mobile. They move to desktop and laptop. If you want your ads to perform better,run your awareness traffic on mobile and run your retargeting and loyalty on desktop and tablet only.That is the customer buying journey,
you'll cut your cost in half.You can't scale it but if you're on
a budget it works really well.So you engage them with video content. The people who watch 50% of them,of your content or read your articles,
you put through a sales cycle.You engage and you can sell them on Amazon too for an Amazon business owner.Engage and filter. This is the game.It's pretty straightforward but it is the same model
that I have used to grow one, a businessthat is doing $20 million a year and several other businesses that are making $5 to $10 million a year.Content on Facebook, on YouTube, on Instagram.
Video related to the experience that the group of peoplethat we are talking to is having, by the way, if you have a front end customer acquisition funnel.This is how you get repeat business,
you don't just try to sell them more products,you put content in front of your buyers. This is the game. In business today, it's not about the first sale,it's about the second and the third.
That is how you scale.You don't scale on sale number one. You break even on sale number one with how much ads cost.So if you want to scale.
You need the second and the third sale.It comes from content and engagement, and then following up with those people.Some Smart Marketer content, then you
create an audience on Facebook.An engagement audience.
A video engagement audience.You say, hey I want people who've watched at least 50% of my videos.You select your videos and then
you run ads to those people.This model works super duper well.
It's called the engage and filter method.After people are engaged,
you filter them out and offer them products for sale.You would think this would raise your cost per acquisition. It doesn't.It lowers it because the people who you're trying to sell to are actively engaged with you,and they like you, and they like what you have to say.
I have a whole course abouthow to do this in-depth. How to create
that content that's actually gonnarelate with people. You can find it on my blog. There's a free link to it.smartmarketer.comNow, real quick. I spend $5 or $6 million a year on ads for my own brands.This video ad formula for those of you that are like, yeah dude, that sounds coolbut I'm like affiliate marketer.
I'm trying to make money.I don't care about building a brand.
I just want to ball out on Instagram,with a gold watch and a Lambo.
I want to cuff my pants and slick my hair and all that.Right on, I'm not judging, do what feels good.
It's kind of funny, but do whatever you want.This formula is our winning video ad
formula right now for top of funnel.I spent $2.5 million since January on one video ad
and that's the beauty of ads.You need one good one.
Don't need a bunch of them.Yeah, you want to have more over time,
but one good ad can take you very far.I call this the testimonial sandwich.
The love demo love formula.It starts with a face to camera customer testimonial of someone who looks like your customers.Someone who is a buyer, talking about their experience of why they like you and your product,and your brand, and your mission, and your
story, and then you demo the product andthen you go into another customer testimonial.
This ad formula is working across the board.I have a mastermind group
that's for ecommerce business owners,who are generating a million plus a year.
Tons of them are using this formulaand it's working super well. One of
the things that we find selling to women over 50is that there's a bit of reverse ageism happening,
where women who are 60don't want a woman who's 45 telling them
about aging. They're like nah, son get out of here.So what we did, was we now segment
based on age range.So if you're 40 to 50 you're gonna see
a woman who is in that age range,and this is when we realised, especially
in our demographic but I think in general,people like to hear from people
who look and sound like them, andI kind of was like, once I realised this, I went and looked at everybody I know who's an influencer.All my buddies and friends and folks who are influencers, and when I lookedat their audience, I looked at the metrics. Women, men, age range, and it's like almost everyone, except for one,the predominant part of their audience
was the same age and gender that they were.It's kind of interesting. So you can
use that in your ads. Know who you'retargeting and then have your models and
people who are in your ads look like them.Real quick. Let's talk a little bit
about how we structure this ad.We open with social proof, grab your
customer testimonials, use them as your ad copy.You are not going to be able to write
better copy than your customers.Let them speak for you, then ownership benefit.
This is your ad copy. Don't focus ontrying to impress people or engage people,
focus on what is the benefit of owning the product,not the features.
What's the benefit of engaging with you?Start with a customer testimonial,
then go into an ownership benefit statement,then an additional headline edited into the video.
Notice that our videos are square,so they take up more space on mobile.
78% more real estate on mobile.They get consumed way more. We edit in
our own headline.We have a square canvas, as I mentioned, we edit in our own big captions.This works better than using the Facebook captions, and then we have an ownership benefit call to action,if you like these formulas, on the 10th at
Facebook Ads Master Live,I'm gonna go over a bunch of formulas
of ads and copy formulas for iStack.If you're gonna come there.
So that's the 30,000 foot view.There's a lot of nuance here. That's just high-level, but my goal is to have you understand thatyou might not be thinking big enough about the ultimate goal. If the goal is a group of people,and if the goal is generate as much resource as we can, and if the goal is build an 8-figure brand, guess what.That takes time.If you spent six months focusing on a content catalogue, amplifying that,building a group of subscribers
who were engaged with that,that would be the best six months
you ever spent because that groupof people will be the foundation for a
business that could be huge.We are in the attention business. We need to engage audiences, and then filter out the most engaged folksand offer them products and services.
This is how you fortify yourself from channels,you generate brand assets across all channels.Instagram followers, YouTube subscribers,
email subscribers, Facebook Messengersubscribers, text message subscribers.
You get iTune downloaders. Everywhere.Nearly half of our revenue comes
from repeat business. By the way,if you ever want to sell your brand, there's
a little thing called valuation, which iswhat your brand is worth. You know what makes your brand worth significantly more?If at least 30% of your revenue comes from repeat buyers that nearly doubles your multiple.Let's say you got a brand, it does
a $100k grand a year. It makes $30k in profit.Someone would buy that for $30,000 – $60,000 cash.If, of that $30k in profit, half of that came from
repeat business, that is worth $100k, $150k.It changes things because it's more stable.
This is what you want.The game is not cash flow – by the way, you want to talk about the resource generation game.The game isn't cash flow businesses. Cash flow businesses are a means to asset liquidation.Real wealth is generated through the acquisition and liquidation of assetsor the growing of assets and
then liquidating them.The game is build something and then sell it, and then deploy that money into the marketto acquire more assets. Use the skill that
you have to grow those and sell those.That is how you're really going to truly
generate wealth, if that is your goal.Maybe your goal is just to ball out on
Instagram, make a little money, have some fun. Cool.But if we're talking about resource generation,
we need to be talking about the sale of assetsif you're gonna sell assets,
you need repeat business.Content is how we get people to come back.
We send emails right.We don't just amplify our
content on Facebook and YouTube.We email people, those people go to our
blog, and then they go to our store.Every email we send, even though they're mostly
content, makes money.Consistency is key with a content game.
With the content business model, if you're goingto subscribe to the idea, that the goal in
business is to engage a group of people over time,you've got to be consistent.
At least one video or article per week.Video is the best because it easily
transforms into other mediums.You can track consumption and follow up with people.Consistency of cadence, of voice,
of tone, builds relationships.You can transform it into articles.
You can transform it into pull quotes.The best types of content are behind the scenes. Your company's opinion on whatever is happening.Hey, Everlane says, in this industry of clothing everybody is making stuff really badly and it's pollutingthe oceans. We think that's wrong.
Here's what we're doing.Your opinion on what's happening in your industry, that's the kind of content you can do.Manufacturing process transparency.
Hey am I moving too fast for you guys, by the way?Feeling good? I feel like I'm — you ever been to Krispy Kreme? Anyone been to Krispy Kreme? Raise your hand.For real, for real.Okay.You know how like the donuts before they go through that glaze, they just got cooked,and they're brown and then they go through the glaze, and now they're glazed.That's like what some of y'all look like, just glazed over.
Krispy Kreme donut.I know it's a lot of content. We're gonna keep going. I'm gonna take that as yes. You guys are you're doing great.Alright, thank you for that feedback.Educational videos, behind the scenes.
Every time I come to one of these events,I'm like, hey I'm out here on the scene, AWE Barcelona.
I do a video for my audience aboutwhat it is like to be where I am. Industry-specific content, timely or relevant to current events. Tips lists,community feedback. So someone
leaves a comment, you comment on theircomment in video form, or you write an
article about it, or you ask them to tell youwhat they think and you post that to
your blog. Interviews and interviews withother brands, curated content, where
you're commenting on other people's stuff.Anything that is related to the
problems and conversations that yourcommunity is already having. That's what
you need. And again, on my blog, you canfind more in-depth on this. It's all
about shared experiences. That's the game.Is there a group of people who's sharing
an experience that you can talk to?Funny is good, and hot dog! Do listicles work.
Listicles like list articles are thebest things you can do. They work really,
really well if you're not going to do videoand we do tons of them. Go to BoomByCindyJoseph.com look at my blog.You will see a ton. Go to
smartmarketer.com, look at my blog.You'll see a bunch of different recurring
themes of content. Pick a theme and do it over and over.Listicles, shared experience articles, behind the scenes videos, whatever it is, and just do that.Alright, switching gears from,
hey people you need to be doing content.Now we're going to talk about brands that get to over $10 million. Some of the things they have in common.Do you thoroughly understand that the content
game is the road towards consistency, growth,It's like, instead of going out
and spearing a fish,you're watering a mango tree, and that mango tree is growing.Takes you six months to a year, eventually it fruits, but you know what? Once it fruits,I grew up in Hawaii, I have done this.
It feeds you for generations. I mean,fifty years that thing's gonna fruit.
That's the game. The game isn't,hey can I quickly make some cash.
It's like, you can do that, cool.You need to pay your bills, but also with maybe half your energy, let's build something.Alright, in general, brands that break
$10 million have/do the following,they have a truly great product. Quip toothbrushes, M.Gemi shoes. I love these guys.Yo, if you want into fashion, they make these Italian shoes, they're amazing.Allbirds, Purple Mattress, Tuche, every one of these
companies exists in a marketplace,where other people are already selling the
same products. You don't need a new idea,you just need to do something truly well.
A good product.Something that when someone gets it,
they actually like it. A good service.Something that has the experience that feels good, and then you can tell stories about it,and you'll get people to buy it.
They go all-in on expansion.My brand, Boom, these are the only two products people buy on the front end. That's it.They come to me for the cosmetics, but
because I have content, because I have an opinion,because I make truly great products,
more than half my sales –Come from these other products, which are skincare.So you got to go all-in on expansion.
I learned this from the Dr. Axe,as soon as you have one product, get another one and cross-sell it to your past buyers,because product launches work incredibly well. You're not sending nearly as much email as you should be.34% of our revenue comes from email.
You should be sending a lot more emails.Lots of them. Sales emails, content emails, you should be running a sale event every six weeks,even if you only have 50 subscribers, if you run a sale event every six weeks, you will make more sales.Big brands do this well. They also go
all-in on user-generated content.We take our customer testimonials. We layer them over product images. We share that on social.We send everybody who buys from us, an email that says, hey listen, we'll give you $10,to our store, if you shoot us a video, and tell us why you like our products.Here's what it should look like, here's what you should say, here's an example of one, and then weuse those in ads. We use those in our
emails. We use those on our landing pages.Millennial brands understand this.
They use only user-generated content.I guarantee, you are not using enough
social proof user-generated content tomarket your brand. There's nothing better.
You cannot make better stuff yourselfthan this. It's real. It's authentic.
It's from people who actually are buying fromyou and have an opinion about your products.Alright look. You ever seen anyone that happy in your life?Have you ever? Look at that.
Could you ask for anything better than that?No, you couldn't.You know what else big brands understand? They understand the difference between product and story.Story is who and why.
That's what you guys don't understand.Everybody here is confused about this part.
This is what I understand well andit's why I can step into a marketplace
like Shopify apps, where there are sixother apps like the same one I just built,
make an app that is unique thathas unique feature sets, and tell a story
about it, and come into that marketplaceand do very, very well. This is the game.
Who are they? Why would they buy from you?What is their experience? And then the
product is the what and the benefits.You guys kind of understand some of that, but
that's really not what it's about.You got it backwards. It's about who and why first.
They also understand paid amplification.Let's quickly take a look at
what's happening with paid amplification.Right now there's a battle for video
between YouTube and Facebook.YouTube's ad revenue has been going up
year over year, and Facebook wants some of that money.Facebook's having this problem
where the newsfeed is sold out.The ad load is at max capacity. They have more advertisers than they do space in their newsfeed.So in the short period of time they've rolled out mid-roll video ads, ads in Instagram Stories, ads inside ofMessenger, ads inside to Marketplace.
They are looking for the next newsfeed placement.None of these have done it. Instagram stories is the closest to their next newsfeed,where there's good ads
that you can run and make money.They are now incentivising their creators,
just like YouTube did and said,hey if you put videos on Facebook,
we're gonna pay you.When an advertiser runs an ad on your video,
you're gonna make money on that.It's called ad breaks. This is getting to a tip for you.Instagram is the fastest-growing ad platform in terms of revenue, in the last short while.It did $2 billion in 2016.
It's gonna do $22 billion by 2021. It's crazy.90% of Facebook ads revenue comes from mobile and the average watch time is 6-8 seconds.So what does this mean for you? It means
that the cheap inventory is in short-form.The average watch time is 6-8 seconds.
All the ad units they're opening up are short-form,that is because that is where the visibility is. If you can create sub 15-second ads that engage,that's cheap inventory, and that is where
the money is for the next 18 months.Do everything else too, but if you're
not going all in on short-form,you're not gonna get as much scale as you could.That's a really, really important one.
It's working extremely well for us.We are supplementing all of our normal, top-line, long-form advertising with videos, or images, articles etc.with short-form 5-15 second video ads.There's a really cool placement I didn't have enough time to talk about it, calledInstagram Story carousel. You can only do
it if in the Facebook Ads manager,you uncheck everything but Instagram Stories,
and then you select the carousel.You can do three stories in a row. The only way you can run that, where it's three Instagram stories,and that ad unit, now it does force all your
allocation into Instagram Stories, butyou run it at a small budget, it works super well.
You can run a GIF, and then a video,and then a 10-second customer testimonial.You can have three stories back to back to back.
Incredible ad unit right now.Okay, how're you guys doing?
Would you like more content? Alright.Listen, listen. If you're happy do me
a favour and our growl for me.I feel like growling is like an
underrated form of communication.It feels good to do. If you growl at someone,
they tend to growl back, it's like a whole thing.So feel free to, when something good happens for the next speaker, just growl at them,but then like let them in on the joke,
so they're not all freaked out, okay.Here's my 2019 playbook.
You guys might be wondering,alright, what are you doing?
Okay, we get it.Content, brand assets, amplification,
engage subscribers over time, filter themout, offer them good stuff, have truly
incredible products, care, be doingsomething beyond selling products, send
emails, generate repeat business.You're getting the shtick.I'm gonna give you the playbook
that I had for 2019.So you can see what my brands
are focusing on this year.Double down on paid. Paid works.
Pay for visibility. More videos, more channels.Add additional channels. Right now we're mostly Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Google Display Network,and Google Search. Let's increase Pinterest, let's get Display Network to work better.Let's get some other ones
like more publishing type channels.Amazon, retail. Let's add articles.
Articles work incredibly well for our demographic.Let's spend more money. If you are not spending at least 30% of your top-line revenue on paid amplification,you're not spending enough.
Let's say you made $1 million last year.You should spend $300,000 on ads the next year.
The idea here is investing in the brand,and you know what's interesting
about a business that generates$1 million in revenue, it only has about $300k in profit.
My viewpoint is that 15-30% of that top-line revenueneeds to go back into paid amplification. $1 million in revenue, $150,000 – $300,000 in paid the next yearor you're not spending enough
to grow your business.Everyone's focused on what they can take
out of the brand, that's the wrong model.The model is what can I put in.
Spend more, optimise our ad and funnel better.We want to expand to additional channels,
move into Amazon, TV, retail, international,further our adoption of YouTube, further
our adoption of the Display Network.It's always good to expand your footprint
once you have a proven offer.We want to expand our product line by
adding new products, new sizes.New sizes is the best way to add products, because you get an additional option right on the offer page.If you can do this, you can expand your footprint without creating a new product,and also get rid of your offers that suck.
Sometimes you make a bad product.Sometimes it falls flat. This product, as much as I loved it, I think maybe like only four people –and we sell a lot of products,
only four people ever bought it twice.If nobody is buying it again,
it's a bad product.Cut your bad products right. There's a saying in the South, starve your ponies, feed your stallions.I don't like that saying, but the point is whatever is working, double down on that deep not wide.Continue our content, up level our packaging.
We're digital marketers.The experience of receiving our product is pretty terrible. We had to fix that.Tell better stories, more stories.Get our messaging and visuals into alignment so that our brand looks as good as our message is.Have more soap opera style,
dynamic, dramatic content.All of our content is very serious.
It's very like intentional, real shit that is important and heavy.So we wanted to do more like,
fun stuff not just heavy-duty stuff.So we've been working on that. More sale campaigns.
By the way, using GIFs in our emailsworks extremely well, if you're not using
GIF animations in your emails.Also, GIF animations as retargeting ads,
there's this new thing on Facebook, it'scalled slideshow. When you're making an
ad, you can upload six images, and it'llrotate into a slideshow. It turns it into
a GIF animation. Those things work so well.Facebook added the ability. This is the exact thing. Three different images stitched together.Facebook added that native in their ads manager because they know how well it works.We've been running these in retargeting and loyalty pillar, so people who know about us, but haven't bought,and people who bought from us,
that we're trying to get to buy again,these are our best-performing ads, aside
from our customer testimonials, are GIFs.And we use them in our emails as well.
Mini sites for every product, I have anapp for Shopify called Zipify. Z-I-P-I-F-Y.
It does a bunch of cool stuff, but it buildswhat are known as mini sites.
We're transitioning all of our productsto have a product mini site, which is
short-form content, a series of pageslinked together by a sticky header, where
the header is stuck to the top, and you cantap through all the different pages,
instead of just one page for the product.A product mini site, more of an
experience for the product.Works super duper well.
We're rolling that out.This was the experience of receiving our products. Terrible. Here's what it is now.You get a nice eco-friendly canvas bag that's made by these wonderful women in India.You get a really fancy brochure that's printed on recycled paper. You get a lot of nice stuff,when you receive the product.
It feels better.We're testing our autoresponder sequences, going really, really deep,because 15% of all of our brands revenue
comes from automated emails.We should be split testing those.
We weren't. So now we are.We get a lot of phone calls.
I want you to listen to something.This plays. You call our brand, this is not the one that we have live right now, but something like this playswhen you call us. We get thousands
of calls a month. So hear this.Hi, thanks for calling Boom by Cindy
Joseph. We'll be with you very shortly, inthe meantime. Can we offer you an exclusive discount as a thank you for waiting?Right now customers are loving our moisturising and vitamin rich serum Boom Nectar.With its 16 all-natural ingredients, Boom Nectar is designed to naturally soften, repair, and rejuvenateyour most delicate skin. So far customers have given Boom Nectar over 1,400 five-star reviews.Today you can try Boom Nectar for 12% off. Just ask your support specialist for this exclusive discount on our serum,and thank you for your patience.
We'll be with you shortly.Where are you engaging with your customers that you're not making them offers or adding value?We noticed lots of people call us and we could have a little pre-recorded message that attempts to sell themone of our highest margin products. That is a really lovely product that happens to have a high profit margin.Look. Go as deep as you can. Hey that
might only make me $30k this year,but you know what $30,000 is a lot of money. I could feed a lot of people with $30k.I can pay a lot of team members with $30k.So, why would I not do that?
Data analysis and insight.Once you get to be really big, you have a lot of data sources. Zendesk, Olark chat, Intercom chat,Shopify, Google Analytics, Facebook, YouTube.So we're using a data warehouse to put them all together, and slice that data,and make decisions off all data sources, rather than just one.This is a higher level thing. You get there when you're at about $5 million in revenue,that's when you want to start looking at a data warehouse. Email health improvement.We send a lot of email. Email is still the number one revenue generator for all ecommerce brands.By far, the most profitable channel. So we are focusing on how do we get our email to do better.I have a whole course on this.
How can we get in the inbox?How can we get delivered better?
How can we get opened more?Email health and an optimisation of process. So after every sale, after every product launch, after every event,post-mortem with the team. What worked? What didn't work? How did we do? How can we do better?Talk about it.How can we make our technology stack even better? What technology is outdated? What technology is new.Optimisation culture. So I tell my team, look, if you see something, say something.A lot of business owners dictate everything to everyone. You are not in the shoes of your team members.They might see some shit that you don't see.
You want them to speak up.You might not take their advice. This is why I tell my team, hey listen, I may not take the instruction or advice,but I want to know what you think
because most of the time,you are seeing something
for how we can make things better.Have your whole team feel empowered to speak up about how things could go better over time.This is not just limited to marketing.
Supply chain, customer support, project managers.Everyone on the team should be continually looking for how to make things go better.You, as the CEO, you're doing too much driving.I spent my whole career driving. I understand, but when you're driving,when you're doing everything, you can't be up,
looking at the mountains, seeing what's coming.You can't be navigating. You must, as the CEO,
make the jump to navigator versus driver.One day a week, you can drive.
You can tinker, you can do things.The rest of the time, you're talking to people. You're coming to events. You'refiguring out what the strategy is.
You're holding people accountable.You're bringing your team up in the game.
You need to navigate your company, not drive it.And that is a real problem.
Everyone who gets stuck at that million dollar mark,it's because they don't understand that.
That is like, it's not about ads,it's not about brand. it's about
the ability to bring people up and navigate,rather than doing it all yourself. My own personal work-life boundaries as I was mentioning.Work will fill the time that you give it.
Most people are working far too much.I do really, really well at this,
but I would like to do even better.You should not be working more than 8 hours a day. Sorry. Maybe sometimes during launches whatever,10, 12, 14. Sure. That's part of the game,
but if that is the backdrop of your existence,if that is just how you do it, you're gonna burn out.
I work like 4 days a week, 8 hours a day.Four good, solid workdays.
I mix it up and stuff, but I get a lot donebecause I'm very good at delegation.
I have a course on that too on my blog.Ongoing process documentation,
that's the delegation part of it.So I want to bring team members up in the game.
I have several of my team memberswho were formerly working at
Safeway, and Cracker Barrel, and Target.Intelligent, tech-savvy, no idea about digital marketing.I said, hey listen, come in,
I'm gonna pay you $15 an hour to start.Here's what we want, in three years, you're gonna be the best social media manager in the world.Here's how we're gonna get you there.
You're gonna read these six blogs every week.They're gonna populate into a Slack channel.
You're gonna take notes on that.You're gonna go to these events.
You're gonna take these courses.You're going to talk to me once a week
for three hours about what you learned,and how we can use it.
Give them a way to come up.Take people from your support department,
move them up to other departments. Train them.You don't want to go out and hire people
who already have the skills.You want to bring people up.
They're more loyal. They're better.It's a better model.
I started, I didn't have any money.I got my cousin. Hey man, listen,
I'll pay you at some point. Come on, let's do this.Brothers, sisters, all my team is like
friends, friends of friends, family, butlike, you should be bringing people up. That's the game. Text message adoption and remarketing.YouTube amplification, podcast, sponsorship, ambassador program, email subscriber campaignsto get more email subscribers, photoshoots, furthering our Messenger adoption, international expansion.Running a clean and a lean inventory. Selling with more story and most importantly, this is whatI'm doing in the world. I'm interested
in having a good time, enjoying myself,having my team, having fun. Being enthusiastic and excited about what they're doing with their lifeand their work, and creating truly great products, services, apps. Things that actually help people,that make a difference in the world, that are good, and then also making profit, but in that order.I don't care about how big it gets. I don't
care about how much profit we generate.I care about, are we enjoying our work life
first and foremost? Because you knowyou're gonna spend a lot of time working,
you might as well work with people thatknow you, that love you, bring your family,
and people tell you not to do that.Those are people who do not have
the skill set of communication.People are unwilling to talk about when stuff gets hard. You're gonna spend a good half of your life working.Don't you want to do that with people
who will call you on your bullshit?Who will stand up and express
how they feel? Who will have viewpoints?I do, and then I want to make great stuff,
and I want to be profitable, and that's the game.The game isn't how much money can we make?
How big we can get? Do you want to be shackledto some crazy business that is super intense, that you work at all the time, that you don't really love,that you're kind of miserable at?
Just because it makes money?That's not a game I'm interested in.
So this is what we're up to.Invest in your team.
Can you bring on someone truly great?You realise the amount of value that some one person, eight hours a day can bring?It's insane. How are you to work for?
Do you offer good benefits?A good work environment? Autonomy?
A container? Support and feedback?Goals and a mission? We believe in people over
progress, and I think that this is one of the other thingsthat is going to hold you back
from building a company to 8-figures.You can't get to 8-figures on your own.
It's very, very hard. If you invest in a team, you can.Also, a copywriter does a lot of stuff.
This is all the stuff my copywriter does.If you hire a good copywriter,
it will change your business.Copywriters do a lot.
It's incredible how much stuff copywriters do.You get out of your business
what you put into it.It's about what can you invest? Who can you
get to help you? Who can you invest in?How can you add more? Not what can you
take out? That's the wrong question to ask,and that's what everyone is asking.
It's misguided. It's not about how muchyou work. It's about what you produce.
People think work harder is better. No.Producing something great is the goal,
and that takes as much work as it does,but it's not about working 15-hour days.
The big secret to building a big brand is consistency.Repetition creates mastery.
If you pick up an instrument for 30 minutes a day,you will get better at it.
You can do the same with your business.1, 2, 3 hours a day consistently, over time.
It's like a diet or a workout program.You have to do it consistently.
You can get my slides at smartmarketer.com /AWE19or if you can't and that URL may not be up yet, you might have to wait to the end of the conference.I don't think we have it up yet.
You can also just email me [email protected] you'll get my slides.
Thank you so much. Have a good day.
Source
