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 Zachary Hallon from myw.com. Welcome to the podcast, Zachary, how are you doing

Zac
[00:01:06]
Good, Robert, thank you so much for having me.

Robert
[00:01:07]
Should I just call you Zachary or just Zach for short?

Zac
[00:01:11]
Zach works is the AC not a problem.

Robert
[00:01:13]
Okay. Is the AC Zach. So if you could just give us a quick overview and background about how you started my tool.com, what you guys sell. And then after that, we can talk about the marketing strategies that you guys are using.

Zac
[00:01:27]
Sure. So tool started three years ago and my dusty basement in upstate historic Albany, New York, and my younger brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia a couple years ago, and it prompted me to start giving back business 2013. I saw the need for warm textiles and winter hats and winter blankets in a mental institution. And I, and I, I saw that people needed support and I wanted to start a business that gave back to local people and, and our customers could choose those local people and not-for-profits that are serving underprivileged children and families. So started about three years ago and we sell TWI blankets, beanies toe bags, and we’re starting some new products as we move forward.

Robert
[00:02:12]
So that’s actually very, I guess not, I guess, but it’s very impressive and also honorable and also good to have a business where you’re giving back to the community and you’re doing something good and you’re just not profit driven.

Zac
[00:02:28]
Right? Exactly. And it’s very important to us. I’m, I’m born and raised in the Albany area. I’ve been here for 30 years. I’m one of seven, five boys, two girls. My, you know, we started with nothing, you know, I sold my car and self-funded this business with $2,000. It’s not backed by some major VCs or industrial capital, you know, it’s backed by, you know, blood, sweat and tears of all of our team members here in, in the region.

Robert
[00:02:50]
Okay. And you said it’s been three years?

Zac
[00:02:53]
Yeah, it’s been about three years. We did a one year research and development in 14 and we put our first year of sales together in 15 and we’re in our sophomore year of sales now.

Robert
[00:03:01]
Okay. And in those three years, can you tell us, oh, I guess we, we, we can just focus on the last 12 months in the last 12 months, what are some of the top marketing strategies that you’re actually using to drive growth?

Zac
[00:03:16]
Yeah, it it’s storytelling. It’s social. The drive referral traffic is through Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, and even Snapchat as that grows as well too. But it really comes down to storytelling, getting out there and getting the story out there through Facebook and through, through, through where our customers live. When we started up, we, we started building our campaign through Facebook, cuz it was free and, and in sort of culture, anything with that for it is great. Free is great. So we inherently started out on Facebook. It started growing our, our likes and our engagement on Facebook and, and Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat. You know, here we are three years later, we’ve got almost 11,000 likes on Facebook and we, we retarget them on Facebook. So we will constantly get new people into the bin, but we’re always constantly targeting those folks that we have. Cause we wanna make sure that they know that we’re alive, you know?

Robert
[00:04:06]
Yeah. And you say it’s storytelling. So how do you tell the story for TWI? How do you use that in the social platforms to get customers?

Zac
[00:04:18]
I think that’s the most important. That’s the secret sauce. And I did an interview a couple weeks ago with, with a similar question. I love this question. The secret sauce is, is storytelling. It’s not selling anymore. So, so many people are so sick and tired of being sold to especially millennials who are owning 30% of the purchasing power in the, in the economy. They want to hear stories. They wanna hear authenticity. They want products that care about the community. They want social, you know, they want conscious capitalism. And, and that’s what we provide. You know, we provide a high quality item that inherently benefits the community when somebody purchases. So customers are right off the bat become philanthropist, which is great. So it’s, you know, to gain them, to gain their attention, you know, to gain their eyeballs and attention and feedback is to do high, high resolution photos of not pretty girls, but of, of people that matter in the community. You know, you see a lot of bigger corporations will put out ads with, you need to look like this type of advertising. I think we fall on the line of, of humil humility and telling stories about real people and our customers love that. They love the authenticity of individuals who have breakthroughs and who have, who get through difficult times in life. Cuz that’s what our company’s about. Okay. So that’s what, that’s what we’ve been able to

Robert
[00:05:34]
Do. So let’s maybe give an example because since you’re using pictures, like what type of pictures are you selecting? What’s the action in the picture? How is the product prominent within the picture to, to make that connection so that I get, okay so I can get this beanie. And when I buy this beanie, I know that part of the money is going to go towards this charity. But how do you convey that in, in an image and make sure that when different people, you target audiences, looking at this image, that they’ll all get the message you want them to get.

Zac
[00:06:14]
You know, that’s, that’s so poignant and I think extremely important, you know, we we’ve been able to use Facebook live Snapchat, Instagram stories to capture video. Video engagement is increasing so much recently that we’ve been able, able to provide often authenticity of our dropoffs to the, not to not-for-profit partners that we link up with. So anytime a corporation comes in and buys some of our product or an individual is able to buy a product, they’re gonna be served content of our dropoffs. They’re gonna be served authentic dropoffs that are happening shortly after they purchase our corporate partners, depending on the level that they select with us and the program that they want to get involved with, they’re able to join us. They’re screened. They’re able to join us on the, on, on the drop off. So we’re providing this really authentic platform of giving and you can see it right on our Facebook.

Zac
[00:07:03]
You can see it on our website and you go, you know, we have, we have Facebook live, we have Snapchat, we have Instagram stories. You know, I’m scrolling down my Facebook feed right now from our, our tool business page. And what you see is children receiving warm tool blankets, having fun, I’m beaten, staying positive. You know, you see our corporate partners, you see family, it’s a brand attitude. The brand attitude is, is warmth and inspiration, fun and family. It’s not poor me. Poor me. No, this is what we’re doing. We’re inspiring young minds. We’re inspiring adults to come and join us. So it’s really been tremendous, tremendous past couple years.

Robert
[00:07:39]
Okay. And as you continue to grow and you’ve given yourself certain goals that you want to reach as far as how many people, you know, you want to expand your reach and you want to get this certain number in traffic and generate this type of revenue, how are you tracking all of this and what are you doing to improve the results and go towards the goals you you’re trying to pursue?

Zac
[00:08:06]
Okay. So the first thing on the tracking side of thing, which is so important, few tools that we’re using is Shopify and Google analytics. We’re walking, we’re walking the line through Google analytics with SEO keyboard analysis, same thing with Shopify. We’re seeing where the, the referral traffic’s coming from and how long people are staying on our site and what keywords they’re inputting and how they’re, you know, basically each sale has a Clicktail to it. So we’re able to track that information. We’re able to track when someone purchase something we’re able to track, whether they’re coming from a Google search, whether they’re coming from Facebook, LinkedIn, or any of those social referral sources or direct referral sources like a Google search. So right now it’s, I’ll be honest with you. It’s 50 50. You’ll see about 50% of the people who land on our website, Google, Google search us.

Zac
[00:08:54]
And then the other 50 come from us through some sort of social platform. And that’s where we’ve continue to enrich our efforts in the social platform because we’re continuing to see that traffic spike through Facebook and Instagram. And for us, it’s like, okay, let’s stick with what works let’s build. You know, let’s build a, a great following on Facebook and let’s track that and, and retarget those folks and kind of keep them in the loop constantly. So those are two portals that we’re using right now and they’re providing some really great feedback and they’re gonna help us get the scale eventually as well.

Robert
[00:09:27]
So how do you use that data from the Shopify reporting and the Google analytics once you have both of them integrated, but when you’re looking at that data, how do you digest it and then figure out how you’re going to increase people to spend

Zac
[00:09:48]
Yeah, it comes down to customer acquisition, right? So, you know, how much are we spending and how much revenue’s being generated on that spend, you know, can we track tracking ROI and, and, and, and quite honestly, it’s not a perfect science. There’s some things as any marketer would tell you is there’s some things you just can’t account for. We try our best to attach ROI through the Google searches to our Facebook campaigns, cuz we feel as if someone’s for a certain percentage anyway, based on Google analytics and their path, we’re seeing that people are hitting that Facebook ad. And then they’re sitting for a little bit and we haven’t gotten into Facebook dynamic ads yet, which we will get into, which will have help track better. But we’re able to, you know, dedicate a certain portion of those Google searches to social a social ad.

Zac
[01:10:35]
They were able to see the content, they were hit again with a social ad and then they Google searched us maybe 24 hours later or whatever the case may be. So what we do is we take a look at those numbers. We take a look at what customer acquisition is per user. And then we see if we want to increase our spending on what’s working or what’s not working. I mean, quite frankly, all of our advertising right now, our marketing strategy has been social and through Facebook ads that one other dime has been spent in print or any other digital advertising. If you want, if you wanna know the honest, brutal truth, we’ve spent strictly through Facebook ads because we’re retargeting our following. We’re able to see them. We’re able to put them in bins and segment them out based on behavior and interaction.

Robert
[01:11:15]
Okay. You’re not even getting customers from SEO. Most of your customers is just coming from paid.

Zac
[01:11:22]
Yeah. It’s, it’s paid, it’s paid analytics or sorry, paid SCM from, from Facebook. It’s it’s paid advertising, sponsored ads. Whether it be a like campaign, whether it be a website campaign shop, tab campaign, we built up the following first and organically and then we hit them with sponsored ads so we can Enri, you know, we can get them to our website to check out essentially.

Robert
[01:11:45]
Okay. And what resources, like, how did you learn? Are you doing this? Do you have like a marketing manager or how did you learn to do all this SCM paid advertising?

Zac
[01:12:00]
Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. I taught myself, I didn’t have any, I don’t have a marketing background. I knew about people. I have a sociology degree from the university at Albany that I’m very proud of. And, and, and I also have my master’s from adolescent and special education. So I understand adults and I understand children very well. And I understand what their wants and needs are from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to what shoppers want. I study people when I first developed my first product, I went out to buy by baby and pretended to be a female shopper. I pretended to be a mom. You know, I pretended to be a pregnant woman. I asked everybody questions. I asked people that were shopping questions cuz I’m not crazy. And to be a content marketer and to be, to be one, a business owner as well, you gotta be a little crazy.

Zac
[01:12:42]
So I try to get all the baseline of data I could and understand our customer. And then that is what yielded the content. So understanding my customer and the story of where we come from being 1 0 7, having a wonderful mother, having a great family, to understanding that there’s other families out there struggling to them wanting quality products and, and products that care about the, the, the planet people and profit that’s most important. So we’re able to build this nice, wonderful following and it’s it’s it’s, it’s truly wonderful. So, and the short answer is Rob is just, I, I taught myself, I spent the 10,000 hours. I, I stood up, stayed up till [6:00] AM, learning SM and SEO, the best I could. And I don’t know all of it, but I tell you, I know more about Facebook’s ad spend than the average bear. I know more about Facebook dynamic ads and Google shopping than the average bear. And then the average entrepreneur does because I stayed up and I watch YouTube videos and I teach myself, I, I am a, an apprentice still, even though I’m the CEO of this company, I’m still an apprentice and I love to learn.

Robert
[01:13:44]
So the goal of this podcast is to teach other people in your situation, how they can grow and get more sales and traffic. So what resources did you use? Like, can you give some of the listeners, some of the resources you used to teach yourself?

Zac
[01:14:01]
Yeah, I, I, you know, the first thing is, is fail. That’s the first thing. If you, if you guys are listening out there and you’re an entrepreneur and you’re just starting out, you’re thinking about going into social or Google or PPC or whatever the heck it is, fail a little bit, put some money aside, put 500 bucks aside, put a hundred bucks aside and watch these things work. Okay. Put some money into a Facebook sponsored ad Facebook and, and some of these social platforms, Google specifically are so good at building algorithms. Let’s not rebuild the wheel on what these platforms are offering currently. And it wasn’t like this before, when I first started Facebook auto populates. And so is Instagram, which I love they, autopopulate your suggested target demo. It does the work for you, which is beautiful. Now they do suggest high spending and you know, that could be interesting, but the way you counteract high spending is you lower the bid price and you put in a high res image, that’s funny and captivating with a high caption and you draw people in organically and you let that paid spend go a little bit further.

Zac
[01:15:12]
I see what I see over and over is too many times people are putting in sales ads on a Facebook spend and they’re not getting the reaction that they want. The only objective that you have on a Facebook sponsored ad is to get someone to click that darn thing. And to do that, you have to have fun Woody content or compelling interest.

Robert
[01:15:32]
Okay. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. I think that’s going to be helpful to a lot of listeners within the last 12 months. What have, what have been some of your struggles as far as marketing or just with your business?

Zac
[01:15:45]
Well, I mean, well, we’re still in the startup phase. You know, we were very understaffed or underfunded, bootstrap and everything. I, you know, for three years why I built this business with my brother and a dear friend of mine, I, you know, I also worked in a daycare. I worked full 40, 50 hours a week, 60 hours a week at a daycare doing PR website development. And I ran a location with 70 kids. So I was chasing kids around for quite some time. So again, you gotta be a little bit crazy. So, you know, early mornings during the day and at night I would stay up and do my till time. But you know, there there’d be points where I’d have to go to work and be a director for daycare or, or build a website. So time management was so key, but to get to your question about the, I guess the, not the negativities, but the, the shortcomings are that we need to run a little bit faster in this startup phase.

Zac
[01:16:32]
You know, we have to get, we have to kind of, it’s not, it’s sort of like cutting the fat, you know, we have to figure out where we can be most targeted. I’m gonna flip it on inside actually. So I downloaded this app called mile IQ and what it does, it auto populates your driving record when, whether it’s personal or business and you can log it for your taxes for next year. It’s a wonderful app. I saw the commercial. I saw the ad on Facebook. I saw I was served it over and over. Cause they, they copied me. I was their targeted user. I was the business man, young businessman who needed something like that. The time that that commercial was served to me and the time and, and in the time that I’ll served, that Facebook ad was within 20 seconds. And I was a $60 user within 20 seconds’s. You have to become extremely, highly targeted because you’re wasting time, money, and energy on people that don’t want your content. So for us, we have to get even more targeted. We’re 79% female we’re moms or organic moms, social consumer millennials between the ages of 18 and roughly about 55. We’ve gotta get really highly targeted. And I think we’ll see better results in the future.

Robert
[01:17:47]
Okay. So actually you, you bring up a good point at the beginning of the podcast, I asked, okay, what’s the one strategy that’s being driving sales. And you said storytelling right now. You just mentioned be, have knowing your target audience between the two, which one do you think has been most important for your business or which one do you think eCommerce businesses should focus on and prioritize over the others? So the storytelling, understanding your brand and yeah. Telling your story, versus understanding your customer and then target in.

Zac
[01:18:28]
Well, that, that’s the thing. I think what you have to do first is you have to story, tell for it almost goes into phases, right? You have to story tell, and then see who’s gonna like your content, because that was the first thing you have to, you know, we were, we painted a broad stroke and you know, when we painted that broad stroke, we realized that men 40 forward a men, 44 to 55 didn’t really respond well right to our content and to our storytelling when we first started. So I think it comes in phases. So your story tell you, get your brand out there and then you start analyzing. So that’s the first thing it’s really comes in these phases phase one story, tell, paint a broad, broad stroke, and then see who’s interacting with that on social cuz it’s so highly trackable and Facebook gives you wonderful insights.

Zac
[01:19:13]
And so does Google analytics see what your demo is? See who keeps interacting, who’s opening up your emails. And then eventually at the bottom of the bin is a ball of customers that are all the same or, or fit into this mold. And it’s, it’s wonderful because they respond quick to your, to your content and they interact faster. So when you have that ball or that mold of customer, all your lead generation, your lead magnets, all your new blood, we call it should be targeted towards that mold. And that way you can focus, you don’t have to focus on energies going after men 44 to 55, you can focus on going after the 79% female demo. That’s 25 to 44 pest two and a half kids, three and a half dogs, whatever the case may be.

Robert
[02:20:02]
Do you have other distribution channels for my tool? Or do you just use Shopify? You already said, you know, it’s going to be 79, 80%, the female demo and the millennials. So how do you just sell them, bring them to Shopify or do you have other places where you can go and sell to them?

Zac
[02:20:24]
Sure. So believe it or not. One of a very kind of moving forward program we have is our corporate giving program. This channel is not e-commerce, it’s actually a traditional selling. It’s actually quite, quite wonderful where we have corporations, universities, small colleges, you know, banks, automobile dealerships that come in from a, for a corporate giving program. And the invoices are much higher than the individual consumer where, you know, our typical spend checkouts, maybe $54 and 86 cents while a typical invoice for a corporate giving program can be anywhere from $2,600 all the way to a hundred thousand dollars. And, and once foul swoop of a check, which is wonderful. And these folks are again, highly targeted individuals as well that our sales team sits down and goes over every Monday. So we get down into traditional sales, traditional sales with large companies that are national, that have national implications as well as the local university or the local bank that wants to get back to the local community. It’s keeping it hyper hyperlocal right now and then copy and pasting that model to a, a national level.

Robert
[02:21:34]
Okay, thanks for being on the podcast, Zach, you’ve shared a lot and I think you’ve provided a lot of helpful information and also at the same time, thank you for having a business where you actually giving back and helping and inspiring others.

Zac
[02:21:50]
Absolutely. I would, Robert, I would love to share the podcast, feel free to send me a link and I will get this out there. And I would love to hear more, more entrepreneurs. If they have any questions, feel free to have them reach out to me. How

Robert
[02:22:02]
Can people reach you?

Zac
[02:22:03]
Sure. So our again, it’s called TWI our website’s my twi.com and my email is Zach, my twill.com. It’s Zac feel, feel free to email me, check me out on LinkedIn Facebook, and I hope everybody’s rock enroll in. And thanks again, Robert really do appreciate the opportunity.

Robert
[02:22:21]
The last question I usually ask this question at the end of each podcast, what is the one thing an eCommerce business can do right now to help the business grow, get traffic or get sales?

Zac
[02:22:34]
I think video content, if you want my honest opinion, I am headed towards the video content spec spectrum. I have to, we have to, if we don’t, we’re gonna fall behind Facebook. Live is getting so much traction right now. If you are an e-commerce owner and you have an online store and you’re trying to, you know, do PPC B blah, blah, blah, blah, SEO, and S se are great. But what, what social does and what Facebook engagement does, it, it extrapolates that faster because there’s live people out there watching you and they can interact so much faster. So if you’re an e-commerce platform out there and you’re on Shopify, you’re on square, you’re on all those things and you got a decent product. And following you have to get into the video business. That’s where everybody’s eyeballs are going. Snapchat is not growing a hundred percent by the second because of no reason at all. Instagram’s stories is growing and growing live video is happening folks, and we need to get on it now.

Robert
[02:23:31]
Okay, Zach, thanks again for being on the podcast.

Zac
[02:23:34]
You got Rob, have a great day.

Robert
[02:23:36]
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.