Marketing Experts Reveal Top Strategies To

Robert
[00:00:06]
Hey eCommerce marketing podcast list. Now I wanted to let you know that we have created 16 eCommerce marketing videos for you. You can download these free videos by visiting eCommerce marketing podcast.com forward slash videos are by texting the word videos to plus 1 4 8 0 4 1 8 1 4 11. This step by step video marketing tutorials will teach you how to drive more traffic to your eCommerce website. How to get more back links to your eCommerce website and how to optimize your website to get more paid customers. Get the videos right now by visiting eCommerce marketing podcast.com/videos or by texting videos to plus 1 4 8 0 4 1 8 1 4 1 1. Welcome to the eCommerce marketing podcast. Today’s guest is vial Madani from the penny hoarder.com. Welcome to the podcast vial.

Vishal
[00:01:05]
Oh, thank you, Robert. Thanks for having me.

Robert
[00:01:07]
So if you can just give us your background at the penny hoarder and how you ended up at the penny hoard and any other things that you’ve done as far as online and e-commerce businesses.

Vishal
[00:01:20]
Oh, sure. Well, that kind of dates me back to way back in the day. Right? So while I was in university talking about late nineties, started developing sites for customers, people co e-commerce and, and branding sort of websites that would allow these clients to, to sell their products online. It was relatively new in 99, 98, to be able to bring your catalog onto the Mar onto the web. There were, there were, oh my gosh, Neva cart. I mean, there was some really, again, dating myself. There’s some really older stuff that’s not around anymore now. It’s, it’s all about, you know, Shopifys big commerce, woo commerce. So it was about getting their catalogs on online and that’s kind of my entrance into the web development side. And it kind of went into about a year later, what are my earlier clients coming to me and saying, well, we have got this great site.

Vishal
[00:02:10]
What do we do with it? And can you help us market it? Right. So I, I, I just kind of learned about it right at that time. I don’t even, there wasn’t even Google, right? It was more like AOL searching, asking friends networking. And I actually came upon someone in, in Miami where, which is where I was living at the moment at the time. And they, they started to school me into the way that they were generating leads and, and generating traffic. And at that time it was, it was buying traffic from co-registration sites and from sites that were, that were some, some of them were giving away free things. Some of them were selling stuff and, and had exit traffic. So sort of to tap into that and learn a bit more from my own clients, really enjoyed it a lot. So then got, got further into the marketing side of things, digital marketing, and, and actually joined a company for a short stint under a year to help them grow their telecommunications business.

Vishal
[00:03:02]
And it went, it was traditional calling card business. They wanted to start a web web acquisition side and a company whose name was tele three owned by radiant. And, and we helped them build their, what, what eventually became and termed as of their affiliate program where people would promote and, and we’d pay them for, for new customers, but then moved on from there and, and ended up opening my own digital marketing agency. Right. And I had many clients that we did this for, right? Yeah. So multi particles, all business, consumer lead generation, customer acquisition, multichannel. I mean, there was, at that point, it was, you know, there was some search, but really it was about networking network of sites. It’s about contacts who you knew. Ad tech was really small ad tech show in New York and was really tiny. And, and if you knew the right people, you’d be able to tap into that sort of traffic and, and generate the traffic for your clients.

Vishal
[00:03:53]
So that’s kind of how I really got in dug into the, the digital marketing space. I’ve owned many, many companies since then. Like I said, when was agency, I was a publisher at one point when I say publisher, not in the sense in the terms of like a penny hoarder or, or usually publisher, it was more like owning media. Yeah. Owning that had had traffic. And then I’ve also been an advertiser where we were buying traffic, all business, consumer customer acquisition, done online sort of thing. My last one’s called ment where it was an online kids’ consignment store. And what made it online is that you’d request a bag. We’d send it to you, your home via mail. They would fill it up. They’d send it in. We’d appraise it. We’d photograph it. We’d give you appraisal online, send you payment online and then list it for eCommerce online.

Vishal
[00:04:40]
And, and that was a good part of almost two years and built it ended up selling it to the leader in the industry. At that time, the first mover was, the name was threat up is threat up. So they’re still around. They do e-commerce and they moved from kids close to adult female. And both now both adult female and male. So that’s kinda, and point I sold that I is, is when maybe a few months after that four or five months after that, Kyle and I met through a mutual friend and I was at that transitional stage. And he was like, Hey, I’ve got this thing going, it’s doing really well and write this content. And, you know, I could use your expertise and looked at what he was doing. Got, it was really exciting. And the way that we, the type of content we produce and the engagement of our users on social media was, was really enthralling to me and joined him. And it’s, it’s I tell you it’s been a whirlwind it’s, it’s flown by and every minute of it’s exciting and a lot of fun.

Robert
[00:05:37]
Wow. So it’s, it sounds like you’re ready to, to write a book because I mean,

Vishal
[00:05:47]
I longwinded.

Robert
[00:05:48]
Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s like you’ve been through it all. I mean, the last 10 years a lot has changed as far digital marketing and online marketing just within 10 years, but you’ve been, you’ve been here, you know, from the get go, you know, the late nineties till right now. So I’m sure today’s going to be a great episode and you can share some great things from everything you’ve seen. That’s walked over all these years, but before we get into it, just explain to us what’s the penny hoarder for some of the listeners who don’t know.

Vishal
[00:06:20]
Absolutely. So the penny hoarder, it is a, a website that is about personal finance, but for the average Joe or Jane, we generated 2016. We generated, generated 20 million in revenue. We are around 25 million page views per month and mostly social. It’s a very shareable content, right? So it’s like something might look like, you know, nine apps that, that can help you budget more efficiently and save, save you a certain amount of money per per month or, or per week. Right. And, and we’ll, we would’ve, what’s different about us. And I think that that a lot of other publishers may not be doing is that we have a research team that goes out and they check out the apps and they experience it themselves and they see how they work and, and the pros and cons, and really pulling out that value pro proposition and differentiations between each one and sometimes commonalities.

Vishal
[00:07:14]
And we’ll recommend, you know, and not we will review it. And I guess through, by way of narrow, narrowing it down to the most important ones, recommend these nine, right. And what, and, and give them our, our own take on it and how we used it and what it saved us. So that whole idea of, of vetting and going through the process of learning what that product does and how it does it, and then communicating that to our users, our users trust us because we’re honest about it. And so that, that’s kind of what the penny hoarder is, is a, it’s a publication of digital finance.

Robert
[00:07:47]
Okay. And now to get into eCommerce marketing, what are some of the top strategies that you think listeners should invest in to grow their eCommerce businesses?

Vishal
[00:08:02]
Sure. It’s a broad question. And, and I guess, so interestingly enough, I just came out of a, a really interesting conference on digital publishing and, and I, I think you see it everywhere now, even in, in many articles that are written about this duopoly, right. Facebook and Google, right. And they they’re, they’re, they’re gonna own the world cuz they, they, they own the media, the digital media, the largest growing, the fastest growing and the largest in revenue. It was last year of growth, 15 to 16. It was like 50 per 50, some odd percent growth of, of Google and, and somewhere in the mid forties for Facebook, but catching up really fast, exponential growth rates. Right. So, you know, that said, I think there’s no secret that these two are the, the trough of traffic that, that, that one can tap into, if you can get it right.

Vishal
[00:08:48]
And, and, and really the strategy is about, about how to get it, right. It’s not about where to go. And you know, what we’ve experienced here at the penny hoarder is, is honesty is, is probably the most important thing, right? Because when you, when you’re looking at something like Facebook, which is one of the fastest growing of the group, is that it, it, since it’s social, it’s, it’s completely transparent, right? So there’s no, you know, you have to be honest in what you’re offering and, and not only honest in what you’re offering, they’re very true to your value proposition, right. Understanding what it is. And, and sometimes just the, the, either the founder or the founding team or that, that understands their competition and, and everything about them and what, and, and I guess what problem you’re trying to solve at the end of the day and how well it solves it, right.

Vishal
[00:09:35]
If you get that right, and you can communicate it, you can, you can build off of that and start communicating it properly through your value proposition and to your consumers and your ad copy. So going back to, you know, strategy it’s, if, if you’re choosing something like a Facebook or social media to buy, to, to generate your traffic, it’s about getting the ad copy, right. And many, many sets of ad copy, right. It might take thousands of, of AB tests to get that one that works and then a thousand more, or 2000 more to get another one. But it’s, it’s really about freshness of, of, of ads. Right. And once you get that messaging, right. And there’s no such thing as too many, I think, in this case.

Robert
[01:10:15]
Okay. And so you’ve mentioned two things. The first one was honesty. The second one was testing different a sets, but to go back on honesty, can you, what do you mean by honesty? How can a business be? How can a business use being honest to, to try and get customers and knowing customers over?

Vishal
[01:10:38]
What I mean to there is, is really, is there are many companies that use dishonest, I guess, misleading practices or misleading taglines or headlines. That’s one example. Another would be calling out a value proposition that really isn’t there, or, or saying you’re better than another particular product and not really substantiating that. Right. It’s about presenting correctly and, and delivering and even better if you over deliver what you promised.

Robert
[01:11:06]
Okay. And so I guess the, some companies have to make sure they stand out in the crowd, they have competitors, and some of them might be liberal as far as trying to make sure that they stand out. So how can they still be honest? I mean, let’s say we’re looking at two companies, we’re looking at Coke and Pepsi. Let’s, let’s look at Coke and Pepsi. I mean, they both have their customer. I’m a Coke person. Honestly, there’s nothing Pepsi can do. They can’t pay me a billion dollars at the end of the day. I love Coke for reason. Yeah. But when Coke and Pepsi is advertising to me, Pepsi, if, if, if they’re coming to me, they know like I’m a Coke person. There’s nothing they can do to convert me, but they still want to stand out. They make, make some crazy claims to try and get my attention. So if a business is making a crazy claim to try and get attention while they’re still, I guess, you know, you’re kind of getting into a gray area. You’re still being honest. I mean, Pepsi, can’t come, can’t come to me and say, we know our soda, you know, you don’t like the taste, but we are still better than cook, I guess, you know, how can they make themselves stand out while still being honest to me.

Vishal
[01:12:24]
So think of, I’m hearing you correctly. You’re talking about like the shock and all sort of, right, right, right. Yeah. I think that that definitely belongs in, in a, in its own category. Right. There’s, that’s more like, you know, you’re trying to get it’s branding. You’re trying to get attention in a lot of the environment that, that digital marketing lives in, especially in the size of, of a lot of these, these organizations, it’s all ROI based. There’s, there’s not, they’re not spending a ton a lot, a ton of time on branding. Therefore, a lot of it has to do, it’s very factual in many cases, or there might be some shocking on it. I’ve seen them for sure. When you actually go out and buy media, you’re looking for a dollar, spent a dollar out and I get a dollar 10 back or a dollar 20 back, whatever your number might be. And it’s almost immediate, that’s the beauty of digital media. Right. And I think in a lot of cases like this, to be able to get that immediate ROI, it’s, it’s a direct message. It’s almost direct, like direct response.

Robert
[01:13:17]
Yeah. And so the other thing you had mentioned was creating hundreds of different access to try and test and optimize. You have any tips as far as doing that, but still at a cheap affordable price because you know, some companies are not at that level where they can spend thousands of dollars on testing.

Vishal
[01:13:39]
Yeah, absolutely. I they’re. I guess it’s all, you’re absolutely right. I mean, it does, it definitely takes money. I, I would say extend as far as, as far as your budget can go in testing it, maximize it, it it’s. I think the tactics we’re all using are very similar, you know, setting a cap of the amount you’re spending per day, making sure you, you don’t, you know, lose all your, or push all your budget out in one, go without proving anything. The point I’m trying to make here is just, just expend as much as you possibly can in testing, even when you have some really successful campaigns use that, use that opportunity to take the excess funds and throw it back into more testing is it will usually yield you more, more funds. It’s it’s a lot of elbow grease and it’s a lot of work, but that’s usually where you see your, where we’ve seen our success.

Robert
[01:14:23]
And what should people be testing in these ads? Is it, is it the copy? Is it the headlines, pictures? Where should they be testing?

Vishal
[01:14:33]
So I know this is not what, what you would, you pro probably wanna hear Robert, but it’s all of them.

Robert
[01:14:38]
Yeah. All

Vishal
[01:14:39]
Of them, it really is. I mean, and it’s not. And, and you know, what’s crazy is that it might not even be a specific, it might, might not even be, be a specific combination. It might be the time you run the same combination and not, you know, it, that it actually takes off there’s. So it’s just, it really boils down to mul multiple tests across copy, headline, tagline, and an image it’s just excess testing.

Robert
[01:15:04]
Okay. Thanks for being on the part visual. If people wanted to reach you, how can they reach you?

Vishal
[01:15:10]
Sure. They can email me at, at Beal the penny hoarder.com.

Robert
[01:15:14]
Okay. Are you on Twitter

Vishal
[01:15:16]
Or? Sure. LinkedIn Twitter. My LinkedIn is, is V Madani that’s V M a H T a N I, and they can reach me there as well. Just linkedin.com/vma and message me there.

Robert
[01:15:33]
Okay. And the last question I have for you is what is one thing an eCommerce business can do today to get more traffic and get more customers?

Vishal
[01:15:46]
I, I think this, this really boils down to product and communicate back to communication of product, right? It’s not just about value proposition and communication value proposition, but it’s, it’s looking at it from many angles, right? So maybe from, for instance, an influencer, an influencer angle, right? So maybe, you know, us as an influencer, the penny hoarder might, might take a, a financial stance on it. Right. But there might be another influencer. That’s some sort of sports star that would take it from a, a different angle, right? It is finding the right influencers and maybe even cross several different verticals or, or, or areas of, of influence and working the correct angle of your product to them and having them endorse it or, or, or write about it so that you have, so you have a voice, a third party that people trust. And most of these, I mean, at least with us, we, we wouldn’t write about it unless we, we believe in it.

Visha
l[01:16:40]
And I think a lot of people on the web that are searching and see something with our brand on it. And, and many other publishers are in, in the same boat that if, if you have somebody writing about it and something positive about it, you’d actually, and sometimes even bringing out some, some cons, they, they can write pro pros, but when you, when you have some cons in there too, and it, it’s fine, it’s, it’s honest. And, and having that sort of backing allows you to, to gain that sort a good reputation and help get through the funnel to conversion.

Robert
[01:17:08]
Thanks for being on the podcast, Al

Vishal
[01:17:10]
You’re welcome. Thanks for so much for having me, Robert,

Robert
[01:17:13]
Thank you for listening to the eCommerce marketing podcast. Join the eCommerce marketing podcast, Facebook group to learn, connect, collaborate, and grow with other eCommerce marketers@ecommercemarketingpodcastdotcomslashfbwww.ecommercemarketingpodcast.com slash FB. Subscribe to us on iTunes by searching for eCommerce marketing podcast, and please leave a rating and a review. Thank you for listening to you next time.