Transcript

Welcome to the ecommerce marketing podcast today’s guest is Gael Breton, Gael is one of the minds behind authority hacker, authority hackers goal is to share action about strategies and on the topic of authority size building, welcome to the ecommerce marketing Gael.

GAEL: Thanks for having me Robert I am really happy to be here.

ROBERT: Yes I am excited for you to be here if you can just give us a back ground on how you started up to hacker and just a background online and (31) marketing.

GAEL: Obviously I started at the very bottom of the scale, so I am French as you can probably tell from my accent, I was a business school student I was thinking from internship nothing crazy and I had studied in Hong Kong before so I wanted to go back to Asia and I found an internship in (56) for an Australian company that was doing SEO, at that time I had no idea what SEO even meant, but I like to hang out with my computer so I said sure why not.

One day as I said I started at the very bottom I was doing an intern in Asia I was doing i.e. I wrote a lot of posting listings on sites like degan ready to and you know very ground marketing type stuff, and so I worked with that company for a year and a half. You know I graduated they hired me a little bit then I moved to London with them then eventually I decided to do my own thing so I quit and started with my own partner Mark Webster who is also my partner on the ([1:40]) and we actually opened an agency of our own.

So we were selling on line marketing services you know we specialize in a small part of the whole online marketing stuff, we specialize in SEO and we were selling that for clients in the beginning there were small client but we actually grew up to be a SEO agency for companies for Macys and Expedia and became pretty big. We actually grew the agency to around 75 staff before we sold it last year actually.

ROBERT: Okay, congratulations.

GAEL: And before that you know a year and a half before we sold the company we started creating our own sites, you I think well we are good enough now we can definitely put our money on this and so we did and we start creating what we call ([2:24]) sites which are mostly like very ([2:28]) websites that then use the tracking we get from the content to sell stuff to their subscribers and stuff like that, we probably dive a little bit deeper into that later.

That is essentially what we started doing and it went pretty and so we have one case on this site that we show called ([2:43])so we actually give like healthy living tips to people and then recommend products to them as well, and then when we were doing that a lot of people asking us how do you do that I want to do that as well. You know I want to build like a five figure a month website and so that’s how we started authority hacker which is essentially us kind of sharing our real life experience some building these kind of sites.

So you know unlike other market we try to make it real life you know we try to talk about stuff we do know and stuff we read about.

ROBERT: Okay, and today we are going to be focusing on authority site building and authority hacker, you guys follow a process called create, promote, engage and convolve and so today I want us to focus on that process and you can just give us details on about that process and explain it, but before we dive into it can you just explain what authority site building is.

GAEL: I mean essentially it is using the power of content marketing so you know a lot of people do informational searches on the internet and so these far out weight the commercial searches maybe you know 95% of people searching for stuff on line you know hanging on social media consume informational content which some has ways to lead to transactions.

But yes we use that to create site that’s just all around useful to people and then because we are useful we get the people on our site and when we get the people on our site we just smart ways of monetising sometimes it is advertising, while Barry is up and is capturing emails and selling stuff via email or it can be recommending direct contents.

For example is we have an article how to get rid of cellulite naturally and actually like on the outside and actually they are like things like a wooden brush that you can you know brush your skin with which essentially reduces the visibility of cellulite right, and so it is very easy for us to like give daily tips in the free blog post and actually say hey, use that brush it is going to look a lot less visible to the swimming pool is what I am saying.

We link to that people click through and buy and so that would be an example of how we link informational content people that would like to get rid of cellulite to products that match what they are looking for you know and we try to be that bridge between the informational search and you know the copy cat.

ROBERT: And so for an ecommerce business a shopping business somebody who has an on line store how do they strategically create the content that is going to eventually get them the traffic and the sales that they are looking for.

GAEL: I think a lot of the ecommerce sites get it wrong I mean they don’t get it wrong but they don’t fully utilize the potential that they have with their products so you know everyone obviously have their product page where they describe what their product is and you know maybe you can show up in Google or like Pintrest maybe for the name of the product or for the name of the brand that kind of stuff which kind of are very high intent commercial intent searches.

So people that actually land on your site from these queries they buy a lot but you know once again if you are selling that wooden brush for skin to make cellulite less visible then you would have a page for like you know wood skin brush, but what you wouldn’t have is you wouldn’t have the article probable how to get rid of cellulite naturally but ways to have cellulite look less visible, or you know diet tips on like reducing cellulite or you know there is no exercise to reduce cellulites so I am not going to say that.

But you know there is many, many things that the people who will be interested in that product will be searching in terms of informational content so very few ecommerce site, you know like more and more blog very few know how to link their blog that show transactions and that is you basically need to figure out like you need to learn research so understanding.

You need to understand like how to find these ([7:00]) and after than you need to learn how to create content fulfil what people have been searching for so they have been searching for to getting rid of cellulite and not make this a gain advertising for your skin brush you need to give what people came for but then again you can have a next call to action and sure this doesn’t cover as much as the product page but this also gets like 100 more time traffic because how to get rid of cellulite has way more searches than wood skin brush.

ROBERT: And so how does a business find these information or types of cures.

GAEL: There are number of cure tools out there, like I am going to give you a few free one okay. There is a cool new one that called answer the http://public.com and it is an interesting one, you can type cured and it is going to give you all the questions related to that cured, and so if I type cellulite, and I am actually doing it right now and literally it is going to pull up hundreds of questions that people are searching for on line.

And so if you write content the answer to these questions there is an ad for your product on these site this is a really good thing to do as a ecommerce store you know.

ROBERT: And what other tools are there for the cured research.

GAEL: So for the answer for these kind of is great I like to use ([8:23]) as well it is a paid tool but they allow you to be to your competition so you just plug your competitors there and you see all the cures there are in for and the content that does will for them so you can emulate on that, that’s basically what I use actually I literally use these immerse address as well depend on the longer tail cure like you put a sick cure you find all these Google suggestions you know.

So I use these cures basically and I just look a lot at my competitors and that’s it.

ROBERT: So the first thing is figuring out what this what people are really searching for when they looking for.

GAEL What does the product helps people with, people don’t buy your product for the product, people buy your product because they have a need, what is that need, and you need to deeply understand your product for that and you need to understand what people need your product for and ([9:17]) very in sink of base cures and you use these tool to expand on that and you get search for it and then create content on the cure to have good search for you.

ROBERT: Once you have done that you have created that content, how do you promote it how do you get into rank and show up in search engines.

GAEL: Okay, if you took typically Google only then the very easy answer to that is type that cure you are trying to look for take the top ten results check the people that link to them, make better content than   these top ten results like real go crazy my content and email every sing person that leads to top ten in Google and ask them to add them to your page.

ROBERT: And how do you find the people that link to those.

GAEL: I use a track as well they have a data base for that.

ROBERT: Okay so for a track you can use it to find the back links to those results and also for the cure or research.

GAEL: Obviously what you want to do as well you want to work on your site level metrics you know your main authority and that kind of stuff and so another easy way to that is to do a lot of guess posting so finding blogs in your nation providing free content for link to your site all three block content and that’s going to increase your domain authority so if you do both of these things then you are in a pretty good place in terms of links.

Now you know there are other ways to promote your content it doesn’t need to be only Google, we also do like social media so for example for ecommerce Pintrest is not safe right, and so in that case if I was promoting physical products I would and the products are show able and is safe it is not something that is show able on social media then I would waste my time I would focus on search.

If it is something that looks good then what works on Pintrest is pictures in context right so like you would say imagine you sell this wood brush you would want to do a tutorial on using it an you can make one of this mini info graphic using this step of the tutorial and pin on Pintrest and Google when Pintrest get together to pin stuff together these column an enormous amount followers and generates thousands of users a day for us and so we pin these kind of info graphics products in context and you know that leads to a tutorial and in the end if you want to do it yourself click here to buy the brush you know.

ROBERT: Are there others ways to promote the content other than just link building and social media marketing?

GAEL: I mean not really at the end of the day most referral tracking is on the internet is search and social media sure you can get referral traffic from other people site but this happens when link building you know.

ROBERT: Yes and you get your promotion going you already have the cures you already have the content coordinate people are coming to the website they are coming your shopping cart your store, okay once they come what should you be doing with the traffic.

GAEL: When they come to the shopping cart?

ROBERT: Or just to your website that page you are creating all that content you are creating from.

GAEL: Okay I would probably try and capture that email, you know what worked for us first in terms of sales is time limited promotions, but you know I didn’t scarcely do anything just make it sell ten times more you don’t have to be an amazing copy writer you just have to be a giant timer on your page.

So but to run these kind of campaigns you can’t emails to remind them about it, it is kind of the softer conversion that I am going for the sale directly, so I like to create lead magnets I like to create guides PDF etc, and like offer that to people in content and the optin pop ups and we have tested these very extensively and so I really, really walk in on the optin right there, and then after that regularly as a shop owner.

Especially if you have a large selection of products just run like a discount on one item randomly you know every week and don’t make it predictable so people are expecting these sales and wait for the discounts but you know have something that let people do one transaction very often when we go buy one especially if there is a shipping cost, they will add more to their cart and they will buy non discounted products, you know.

ROBERT: Right now we are going to move on to the other side of the authority building process that’s engaged or what is involved when it comes to engaging.

GAEL: Well I mean that’s basically what we were just talking about before, essentially you can I mean you can get on their email list but if you just like do nothing other than selling to them, although we actually have tried that recently and it works pretty well still, but if you can’t value for people want to open your emails, and so it is good to regularly to be basically be part of their lives.

When we have people come to our site and come into our email list on any site, we are like hey, we share this kind of stuff on face book click here to like us on face book and the next week we are like by the way we are on twitter we also share this kind of stuff please follow us etc, essentially we just become part of their lives in every social thing they have.

We also have ads following them etc, we make them engagements events we make them comment on some stuff we make them listen to podcast episode, we essentially give them a little bit of a taste of what we do and then they pick the channel they like the most and then they start engaging with it sharing the content dropping comments just reading.

They don’t even have to do anything just clicking and reading the content that we send them and so we have like the best of sequence where our best content is sent to them regularly at the beginning when they come in so that we basically warm them up to what we do and that is essentially that session which a lot of people ignore you know.

A lot of people go for the kill directly and you know you can do okay without that when you implement your conversion it is not going to show that.

ROBERT: And lastly is conversion, so in the conversion set up what should an ecommerce business be focusing on.

GAEL: It really depends on what you are selling honestly but like I said you know time limited promotions give a good to take action because when you have something that is opened all the time and here all the time and nothing changes people just don’t go a check it out again.

You need to take this audience through your email list through your retargeting list using TPC which you probably should and like make things move around special offers once in awhile it doesn’t have to always be discount it could be like a bundle for example.

So on our outside we are like toying with the idea of selling ([16:38]) for example and rather than giving a discount all the time what we are thinking about doing is like doing bundles of super that are targeted to a specific problem you know. So like we say, hey you have joint pain you need Omega 3 you need this and this and this and like here is the bundle and buy it all together and also the directoring subscription that is available to you every months you know.

So, but what you want you want some new stuff that you can put in front of people all the time that’s what generates sales, scarcity is absolutely massive as well so if they offer clothes and it goes away people take more action way more action. So once you build that email list once you build that content and all that stuff that you work so hard on.

I see so many people build those email lists and never emailing them or they are emailing boring stuff that is just not interesting and you are missing out on hundreds and thousands of dollars literally so work on creating others all the time. You can rotate them you can bring them back but don’t bring them back too often otherwise people get tired of them all people are waiting for discounts before they buy which is another thing.

ROBERT: Out of all that authority site building process out of the 4 steps which one do you think is the most important.

GAEL: I think it is conversion actually, so many people like you know traffic essentially you could buy it you don’t even have to pay the amazing you could literally just buy it, if you convert it is basically once you have something that transforms traffic into money traffic is not a problem anymore, because you can have an affiliate program and people will send you traffic.

You can buy traffic you can do anything and so a lot of people focus on the front end of the phone which is content creation SEO social media etc and you know people get really excited about getting a lot of traffic, but nobody gets excited about their shopping cart conversion rate you know and that’s for me by far the most important step, because once you have a high converting a high value per visiting that you can just go to face book and you know stop buying the traffic and like a profit.

which is what we are doing now and we are still and it’s like the incentive is definitely decreasing as well and is getting better with the conversion rates so it is usually the boring stuff is what gives you the most money.

ROBERT: Do you have any final thoughts about the whole the whole process about just the authority site building is there something we left out.

GAEL: I mean for ecommerce site owners you know as soon as someone visit a product page you know they go from your blog from your content to a product page when you put your call to action, you need to have retargeting as following people, these are extremely, extremely profitable.

If you haven’t set up targeting retargeting yet a fully commercial page not for your blog post this is going to make you so much money.

ROBERT: What is a range retargeting ([19:49]).

GAEL: You can check Ad Word is pretty good I use the face book native platform for face book and other wise for Ad Words I don’t like the Ad Words platform so they ([20:00])I use Ad Word if I want to do that.

ROBERT: Thanks for being on the podcast Gael, how can people reach you if they want to find out about you and just authority hacker.

GAEL: I suggest you just go to authority http://hacker.com and sign up for the mailing list we have the best of sequence we have everything set up a bunch of cool stuff when you sign up actually.

ROBERT: And what about twitter.

GAEL: I am not on twitter lately so I would just sign up for the mailing list through emails, twitter is not something we do that is big right now I mean we have like almost 5000 followers and we not even trying it just like we can’t do every social channel, we can grow every social channel the same time so we messages from not growing there.

ROBERT: And lastly what is the one thing an ecommerce business can do right now to help their business grow.

GAEL: As I said retargeting if you don’t have that website if people already show intent of buying but didn’t especially if they went on the check out page and you are not retargeting them you are missing out on like something like 20% revenue.

ROBERT: Wow, okay Gael thank you for being on the ecommerce marketing podcast.

GAEL: No problem thanks for having me Robert.