E008: Your Questions Answered! Marketing Channel Expansion, Team Building, Influencer Marketing & More

[00:00:00] Welcome to episode 8 of Marketing Operators. We've got a packed episode. We start out with our

[00:00:06] Second official test of the week from Cody who breaks down a very high performing channel.

[00:00:11] Obviously, in my performance, creative team and paid social team to get that in the works immediately.

[00:00:15] So I definitely recommend giving it a listen.

[00:00:18] The rest of it is a Q&A. So we feel that a bunch of questions and comments from people on Twitter and YouTube, some people email then.

[00:00:24] We go over team building, channel expansion. And then my submitted question was going through our over and underrated software providers.

[00:00:34] I think it's a great listen. Before we get any further, I'd love everyone to take a moment to subscribe to the podcast.

[00:00:40] We typically don't call this out till the end but I think it's so important.

[00:00:43] We get this information in the minds of as many marketers as possible.

[00:00:47] So any subscriptions are appreciated or share with your teams and colleagues and friends.

[00:00:53] And lastly, thank you to our sponsors Premier Sponsor Motion after self rich panel and house.

[00:01:07] So I heard a great metaphor this week talking to my team about our Premier Sponsor Motion.

[00:01:11] We were talking about getting better at performance creative and someone said it's a lot like playing basketball.

[00:01:16] You know, if you want to be a professional basketball player, you can't just shoot free throws.

[00:01:20] You've got to train, you've got to practice, you've got to eat well. And motion is the equivalent of watching game film.

[00:01:25] If you're a basketball player, you're watching the plays back, you're learning, you're planning for the future.

[00:01:30] That's what Motion allows you to do it's analytical rigor for your performance creative teams.

[00:01:34] So if you want to add that level of knowledge to your teams, the same as Rich, Hexclad Jones Road, Viori, you can go to motionapp.com and get your first month free.

[00:01:43] If you mentioned marketing operates to the podcast and Cody's got some more special details.

[00:01:49] Yeah, you know, one thing I love about motion in addition to making great software that can unify marketing and creative teams.

[00:01:54] They also put out a lot of amazing information, a lot of helpful resources and actually have something great going on.

[00:02:00] The make adds that convert 2024 is coming up soon. It's a 2024 super group addition.

[00:02:07] There are going to be four performance marketing mega stars in one place for the first time.

[00:02:13] The undisputed ad experts together on one stage. You're going to have my relative crest be the performance ad mastermind, Dara Denny, the ultimate creative strategist, just Bachman, the creativity machine and Savannah Sanchez, the TikTok and metacreatiforce all in one place weekly live sessions for free.

[00:02:33] It's a must attend event that I'm going to have my whole team at the best part. It's a free event with live sessions every Thursday starting May 23.

[00:02:42] I'm going to June 20. All be there. My team was there. I hear the rich team has moved around their whole schedule to be there.

[00:02:48] Can't miss a vent of the season.

[00:02:50] It's like watching game film from the 2008 Miami heater something. It's going to be great show.

[00:02:56] We're moving meetings around some more of the rich team can join, so we hope to see you guys there.

[00:03:00] Do you have something on my first million?

[00:03:05] Yeah, I do.

[00:03:07] As any good e-commerce operator, we do the bi weekly listening to my first million.

[00:03:12] And all in, of course.

[00:03:15] What's that?

[00:03:17] Something operators?

[00:03:20] Have they heard that one?

[00:03:22] Yeah, I really listen.

[00:03:24] But my first million, they did a really interesting thing where they challenged.

[00:03:28] They've been on the spiel recently last couple of weeks about doing hard things and they challenged their listeners to like a fitness challenge.

[00:03:35] They were like, we want you to record and post doing 100, sorry. 100 pushups, 100 squats and 100 burpees.

[00:03:43] And they had prizes for the winner.

[00:03:46] They worked with Nike strength. They were given away some cold plunges, stuff like that.

[00:03:49] For who could be the fastest as well as like style points or whatever?

[00:03:53] How long do you think it would take you guys to do 100 squats, 100 pushups and 100 burpees?

[00:03:58] I'm going to say in my current shape, which is not my best probably 25 to 30 minutes.

[00:04:04] I don't know.

[00:04:05] That's pretty hard.

[00:04:06] Seems reasonable.

[00:04:07] I think the squats, the squats would be the quickest.

[00:04:11] The pushups would probably be like, I feel like a 78 minutes.

[00:04:17] The burpees would crush me.

[00:04:19] Like I'd be 10 burpees in and I'd be half an impuff.

[00:04:22] And I feel like the burpees would take me at least 10 minutes, probably closer to 12.

[00:04:26] I think I'm probably 20.

[00:04:28] Yeah, I think I think it is.

[00:04:29] That sounds ambitious.

[00:04:30] I'll be honest with you.

[00:04:31] We haven't hung out in person well.

[00:04:33] So I'm not sure how physically fit you are.

[00:04:35] And you're just like the chest up.

[00:04:37] I'm not a cardio.

[00:04:39] I'm not a cardio.

[00:04:41] I'm not a cardio.

[00:04:42] I'm not bill for cardio.

[00:04:43] I'm bill for cardio.

[00:04:44] How tall are you?

[00:04:45] Like six feet tall.

[00:04:47] Yeah, big guy.

[00:04:49] Yeah.

[00:04:50] Yeah.

[00:04:51] So I was gasped for like exactly what it's a day for ever to do the burpees.

[00:04:55] Yeah, I did it because I was excited to accept the challenge of doing something hard.

[00:05:00] I like, I've been saying recently.

[00:05:02] I feel like I might be I might not be as gritty as I was when I was like 23, 24 years old.

[00:05:07] In my old age, I think I'm getting soft.

[00:05:09] So I was like, do you know I got to do something hard?

[00:05:11] Took me just over 30 minutes because burpees took me forever.

[00:05:14] And I bring it up now because like my arms are so sore.

[00:05:17] Like back here.

[00:05:18] Like basically she pushed up.

[00:05:19] Like I'm struggling to like take my headphones off.

[00:05:21] Like my arms are not bending to like touch my head.

[00:05:24] So I am like physically.

[00:05:26] I feel injured basically.

[00:05:28] I'm so sore.

[00:05:29] I'm like disabled.

[00:05:30] So anyway, that was my big weekend.

[00:05:33] All right, maybe we'll talk about it next week.

[00:05:36] If I beat you.

[00:05:37] If I beat you.

[00:05:38] If I beat you.

[00:05:39] Yeah, we're just not going to bring it up.

[00:05:41] Yeah, we'll never mention again.

[00:05:42] I didn't post.

[00:05:43] I didn't post.

[00:05:44] I didn't feel confident enough about my time.

[00:05:46] You're still in your style, wasn't good.

[00:05:48] Oh, well, dude.

[00:05:49] I some some guy did it in like 930.

[00:05:51] I had a buddy do it in 12 minutes flat and he's like the fittest guy.

[00:05:54] No.

[00:05:55] So like that's kind of the standard.

[00:05:57] And my form was ugly.

[00:05:59] Like it was not pretty.

[00:06:00] Maybe I'll send you guys some of the clips.

[00:06:02] I'm like, I am just dragging myself through the crowd of you though, man.

[00:06:06] Yeah, thanks.

[00:06:07] Yeah, I did feel accomplished.

[00:06:08] Yeah, thank you guys.

[00:06:10] Well, then she's out here on a new regimen.

[00:06:12] Are you saying you're on a new workout and or diet regimen?

[00:06:14] I think you mentioned that a few episodes ago.

[00:06:16] I've lost a couple pounds and I've been mostly running.

[00:06:19] That's why that's the other excuse I'll give myself for not being able to do.

[00:06:23] You know, 100 pushups and 100 burpees is a.

[00:06:26] I can run a couple miles faster than I could a couple months ago.

[00:06:30] Okay.

[00:06:31] But another about my fitness.

[00:06:33] I'll keep you guys posted.

[00:06:34] I'm actually getting married at the end of the month.

[00:06:36] So I'm like trying to try to look nice.

[00:06:38] The photos, you know, yeah, thanks.

[00:06:40] No, dude.

[00:06:41] Let's get right into it.

[00:06:42] We're starting with the test of the week.

[00:06:44] I think our second official segment of the test of the week.

[00:06:47] Cody's kicking us off with his most recent learnings.

[00:06:50] Man, I don't know how I top that guy was getting married.

[00:06:52] He's probably got a six pack right now.

[00:06:54] I don't know how I top that up.

[00:06:56] I'm over here like Sean Frank on the elliptical because my old body with a bum hip can't

[00:07:01] can't handle running and lifting heavy anymore.

[00:07:04] But yeah, so let's get into it.

[00:07:06] Yeah, I'm excited about this.

[00:07:07] So I think I talked about it maybe on the episode with Dave and a few episodes ago we launched

[00:07:13] Pinterest.

[00:07:14] Probably somewhere around a month ago.

[00:07:16] I'm just checking in our theme now.

[00:07:18] We spent 60,000.

[00:07:19] So I believe it's probably just about a month ago.

[00:07:22] We launched with the holdouts or right out the gate.

[00:07:24] We launched it with a house setup.

[00:07:26] Let me pull it up.

[00:07:28] I believe we ran something like a 40% holdout.

[00:07:31] Yeah, so essentially we targeted 60% of the country.

[00:07:34] How's gave us the geos to exclude?

[00:07:36] Something like 2K day they gave a little credit.

[00:07:39] But I think net is probably something around $2,000 a day and crushed it.

[00:07:43] Really good.

[00:07:45] I'm super impressed.

[00:07:48] I was expecting to see.

[00:07:51] Part of the reason we launched with houses like

[00:07:54] I want to know in mentality regardless of what attribution says.

[00:07:57] I was expecting to see pretty poor attribution because just everything I've heard about it being a

[00:08:01] Discovery channel and Pinterest having this long view through consideration window.

[00:08:05] I don't even know, like in platform where like a 5x but I don't look at

[00:08:10] that or believe it.

[00:08:11] In Northby more above a one and so our normal target depends on kind of the

[00:08:16] pens on kind of the channel.

[00:08:17] We're probably somewhere in like a point nine to one

[00:08:21] on meta and just like average overall,

[00:08:23] but so and Pinterest were above a one.

[00:08:25] So I'm pumped about that.

[00:08:27] We started with a very high percent of new visitors.

[00:08:30] It was like 80%.

[00:08:31] It's dropped.

[00:08:32] I think we're around 70% right now.

[00:08:35] And so very solid.

[00:08:37] I'm like a one day click.

[00:08:39] And so out the gate,

[00:08:40] we even kind of scaled it up a little bit

[00:08:41] because we felt confident in it.

[00:08:43] We did a two week holdout test,

[00:08:45] 40% holdout.

[00:08:46] So we targeted 60% of the country.

[00:08:48] How it helps to randomize it.

[00:08:49] They make it super easy.

[00:08:50] And we did a two week test with a two week post test

[00:08:53] observation window.

[00:08:54] We haven't gotten the results back of that.

[00:08:55] We probably will soon, but we saw a great lift.

[00:08:58] It was probably our second best cost per incremental.

[00:09:03] Like I can't show the cost per incremental,

[00:09:04] but it was pretty solid.

[00:09:05] Definitely profitable on that basis.

[00:09:08] And again, I do think it's going to get better over time.

[00:09:10] We'll have that post treatment window

[00:09:12] where we can see if the results actually get better.

[00:09:14] If it is kind of higher funnel and longer consideration phase.

[00:09:18] But yeah, it was about a three and a half percent incremental lift

[00:09:20] on new customer orders.

[00:09:22] So give us probably our second best cost per incremental.

[00:09:26] So I'm pumped about it.

[00:09:27] We're now scaling it up a little bit.

[00:09:29] We'll see how much we can really do.

[00:09:31] As we talked about the episode with Dave,

[00:09:32] I don't have that high expectations.

[00:09:34] We're not going to get it 10K a day,

[00:09:36] but if we can get it three, four.

[00:09:38] Yeah, but I'm pumped about it.

[00:09:40] Any questions about it?

[00:09:41] Yeah, I have a question.

[00:09:42] So what was it targeting and what did the ads look like?

[00:09:46] Yeah, great question.

[00:09:46] So we kept the account pretty simple.

[00:09:48] We just did one campaign for Homefeed and OneFour Search.

[00:09:52] We started 50, 50 budget.

[00:09:53] So let's say a thousand a day,

[00:09:54] and then we just allocated to where we saw a performance better,

[00:09:57] which was home.

[00:09:58] Targeting was a mix of interest and keywords.

[00:10:01] So Pinterest kind of just ingested some of our data

[00:10:04] and gave some recommendations.

[00:10:06] For us, there was a lot of, you know,

[00:10:07] obviously there's make-ups in care,

[00:10:09] but kind of adjacent ones, like there was travel,

[00:10:11] finance was a big one, gardening, things that maybe

[00:10:15] our audience is interested in.

[00:10:16] That's adjacent.

[00:10:17] And then for creative, you know,

[00:10:18] and Dave said that, like you shouldn't just take your

[00:10:20] meta stuff and put it on Pinterest,

[00:10:22] but you should really make things that are really relevant.

[00:10:24] Yeah, we didn't do that.

[00:10:25] We went with our stuff.

[00:10:27] But it honestly for us, our stuff, pretty,

[00:10:29] performs, I think.

[00:10:30] I feel like same thing for you guys,

[00:10:31] like your creative looks pretty similar across placements.

[00:10:35] For us it does.

[00:10:35] So we went with just with video,

[00:10:36] that was our reps recommendation.

[00:10:39] Just our video.

[00:10:40] We just took our top three, four meta ads recently.

[00:10:44] Our top few videos and just launched them.

[00:10:46] And what's really cool is that we just met with our reps

[00:10:48] about kind of scaling strategies.

[00:10:50] And what they recommended, it's super simple,

[00:10:53] you can just, we tossed not all of the interests

[00:10:55] but a ton of interest into the same campaign.

[00:11:00] But it's like an observation audience on Google.

[00:11:03] You can view the breakdown by performance.

[00:11:06] So it's not like meta where you have an interest deck

[00:11:09] and you just see the results of the whole adset.

[00:11:12] And if you want to break it out

[00:11:13] and see, hey how to travel, compare to gardening,

[00:11:15] you have to split it out into separate adset.

[00:11:17] You can actually put it together

[00:11:18] so you get the benefits of consolidation

[00:11:20] but then you can go through and say,

[00:11:21] hey, we spent $1,000 in the last week on finance

[00:11:24] and it's way above our CPA target

[00:11:27] so let's cut that one down.

[00:11:28] So that's kind of been our scaling strategy right now.

[00:11:32] It's just like adding a bunch of them.

[00:11:33] Dude awesome, I'm here for the Pinterest Redemption Arc.

[00:11:36] They've gotten a lot of shade over the last couple years.

[00:11:38] I think.

[00:11:39] Can I just go follow it one more fall off on that real quick?

[00:11:42] So Cody, are you gonna do another budget test?

[00:11:45] Like another two cell?

[00:11:46] You found out that your existing spend

[00:11:48] is very incremental.

[00:11:49] Do any plans to say okay like as a follow up test

[00:11:52] let's do cell A as the 2K per day

[00:11:55] but then maybe let's do like a cell B

[00:11:56] at 4K per day so you can basically find that sweet spot

[00:12:00] of like when it really starts to fall off incrementally

[00:12:02] so you can optimize that spend.

[00:12:04] What's a really good question?

[00:12:05] And I know we got some questions about that

[00:12:07] so it also loved to hear how you guys kind of do it

[00:12:09] and think about it.

[00:12:10] Currently we just did a two cell as just a very easy

[00:12:14] like is this channel incremental or not?

[00:12:16] And I think for right now,

[00:12:17] I think we just wanna like think

[00:12:18] about how we're prioritizing like

[00:12:20] geo test in general across channels

[00:12:22] for now we just feel confident that it is

[00:12:25] and we're just gonna push spend until we see MTA go down

[00:12:28] and we just know we have like an incrementality factor

[00:12:30] I don't know if you guys do that

[00:12:31] where you find like the incremental

[00:12:33] the incremental factor from house compared to Northeam

[00:12:35] but we may say, hey we think you know

[00:12:38] we think whatever our Northeam number is

[00:12:40] it's really houses really saying it's double the amount of value

[00:12:42] or one and a half times value

[00:12:44] and so that all just helps that what our MTA target is

[00:12:47] so because it was so incremental

[00:12:48] we're happy to say you know

[00:12:50] hey we can run this at like a 0.7.8

[00:12:54] and we'll just scale it until that threshold

[00:12:57] and maybe we find that's 3K day for Kday

[00:12:59] and I think because it's not that big of a channel for us

[00:13:02] it's probably not necessarily worth it

[00:13:03] but if we got to a point where we really wanted

[00:13:06] to try to scale it and find another level

[00:13:07] and like really prove out the incrementality

[00:13:09] of that spend threshold then we would

[00:13:11] or the other one would be

[00:13:12] if then we decide we wanted to put another objective on top of it

[00:13:15] like we wanted to run like a clicks thing

[00:13:17] or a reach thing on top of it

[00:13:19] we would totally then do it three sell

[00:13:20] but I feel like it's just we just have a bunch

[00:13:22] of other tests we want to get to like

[00:13:23] we're trying to launch Twitter again

[00:13:25] and do a hold on that

[00:13:26] and you can only do it three sell

[00:13:28] like you can't run any other tests while you're running a three sell

[00:13:30] so I think we would just have to weigh

[00:13:32] like the return on an ask strategy.

[00:13:35] Interesting.

[00:13:37] Awesome.

[00:13:38] Conrad you have any other questions?

[00:13:39] No, that's super interesting.

[00:13:43] Yeah, I was gonna say

[00:13:44] I've your trying to balancing that

[00:13:45] between like running these other channel level tests right?

[00:13:48] Yeah, I think so and I think because it's like

[00:13:50] it's not that much it's like hey

[00:13:51] it's like we might spend another 1K day most right

[00:13:55] and if we learn that's super incremental

[00:13:57] or maybe it's not gonna make a huge difference

[00:13:59] versus if we find out that 50% higher budget on YouTube

[00:14:02] which we may run in a three sell

[00:14:04] is obviously a much larger budget for us.

[00:14:07] It's gonna make a bigger difference

[00:14:08] like we made decide to prioritize that.

[00:14:10] So I think in the future

[00:14:12] like that would probably make the most sense

[00:14:14] is like we ran a TikTok test same thing too sell

[00:14:17] just incremental or not but then I think really

[00:14:20] the next step is how much can we scale here?

[00:14:23] Yeah, that would be the three sell.

[00:14:25] It's strategy nest.

[00:14:26] That's super interesting.

[00:14:27] Sick.

[00:14:28] Alright boom, wraps up our second official segment

[00:14:31] test of the week.

[00:14:32] We will be talking more about incrementality

[00:14:33] because today's episode where we're opening

[00:14:37] the listener mailbag going through Q&A

[00:14:40] is that Cody Field did from D to C, Twitter

[00:14:43] and other sources.

[00:14:45] I've got them laid out here

[00:14:46] and what I think is like a pretty good order.

[00:14:48] We're gonna start talking about team

[00:14:49] and then very, very relevant to the marketing operators

[00:14:54] most of them are about marketing channels and things like that.

[00:14:57] Alright cool, the first question comes from Lily Accerly

[00:15:00] in Conorment and Hand this one off to you.

[00:15:02] She asks, how did you hire your teams

[00:15:04] and what roles department skills

[00:15:06] did you prioritize as the company grew in revenue?

[00:15:09] Yeah, so we prioritized our core competencies

[00:15:14] first and foremost.

[00:15:15] Like I'm a huge believer that to the extent

[00:15:18] that you can own the skill and the team

[00:15:23] that's operator and executing on the channels

[00:15:25] that are driving the most of your revenue you should.

[00:15:27] So for us that's paid media

[00:15:29] and that's our retention channels.

[00:15:30] So that's where we focused our hires first,

[00:15:33] our biggest teams are across the retention teams

[00:15:35] and across the paid media teams

[00:15:37] that includes both like the more technical media buying

[00:15:40] like budget forecasting side of the paid media team

[00:15:43] and their creative side of the team.

[00:15:45] So that's where we've really focused.

[00:15:46] But ultimately, we also have an internal team now

[00:15:50] for influencer.

[00:15:51] We have an internal team now for brand partnerships

[00:15:54] for community.

[00:15:55] But those were definitely a little bit secondary

[00:15:57] just because those don't drive as much revenue

[00:15:59] as paid media and retention do.

[00:16:01] So I think about it that way.

[00:16:03] Like it's most important to have the team built out

[00:16:05] that's driving the most revenue for you.

[00:16:07] So you have to kind of ask yourself

[00:16:08] what channels are those

[00:16:09] and then go build those teams out.

[00:16:11] In terms of like the roles that we decided to hire

[00:16:17] for second, third,

[00:16:18] I'm a huge believer in hiring the thinkers

[00:16:20] before you hire the doers.

[00:16:21] The reason being is ultimately you need to have doers

[00:16:24] in your company.

[00:16:25] But unless you have thinkers, IE managers

[00:16:27] kind of driving the strategy in setting priorities

[00:16:30] and building systems and processes

[00:16:32] to make all the work for the doers

[00:16:34] and the executor's super efficient.

[00:16:36] Like it's not gonna work out.

[00:16:37] Like you can't have a bunch of designers

[00:16:39] and copywriters and video editors

[00:16:41] and create a strategist and media buyers

[00:16:43] if you don't have like the high level strategy

[00:16:45] guiding what those folks are working on each day.

[00:16:47] So that's all I thought about it.

[00:16:49] So basically what that looks like functionally

[00:16:52] is last year in the first part of the year.

[00:16:54] We hired like all of our directors

[00:16:56] to really own each channel.

[00:16:57] Again, starting with paid media,

[00:16:59] then going into retention,

[00:17:00] then going into some of these other channels,

[00:17:02] like influencer, brand management community, affiliate.

[00:17:07] And now as we've started to really stress the workload

[00:17:10] on those people, then we go on level lower.

[00:17:12] Now we're hiring the managers

[00:17:13] to really take on even more of the execution

[00:17:15] for those channel-over directors.

[00:17:17] And now as we start to build out the manager levels in our team,

[00:17:20] which I would say are like 50% thinking,

[00:17:21] 50% doing,

[00:17:23] now we're really starting to get into the roles

[00:17:25] that are like 70% doing 30% thinking.

[00:17:28] So now we have another creative strategist

[00:17:30] that's just like writing briefs all day,

[00:17:32] giving feedback on assets.

[00:17:33] Now we have an internal copywriter and internal designer

[00:17:37] and now we're really starting to build out

[00:17:38] that do or level of our org.

[00:17:41] And really starting to bring some of these competencies

[00:17:43] more and more internal.

[00:17:45] And as we continue to scale,

[00:17:47] I think that's gonna be the roles

[00:17:49] that we hire the most is these do or levels

[00:17:51] that are actually executing all of the strategies and tactics

[00:17:54] that we wanna do on a day to day.

[00:17:56] Yeah, I agree with a lot of parts of that.

[00:17:58] There's some I don't agree with

[00:17:59] and it's probably because I'm wrong,

[00:18:00] but I'll share about that in a second.

[00:18:01] But yeah, I agree with like,

[00:18:03] do the thing that's core to YouTube.

[00:18:05] As I said, I heard from somebody

[00:18:06] that like don't outsource your love making.

[00:18:08] Like if this is the thing that makes you special,

[00:18:10] don't outsource that.

[00:18:12] And I think you just have to be really clear

[00:18:14] on what the thing is that makes you special,

[00:18:16] rather than a lot of companies like,

[00:18:17] hey, we're a tech company, we're a data company,

[00:18:19] and they're not like,

[00:18:20] you're any commerce company.

[00:18:21] Our first hire was product.

[00:18:23] She's now our chief product and operations officer.

[00:18:24] She was the first hire, almost two years before we even launched.

[00:18:27] So like, we knew product was gonna be,

[00:18:29] especially if we knew creative was gonna be,

[00:18:31] I came in and did media buying

[00:18:34] and always wanted that in house because I think,

[00:18:36] if it's something that you're gonna do every single day

[00:18:38] and it's gonna be how you're driving revenue and value,

[00:18:40] you should have that in house.

[00:18:42] And then I think the things that are,

[00:18:44] you know, you should build teams around them as you grow.

[00:18:46] I think that the things that are not your primary skill set.

[00:18:50] It's why we work with house because we don't have a team

[00:18:52] of data scientists at our disposal,

[00:18:57] who are great with that.

[00:18:58] We're just now building a data team

[00:19:01] like what we work with external partners to do things like that.

[00:19:04] I think I was much more like,

[00:19:05] hey, it has to be in house earlier.

[00:19:07] I think it's just about figuring out,

[00:19:08] like you said, like, what are the core things

[00:19:11] that you need in house?

[00:19:13] I was hit apart where we differ,

[00:19:14] and again, I think I'm wrong in this,

[00:19:15] is like the whole strategy versus doing.

[00:19:18] I always felt like we didn't want,

[00:19:21] like the, I'm much more of a doer

[00:19:22] and I think our culture is much more of a doer culture.

[00:19:24] And I think there's pros and cons to that.

[00:19:27] But, you know, listen, we're nine figures

[00:19:30] and I've been media buying on all platforms all week

[00:19:32] because I don't have that many people on my team

[00:19:34] and some of them are away.

[00:19:35] So like there's pros and cons to all of it.

[00:19:37] So like, I think I'm probably in the wrong.

[00:19:38] We like just have a director grow starting tomorrow.

[00:19:41] But I think what I would have done differently

[00:19:46] of building the team is I would have hired senior people,

[00:19:48] directors, but made sure that they actually could also

[00:19:50] be doers.

[00:19:51] Like I feel like Ridge does a pretty good job of this

[00:19:53] from what I've seen.

[00:19:54] I think X-Cloud does as well.

[00:19:55] Like you've got directors of things,

[00:19:57] but it sounds like they're also able to push buttons

[00:19:59] and do the work as well.

[00:20:01] And I think now as we grow, we've got senior people

[00:20:05] and then we've got like a lot of like lower level

[00:20:07] coordinators, but I think we're really looking

[00:20:09] to have a director everywhere

[00:20:11] and it's just gonna be very clear

[00:20:12] when they're hired.

[00:20:13] Hey, this is a hybrid role.

[00:20:15] If your nobody here is just a manager,

[00:20:17] nobody here is just a director.

[00:20:18] Like yeah, you can do a little strategy,

[00:20:19] but to me it's like 80-10 and it's 20% or 80-20.

[00:20:23] And it's 20% spending time on strategy

[00:20:26] and it's really 80% actually grinding

[00:20:27] and putting in the work.

[00:20:29] But I think we're going in that direction

[00:20:30] but we didn't start with a high level

[00:20:32] and strategy because on the other end

[00:20:35] is like if you just start with strategy,

[00:20:36] then you've got nobody who's actually doing the work

[00:20:38] and that's not great either.

[00:20:40] I actually, Cody, I 100% agree with you.

[00:20:45] Actually, one of the filters we have in our hiring process

[00:20:48] is actually give someone a project.

[00:20:49] Because I feel very strongly that you cannot be like,

[00:20:54] it's actually been hard for me to transition from doing more

[00:20:59] and more thinking work.

[00:21:00] And I've just had to do it

[00:21:01] because I realized I'm actually more productive

[00:21:02] by thinking and delegating to the team

[00:21:04] than I could be as an IC at this point.

[00:21:06] I actually, as one of the filters we have in hiring,

[00:21:09] we always give no matter the role,

[00:21:10] it could be a head director VP level.

[00:21:12] They always have a doing project to complete.

[00:21:16] Because I truly believe you cannot be a thinker in an org

[00:21:20] if you do not have the ability to do

[00:21:22] or you have not been a doer in a previous role.

[00:21:25] There's no way you could possibly know

[00:21:27] tactically what's possible if you've never been a tactician.

[00:21:30] So I actually think it's funny that like,

[00:21:33] it's even more important for me

[00:21:34] when I'm hiring people that I anticipate

[00:21:36] to be doing more thinking than doing

[00:21:38] to that they really execute incredibly well

[00:21:41] because otherwise, how could you potentially like,

[00:21:43] you can't be a producer of deliverables

[00:21:45] if you're from a thinker's role

[00:21:47] if you don't have the ability to do those things yourself.

[00:21:50] I really believe that.

[00:21:51] So it's almost backwards.

[00:21:53] We're doing a big doing project

[00:21:56] in the interview process to hire thinkers

[00:21:58] but I think it's critical.

[00:21:59] Yeah, I'm just trying to think,

[00:22:01] like, I don't even think about things

[00:22:03] in terms of doing versus thinking

[00:22:04] because I think we're so far on the doing side

[00:22:07] and it's probably too default.

[00:22:08] Like, it would maybe it's because you guys are so much larger

[00:22:12] than us that you just have that,

[00:22:13] that luxury to be able to kind of think longer term

[00:22:15] and have more people.

[00:22:17] So it must be nice.

[00:22:19] I can't wait to get that out there.

[00:22:20] There's still a lot of doing going on.

[00:22:23] You guys aren't just thinking over there.

[00:22:24] Not just thinking.

[00:22:25] Not just thinking.

[00:22:29] So next we're going to talk about two things.

[00:22:31] Customer service and artificial intelligence.

[00:22:34] Our next sponsor, Rich Panel,

[00:22:36] is a platform that combines the best of AI

[00:22:38] and humans to respond faster, manage all channels

[00:22:41] and scale your customer service.

[00:22:43] They do this in a number of different ways

[00:22:45] but their ultimate goal is for you

[00:22:46] to get every agent responding as if they're your best agent.

[00:22:50] First, my favorite part, which actually isn't AI related

[00:22:53] is better self-serve tools

[00:22:55] so that your customers and prospects

[00:22:57] can find the information they need

[00:22:58] without ever submitting a ticket.

[00:23:00] But when they do submit a ticket,

[00:23:02] they have artificial intelligence

[00:23:04] that learn from your previous interactions.

[00:23:05] So it's not a chatGPT wrapper

[00:23:07] that's just going to rattle off whatever it thinks

[00:23:09] is the best way to respond to a customer.

[00:23:12] It's actually going to understand

[00:23:13] what are historical interactions you've had

[00:23:15] to recommend and automate the responses

[00:23:18] to customers submitting new tickets

[00:23:20] as well as new ways to augment your current agent

[00:23:24] so that they can respond more efficiently and empathetically.

[00:23:27] If you're interested in Rich Panel

[00:23:29] and bringing AI to your customer service teams,

[00:23:31] visit richpanel.com.

[00:23:35] OK, so related question.

[00:23:36] And it's about both Lily Asis.

[00:23:40] And we kind of touched on it, but I'd love for one of you

[00:23:42] to speak to it explicitly.

[00:23:44] How do you think about in sourcing versus outsourcing

[00:23:46] as you kind of grow?

[00:23:48] And then the second question which is related in my mind

[00:23:52] is Andy asked, how do you strike the right balance between

[00:23:55] full-time employees, agencies, consultants, and freelancers?

[00:23:58] You want to take a pass at that?

[00:24:00] Why don't you take it?

[00:24:01] Ooh, OK.

[00:24:03] I'll tell you one really formative experience that I had,

[00:24:07] which was probably a neutral impact

[00:24:09] because I'll describe both pros and cons to it.

[00:24:11] I went to the Man's Gaped Office in 2020.

[00:24:15] They were like, they were, I think they just

[00:24:18] on over $100 million, but I don't think

[00:24:19] they'd quite hit peak, like D to C, darling yet.

[00:24:24] And I went in and they were just machines.

[00:24:30] All the founders have previous D to C experience,

[00:24:33] like they just are tried and true operators.

[00:24:36] I would describe them.

[00:24:38] And what they said to me at the time was,

[00:24:40] they were like, yeah, we hate agencies.

[00:24:41] We do everything internally.

[00:24:42] They had six full-time engineers.

[00:24:44] They had the full influencer partnership team,

[00:24:47] all media buying in-house.

[00:24:49] They were like, they had a 3D render artist on staff.

[00:24:51] Like, everything, like, soup to nuts, more or less

[00:24:54] seem to be done internally.

[00:24:55] I don't think that's still the case,

[00:24:56] but was largely at the time.

[00:24:58] And I'd like that approach.

[00:25:00] That's like a full-like, doers approach.

[00:25:02] Get people who can come in and execute.

[00:25:04] Obviously there's a strategy piece of that.

[00:25:07] So it's kind of how Ridge was built.

[00:25:09] Also the backstory of Ridge's

[00:25:11] Channonite came from an agency background,

[00:25:12] so we were like inherently doers.

[00:25:14] So I do think we've had like the bottoms up approach

[00:25:16] of like people who were techticians

[00:25:18] and then some of our most senior leaders have like

[00:25:20] leveled their way up into a more balanced role

[00:25:23] of delegating and thinking and strategizing.

[00:25:26] But it's super, super tough.

[00:25:28] And especially the last couple years,

[00:25:29] I think with how rapidly things have changed,

[00:25:32] you're better off like just outsourcing

[00:25:35] to someone who has done it before.

[00:25:37] You can provide this strategy.

[00:25:38] You can help set the objectives for some new initiative.

[00:25:41] outsourcing and then kind of test the waters

[00:25:43] and if it works, maybe, in sourcing at some point.

[00:25:46] And the example that I'll give you is like,

[00:25:48] we're fumbling our way through like TikTok shops right now,

[00:25:50] which is just a completely different function.

[00:25:53] The massive amount of product seeding,

[00:25:55] like even the way we're doing outreach,

[00:25:57] the way you're setting up the shop,

[00:25:58] the whole thing.

[00:25:59] We have done internally and I think it's been a struggle.

[00:26:02] And like now we're like, okay,

[00:26:03] how do we bring in a consultant to help

[00:26:05] make this way higher leverage?

[00:26:07] Let's get best practices in place earlier,

[00:26:09] people who know how to do it best,

[00:26:11] let's have a doer, let's pay for a doer to do it

[00:26:14] and then we'll decide whether we wanna like,

[00:26:16] you know, enforce that and take it internally.

[00:26:18] So that's kind of been our general approach.

[00:26:21] It's really changed over time.

[00:26:23] What do you, what do you, how do you just decide?

[00:26:26] Like I know like a new function,

[00:26:27] it sounds like you might wanna outsource side

[00:26:29] or at least have a consultant.

[00:26:31] But how about the things that are currently happening

[00:26:34] in the business?

[00:26:34] How do you decide like, why do you guys

[00:26:36] buy Google search and house versus not?

[00:26:38] I get paid social, but why that, why email or not?

[00:26:42] And then like creative,

[00:26:44] how much of your creative is internally versus with partners?

[00:26:47] Yeah, totally, that's a good question.

[00:26:49] I mean, ultimately comes down to like,

[00:26:51] we're still largely built around the core column,

[00:26:53] but since these, the first couple of hires at Ridge

[00:26:55] were we brought in a designer,

[00:26:57] we had a retention manager

[00:26:59] and then I was doing all the media buying.

[00:27:00] We didn't even produce content in house.

[00:27:02] This was like 2017, Facebook ads,

[00:27:04] super cheap, super effective.

[00:27:05] Like I could like screw around in Photoshop

[00:27:08] and create like an ad,

[00:27:09] we'd spend $2 million on or whatever.

[00:27:12] So I've always thought, oh,

[00:27:13] and we had like tech internally,

[00:27:16] we would manage like website updates.

[00:27:17] And that's like the performance stack,

[00:27:18] retention, media buying, landing pages,

[00:27:21] that's what we had set up initially in 2017.

[00:27:24] Those teams have really just been built out way more significantly,

[00:27:27] right?

[00:27:28] We're media buying across a bunch of channels and markets

[00:27:29] for multiple categories.

[00:27:30] We have an additional developer,

[00:27:32] we have e-commerce like that's a whole operation now,

[00:27:35] especially with all the Shopify instances

[00:27:37] that we have, retention's larger.

[00:27:39] And then one of the other large teams

[00:27:42] that I've talked about on previous episodes

[00:27:43] is performance creative.

[00:27:44] That became such a key factor post like iOS 14

[00:27:48] that that was something we very quickly needed to

[00:27:51] take internally and be really good at.

[00:27:53] But even then, we still source creative

[00:27:55] from external partners like we'll test with narrative.

[00:27:58] We'll kind of battle tests the content we're creating

[00:28:00] against external sources and just try to ensure

[00:28:03] to the best of our ability that we're like,

[00:28:05] we're getting the best stuff out there.

[00:28:08] Anyway, do partnerships internally,

[00:28:09] which is like the other one,

[00:28:10] but partnerships I give the example of something

[00:28:13] that has just changed so dramatically.

[00:28:15] For a long time, we had a very particular approach

[00:28:18] to how we partnered with YouTube creators.

[00:28:20] Partnerships today is like it's more distributed.

[00:28:24] It feels like all, it's really way more spray and spray.

[00:28:28] You're working with TikTok shops.

[00:28:29] It really looks way different.

[00:28:30] There are so many kind of looks and feels to it

[00:28:33] that it's almost as if we just have to identify

[00:28:35] what are the areas of opportunity

[00:28:37] and then what's the best way to prioritize those

[00:28:40] and then execute on those?

[00:28:41] And I think more often than not,

[00:28:43] it's about bringing in a third party to say,

[00:28:45] hey, yeah, let's test TikTok shops

[00:28:47] in the most efficient way we can.

[00:28:48] Not necessarily from a cost perspective

[00:28:50] but from a learning perspective.

[00:28:53] That's how we've been,

[00:28:54] that's how we've been trying to approach it.

[00:28:56] Why, like, dev in house?

[00:28:58] I feel like that's not a super common one.

[00:29:00] It's really like a specific reason

[00:29:01] that you would do that and if you were to build today

[00:29:03] would you do that again?

[00:29:05] Okay, great question.

[00:29:06] Cause that's like,

[00:29:07] I'm hearing about Connor's team

[00:29:09] and you guys don't do development in house.

[00:29:11] We're hybrid, so we do have an internal dev team

[00:29:14] but then we also outsource some dev.

[00:29:17] Okay, cool, yeah, sorry.

[00:29:18] I don't mean to convolut the question

[00:29:20] I mean, we had a developer from the beginning

[00:29:24] which is just kind of developed into its own kind of workflow.

[00:29:29] There's really terrible answer to that

[00:29:30] but like, just kind of the way that it is

[00:29:32] and we're also able to more rapidly iterate.

[00:29:34] We've able to build a lot of custom features

[00:29:36] and especially as we've expanded categories,

[00:29:38] we've just had more e-com needs.

[00:29:40] Expanding categories, expanding markets

[00:29:42] is just like exponential real estate

[00:29:44] that we need to be developing custom features for.

[00:29:47] So we found it helpful.

[00:29:48] Our technical person also just handles

[00:29:51] along with the e-com site,

[00:29:53] there's some internal tools that we have

[00:29:55] or just all sorts of random technical stuff

[00:29:58] that just kind of falls under his jurisdiction.

[00:30:00] It's just like I said, that's not,

[00:30:03] it's not ever gonna be our core competency.

[00:30:04] I think one day maybe it makes sense

[00:30:06] especially to have the speed,

[00:30:08] I think there's a lot of things that we could do.

[00:30:11] It's like we don't spend that much on it

[00:30:13] like the agency that we work with

[00:30:15] and they give, we do design in house

[00:30:18] like they have multiple competencies across Dev,

[00:30:21] like front and back end,

[00:30:22] that if we were to hire one person

[00:30:24] it wouldn't really work.

[00:30:25] So I think that's one of the advantages

[00:30:27] to working with an agency is when you're smaller

[00:30:29] and you don't have that much budget for a function,

[00:30:31] you can work with a creative agency

[00:30:33] who's got a copywriter and editor,

[00:30:36] a producer, a scriptwriter, or something like that,

[00:30:38] all on one team and it's obviously fractionalized

[00:30:41] versus if you were to hire internally to do that,

[00:30:44] it might cost you four times as much.

[00:30:45] So I think part of it is like a scale thing.

[00:30:48] Yeah, I totally agree with that.

[00:30:51] But cool, I do want to get through some more

[00:30:53] of these Q&A's where we're 38 minutes in or so.

[00:30:57] We touched on this a bit earlier in our test of the week

[00:31:01] but Ad Olive, anonymous account seems like

[00:31:05] some sort of olive themed advertising account

[00:31:08] as how do you measure incrementality for each channel,

[00:31:12] actionable step by step process?

[00:31:14] They said, love the pod.

[00:31:16] So, Cody, you kind of started touching on it

[00:31:18] with how you're prioritizing like higher leverage test

[00:31:20] but maybe you could give us

[00:31:21] like the quick run through of how you're approaching it as a whole.

[00:31:24] For sure.

[00:31:25] Yeah, so I will go kind of just like a one-on-one

[00:31:28] introductory to incrementality.

[00:31:29] So you wanna do most likely what's called

[00:31:32] a holdout, geo holdout which is where you are going

[00:31:34] to set up an experiment where you're gonna have,

[00:31:37] let's say two different cells or two different groups.

[00:31:40] One of them will be the holdout

[00:31:41] which means they will not get the media in question.

[00:31:44] So all other variables should be constant

[00:31:46] with across both cells.

[00:31:48] So let's say you wanted to test Twitter

[00:31:51] and you wanted to test how incremental Twitter is

[00:31:53] and you normally run meta, you know, Google, TikTok

[00:31:57] and YouTube.

[00:31:58] You would still run all of those channels across the entire country

[00:32:02] because that's not what you're testing.

[00:32:03] You wanna keep those variables constant across the cells

[00:32:06] and then the only change between the two cells,

[00:32:08] the holdout versus treatment group would be Twitter.

[00:32:11] And you would and how it makes us super easy as you guys know.

[00:32:14] But you would input your spend,

[00:32:17] how many of your main KPIs per week you get

[00:32:21] which is for us new customers

[00:32:23] is probably for you guys to new customers.

[00:32:24] And you would get like a calculator like a table

[00:32:27] of the recommendations of how large of a holdout you wanna do.

[00:32:31] So like a 20% holdout which would mean

[00:32:33] you're gonna run Twitter in 80% of the country

[00:32:36] and 20% of the vote you're not going to.

[00:32:38] 50% holdout would mean

[00:32:40] that you're running in half of the country.

[00:32:42] And what you're gonna do is you're simply going to look

[00:32:45] over time, whatever time period you selected.

[00:32:47] Most commonly it's probably two weeks

[00:32:49] but it can be up to we've ran a 12 week holdout

[00:32:51] on like a reached test and you're just going to look

[00:32:54] at the end of it and say, hey,

[00:32:55] it's gonna be hooked up either to your data warehouse

[00:32:58] or to your Shopify and you're gonna say,

[00:32:59] hey, here is how much we spent on that test.

[00:33:03] Here's how much we spent on Twitter.

[00:33:04] We spent, you know, we spent $60,000

[00:33:08] over two week period on Twitter.

[00:33:10] Here is how many new customers we got in the treatment group

[00:33:13] where we ran Twitter versus where we did not.

[00:33:16] And so I was gonna tell you how much of a lift you got

[00:33:18] and you might say, hey, we actually see

[00:33:19] a 5% lift in new customer orders

[00:33:22] when we run Twitter versus when we don't

[00:33:24] and if you divide the number of orders you get divided

[00:33:27] by how much you spent, you may get a cost per incremental

[00:33:30] which is similar concept but a little bit different

[00:33:33] to like a cost per acquisition

[00:33:35] and then that will help you understand how

[00:33:39] incremental that channel is for you

[00:33:41] and you're able to control variables.

[00:33:43] So you have everything else the same across those two cells

[00:33:46] and you're doing them at the same time.

[00:33:49] So you're really limiting and controlling as many variables

[00:33:51] as you can and one thing I like about it

[00:33:53] is you're not looking at clicks, you're not looking at any attribution

[00:33:56] thing, you're simply looking at, you know,

[00:33:58] it's very scientific here's how much we spent.

[00:34:00] Here's how much of what we really care about

[00:34:02] which is new customers orders we got,

[00:34:04] you're not looking at like any pixel attribution things.

[00:34:06] Totally.

[00:34:08] The one thing that I'll add there,

[00:34:09] because I was thinking about this a little bit further,

[00:34:11] you know, house, our beloved sponsor, awesome tool to approach

[00:34:15] and that's where we're using to like,

[00:34:16] we have a very diversified marketing approach

[00:34:18] in the US for EDC wallet business

[00:34:21] so like we're using house right now to sift through

[00:34:24] channel by channel measuring incrementality

[00:34:26] so we just get more clarity on how each of those performing,

[00:34:28] the total impact of each channel.

[00:34:32] But the flip side isn't I'm thinking from like

[00:34:34] a much smaller brand's perspective like just thinking incrementally

[00:34:37] maybe a little bit different and I'll talk about like

[00:34:39] blurring the line a little bit but like our travel business right now

[00:34:42] we're on Facebook and Google and I'm like look,

[00:34:44] if we're driving incremental results it means if we spend more

[00:34:48] on Facebook we'll do more in travel revenue like we don't.

[00:34:51] Like I don't want a perfect scientific experiment

[00:34:56] to like cloud our ability to cloud our ability to identify

[00:35:00] whether something's working or not it can be really simple

[00:35:03] from much smaller businesses so that's worth thinking about as well

[00:35:06] and looking really over period.

[00:35:07] I'm the biggest fan of house or is we haven't ran

[00:35:10] a house test on meta conversions because I don't doubt the incrementality

[00:35:13] or I probably should but I've just been pushing it off

[00:35:16] because same thing when we scaled meta revenue goes up

[00:35:19] when we pull back right out of revenue goes down.

[00:35:21] So yeah and it's just that idea of like thinking incrementally

[00:35:24] rather than like trusting what in platform row is is I think is like

[00:35:28] the key thing at least how we've been thinking about it

[00:35:30] but Connor Roland anything you'd add on the incrementality front?

[00:35:35] I think what Cody mentioned like that is the gold standard right?

[00:35:39] That's like one of the most scientific way to set up an incrementality test

[00:35:45] the truth of the matter is that most brands aren't at that size

[00:35:49] to set that up and like onboard a tool like house

[00:35:52] and you know have spend levels to like warrant that

[00:35:55] and revenue levels to warrant that.

[00:35:57] I think what's important though and there's probably a hundred ways to do this

[00:36:01] like whenever you're testing anything that's new

[00:36:04] you have to have a model for measurement and comparison

[00:36:07] that's as apples the apples as you possibly can and it's not going to be as perfect

[00:36:10] as the methodology that Cody just mentioned but like if I'm

[00:36:15] let's say I'm launching Twitter and this is a real example

[00:36:17] like last year we launched Twitter we did not have house setup yet

[00:36:21] so we didn't have the ability to set up a geohold outtest

[00:36:24] but when I was launching Twitter I thought to myself well this is a paid social channel

[00:36:28] I assume that it's going to have roughly the same net new visitor rate or better

[00:36:32] and I know what my benchmarks in Facebook need to be to hit my goals, my blended goals

[00:36:37] and I also know what my actual Facebook one day click row as is so

[00:36:40] because of all those things because they're similar stages in the funnel

[00:36:43] I can launch Twitter and then compare performance of Twitter

[00:36:47] to my Facebook benchmark to my Facebook actual

[00:36:49] and then make a decision if that's a smart new channel

[00:36:52] a high performing incremental new channel for us.

[00:36:54] Last year we launched Twitter and it checked all those boxes

[00:36:58] so we decided that you know this is a lot of net new visitors

[00:37:01] the one day click row as was above our benchmarks we sat for Facebook

[00:37:04] and comparable to Facebook as a whole

[00:37:06] so to us our conclusion was well that's an incremental channel like

[00:37:09] that's one way to set it up you could do that same thing with like post-purchase survey

[00:37:13] I think the most important thing is to like have some sort of methodology

[00:37:17] that gives you an apples to apples comparison if you don't have that

[00:37:19] then you're gonna run a channel or a test and have a bunch of data

[00:37:24] that you don't know how to make sense of now we are going to do the

[00:37:27] incrementality the most scientific with controlled incrementality test on Twitter at some point

[00:37:31] but like I have confidence in Twitter through that methodology

[00:37:35] and I'm hoping we'll see that play out in the holdout test too

[00:37:38] but like smaller brands you just need to have this methodology

[00:37:41] if you don't have a holdout test tool in mind before you've been launched the channel

[00:37:45] it's the same way you look at creative tests right like a monolotidoo batch of

[00:37:49] I'm gonna compare that to like my account wide aggregate of statics and my you know my overall testing

[00:37:53] budget if it's a better one day clicked then I'm gonna say well this is an incrementally

[00:37:57] high-performing static compared to my account wide statics or my account wide testing

[00:38:01] like that is just an attribution

[00:38:04] incrementality methodology that we've built out internally that's not relying on like a geo holdout

[00:38:09] so you could do that no matter the size right you could be doing

[00:38:12] 10-grad a month in revenue you could be doing a million a month in revenue

[00:38:15] and like that that approach would would be like a fairly valid way to approach

[00:38:20] in criminality with creative or new channels or anything you're testing I think 100%

[00:38:25] not quite as scientific but like any methodology is better than no method definitely

[00:38:32] okay cool so pivoting from you know smaller brands just introducing channels

[00:38:36] we've got a question from and I love this well it's Zach B but his handle on Twitter is

[00:38:40] let's go to the bar to the number two

[00:38:44] this sequel he says or he asks

[00:38:50] in Cody I'm gonna hand this one new first how do you know once you've maxed out a specific channel

[00:38:54] i.e. in this sounds like a good problem to have meta at 30 to 50 k a day of running 10 to 20

[00:38:59] new concepts weekly can't scale pass constantly testing new angles audience his pain points creative types

[00:39:05] offers LPCRO and apparently he's maxed out what do you do is the next step for growth

[00:39:10] this is a good question because I feel like you're doing an entire episode on this and I

[00:39:14] don't think there's a one right answer I also think you could take this from so many different ways

[00:39:18] like i think rigid doesn't such a great job of category expansion and new product expansion

[00:39:22] to be able to reach new audiences yeah you can take this in terms of testing new new personas new

[00:39:28] creatives new campaign objectives on that same channel to try to get more reach or you can go and

[00:39:36] test other channels or you can test other yeah I guess you can go and test other channels so

[00:39:41] I think there are multiple ways to try to grow the business and it's not always one

[00:39:47] I do think a lot of times marketers will think about you know just how do I spend more on the same

[00:39:53] thing and they might not realize their their market is tapped and maybe they need product

[00:39:57] the expansion or they need to crack a new audience kind of like kind of role in as talked about you

[00:40:01] persona based targeting to reach so I think that I would probably test those things and

[00:40:06] think about it I don't know if you guys have you know anyways to think about how you would

[00:40:11] figure out like hey might just running into a tam issue here or because 30 to 50k days

[00:40:17] like pretty significant or as an creative diversity issue we're doing they get more reach so

[00:40:21] like before I say too much about income and how to like how what do you guys think about that

[00:40:25] the really important caveat here is product and tam like there are some businesses it like

[00:40:32] should be able to scale 200s of thousands of dollars a day if you've got the right product price

[00:40:37] point large market etc so I think that is an important caveat but counter what were you going to

[00:40:43] say well it sounds so in Zach B situation it sounds like he is like my my guess is that he's

[00:40:50] going after like it's the same product but he is going after a different subperson as I assume

[00:40:54] because he's he's testing about you new creative he's testing landers he's doing CRL like I'm assuming

[00:40:59] yeah it says he's going after different audiences like because there's one thing to say

[00:41:04] like if you're trying to go from let's say like you have a benchmark in Facebook and you know

[00:41:08] that that benchmark is where you're profitable anything below that's not profitable if you are

[00:41:12] just trying to vertically scale what's currently in your account let's say from 20k to 30k or 20k

[00:41:17] to 25k and every time you drop below that benchmark like oh like nothing's working here that's a

[00:41:25] worse approach than what Zach B is describing here where he's actually taking swings at cracking

[00:41:29] new personas and I'm assuming he's trying to scale his spend to reach more like top line scale

[00:41:35] by spending more on these new creative landers audience you know subpersoner targets etc

[00:41:41] like it sounds like he is probably hitting more of a wall and like think that I think he could

[00:41:46] probably more confident that maybe he's getting closer to maxing out this channel and that's like

[00:41:50] if you can honestly look at yourself and say I've tried to go from you know 20k to 30k

[00:41:55] or 20 to 25k and I've tried to do it through like legitimate horizontal scaling through all these

[00:42:00] different levers that you know can drive scale in an at account and you just cannot get to that

[00:42:04] increase pen level at that you know that one day click or whatever that benchmark is that you

[00:42:09] know you need to be at I think that's when you need to look and say listen we've taken all the swings

[00:42:13] we can or should have taken and we're still not cutting it like maybe we need to go think about a new

[00:42:18] channel or maybe we need to go think about product expansion so it seems to me like Zach B's in a

[00:42:22] situation where he is trying all of the swings that that he should be trying but this also relies

[00:42:28] on him understanding his benchmarks like you got to know like what's the absolute lowest we can go

[00:42:33] if you're dropping below that and you're trying all these things then I think it's time to move on

[00:42:37] and and think about channel expansion or like product funnel expansion yeah so

[00:42:44] I think you're right we're on the same page I will say like in ridges case one way we have

[00:42:49] unlocked additional scale was just like leaning into seasonal moments more and maybe that's

[00:42:53] like super obvious here but when I joined seven and a half years ago our father's day campaign was

[00:42:59] like maybe one two emails like it was minimal and then we really like now may in June or June

[00:43:07] in particular has historically been able to be as big as the previous November so we've created

[00:43:12] like almost Q4 level demand around father today we are a great gifting product but if you can find

[00:43:17] unlocks like that there might be a little bit different than just like persona targeting or new

[00:43:21] angles or new landers it could be valuable I'd say the same thing smaller examples of success for us but

[00:43:27] like anniversary sale Q1 or sweepstakes where we give away jeeps and broncos and stuff and in

[00:43:32] August it's just like a completely different reason for someone to buy then what we would have gotten

[00:43:38] to without creating like a dedicated multi week moment so that's one thought but then too it's like

[00:43:43] yeah dude if you're spending 30 50 k a day I imagine you're profitable it's working across

[00:43:49] some amount of personas it just feels like channel diversification is like the right next step

[00:43:56] all of us are house customers and very big fans in fact I've actually been told I talk about

[00:44:00] how it's more than my own daughter so what is house houses a marketing science and experimentation platform

[00:44:06] that enables you to measure true and comatality and allocate budget efficiently to maximize growth

[00:44:11] and profitability how so allows you to comprehensively measure your marketing across all channels to measure

[00:44:17] the true incremental impact of all of your channels on retail and on DTC etc. how so allows you to design

[00:44:25] and launch experiments in minutes and get results in as little as two weeks so we are all actual

[00:44:30] customers of house we all use it I actually got the both contours onto it I was just such a big fan

[00:44:35] and I just couldn't help but share some of the tests that we were running and I thought it was

[00:44:39] super cool and I knew we had a group chat going and I knew that both of these guys were

[00:44:43] spending on a lot of different channels and platforms and we were all looking at things similarly

[00:44:48] but really looking to kind of take us up so yeah if it's good enough for me to sell these

[00:44:52] got to it guys on I think it's good enough for you guys to try out. As you can tell we could do a whole

[00:44:57] episode about house and we probably will at some point but this is just the ad read so if you want to

[00:45:02] add marketing rigor to your organization and make the most impact with your spend go to house.io

[00:45:07] slash operators that's HAUS.io slash operators to learn more. Connor what that seasonality

[00:45:17] is that does that necessarily have to be collect for example this year one of the one of the

[00:45:22] seasonal angles we started to expand into was like this new years angle we did not have that

[00:45:26] associated with an offer are you saying like out like a seasonal period that's just evergreen it's

[00:45:32] not evergreen in the sense that it's season up but you're not attaching an offer to it or you

[00:45:35] saying that's an opportunity that you think brands can tap into more well not that you don't need to

[00:45:43] attach an offer to it but like I mean the example for us right now is like I think we could make

[00:45:48] our Valentine's Day moment really big we do have a men's wedding band business so that helps quite

[00:45:52] a bit but like that was up 300% year over year because we were going to put in the legwork to

[00:45:58] like fully capitalise on that moment and frankly like because what I would describe is like

[00:46:04] how I describe what ZX has internally around just testing new concepts new angles a ton of new

[00:46:10] creative every week is like it's like in market iteration that's like always on we've got a

[00:46:15] system to like support that where how can we bring like seasonal moments like how can we go to

[00:46:21] market with new campaigns and new reasons to buy that are like maybe a little bit more holistic

[00:46:26] we're talking like full web take over email campaigns new creative concept and like just speaking

[00:46:31] to buying for a different reason than you otherwise would I think at least our plan to continue

[00:46:36] scaling is to add more seasonal moments so like I look at a Valentine's Day or a Mother's Day

[00:46:40] or even like primed day in July I think we can get way bigger so that is like just figuring out how

[00:46:47] to get those moments to be two or three three times bigger is like at least one of our approaches that

[00:46:51] might not require any form of channel diversification from here. What do you guys have feel like I've

[00:46:57] heard Sean say it's like it's like the ceiling and the floor you like try to raise the floor with

[00:47:02] the new launches is that right or is it the ceiling? The ceiling yeah yeah yeah it's very similar to my

[00:47:08] local and absolute maximum analogy where it's just like we are we are iterating our way to a

[00:47:16] local maximum and that's what you could be doing with these like in market constant tests of creative

[00:47:21] and CRO and everything else and like what you actually what you can do is take a step back and it's like

[00:47:26] what is like the weird stuff that we could like you know get on the table that will unlock some

[00:47:31] sort of more some higher maximum maybe the absolute maximum so that is the the ceiling analogy as

[00:47:37] well. So I think Zach needs to ask himself is he taking big enough swings is he trying to iterate

[00:47:42] on the same you know type of creative angles that he's unlocked or does he need to think bigger than those

[00:47:47] and and think yeah you know not just with in Facebook too like Omni channel campaigns huge

[00:47:53] swings that he's never taken before that could be a massive unlock for his brand versus you know

[00:47:58] the next new hook on an ad that has worked for a year and a half for for his brand. Right and frankly

[00:48:04] it's like probably or well we said that bigger swings and then also like a really actionable thing

[00:48:09] is channel diversification and like the answer is probably both right like Zach's bias says he's

[00:48:15] grown to nine figure personal men's care brands so like it's definitely both getting to 100 million I think

[00:48:21] okay so another question from Jeff Serini very related big is what steps would you prescribe

[00:48:28] to a single channel brand meta wanting to diversify into other channels how to do it quote unquote

[00:48:34] right all right I'll start with this and I guess just kind of piggybacks off the the other one

[00:48:39] of Zach's but like I think the first thing to figure out is like all right let's let's

[00:48:45] the stuff you guys just had 100% on like new products these are moments like that's more important

[00:48:50] than where you're spending but as certain point you are gonna have to figure out where you should

[00:48:54] be spending is where is your next dollar best spent and you've got to figure out like when is meta

[00:48:59] actually starting to get you know diminishing returns that are going to really really negative um and

[00:49:04] it would actually be better on another channel for us actually think we were pretty late to it and we

[00:49:08] weren't spending on other channels really the best way to do it would actually be like how's three

[00:49:12] self-test where you have different spend levels and you can see if you don't have that I would just

[00:49:16] continue to try to scale and see if spending more is reaching new people and helping you acquire new

[00:49:21] customers um I would say first and I think they've talked about this but where your customers you know like

[00:49:26] I know that you guys have a lot of success with snap I don't think our customers are on snap

[00:49:29] our customers are on Pinterest like I think that's number one is where your customers um what do you

[00:49:36] have the ability to measure you know if if you need a certain click row s to see success and prove it

[00:49:42] you're probably not going to have success with YouTube or have success with TV because your

[00:49:47] finance team is not going to be willing to wait around to get that data back you know where's your

[00:49:52] primary skill set I think some of that is going to depend on your AOV right if you're a low

[00:49:56] AOV brand you're probably going to do that well on on YouTube if you're a super high AOV brand maybe

[00:50:00] TikTok's not the thing um and then also what do you have creative for what do you have the right

[00:50:04] creative for do you have the ability to create creative that's you know potentially relevant to that channel

[00:50:09] so I feel like I would ask a lot of those questions and then kind of think about it um

[00:50:13] and make a decision and there's there's no one right answer or it's your next one has to be YouTube or

[00:50:18] the next one has to be TikTok but for you guys Cody it's you have meta and then what's channel number

[00:50:26] two where are you spending the most time uh YouTube is a second one right now it's about 15 to 20

[00:50:32] percent of mex what about you guys Connor I mean search but you know if you're just

[00:50:39] to keep it more top of funnel then it would be TV streaming and streaming and linear I mean

[00:50:45] I think like in terms of immediate next steps like how to do it right I think I think Cody you

[00:50:51] nailed it like what is the like what is the creative that's going to work there and do you have

[00:50:56] the ability to either produce yourself or like work with an agency or an outsource partner

[00:51:01] but even one step like upstream of that is like what's the best swing we can take with the current

[00:51:07] creative that we have so if you're a brand that's typically scaled on meta and you're trying to

[00:51:11] diversify and you have agreed that you think TikTok's your next best channel because your audience is

[00:51:16] there like like are you taking the best swing possible by launching your top performing videos

[00:51:22] inside of that channel do you have your attribution methodology thought like do you have a good

[00:51:26] sense of what winning will even look like before you even launch like that's where I would start

[00:51:30] and then like as you launch that channel with that you know winning creator from meta then you can

[00:51:36] go and you know work on producing you know the more TikTok native stuff that is hopefully just like

[00:51:41] in iteration maybe as a starting point of what's worked in meta but just like more native to

[00:51:45] TikTok with that like style of shooting and overlay and like edit style but like you don't need

[00:51:51] to necessarily go and like produce like for us when we launch Twitter we just took our best

[00:51:55] performing static for meta and we launched them in Twitter and then we started going into

[00:51:58] and producing static for Twitter that we thought would work because we thought they lent them

[00:52:01] sales better to Twitter but like we launched it we knew what winning looked like we let we let that

[00:52:06] date or that creative gather baseline data and then we in the meantime we're producing creative

[00:52:11] that we followed up with so like that that's where I would start with if you're like launching

[00:52:16] a new channel you don't need to go like builder from the ground up I don't think yeah I love that

[00:52:20] answer that's like exactly I didn't know no notes okay cool so well actually one for me personally

[00:52:28] like I have a lot of conversations about people wanting to type to diversify from meta and then

[00:52:32] talking about influencer and I always think like it's too big of a step I'm like if you have meta

[00:52:38] if meta is truly working then you just diversify into other like more similar channels like

[00:52:43] it makes sense to go into a TikTok or a snap or a YouTube or yeah I think at least we're also

[00:52:48] seeing a lot of success on Twitter right now it's a great it's great feed at inventory so

[00:52:53] that's how I answer that question but our next one is about influencer it's from oh it's actually

[00:52:59] Jeff's first question uh he's probably thinking the same thing he's like where do I type of

[00:53:06] person by for meta maybe he should go to influencer he says what percentage of revenues influencer

[00:53:10] marketing for each how much opportunity do you see in influencer space for your brands

[00:53:16] come you want to take a first bath it's a great one I this one's a this one's a hard question

[00:53:22] we don't look at like I'm going to sound like a broken a broken record here but like we

[00:53:27] don't look at from an attribution performance standpoint like we don't look at influencer the

[00:53:31] same way that I would like measure a meta or a TikTok or a YouTube or a streaming like any paid

[00:53:36] media channel that I want to see a direct ROI on that's probably different for a lot of brands out

[00:53:42] there that's just the case for us because we have such a long consideration period like we don't

[00:53:46] see a ton like we do see directly attributable revenue but it's not even close to what we see in like

[00:53:52] a conversion oriented like meta campaign for example so like we I don't think about them the same way

[00:53:58] like I'm looking like at our influencer program at least first and foremost I do pay attention to

[00:54:05] performance and like we do have attribution methodology in ways that we try to like drive revenue

[00:54:10] through influencer but like the gold standard KPI I'm looking at and like the the core reason we

[00:54:16] do influencer into a chief is just like arbitraging eyeballs with like super cheap CPMs so like that's

[00:54:22] my first and foremost goal that's what I'm tracking on like a monthly basis and seeing how many people

[00:54:28] reaching what the cost is for that what the CPM is for that what percentage of a revenue for

[00:54:33] influencer marketing is right man that's a really hard question like I've heard 1% of your top line

[00:54:39] revenue I've heard 10% of your overall media budget I like to look at it in in a relation to our top

[00:54:45] line revenue I think that 1% number is a decent starting point but then you're probably going to

[00:54:50] flex it up or down but again it depends on whether or not like if you're selling a $30 product

[00:54:55] and it's an impulse by product you can probably treat performance influencers somewhat similarly

[00:55:02] to how you treat like analyzing a meta on a one day click basis in like scale up or down by

[00:55:07] comparing like one day click versus maybe like last click GA attributed revenue if you're

[00:55:13] if you're not like we are like we don't really look at it that way and like we do use the performance

[00:55:18] attribution directionally but like I'm just seeing it way more as like a brand awareness

[00:55:22] impressions arbitrage than I am like looking at like a meta channel so I think it depends a lot

[00:55:28] on the type of brand and product in like consideration period you have totally so you guys like if

[00:55:34] you were a single channel and you're only advertising on meta you wouldn't go to influencer next

[00:55:38] if you had like an impulse by product that you could directly measure revenue off of then I would

[00:55:44] then I would trust it but if not like I just but you wouldn't do it in the way that you guys are running

[00:55:49] influencer now right now it's like brand awareness yeah yeah not like it's not we do performance

[00:55:54] influencer but it's not the core goal of our program but like that's not to say I still wouldn't

[00:55:59] expand there immediately but I do think influencer can be a performance channel with you know

[00:56:04] direct attribution if you set it up that way any of the product that lens itself to that totally

[00:56:11] we're super excited to talk today about one of our sponsors after sale all three of us

[00:56:17] Jones Road Beauty, Hacks Cloud and Ridge Wall at our customers of after sale

[00:56:21] if you're selling on Shopify you need to find ways to boost your average order value

[00:56:25] one of the best ways to do this is cross selling and up selling and there are a lot of different ways

[00:56:29] in places you can do this one of the best places to do it is right when that conversion is happening

[00:56:34] and that is exactly what after sale facilitates for you so what actually is after sale after

[00:56:40] sale is a widget that you install on your website and on the post purchase page right after someone's

[00:56:46] completed their conversion they're basically getting this up sell and or cross sell it's super seamless

[00:56:51] it's one click and it adds it to the order they do not have to go through check out again

[00:56:57] it's really just free and not free but it's incremental revenue that you're getting from someone

[00:57:02] that's already bought from you one thing I love about after sale is you can decide to

[00:57:06] optimize at a ton or not at all either way it's going to drive you a ton of incremental revenue

[00:57:12] and if you have the team in the bandwidth and you want to optimize it you can do all sorts of

[00:57:16] analysis on you know which products are most likely to be bought with other products you know

[00:57:20] doing those sequential order and market basket analyses and you can literally build out

[00:57:25] different funnels as many as you'd want for different products depending on what that first ordered

[00:57:29] product was and then up sell them super intentionally based on that first order product so

[00:57:36] love after sale it's driven six figures of incremental revenue for us in a very short period of time

[00:57:41] and I highly recommend it if you want to check them out head over to aftersell.com

[00:57:48] Cody what about you so and I want to hear about how you guys do it because I think you guys

[00:57:53] do influencer very differently and have spent a lot more and had a lot more success we also

[00:57:59] consider influencer brand channel I think in beauty I don't really know anyone who's considering

[00:58:03] influencer like a performance channel so influencers on our brand team I'll say we spend like

[00:58:08] so let's say let's say hypothetically you know we spend 30% of revenue on marketing

[00:58:16] media so paid media which is like digital TV direct mail is you know 25% of that right and then

[00:58:23] four to five percent of that might go to everything else and one of those within it is influencer so it's

[00:58:28] sub 1% of revenue of net revenue we consider it a branch channel so we have our director influencer

[00:58:35] report to our our head of brand and our main KPIs EMV earned media value we use tribe dynamics

[00:58:42] and so that's our main one so the majority of it is just organic seeding gifting

[00:58:45] there's just like an always on like new prospecting acquisition campaign where we're reaching out to new

[00:58:51] new influencers new creators setting them things and that's just very relationship based and

[00:58:56] very excited for our next podcast where we're going to have astronaut to kind of talk about it

[00:59:00] we work with them she's choosing genius so like we just that we just do what they say

[00:59:04] and so we really don't do anything performance based we'll do a little bit of like sponsored content

[00:59:09] but it's really look we're looking at EMV row us we're looking at you know are we able to

[00:59:13] arbitrage attention and get really good content and get you know solid um so you know

[00:59:20] oh weariness based on that so for us it's a branch channel I can't tell you the the lift and

[00:59:24] revenue and things like that I do want to test we also like we do have an affiliate program

[00:59:29] off the back half of that after we build relationships with people and it drives meaningful

[00:59:33] volume not anything crazy um I do want to test a little bit more of like you know YouTube paid stuff

[00:59:39] so curious you know how you guys look at it how you measure it but yeah for us it's just like a brand

[00:59:44] or media value channel so kind of upper funnel but I actually would I would say the one thing that's

[00:59:48] great about influencers not like TV where you've got to do a 50k production and you've got to spend

[00:59:52] a certain amount like anyone can do influencer it's it's scalable if you're just launching your

[00:59:56] brand I would get it in the hands of people it has actually some of the best arbitrage you shouldn't

[01:00:00] you can have with with uh CPMs because your product hogs should be obviously much cheaper than

[01:00:06] you know than the value that it's giving somebody if they get it but it's scalable you can

[01:00:09] send 10 boxes out of month you can send 100 you can send 10,000 boxes out of month so to me it's

[01:00:14] very scalable and one of the better brand awareness methods that somebody can do um if you're just

[01:00:19] starting out yeah that's a great point there's a way to like grind it out with influencer which

[01:00:24] I frankly we don't have experience and that could be like it could just be time and cogs and you're

[01:00:30] like getting pre-posts and exchange that could be incredibly high ROI so definitely some possibility

[01:00:36] we have um you know rich ridges history with influencer was like we were really early disponsoring

[01:00:43] YouTube creators um YouTube over indexes in men there were like very few people doing native

[01:00:48] integration so 2017 we were working with like anti-infantano the yovon tiger bell we were

[01:00:53] we were talking about like Joe Rogan peripheral character basically was like the initial strategy

[01:00:58] and it was a huge it was both the cost and like awareness arbitrage like really affordable

[01:01:05] CPMs it was a win-win for everybody because there was no other real advertiser demand

[01:01:11] we were really easy to work with we'd we'd pay on time we didn't give them like crazy brand

[01:01:15] guidelines to work with and uh and what I always said was it was one of our most efficient channels

[01:01:21] like and it was really just a body's game so for a while our influencer team was our biggest

[01:01:26] because we just had to do mass outreach, mass negotiation, mass and product um so it was our most

[01:01:31] efficient channel and it was like our best brand building channel like truly kind of created

[01:01:35] tapped into communities we had people like creating memes about Anthony Fantano being uh

[01:01:40] a walletailsman that reviewed music like so it was really there was like a lot of really funny stuff like

[01:01:45] that um it's just different now like there's way more demand for YouTube advertisers I think

[01:01:51] seat the average CPM from a YouTube creator has like correlated perfectly with the mentions of

[01:01:56] the creator economy all of a sudden you've got people like operationalizing building businesses like

[01:02:01] really treating it like a business and there's just less of an arbitrage opportunity

[01:02:06] we still think of it as like part performance we look at everything through a performance lens

[01:02:12] it's now one of our lower performing channels from an ROI perspective but there's a lot of brand

[01:02:17] value to create there especially right now really just focused on large deeper integration so

[01:02:22] we had Jerry rig everything like shoot wallets against a cyber truck in March and it drove like

[01:02:28] just a ton of revenue it was an awesome piece of content we got ad rights that we've been pulling

[01:02:32] it across channel so that's where our focus has been but again wouldn't be my wouldn't be my first

[01:02:37] option oh in terms of budget like in our biggest months of influencer spend which is right around

[01:02:42] our peak moments, bothers day anniversary, Q4 etc we'll get right around 8% but then it really just kind

[01:02:47] of ebs and flows so that's of total spend okay yeah how do you measure the performance

[01:02:55] YouTube stuff so we have like historical benchmarks on like a one day click basis from North

[01:03:00] mean but like you know one of the things it is like weird about that is like YouTube like

[01:03:06] changed the UI a couple years ago so it's like way harder to click through so it's like

[01:03:09] clicks are different we get codes we have a post purchase survey that's like asking whether

[01:03:14] where someone came from so we really just tried to triangulate it's a lot by far the hardest

[01:03:20] from an attribution standpoint unless you have like a big hit we did smarter every day last year

[01:03:25] early June drove like almost a half a million dollars in revenue and it's like you couldn't

[01:03:29] miss it like the video went live and like top line revenues just immediately increased you know

[01:03:33] 100 grand or whatever so yeah that's how that's how we were approaching so when you look at it like

[01:03:40] like I would imagine could be wrong but like you said by YouTube like I would imagine a lot of

[01:03:45] the value doesn't come from a click based on on that you know in their posts it's probably seeing

[01:03:49] it and searching it later do you have like a multiplier you're like hey like whatever

[01:03:53] the the click roses it's probably double or anything like that no we don't have a multiplier for

[01:04:00] yeah i really don't feel confident and it's so different by channel like you get super weird

[01:04:05] things like uh Philip de Franco post a video every single day so his results are like really

[01:04:10] compressed like you don't get views after 24 hours he has like a news-based show so it's like

[01:04:15] it's the the opposite of evergreen content um then you have other like history channels where like

[01:04:20] it'll get views forever we've seen we've seen um it's been a couple months since I looked at this but

[01:04:25] if you look at all the revenue attributed to influencer on like any given month about 40% of that

[01:04:31] came from a video in a previous month um so all of a sudden there's these other videos that are just

[01:04:36] like generating sales forever um it was really hard to get a multiple it's like a really soft science

[01:04:42] we're just trying to create really good memorable content that like has some form of observable

[01:04:48] revenue that's what i would that's how i describe it and uh to touch on um Jeff second point

[01:04:53] opportunity in the influencer space like I said we're focused on big deep integrations getting ad rights

[01:04:58] pulling that across more channels making them more of moments that's where we're focused i want

[01:05:02] to do like a dozen of those this year smarter everyday as an example the Jerry Rick video as an

[01:05:06] example um there's so many more than that like i've mentioned us screwing up TikTok shops right now

[01:05:13] there's like clearly a lot of value to create there there's like just the way people consume

[01:05:17] content is so much different than it was a couple years ago it seems to be one of the more rapidly

[01:05:21] evolving spaces from a from a strategy standpoint so if I were Jeff I'd look at some of those newer

[01:05:28] or like longer tail opportunities kind of you also hit something that needs to be considered like

[01:05:33] if your main channel's meta and because there's layers to influencer right there's the there's the

[01:05:38] pure like are we getting good like cpm's impressions and attributed revenue from this influencer

[01:05:45] organic audience but if you're thinking to yourself well i also in big on meta i don't have like

[01:05:50] i have a gap in this certain content bucket and i think i can like parlay this influencer market

[01:05:55] this organic influencer marketing play into content sourcing and now all of a sudden i've added a new

[01:06:00] channel that's a new channel on its own but it's also feeding our core channel like those are the

[01:06:05] probably the things you need to be thinking about of like if you want to invest into influencer and how

[01:06:09] you want to do it i'll also say like the viral moments like that can come from adding influencers

[01:06:14] a channel is there's probably more upside in terms of that than there are with some of these other

[01:06:17] channels like i'm scrolling through through you know instagram and i look at like path in your

[01:06:22] friend goal she's like one of the real housewife ladies and all of a sudden she's like cooking some

[01:06:25] dish on a hexclad product and i was just from product seating like that's not going to happen through a

[01:06:29] meta ad or like we we did this whole we went through all these like these loops to get like customer

[01:06:34] organ products and we just like just seated at two um because we bought a podcast out with her and like

[01:06:39] i didn't maybe let's show up on his feed probably not but whatever and it it showed up on his feed

[01:06:43] and i'm like sitting out of our playing pool one day and and one of our agency guys text us and like

[01:06:48] wow nice work guys what you pay for this i'm like we didn't pay anything for that like we just we just

[01:06:52] made custom products and sent it to him and he likes them like sure that's part of like the

[01:06:56] scale of our brand now that helps drive that but like the the virality component um you don't know

[01:07:00] what it's going to happen but like the shots on that an influencer certainly increases the the

[01:07:05] potential of some random posts like just totally taking off that you could never have facilitated

[01:07:10] a gas but like it happened yeah 100% yeah i love it as a strategy it's just like if i'm looking

[01:07:19] for a repeatable like ideally scale of the channel it's like never mind yeah never my second thought

[01:07:25] alright sweet okay so question from me here i have a question for you guys there's there's been

[01:07:34] they did the yacht yacht Pope podcast yacht puts on their redemption arc they were like you know

[01:07:38] I think they were the most dumped on software brand or you know e-commerce software um

[01:07:44] but i don't want to talk about yacht pub what do you guys think is the most overrated piece of

[01:07:48] software right now codey go oh man so many it's so hard to pick um let's see what's been on

[01:07:54] my mind lately it's anything that's charging a variable fee where they're not really creating

[01:07:59] that much you know variable revenue and i think just like yacht po those a lot of these that were

[01:08:03] were super expensive and they're really the best for the only one and now there's so many out there

[01:08:07] that um are just super kind of like so you know reviews is super competitive um you know one

[01:08:13] that we're thinking about switching from like gorgeous i think gorgeous used to be like

[01:08:17] the category creator like the best and it's just it's wildly expensive i don't know if you

[01:08:21] guys ever go in it or if you guys use it it's like super outdated it looks like it was built like 15

[01:08:26] years ago i think the UX is terrible so like we're looking to switch one of our sponsors of

[01:08:30] show is rich panel like not even an ad like i'm so impressed by rich panel and so we'll most

[01:08:35] definitely be switching to them uh the UX is clean it's really good it's much faster it's got the AI

[01:08:40] integration so um Connor i think you you said you guys are looking as much as well

[01:08:45] we're in the midst of it yeah we're on we're on customer now which like they got acquired by

[01:08:51] meta and then spun out by meta so they're like they've got a bunch of stuff going on and like my my

[01:08:57] oh so i'm actually answering a different question now but my spiel to the team internally is like

[01:09:01] from a customer experience perspective we just need better tools we need like a better foundational

[01:09:06] base for how we are servicing customers and the teams impressed by rich panel so uh yeah we're

[01:09:13] kind of in the same boat there but i totally agreed to gorgeous when they rolled out the ppc pricing

[01:09:18] it was it was insane we see some of the most i listen to um Jason Lemkin on i think that's his last

[01:09:24] name he's the saster guy oh i love him he was on he was on my first million a couple weeks ago

[01:09:29] i think i'm i think i'm quoting him correctly but he said like at some point sass became rather

[01:09:34] softer as a surface service it became softer as a riff-ah and it just feels like like gorgeous

[01:09:41] isn't that bucket like we've seen a couple of examples of these just like super value extraction

[01:09:46] like pricing models and things like that um see i'm with you on that definitely no we're

[01:09:51] we're honestly dude i was blown when we got that demo from rich panel like i was blown away

[01:09:55] i told my team like we're switching like right away i was like when this are contractant

[01:09:59] i never want to be that kind of like hey like we've got a switch to jump around so i tried to

[01:10:02] find the time when it's right to do so um and i've seen a deal of contracts coming up and stuff like that

[01:10:08] but that's another thing that is just like crazy long contracts that you get locked in like

[01:10:12] attentive as well i don't think any of us use attentive but maybe maybe around um yeah dude but

[01:10:17] rich panel i'm impressed and i actually think it's gonna help our team from what i've heard

[01:10:21] from other people like that they use it i know perfect way to use it like you your agents are

[01:10:25] able to just answer so many more tickets i really like i like their approach to AI how they're not

[01:10:29] trying to just like have stuff automatically be done but they're they're helping your agents actually

[01:10:34] get more done not trying to replace people but it's helping them be more efficient which is like

[01:10:37] i think we're allowed to the AI stuff is gonna go yeah i think that makes total sense

[01:10:41] who else any any other ones that you guys you guys want to start something more about who else do

[01:10:47] you think is is overrated and then maybe we can do underrated after that i don't want to i don't

[01:10:51] want to call it a name but there's a certain there's a certain um tv buying provider that i'm

[01:10:58] not a huge fan of like as i've started to dig into some of the other options out there

[01:11:02] in like comparing like what's possible from a targeting perspective what's possible from an

[01:11:07] attribution perspective in like how some of these newer providers of that channel are

[01:11:12] are innovating in those two areas it's maybe realized that uh the the the choice of this particular

[01:11:18] vendor which is a large vendor probably one of the largest in the space that i know a lot of

[01:11:22] folks use is is fairly antiquated in their practices with how they're going about targeting

[01:11:27] and how they're going about attribution so i think that's that's one we're like

[01:11:31] i think do your diligence when you're when you're selecting like a linear and a streaming tv

[01:11:35] provider and kind of uh there's some people really innovating out there and some of the big players

[01:11:40] are are gonna get left behind if they don't start to take note and follow suit i think

[01:11:46] does it rhyme with the tar in my in a yeah can't confirm but in my

[01:11:52] our counter kind of ridge that we both did it we both called out somebody so who you got

[01:11:57] who you coming for a deal i'm struggling i'm not sure if i could call out somebody every day you

[01:12:03] can come over the one i'm not well i'm having trouble with an underrated one as well i feel

[01:12:12] like a lot of the stuff where you we're using is properly rated uh i do think i do think

[01:12:22] we're seeing like i don't know i just i just think a lot of the stuff where this coming out

[01:12:26] right now like everybody wants to charge on volume everybody wants to charge a percentage of revenue

[01:12:30] like and i can't help but think like we're in the final stages of that to some degree like i

[01:12:36] like i was i've been disappointed with klavy on a lot of ways we switched off that was like

[01:12:40] very uh i think we've talked about that before we switched to send line um but klavy was in the

[01:12:45] same boat like didn't i i think they had this incredible opportunity they were like the absolute

[01:12:50] go to ESP for all ddc brands they're like as close as you're gonna get to like the central

[01:12:56] brain of any of any brand uh and i just i don't think they've had very good product development i

[01:13:01] know the invested a long time or that what they told me for a long time was a invested in like

[01:13:06] reliability and scalability which is cool like i guess it would work most of the time it did fail

[01:13:11] unlike multiple black Friday's over the last couple years but uh then raising their prices i just

[01:13:16] felt like squeezed out it's just disappointed more than anything you know um they definitely

[01:13:21] fumbled their lead quite a bit yeah that's it yeah and like and there's nothing all that

[01:13:26] interesting a bunch of nice to have like dynamic codes dynamic blocks like i guess it's pretty

[01:13:31] good segmenting they have like smart sending stuff like that but like i would have loved for them

[01:13:36] to have like rolled out a a more proper CRM better you know they plug in a Facebook they kind of

[01:13:41] plug in a Google that never really worked the way that i hoped it would um they like their receiver

[01:13:46] i don't think they think they're like their receiver that's like running to the end zone and they

[01:13:49] like are dropping they like drop a ball in the one yard line because they're like headed in

[01:13:53] and they just like let it remember that trend when that like three receivers are running back

[01:13:57] stood that like a few years back and it was like a fumble oh sure sure yeah yeah yeah yeah that's

[01:14:04] basically what i'd say i mean they had a huge head start they decided product everybody's super happy

[01:14:08] with it and then just lack of product development and then increased prices while there are like

[01:14:14] comparable services that are just being way more aggressive so um that it's one out one i'll

[01:14:20] call out that i won't say they're underrated because i think they get the credit they deserve but

[01:14:24] i will say like every time and this is sponsored this is about motion every time i get that motion

[01:14:30] bill in our invoicing software i just like blows me away because of how much like we use it in

[01:14:35] our day-to-day and the value we get from it like seriously i'm like like and then i look at some

[01:14:39] of the billables we get from these other tools that like we just don't use nearly as much they

[01:14:44] don't provide nearly as much value like i just think the you know the the value to price ratio

[01:14:49] that you get from motion is absolutely one of the best um and our entire tech software stack

[01:14:55] i will so i agree with that i had that thought recently similar type of tool that i think is

[01:15:00] very valuable is for play the the to help manage like performance creative you can index all the

[01:15:08] ads manager it was like that's like a hundred bucks a month or something and i don't know

[01:15:11] how we do it otherwise like you're just kind of like saving ads but then those can disappear from

[01:15:15] the ads library that just seems kind of like a no-brainer especially if you're scaled and you want to take

[01:15:20] like performance creative learning really seriously um they have a really cool product so i'll call

[01:15:27] that one underrated to the motion will build that that function out like that would make some some sense right

[01:15:32] there are the creative analysis tool what it makes sense to kind of become the research

[01:15:37] portion of that as well i guess yeah what i got i got one um pdq so uh lyron who's

[01:15:44] I think one of the co-founders that came to our office last week is we work with them just kind

[01:15:48] of you made the team when he was doing a tour and they showed me a lot of the stuff that they're

[01:15:52] working on i'm so impressed not not a sponsor not an investor i think like that i just think

[01:15:57] they're they're awesome it's just like a real is really team they they do like amazon like um shipping

[01:16:04] options and check out so like you can add on multiple options and people get accurate like arrived

[01:16:08] by dates but one thing i'm pumped about is they're doing a lot more with checkout like i think

[01:16:13] with like they're gonna like own a lot of stuff with checkout so with check out accessibility the

[01:16:18] i don't know if you guys feel like this without us having a dev team internally maybe this is

[01:16:21] the benefit of it we haven't really tested that many things and check out because it's hard to test

[01:16:24] and measure they're doing like in a no-code a b testing checkout tool which is going to be awesome

[01:16:30] so you can add like upsells in there you can add different you know trust badges like anything

[01:16:33] you can do a check out accessibility but like any marketer will be able to go in there and ab test them so

[01:16:38] that's something i know they have coming up on the road map that i'm like i just can't wait to get my hands on

[01:16:43] um so i don't i don't see that many people talking about pdq and it's helped us a lot it's helped

[01:16:46] our margin a lot just recover some shipping revenue no yeah i've never heard of it but salt lake city

[01:16:51] base so i was good there is rarely maybe that's like their us base i think i got there right yeah it's

[01:16:57] pretty good but nom yeah i don't see see that many people talking about it but it has it has

[01:17:02] helped us like very significant way awesome all right perfect i think we'll call it or after

[01:17:06] there covered a lot of ground from team building to marketing channel expansion to kind of just shooting

[01:17:12] the shit on uh the over and under on uh some e-commerce software businesses that's a wrap

[01:17:18] episode eight thank you to our sponsors motion after self rich panel and house uh we're going to do

[01:17:22] more Q&A episodes this one was super fun there were a lot of great questions uh if you guys want your

[01:17:28] questions discussed you can tweet at any of us tweet it marketing operators comment on youtube

[01:17:33] all of the above will ensure that uh that we'll speak to it so um we'll let you decide from there

[01:17:39] uh if you are enjoying the episode make sure you like and subscribe um appreciate everyone listening

[01:17:44] and looking forward to the next one