> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Joe Putnam, founder of Conversion Engine, about scaling Shopify brands from six to eight figures. Joe shares advanced strategies for e-commerce growth, including bold branding, creative diversity in Meta ads, and leveraging AI for customer insights. He emphasizes the importance of emotional storytelling, data-driven decision-making, and retention marketing. The discussion features actionable advice, real-world case studies, and tools for understanding customer psychology, offering listeners a practical roadmap to achieve rapid and sustainable e-commerce growth.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Branding That Stands Out
Joe discusses the importance of bold branding, taking risks, and not trying to please everyone.

00:00:18 Podcast Introduction & Guest Background
Introduction to the Ecom Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley, and guest Joe Putnam’s credentials.

00:00:32 Scaling Shopify Brands: The Mission
Josh shares his journey and introduces Joe’s expertise in scaling Shopify stores from six to eight figures.

00:01:57 Welcome & Episode Focus
Joe is welcomed; the episode’s focus on strategies for seven-figure e-commerce sellers is introduced.

00:02:25 Meta Ad Creative & 2026 Trends
Joe highlights the importance of ad creative for Meta campaigns and adapting to recent changes.

00:03:07 Meta’s Andromeda Update & Creative Diversity
Discussion of Meta’s Andromeda update and the need for diverse ad creatives and angles.

00:04:41 Implementing Creative Diversity
Joe explains how his agency researches and implements diverse ad angles to target different buyer personas.

00:05:35 Stitch Fix Example: Ad Angles in Practice
Joe uses Stitch Fix to illustrate the power of multiple creative angles in ad campaigns.

00:08:34 Case Study: Scaling a Six-Figure Brand
Josh asks about rapid growth case studies; Joe details how a six-figure brand scaled to eight figures in 12 months.

00:11:58 Profitability & Retention Strategies
Discussion on front-end profitability, launching email/SMS, and the impact of retention marketing.

00:12:46 Scaling Ad Spend & Knowing Your Numbers
Challenges of scaling ad spend, understanding total addressable market, and the importance of knowing financial metrics.

00:16:13 Creative Strategy for Scaling
Joe explains the importance of strategic, research-driven creative rather than just increasing ad volume.

00:17:09 Lightning Rod Strategy & Viral Products
Joe describes using controversial products to drive engagement and lower ad costs.

00:19:17 Consumer Psychology & Emotional Storytelling
The importance of understanding customer psychographics and emotional storytelling in ad strategy.

00:21:30 Brand DNA & Emotional Messaging
Joe discusses brand DNA research and customer sentiment analysis to create emotionally resonant ads.

00:22:20 Case Study: Country Lifestyle Brand
A case study on using emotional storytelling to scale a country lifestyle brand rapidly.

00:24:29 Branding, Trust, and Competing on Amazon
Josh and Joe discuss building brand trust to compete against overseas knockoffs, especially on Amazon.

00:27:56 Emotional Connection & Customer Insights
The role of emotional connection in branding and tools for understanding customer psychographics.

00:28:24 Customer Sentiment Analysis Process
Joe outlines his process for analyzing customer reviews and Reddit posts to inform ad angles and messaging.

00:29:38 Selling Through Ads & Copywriting
The importance of ads that sell, matching copy length to product complexity, and leveraging emotional triggers.

00:31:49 AI in Marketing & Copywriting
Discussion on how Joe’s agency uses AI (ChatGPT, Claude) for sentiment analysis, copywriting, and process optimization.

00:35:30 AI Best Practices & Data Integration
Josh and Joe discuss the importance of feeding AI accurate data and integrating it with business metrics.

00:36:25 Three Actionable Takeaways
Josh summarizes three key takeaways: strategy selection, having a brand “hill to die on,” and building retention-focused brands.

00:39:33 Bonus Takeaway: Customer-Driven Creative
Joe adds the importance of basing creative decisions on real customer insights and research.

00:40:06 Rapid-Fire Questions: Book, AI Tool, Influencers
Joe shares his most influential book, favorite AI tool, and under-the-radar e-commerce experts to follow.

00:43:22 Where to Connect with Joe Putnam
Joe shares where listeners can find him online and learn more about Conversion Engine.

00:43:48 Podcast Closing
Podcast outro and call to subscribe and leave a review.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Books

Case Studies

Strategies and Concepts

People to Follow

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started my business in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com and in your subject line say “strategy audit” for the chance to win a $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit at no cost!

Transcript Area:

Joe Putnam 00:00:00  If you’re not making some people mad, then you’re not branding hard enough. and you know, any brand we’ve worked with on almost any brand, there’s somebody at some level has some type of pushback on it. You know, you want to be taking some risks and you want to stand out for your customers. So you need to know who your customers are and you’re not trying to make everybody happy.

MC 00:00:18  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. Are you ready to unlock the full potential and growth in your business? You’ve already crossed seven figures in sales, but the challenge is knowing how to take your business to the next level.

Josh Hadley 00:00:32  How would you like to scale your brand from six figures to over eight figures in sales on Shopify in just 12 months? Well, Joe has done it, and today we’re going to be breaking down exactly how. Welcome to the Ecom Breakthrough Podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley. I scaled my own brand from 0 to 8 figures in sales, and now my mission is to take it to over nine figures in sales.

Josh Hadley 00:00:51  On my journey to nine figures, I bring you the unfiltered conversations with the smartest minds in e-commerce. Past guests include Ezra Firestone, Kevin King, and Michael E Gerber, author of the E myth. Today, I am excited to introduce you all to Joe Putnam. Joe is the founder of Conversion Engine. It is an e-commerce performance marketing agency that has helped Shopify stores scale from 6 to 8 figures in as little as 12 months, with a background in direct response, copywriting and growth strategy. Joe specializes in crafting meta ads, Google campaigns, and retention strategies that actually convert. He’s helped brands like Bogey Bros, No Rivals, Salt Mafia and Back Down South Clothing Co unlock rapid growth, including scaling one store from 650 K to over 10 million in a single year. Joe is passionate about demystifying marketing for entrepreneurs, sharing those frameworks in real case studies that help brands build sustainable growth instead of just chasing quick wins. When Joe’s not helping brand scale, you’ll find him training for triathlons, exploring the outdoors, or investing in the next wave of business growth opportunities.

Josh Hadley 00:01:57  With that introduction, Welcome to the show, Joe.

Joe Putnam 00:01:59  Hey, it’s great to.

Josh Hadley 00:02:00  Be here, Joe. Super excited to have you on. Super impressive. You know, background of being able to scale stores up on Shopify. And I’m sure you’re seeing, you know, e-commerce continue to evolve in today’s day and age. So Joe, as we dive in to today’s episode, you’re speaking to seven figure ecommerce sellers. What are some of the things that are on the forefront of your mind that are working, that we’re going to be diving into, that you think people need to be listening to?

Joe Putnam 00:02:25  Yeah, I think one of the things that we’re very focused on right now, I’m very focused on right now, is basically ad creative for meta ad campaigns and the things you can do to make your ad creative and your ads more successful and, you know, kind of use that as a leverage point in 2026. So I’m sure you’re aware, and most listeners are aware that that meta has changed a lot over the last kind of 2 to 3 years.

Joe Putnam 00:02:50  But one thing that hasn’t changed is, you know, one of the levers you can pull that has the biggest impact on results for either you know, your return on ad spend or scaling your brand. Is is the quality and the effectiveness of your creative. So you have a lot of points there that we can we can talk about today for brand owners.

Josh Hadley 00:03:07  Love that meta continues to evolve. And that’s I think the key part is being able to keep up with all of these changes. And so Joe, one of those things is obviously like creative diversity. We have the Andromeda update as well. So why don’t you dive straight into that? Because I think that’s the latest kind of like wave of things that have changed on meta, which is how most people are driving traffic to their Shopify storefront. So what’s the new Andromeda update? Kind of peel back the curtain and help our listeners understand what’s going on?

Joe Putnam 00:03:35  Sure. Yeah. So related to that update, and that’s one of the the biggest things, most recent things that people have been talking about, although, you know, it’s been a little while now, so it’s not like it happened last month.

Joe Putnam 00:03:44  It’s a change that was made and people have been adjusting to. But essentially one of the main things with it is meta made a change where there’s a need to have more creative diversity. And the whole point of it is having different types of ads and a diversity of creative, where Meta’s goal is to find new pockets of buyers with that creative. And so kind of one of the things that they were, you know, kind of saying or adjusting for is a lot of times in an ad account, you’ll have maybe even a large number of creative. But even if you have, you know, 40, 50, even 100 ads in an ad account, it’s still possible that those ads are not very diverse. They might, you know, a lot of them are the same angles. They’re designed a similar way. And so one of the things that’s important in 2026 is to provide more creative diversity for your meta ads, but also knowing how to do that in the right way so that you’re able to benefit from it and not just, you know, kind of putting more ads in the ad account and then not, you know, kind of benefiting the way you could.

Josh Hadley 00:04:41  Yeah. So how are you recommending, I guess, what are you guys doing as an agency, and what are you advising clients to be doing or changing with this based on this update?

Joe Putnam 00:04:51  Yeah. So the main thing is looking at depending on the ad account, looking at it and kind of researching and paying attention to. And actually there’s a very big kind of long in-depth research process we use upfront for brands to identify different potential angles for that brand. And one of the things that I’ve been emphasizing with owners is it’s not just like I said, you know, let’s get ads up that look different, but how do we get even different ad angles into the ad account? Who are going that are going to hit, you know, different buyer personas? Or even another way to look at it is sometimes, you know, people need to see different angles for the same product, and eventually after they see two, three, 4 or 5 different angles, you know, one of those angles lands and hits or they all kind of add up together to hit, right? And then someone makes a purchase at that point.

Joe Putnam 00:05:35  So again, it’s more about diversity and starting from the ad angle versus just, you know, the way the ad looks, the design, you know, the style of the ad, things like that. An example I like to use is there’s a business called Stitch Fix. Have you heard of them before?

Josh Hadley 00:05:49  Yeah.

Joe Putnam 00:05:50  Okay. So Stitch Fix, they’re publicly traded. They they, you know, have this service where they’ll send you, you sign up and they’ll send you, you know, five, five clothing items a month. And to kind of, you know, update your wardrobe and different things like that. And I like them as an example for creative diversity, because if you go to their Facebook ad library, you look at their ad account, they primarily are using kind of an angle of sign up and get close, sign up and get clothes and kind of, you know, sign up for a box, get clothes delivered, all that kind of stuff. But there’s really a big opportunity there to provide more diversity and hit that from more ad angles.

Joe Putnam 00:06:23  And, you know, my, my, our experience is by doing that, they’re going to see better results from identifying those angles, creating ads from five, six, seven different angles, and not just kind of hitting it, you know, straight on the same angle every single time. So an example would be with Stitch Fix, you can or first of all, when you sign up, they ask you questions about kind of your clothes and your sizing and different things like that. So you know, your height, your weight, but they’ll ask you questions like, you know, are your sleeves typically too short or too long? you know, are your shirts typically too short, too long? Whatever. And get a feel for, you know, what your inseam is and your sizing is. And then I don’t know exactly how they do it, but my understanding is they use AI to then build kind of a profile for you where you know, your clothes or the brands they choose are designed to fit you specifically.

Joe Putnam 00:07:10  so there’s a component where the size is better, but they also have a feature where you can, shop. It’s called freestyle. And anyway, you can kind of shop on their, their store and you don’t have to just wait for a box of clothes to come and different things like that. And anyway, in case it’s not obvious yet, my wife and I, we’ve used the service and it’s something that I’ve used, but I personally prefer the freestyle shopping over getting a new box every month. new box is kind of annoying. It’s kind of stressful. I’ve got a send stuff back. I don’t get to pick it out. But anyway, the fact that the clothes fit well is a a, you know, a big benefit to me and to my wife and things like that. So how do we use that for creative angles? What I would say is they should be saying things. They should be running ads such as, hey, I’ve never felt more confident. Shopping has never been easier.

Joe Putnam 00:07:53  You know, I can I can get a box if I want, but I can. I can also, you know, shop on the side. And it’s so easy to shop on the side and find things that I want. And that’s really kind of sorry. That’s very rough. I haven’t spent some time to actually break this down. But again, you start with those first two, you know, confidence, you know, ease of shopping, things like that. Anyway, those are just different angles you can use that are going to hit different, you know, different customers differently. And and it’s better than just, you know, like I said over and over again, hey, sign up for a box of clothes, sign up for a box of clothes, sign up for a box of clothes. So that would be an example of where how to do creative diversity, right and why it’s important for at accounts.

Josh Hadley 00:08:27  Yeah. And I think that just becomes more and more important, as you know, with AI and the adoption of that, people should be putting out more content.

Josh Hadley 00:08:34  But it’s not just about more content, more ads that are the same just with like a different image. It’s about hitting it at different angles. So I love that. Now, Joe, as we dove into, I mean, your bio, you talked about some of your experiences of really being able to, like, blow up some brands and see some rapid growth. I’d be very interested to dive into some of those case studies of brands that came to you. What are some of the things that you primarily worked on on day one, and why did they grow so fast? Specifically the six figure brand that went to eight figures in 12 months? Like, how and why did that happen?

Joe Putnam 00:09:09  Sure. Yeah. And that’s actually a very fascinating case study. so that brand came to us and they were getting about a five Roas, and they were pretty happy with where they were, and they kind of felt like, hey, five Roas means we should spike the football and we should be excited where we are and all that kind of stuff.

Joe Putnam 00:09:25  But anyway, we started having a conversation with the founder and, and did an audit of their ad account. And the main thing that stood out that I kind of talked to the owner about or we talked to the owner about was, hey, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table. So first of all, you know, again, people think, you know, a five Roas is is really exciting and a reason to celebrate. And, you know, let’s post some screenshots and let’s brag about it and all that kind of stuff. But actually for this brand, it meant, hey, the demand curve for your products is extremely high. People want what you’re selling, but if you don’t scale into it, you’re going to be leaving a lot of money on the table. And so we we kind of broke that down for them and kind of dove into their margins and their numbers and figure it out, kind of, you know, what their contribution margin was and different things like that. And at what point they’re still profitable and how they should stick scale and all that kind of stuff.

Joe Putnam 00:10:09  And they were working with a freelancer who again, also was very happy with the results and was saying, hey, we’re spending 15,000 a month, we’re getting a five Roas. Like, you know, this is pretty exciting. This is this is great. You know, let’s celebrate. Let’s let’s go to the beach. Let’s let’s have some fun. But anyway, again, so we broke it all down and kind of explain how they’re leaving money on the table, started scaling their spend, came up with a strategy they could use to scale that spend. And then, you know, eventually we scaled them from, like I said, 6 to 8 figures in 12 months, which again, is an indication of that demand curve was very high based on that initial Roas, but eventually. And one thing I would say is the brand owner was uncomfortable about two months in and was saying things like, hey, Roas is coming down. You know, I’m a little bit nervous, like, hey, we’re only getting a three Roas now.

Joe Putnam 00:10:50  We were getting a five before, like, you know, you know, they were he just had a little bit of, you know, kind of confusion and disappointment and, and we had to break it down for him and explain kind of how that works. But eventually we got to the point where, you know, I forget what it was, but Roas was, you know, let’s say even 2.25, 2.4 somewhere around that level. But we scaled ad spend up to over 100,000 a month. You know, had some 200,000, $300,000 a month, especially during, you know, Black Friday and Christmas and things like that. And eventually he realized and he saw the picture and he realized, hey, you know, $1 million a month in revenue at scale is better than at a 2.25 Roas is better than, you know, five Roas and only spending $15,000 a month. You know, the profit there. There’s a really big difference. And so anyway, eventually he realized it. He saw the picture and, you know, kind of was was pretty excited about it.

Joe Putnam 00:11:35  So it was a lot of fun. And then, you know, that’s kind of just the number side. So really it started with understanding their numbers and building out a strategy around that and not kind of, you know, being being too happy too soon. And then the other side of it was pushing the owner out of his comfort zone. And then obviously there’s the creative side and the ad side and the strategy side we had to put in as well. And I’m happy to talk about that more. But I know that’s kind of a bigger picture and kind of where where all that started from.

Josh Hadley 00:11:58  Were they profitable on front end acquisition or did they have to, you know, kind of pick become profitable 30 days after or anything like that?

Joe Putnam 00:12:07  Yeah. So they were profitable up front. So even even first purchase, eventually they were still profitable first purchase. So they had very healthy profit margins, you know, high conversion rates. And so yeah, they were they were they were profitable purchase one.

Joe Putnam 00:12:18  And then but the other thing was and we did actually launch email and SMS for them. And then once you combined that the retention side, the customers coming back side to it, you know, especially even then you realize like, hey, every customer, we’re getting into the door today, become someone who can buy for Black Friday, who’s going to buy a gift for Christmas, who’s going to come back when we do a new drop. And so yeah, sorry. Short answer is they were profitable first purchase, but even more profitable when you layered in retention and return customers and all that kind of stuff.

Josh Hadley 00:12:46  Awesome. How does it work with especially on meta, right. Especially if you’re just trying to sell into the US and you have a very niche market that you’re going after. There’s a lot of brand owners that can have a great Roas, but you can’t just say, hey, I’m going to start doubling my ad spend on meta tomorrow and then anticipate that row as staying the same. In fact, as you continue to scale more often than not that Roas gets lesser and lesser, and it’s just like it creates massive inefficiency.

Josh Hadley 00:13:12  So my question to you is like, how did you keep them profitable on the front end, while also pushing that the front end ad spend? Because do you not eventually just hit kind of like a Tam or a total addressable market that you’ve already tapped out of?

Joe Putnam 00:13:26  Yeah, that’s an interesting question. And I mean, that was one of the biggest questions that this brand owner had where he, he, he kind of had this fear where he thought, hey, we’re getting it. Good. Now we’re, you know, we’re spending 15, 20,000 a month on ads. We’re getting a five Roas. But he’s like, at some point we’re going to hit a ceiling. And at some point, you know, we’re going to tap out. And that’s true. I mean, you know, everybody will kind of hit that. But I would say in the US for most brands, the market is is bigger than a lot of people realize. And there’s always the opportunity of going international. So you know, that is is always an opportunity that’s on the table.

Joe Putnam 00:13:55  But I would say it really starts with, first of all, really knowing your numbers. and we have some calculators that we use a brand owners to identify, you know, their breakeven Roas, their contribution margin, you know, kind of how all of that breaks down at the at the Roas level. So we know if we hit a certain Roas, then, you know, we’re going to break even if we hit this row. And then we have this contribution margin, which means we have this amount of money per box that goes out that’s going towards profit and fixed costs. And so I would say, you know, with your marketing team, it’s important for them to know those numbers. So you know, when you should be scaling up and when you should be pulling back. But I would also say it’s really important for brand owners to really understand those numbers as well, because we’ve had a lot of experience working with brand owners. They don’t know that number, and so they kind of are making a decision based on their gut and they’re like, oh, somebody else is talking about they have a 3.5, so we should be getting a 3.5 or whatever that might be.

Joe Putnam 00:14:45  But every business is different. Profit margins are different for every brand. And then the last thing is you have to think about it from a strategy perspective, which is, you know, your particular business. What is your strategy. And so is your strategy. High growth, low margin because we want to go volume and we want to build this as big as we can so that we do have a customer base to sell to for the second, you know, second purchase, third purchase, things like that. Or do we need to be more conservative and make sure that we’re putting more money in our pocket at this point? And so, yeah, there’s different things to kind of think through and look through. But obviously that’s a very important step is knowing your numbers. And that way you’re you’re making decisions based on real numbers and not kind of your gut, which is not, you know, the way you want to be making those types of decisions.

Josh Hadley 00:15:24  Yeah, I think that’s an excellent point. I think that makes a massive difference, like setting your strategy from the get go.

Josh Hadley 00:15:30  And there’s also a good number of Shopify brands where you’re actually not profitable on the front end. You’re going to make that all back up on the back end, which then comes into the retention marketing. And so there’s 1,000,001 different ways to scale on Shopify. But it is very important for you as the brand owner to understand what is the actual value lever that you are going to be driving to, where it actually drives your profitability? Otherwise you just run yourself out of business. So knowing your number is obviously very important. But you also talked about the creative that you guys introduce. So what type of creative. Because I’m sure that that was a component to them being able to double, triple, quadruple ad spend rather than just like re putting more ad spend behind the same ad that produced them five rows.

Joe Putnam 00:16:13  Yeah. So great point. Great question. And and I would say creative strategy is a really important part of this process. So just, you know, your overall meta strategy and then your creative strategy.

Joe Putnam 00:16:23  So it’s not just hey, let’s put in any ads that that, you know, we can and see what happens. Actually, one thing that kind of drives me a little bit crazy is when people think volume is the answer. But anyway, conversion engine, we don’t view volume being the solution. It’s it’s how do we put as many as in the ad account that we believe have a high confidence level, that they’ll succeed based on the strategy and the inputs and the research, and then we run those. So it’s not just, you know, throw spaghetti at the wall and test everything that you can, but you want to do research, come up with strategy, and then, you know, kind of put ad accounts in the ad account for a reason. So with this particular brand, one thing I would mention is they had a product that lent itself to being very viral. And not every brand has has that opportunity. But this, this particular brand did. We’re working with another brand right now that also has has the same thing.

Joe Putnam 00:17:09  And so we use something that I call the lightning rod strategy for their brand, which is essentially we led with their most controversial products. And so purposefully we designed ads and put ads in the ad account that led with their most controversial products. And the result of that is their ads would have, you know, 2500 likes, their ads would have 1000 shares, a thousand comments. And just from a strategy perspective, but again, this doesn’t fit for every single brand. But you know, the engagement side and the content side and things like that does work where Facebook likes it when your ads have that type of engagement. So they actually lower your costs and kind of give you, you know, better, better position and things like that in the marketplace. If your ads are getting that type of engagement, plus, anytime someone comments and tags or they share your ad with somebody, that’s basically free advertising for you because you’re paying to get in front of the first person. But, you know, someone tagged three of their friends, they, they, you know, they they they share it with somebody and, you know, so sometimes we’ll run ads that talk about, you know, kind of purposefully kind of get people to do that.

Joe Putnam 00:18:12  But this particular campaign, the strategy was let’s lead with the most controversial. Let’s let’s get that lightning rod out there. Let’s get people reacting, responding, talking about it, thinking about it with the realization that a large percentage of people would click through to the site because they’re like, I’ve got to check this out, let me go to the site and see what’s there. And they would choose something that wasn’t quite as controversial. So maybe, you know, they’re not willing to, you know, put that, that, you know, kind of polo on. but, you know, you lead with that and then somebody walks out the door with something else. So that’s a strategy that works really well with them. But, you know, something we came up with based on consumer psychology study of their, their, their, their customers also, you know, a B testing and things like that. And we realized, hey, let’s make sure we’re designing creative this direction we’re leading with this. And yeah, so that worked worked obviously very well for them.

Joe Putnam 00:18:58  It was a big part of that. But again, I just want to kind of pull back a little bit and say it starts with, you know, what is our strategy? What’s our approach? How do we understand consumer psychology and not just let’s throw as many ads as we can and lets, you know, kind of see if anything sticks against the wall? It’s it’s a it’s an informed strategy is a big part of that process.

Josh Hadley 00:19:17  Yeah. No, I love it. I think that very smart and understanding like the customer psychographics like what do they actually need. What’s the transformation that they’re looking for before buying that product? I think that’s a deep, fundamental like basis of your success whenever you’re doing any type of advertising. Joe, tell me more about some of those other case studies of brands that you’ve worked with that you guys have been able to help scale them up so that our listeners can maybe get some ideas as to how they could scale their own brands.

Joe Putnam 00:19:45  Sure. Yeah. That’s a that’s a great question.

Joe Putnam 00:19:47  One of the things I would say, and I was just thinking about this while you made that last comment, is I think it’s important for, for brands to be willing to take risks and for them to be willing to take a stand for their brand. So one mistake I see a lot of brands make is, you know, they kind of want to make everybody happy. But I like to say, you know, if you’re not making some people mad, then you’re not branding hard enough. And, you know, any brand we’ve worked with almost any brand. There’s somebody at some level has some type of pushback on it. You know, you want to be taking some risks and you want to stand out for your customers. So you need to know who your customers are and you’re not trying to make everybody happy. so Bogie Bros would be an example of that, where, you know, not everybody is going to want to wear their polos, but there are some people who really vibe with it, really get excited about it, all that kind of stuff.

Joe Putnam 00:20:33  And so again, you’re not trying to make everyone happy. You’re trying to make your customers really excited about what you have and kind of building your ad strategy and even your brand strategy around that. So I would say that’s one thing. Another thing we focus on and we’re big on is basically emotional storytelling, I think is something else that’s really important for brands and targeting and hitting emotions. And so again, if your ads are too safe and if you’re not taking risks, I like one thing you mentioned earlier. You know, if your ads aren’t focused on the outcome and the solution for for your customers, but at an emotional level, then anyway, it’s harder to to really kind of connect with customers and then ultimately have those triggers that get them to buy. So the emotional side of it, we do something that we call brand DNA research. We also do something called customer sentiment analysis where we we analyze what is the emotional experience. Well, I would even say experiences people have with this brand. And how do we unlock that and build that into the creative strategy, build that into the ad strategy, things like that.

Joe Putnam 00:21:30  I like to tell people that we think as humans were very logical creatures. So we think, you know, we make decisions based on logic. But actually if you study consumers, if you study, you know, people, you realize we’re actually very emotionally driven and we use logic to justify kind of our decisions and our purchases. You know, we primarily make emotionally based our emotions are really a big part of our decision making process. So we emphasize, hey, let’s do the research up front. Let’s understand the brand. Let’s understand the customer experience. Let’s identify the selling points, the core messaging pillars. And let’s let’s figure out how do we create ads that touch them at an emotional level and not just try to make sense to them or be logical or whatever that might be. So yeah, it’s another part of the process, and I could kind of talk about that more. But I guess there is one specific brand where we focus on kind of the emotional storytelling side. Do you want me to get into that?

Josh Hadley 00:22:18  I’d love to hear it.

Josh Hadley 00:22:19  Yeah, let’s hear that.

Joe Putnam 00:22:20  Okay, cool. So so the brand is is a brand where it was a kind of a country lifestyle brand hats, T-shirts, things like that. Kind of for people who like to go to rodeos, they drive trucks, they wear cowboy boots. You know those. Those types of customers. And the founder had this really kind of emotional story. Basically, the short version is he was in a car accident. He became paralyzed. He was in a wheelchair and, you know, going to be a wheelchair for the rest of his life. And he just had this, this mindset and this approach where he just said, hey, I’m not going to let this hold me back. I’m going to live life to the fullest as much as I possibly can. And he wanted to share that message with people. So anyway, they had this this video that talks about kind of what happened and had, you know, pictures of the accident and different things like that, you know, really, really tragic story, difficult story.

Joe Putnam 00:23:03  But again, the message they wanted to convey and they wanted their products to convey was why not live life to the full? you know, especially if you’re not in that kind of a situation, like, why are you kind of holding yourself back and, and not chasing your dreams and not going after things? And so again, why not live life to the full and so but yeah, that was, that was, that was what I would describe as their brand DNA, we like to call it. And we like to really get into what is your brand’s DNA, what is that emotional messaging? What is that story we can tell that’s going to resonate with people? So we built an ad strategy around that. So not just, hey, here’s a hat, do you want to buy it? Hey, do you like how this looks? Do you want to buy it? But let’s make this story into it. Where now they’re making a decision based on, you know, kind of this emotional experience that they’re having.

Joe Putnam 00:23:46  And so we were able to scale their sales, let’s see, 25,000 a month to 90,000 a month within the first 90 days. And then kind of were able to just kind of keep going from there. And the biggest challenge they had was keeping up with inventory. So as you can imagine, kind of when you scale that fast, you’ve got to stay on top of inventory. You’ve got to manage cash flow, all that kind of stuff. But anyway, this was an example where they had kind of plateaued and kind of were hitting a certain ceiling. But once we were able to inject more of their branding into their ads, we were able to do more emotional storytelling. That’s when kind of results took off for them. So yeah, those are just a couple examples of, you know, creative strategy, emotions, brand DNA, like, you know, doing all of that work up front kind of unlock a lot of growth for brands. If they haven’t done that, if the, you know, kind of marketing team hasn’t done that type of work yet.

Josh Hadley 00:24:29  Yeah, I think honing in on who you are as a brand becomes paramount, and especially those e-commerce brands that want to be able to scale on other marketplaces. Amazon’s a massive channel. And frankly speaking, if you’re spending on meta and you’re not on Amazon, you are losing at a minimum 33% of your sales. Like they’re just going to your competitors on Amazon. But you need to ask yourself like, hey, but my my prices are too high compared to what I see on Amazon. And that’s fine. You can still have a premium price product on Amazon, but do you know what the difference is? It all comes down to the brand, and brand is nothing more than like the trust that you have built with a consumer over time. And that’s what I think the advantage is for all ecommerce brands. There is an onslaught of overseas knockoffs coming into our country every day, and on Amazon, it’s extremely rampant. They, the overseas competitors, target the best selling products. They then spin it up to make it cheaper.

Josh Hadley 00:25:29  All of the above, because they only know how to play the price game. And what happens is they’re not about building a brand. They’re just about like, hey, can I just make a sell today? And so the best e-commerce brands are all about not just making a front end acquisition. It’s all about building your brand, and it’s the experience that you create. And it’s those experiences across multiple transactions that you develop that trust to where somebody is going to say, I’m willing to pay double the product or double the price for this product, because I know that it’s either been safety tested or there’s no, you know, cancer causing chemicals in here. I know that, you know, the brand actually stands behind this, whereas I have no idea what I’m getting from this overseas seller. And that, I think, is the distinguishing factor between the brands that I see dominate Amazon and then be able to dominate omnichannel presence and eventually be able to move into retail. Like that’s what the nine figure brands are doing is they’re focused on that brand story in who they are.

Josh Hadley 00:26:26  Would you agree with that, Joe?

Joe Putnam 00:26:27  I would, yeah, I would completely agree. And yeah, I think it’s important, especially if you’re gonna be on Amazon. But yeah, we see the same thing where people run meta ads and you’re just measuring results on meta. But Amazon consistently goes up as your meta ad spend goes up. So I think it’s important to to to be on there like you mentioned. And a lot of people have a love hate with Amazon. And there’s things they love and there’s a lot of things that they hate. But kind of doing both is important. And you’ll see a lift on both sides by running meta ads. And it’s important to to be aware of that from a buying buying perspective, a sales perspective. Fear and anxiety is a big part of of that. So anytime you can kind of take fear and anxiety away or, you know, kind of leverage, it is really important. So the example that made me think of was when you’re talking, you know, something like Yeti and obviously they get brought up a lot, but people pay, you know, twice as much for a Yeti as they do.

Joe Putnam 00:27:16  You know, let’s say a Chinese knockoff or whatever that might be. And, you know, the one hand, you know, some people just want the name. And so they’ve built up that brand and that brand value and equity and things like that. But the other side of it is, you know, when you’re making those types of purchases or even if it’s, you know, cable, HDMI cable or something like that, there’s just that fear and anxiety in the back of your mind where you’re like, well, if I buy this knockoff Yeti, maybe this deal is not going to be as good. You know, maybe it’s going to crack sooner, you know, whatever it might be, kind of being able to tell that story, being able to build a brand and then, you know, kind of having that on Amazon, you’re going to have people who are like, hey, I have more trust in this brand than this Chinese knockoff. And so, yeah, it’s just a really important part of that process is to, you know, make sure you’re building that in as you as you grow.

Josh Hadley 00:27:56  Yeah. A big, important part of building that brand is understanding the emotional connection that a customer is going to have to your brand and your product. So, Joe, you were talking about that. What are some of the tools and resources that you could give to our listeners to say, hey guys, here’s how you actually understand your customer psychographics. Here’s what’s going on inside their mind. Here’s ultimately the transformation that they’re looking for, so that you could then spin up all the different ad angles, speaking to the emotional triggers.

Joe Putnam 00:28:24  Yeah. So yeah, it’s a great question. And one of the things that we’re doing right now for that I mean, first of all, it starts with actually talking and listening to your customers. And that’s a step that kind of gets overlooked. So even if you’re at a trade show and you’re talking to people, just the questions they ask, the objections that they raise, or the way you talk about it at a trade show, you know, there’s something to learn from there.

Joe Putnam 00:28:45  On the customer service side, you know, the questions that get sent into your your your customer service team is something you can learn from. But the number one thing we use right now is, is customer reviews. Could be Amazon reviews, could be your Shopify reviews. And then also we’ll go to Reddit and kind of research different products on Reddit. And then one of the things that we are using right now, which probably won’t come as a surprise, but we have a process that we use. It’s kind of a proven process, and it’s a formula we’ve used with multiple brands where we actually analyze, you know, Reddit posts, Reddit comments, reviews, things like that. And we that’s where we we are able to do what I mentioned, which is the customer sentiment analysis. So what is the emotional experience people are having with this brand? Then we take some time to to define it and categorize it and organize it and things like that, and then just kind of go down from there to, to, you know, like I said, we have a process where we we build out ad angles from that analysis.

Joe Putnam 00:29:38  We identify the core messaging pillars. So it starts at a research level where you’re actually talking and listening to customers and hearing their real experience. Otherwise you’re left guessing and you’re left saying, oh, I think they feel this, and I think they’re buying it for that reason, guessing and checking is really not a very effective marketing strategy. You want to base it on real customer insights. You just keep drilling in from there until eventually you have, you know, your ad angles. Eventually you come up with your copy and your sales pitch and things like that. One other thing I would mention is, and we’re, you know, I’m really big on this basically, for a lot of brands, ads should be selling more than brand owners realize. And so when it comes to ads, a lot of people talk about, you know, let’s get scroll shopping ads and things like that. And I’m all for stopping the scroll. So let’s have a hook on the ad. Let’s get their attention in the first three seconds.

Joe Putnam 00:30:21  You know, definitely don’t wait longer than that. You know, there are certain things that you need to be doing, but your ads should also be selling. So one thing I like to say about that is whoever’s running your ad account, writing your ad copy, writing your ad scripts, all that kind of stuff. They need to know how to sell your product. So you need to know the unique selling points. You need to know what those trigger points are. Emotional trigger points are for your customers and anyway. But then you also need to write a script or an ad or design it or, you know, whatever that might be in a way that sells the product. And I think that’s something that gets overlooked by a lot of people. But that’s that’s yeah, something that I’m really big on, we’re really big on. And essentially when your ad goes out there and some brands, you know, we’re going to have a brand right now where it’s very impulse buy. So it really is, hey, get their attention and get them to buy.

Joe Putnam 00:31:02  And you know, I don’t need to tell you, hey, this this foam trucker has, you know, this kind of plastic, you know, back. And it’s this and it’s that. It’s like either you want it or you don’t. So like, let’s focus on grabbing attention. And so actually there’s a, there’s a phrase in advertising where people say the more complicated and the more expensive your product is, the more copy you need for that product. So $25 phone trucker. You don’t need a lot of copy. You don’t need a lot of selling to to kind of, you know, get people where they’re ready to buy. But the more expensive something is, the more complicated it is, the more selling you need to do. And I just think that’s one step where either a lot of marketing teams or a lot of brand owners, they kind of miss that step and they don’t realize every ad they show could be a salesman out there in the marketplace selling for them. So anyway, that’s another thing that I like to think about and make sure that we’re able to, to deliver for customers.

Josh Hadley 00:31:49  Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Joe, I’m curious, as you have an agency, how much are you guys utilizing AI? And I’m curious like is are you utilizing AI? If so, which which LMS are you using that you’re finding best results for doing like the customer sentiment analysis or even for like the copywriting and scripting of ads? I know that that’s almost like a role that’s almost going extinct because like, you no longer need the junior copywriter, you just need the creative strategist that can architect the right offer and know the right selling point, and then give it to AI to actually create the copy. How are you using it in your own agency?

Joe Putnam 00:32:26  Yeah. Great question. So first of all, using it as much as possible, leveraging it as much as we can, and all in on AI and ready to get the most out of it we possibly can. But yeah, using it in a lot of different ways. So you know, even for the analysis kind of the process that we talked about.

Joe Putnam 00:32:41  So we have, you know, a documented process we go through to, to do all of that. We’ll even use it for things like video, script writing, but making sure that we have that front end research, that front end information that we’re giving it. And then we found that, you know, kind of our ad video scripts and things like that. When we follow that process, they’ve got the information that you need for your ad to do a lot of heavy lifting. Based on the experience we’ve seen, we’ve spent millions of dollars on ads. I’ve spent millions of dollars on ads, I’ve run thousands of ad tests. So there’s a lot of things that I’ve learned over that time period. And as smart as AI is, you know, actual intelligence is still, I would say, a key component of the process. But to me, it’s a tool that we can use based on our experience and based on what we know. In order to create ad copy or ad scripts or whatever that might be, but then we can kind of look it over and finalize it and make sure that, hey, first of all, this is built on a process we know that works, and then we can kind of, you know, double check and, and fine tune it and make sure it doesn’t sound like it’s, you know, kind of ultimately run by a computer or, you know, done by a computer.

Joe Putnam 00:33:37  But but yeah, so fully leveraging it currently using ChatGPT, but I’m actually ready to kind of fully geek out on all of this. And I’m in the process of switching over to kind of having a dedicated computer for it and using basically Claude to kind of start running some of these things. And so, yeah, anyway, right now it’s kind of more of we use it as we go, we build projects. We have one of the things that actually works very well in our process is each step of the process saving kind of a document of that process and then using that as, you know, part of the prompting later on or whatever. and so then again, it has that brand DNA as part of the research process. It has the customer insights is part of the research process. So I would say that’s a that’s really important is is making sure that you have kind of documents and you’re able to use those each time you use AI to help with something. But yeah, so currently ChatGPT currently, you know, kind of have documents and then upload those and build the foundation first.

Joe Putnam 00:34:30  And then once we have that foundation built, then we use it. And I guess the last thing I would say is and I’m curious to know where it goes. And, you know, I don’t know what’s going to happen. And, you know, some people think it’s gonna, you know, take everybody’s jobs or whatever it might be. But right now I’m viewing it more as you know. Hey, have you brought a plumber into your house and new technology was available? You’d want him using that latest technology to, you know, drill the hole faster, line your pipe better, you know, whatever it might be. And you’re not going to be like, man, why are you using that latest technology? Like, why aren’t you using that 1980 stuff? But that same technology wouldn’t do any good in my hands if I was trying to use that technology. I couldn’t do anything with it. So it’s great technology. It’s helpful for a plumber, but to me, at least as of now, you still want to have that tool in the hands of a skilled operator who, you know, knows how to leverage the tool, but not over rely on it and not, you know, again, make it where it seems like everything’s written by a computer.

Joe Putnam 00:35:22  And so, yeah, it’s interesting to know I’m interested to know where it heads. But that’s kind of my my view on it right now. I’m curious to know what are your what are your thoughts on all that.

Josh Hadley 00:35:30  Yeah I mean same thing. We’ll we’re definitely heavily investing in AI, but AI only sits upon like the good information that you’re providing it. We added fantastic conversation in our last episode with being able to pull in all of your data. It all sits behind like, what’s your data warehousing strategy and what is your LLM sitting on top of? And so it needs all of your Amazon reviews. It needs all of your Amazon conversion rates. It needs your Shopify conversion rates, your click through rates. Because if you’re just uploading generic reports, what ends up happening is like it doesn’t actually understand certain columns, but it’s going to confidently give you an answer and not tell you that it doesn’t understand things. And so I think that with AI as it evolves, the first foundation is are you feeding it the true right data and is it or is it just like kind of taking the hodgepodge of everything it knows in the world, a lot of Reddit posts and then just making assumptions on who you are as a brand.

Josh Hadley 00:36:25  So that’s kind of our go to for our brand right now. Joe, as we wrap things up, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from our episode. Here are the three actionable takeaways that I noted. You let me know if we’re missing something. So number one for Shopify, if you want to be scaling your store and you want to go from 6 to 8 figures or even further, one of the first things you have to do is actually identify the strategy you’re going to follow. And it goes to a basic principle of are you looking for high growth at all costs, which might mean even lower profit margins? Or I’ve often heard of many sellers that will run a deficit, maybe run at a small loss on Shopify, but then they capture all of the profit on Amazon, which then boosts all of their Amazon rankings And that whole flywheel on Amazon keeps turning. So. Like the secret is their Shopify front end isn’t converting profitably. But what it’s doing is it makes their bigger pie.

Josh Hadley 00:37:20  The the bigger pie over on Amazon is where all of the profit is is gathered and obtained. Or are you going to be focused on, hey, front end profitable acquisition from day one we’re going to slowly scale. And so again, I think this strategy makes a massive difference. And so you can’t do both of those strategies at once. You’ve got to choose which one you’re going to ride and die by and then know your numbers. So that’s action item number one. Action item number two. You touched on this. But in your ad creative and even as a brand, you need a hill to die on, which means you need to plant your flag in the ground of what you stand for. And it needs to be maybe somewhat controversial, right? You maybe could be the kids clothing company that only uses organic fibers, right? And you believe, you know, let’s call it bamboo is of the devil, and you’re going to plant your flag in the ground, and that’s what you’re on, right? And so you only use organic certified cotton that comes from this part of the world.

Josh Hadley 00:38:19  And that’s the hill you want to die on. That’s what you need to be preaching to your customers and make sure that that resonates with them emotionally as well. But if you can’t create a polarizing hill to die on, your ad creative is going to flounder because you’re basically trying to preach to everybody. And but effectively, what you’re doing is preaching to nobody at the same time. In action, item number three building a true brand. So don’t just see that. See this as one time transactions. If you actually want to build a meaningful e-commerce business, it’s all about the retention marketing. It’s all about their first experience, then their second experience, and then their third experience. And that’s where you’re able to command that premium price in the market. That’s why Apple is who Apple is. They’ve created a whole ecosystem of products. They’re like, if you leave the iPhone. It also is going to disrupt how you work probably on your on your laptop, and it’s going to disrupt how you utilize a watch.

Josh Hadley 00:39:14  They’ve got you so embedded to the way that their products work cohesively together. So think through that. As a brand owner, how am I creating an experience across multiple products that ultimately builds trust with the customer? That they’ll come back to me. So, Joe, those are the three action items that I noted. Anything else that you feel like I missed here?

Joe Putnam 00:39:33  I mean, those are those are super solid. So yeah, those are great. I think the one thing I would add is just kind of throw another vote towards making your strategic, creative decisions based on real customer insights and research. And I just feel like it takes work and it takes time. And so I’ve seen a lot of people who kind of just skip over that, especially marketing agencies, and they kind of just want to go straight to designing and creating ads. And so anyway, building a foundation for your creative strategy that is, is based on real customer insights is, I guess, the fourth thing I would add there.

Joe Putnam 00:40:04  But other than that, those were all great takeaway points.

Josh Hadley 00:40:06  Awesome. Love it. Let’s move into our final questions here. Joe, what is the number one book that you have read that’s been the most influential for you and why?

Joe Putnam 00:40:14  Yeah. So yeah, I like reading books. There’s a lot of books that I’ve read that I’ve got a lot out of. But I would say I’m actually going to go to this book. It’s called Why We Buy by a guy named Paco Underhill. And it’s an old school marketing book, even pre digital marketing book. It’s one of the first books that I read. So I mean, I read it probably 15 or 20 years ago. And yeah, I’m going to go back to that one as being the most influential because just short version of the book. Or Paco, Paco Underhill, what he does is he sets up time lapse cameras and he studies basically consumer behavior based on, on, on the time lapse cameras. And then he makes decisions or he kind of comes up with theories for retailers and things like that based on what, what they identify.

Joe Putnam 00:40:55  And but anyway, there’s a lot of really interesting theories that come from it that I, that I think are fascinating and are really things that you wouldn’t have thought of if you hadn’t watched the video. So I don’t know. That was very influential for me. Foundational for me. Insightful for me. Just to say, hey, when it comes to marketing. Don’t base your decisions and your copy and all that kind of stuff based on your gut. You actually need to be doing customer research. So I’m going to go with why we buy. By Paco Underhill.

Josh Hadley 00:41:19  Love it. Great recommendation. Question number two. What’s your favorite AI tool that you’ve been using and how have you been using it?

Joe Putnam 00:41:25  Yeah. So ChatGPT is a go to right now. So primarily kind of leaning on that meta has AI built into their ad platform. But it’s still pretty. It’s not it’s not worth using yet. So yeah. So just using that for all the stuff that we talked about. So doing the foundational work analyzing, you know, reviews so that we don’t have to instead of, you know, reading 500 reviews, you can analyze all of those in one batch, that sort of stuff.

Joe Putnam 00:41:48  And then like I said, kind of using that as a starting point to start developing, you know, ad angles for brands, ad copy for brands, writing scripts for brands. And but yeah, starting with kind of the research side and yeah, just loving it, leveraging it as a tool that helps you to process more information than we could process otherwise. And then, you know. Kind of benefiting from that information. And yeah, so it’s been it’s been super helpful.

Josh Hadley 00:42:11  Great. Final question. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why?

Joe Putnam 00:42:18  Yeah, I’m gonna I’m gonna throw a shout out to a couple people that you know, aren’t. You’re kind of, you know, you’re you’re the ones that that get thrown out a lot. You know, Taylor Holladay, everybody talks about him and there’s some people like that. So I’m going to go with Sarah Clevenger. She is in Denver and I don’t know if you’ve heard of her before, but she’s on Twitter.

Joe Putnam 00:42:31  I like to follow her on Twitter. And what I like about her is she has a unique approach to marketing, and she talks about some of the stuff on the emotional side and sentiment analysis and stuff like that. But anyway, one of the main things that I like is I feel like a lot of other people, they talk about the same things over and over again, but she talks about some stuff that’s, you know, kind of really foundational and insightful. so I think she brings a unique perspective that has helped me a lot. And so I’m gonna I’m gonna give it a shout out for Sarah Lavender. And then also one more is this guy Chris Hall, and he, he used to work in conversion engine, and now he is he’s running a DMC podcast. He goes by Ecom Cowboy on Twitter. And so yeah. Anyway, I would say both of those two are kind of two. Two follows that that I think are under the radar. But but both worth following.

Josh Hadley 00:43:12  Awesome recommendations.

Josh Hadley 00:43:14  Love to hear new people to follow. So Joe, this has been a fantastic podcast. If people want to learn more about you and follow you, where could they do so?

Joe Putnam 00:43:22  Yeah. So I would say either LinkedIn or Twitter are both great places to follow. So yeah, kind of kind of find me on one of those too. And I can hear if I’m on there as Joe or Joseph Putnam, but yeah, look me up on LinkedIn or look me up on Twitter. And I’d love to love to connect with people there. And also sorry. Last one is conversion engine. Com so if they want to learn more about what we do and how we help brands, they can also go to conversion.

Josh Hadley 00:43:42  Com fantastic. Well Joe thanks again for your time on the podcast today for sure.

Joe Putnam 00:43:46  Great to be here I enjoyed it.

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