Eric Kooymans 4:51

Sounds great. Well, it’s definitely something that many businesses in today struggle with the same but the same issue and I think that the biggest thing that we’ve noticed over the years is that even though we have a great company, we have a great strategy, excuse me, a great product. And, excuse me, and, and really a, a a model that’s working, when it comes to off Amazon, it really needs to be taken a little bit step further. Because now you’re having to actually pay for your own traffic, you’re having to be able to take care of maybe someone or the shipping side of things that you don’t get to leverage some of the prime or discounts or things of that nature. And most importantly, you have to deal about the cost per acquisition. And so this is the kind of before we get started with anybody, we would just say, hey, how do we scale to the next level? And really, we really look at it when it comes to the whole kind of strategy around that. And it really becomes to what are your cost of goods? What are the margins that you have? What does it cost for you to ship it? What does it cost for you to warehouse to pick and pack all of those different things, because the biggest caveat, if you were to have, you want to start potentially looking at another marketplace to sell on and or be able to have your own website, now you have to deal with these other additional costs. And when it comes to offline paid marketing, when it comes to maybe its Facebook marketing, or Google Marketing, or different things of that nature, we now all of a sudden have to deal with a cost per acquisition, for example, with Facebook, it’s an $18 average cost per acquisition. With Google, it’s an average around 40 to $75, for search ads, and around 30 to $40 for Google Shopping. So if you think about if you have a, you know, one or two or three product type scenario, we need to figure out how can we get our average order value up to be able to not just be able to have, you know, the normal kind of onesie twosie type sales on Amazon, but how do we really be able to scale and push the ball, push the sales and really go scale from that seven-figure to the eight-figure and beyond. And it really starts with a good strategy. And unfortunately, in today’s world, most businesses are very excited about what they currently have, but not thinking about, well, this is how we do it. How do we make a three pack? How do we make a two pack? How do you make an upsell for a potential product. And when you have a Shopify or WooCommerce store, there are plugins that will help you do this. But the neat part about it is, unlike Amazon, you can actually if you have the right formula, and you have the right model, you can actually really scale it, push it up and make it happen.

Josh Hadley 7:24

Yeah, Eric, I love that. And I think we’re gonna dive a whole lot deeper into each of these action items here. But let’s kind of let’s take maybe a step back, why don’t you tell us more about Harnessing Strengths? And maybe how you got your start into e-commerce, you’ve got 18 plus years of experience. But where did this experience come from? How did Harnessing Strengths get built? How are you working with over 180 different brands right now.

Eric Kooymans 7:51

But basically, what we first started out was working with I started in the e-commerce industry, working with a couple of different agencies started off with the SEO kind of side of things. This was kind of when when Google was all kind of, you know, what, what was just kind of getting going and just getting started, you know, with that, and really focused on on not just all the paid side of things, but what’s the strategy? How do we build a website so that people can get in front of it? And then with that, we also quickly got into some of the all the inbound marketing strategies when it comes to not just a batch and blast and like, hope it works. But actually, how do you build trust? How do you build confidence? How do you build a reputation of brand that people want to want to work with and want to be able to scale? And then, you know, once the, you know, we spent about 10 years and kind of the lead generation direct response marketing, where where really, we spent X we had to make, why it was always about what’s the cost per lead, what’s the cost per acquisition, and really, really went deep into those types of things. We tested every type of marketing, everything’s from guerilla marketing to all of the, you know, the paid, you know, Google and Yahoo ads at the time, and then now that we’ve moved into social media, and all the Facebook and all the different opportunities that are there, really being able to scale and all of those aspects. And, and the neat thing that’s happened over the years is that, yes, the world has changed when it comes to you know, how things are searching, but, but with being able to stay on in front of the curve, to be able to really understand what’s happened in the industry and kind of where it’s going, we’ve really been able to help businesses, even in tough markets, and then and good markets to be able to be able to scale and to really be able to go from there. So that, yep. And then when it comes to the different types of businesses that we work with, you know, the, the whole goal is is to and this is with, even with your own business, you know, the whole goal is always to be able to, to not be so deep in the weeds and so deep into the to the problem after problem that you can’t see where you’re going, you know, and you can’t see the bigger issues and the bigger things that to be able to scale the business and so that’s something that as an agency owner You know, I am somebody that can do the technical work, but also, you know, need to be able to build and manage and scale. You know, we basically built a team of 14 people that that we build and scale businesses. And that’s just what we do. And, and we’ve got some of those Amazon letters from Amazon, where the client has an issue with it with a with an asin, or with a towel suspension, or when Google made big changes, and we’re like, alright, we’re not doing this type of industries anymore. And it’s just like, you’re like sitting on the edge of your seat, worried about those things. And that’s what we kind of stepped up when I was remember, 40% of income basically going away, because the Google changed, you’re like, Okay, how do we diversify? How do we basically be able to not have to worry about those, you know, What’s Google doing these days? What’s Amazon going to do? What’s the big change what’s maybe a overseas seller kind of coming in and, and taking something, it’s a situation, we had to really step back. And we really put together a good 12 to six month 24 month growth strategy for any for any, all of our clients, and really be able to just scale and build and grow from there. So that’s kind of how

Josh Hadley 11:03

it works. I love that. I love that. And I think every single listener is going to want to hear like, what are those growth strategies that you implement? Right? What are those the tactical things that you do that help diversify, provide comfort, but I think it’s not even just the aspect of diversification, I think it is building a comprehensive brand, that private equity truly would be hungry to acquire, right? Because they don’t just see you as a fly by night, Amazon seller, you had success on that, but you can’t repeat that success anywhere else. So Eric, let’s let’s dive into those strategies. Somebody comes to you, you know, how do you work them? Or how do you start to develop that six to 24 month? You know, growth strategy? I guess ramp up for that?

Eric Kooymans 11:55

Sounds good. Yep. So the first off, before we do that, we basically have, you want to ask the basic questions, we gotta we normally have a little questionnaire that we have, that we’ll provide in the show notes. But the big question that you always want to kind of do a kind of a self audit, we need to be able to understand, you know, who are? Who is the target audience, you know, what specifically is their problem? Or what are they looking for? Like? What’s their big, you know, when they’re looking for your products? Kind of what is that? What are we think of that as some kind of what’s the keywords? what’s the, what’s the symptom, or the problem that they’re having. And then with that, also, when it comes to the types of gifts or ways that this product could be used, if it were to be a type of a gift, or a, you know, holiday type thing, we put together all the different audiences and we do what we call the keyword research around that. And that’s basically using tools like keyword CAG. There’s also sem rush, there’s also Google Keyword Planner. But these are tools that we put it in there. And that basically tells us over the last 12 months, what is the search volume, and not just what we’ve made, we want to offer the what are all the other things that we never thought of. And from there, we’re then able to kind of have a lay of the land of what’s the demand, then we put together we call the demand growth bench, he was basically is a, how do we build our business around where the opportunity is, we don’t want to just go buy a whole bunch of products and hope it works, we actually have to plan for it. And so the way that we do that is is we understand what’s the demand? And what how many people are searching for what? And then And that’s not just only what times of the year as well, because you want to know what are seasonal businesses? And if you have something that’s big and and a Christmas time, well, how do you get busy in the summertime? You know, how do you not have the slow months? And how do you build products and accompany around a sustainable growth strategy with that, so we really kind of look at the seasonal trends. And then lastly, when you look at the keyword research, we’re then able to understand what’s the average cost per click? And and what the key thing to note is that is that if we were to go say, let’s go do this, let’s go and put together a strategy, what is the average cost per acquisition? And those are the things that are really allow us to say, Hey, I would love to do this. But my product is $90, or my product is 14? Or if it’s 29. Does that work? And there’s some sweet spots with that we can go over a little bit later. But you know, those are some things that that we really have to think about with the keyword research, I offer this one product, but how do I build a bundle of products? How do I get it where the numbers make sense? And really, when we think about this whole growth strategy has been how we’re going to where we’re going to go, we have to understand what’s our what is the sweet spot of a cost per acquisition, sorry, have a average order value that allows us to scale that includes all the costs, all the marketing and all the revenue and a team that we need to manage it, you know, and that’s and that’s, that’s kind of the cue that success

Josh Hadley 14:46

Makes a lot of sense when you’re doing that demand, I guess the demand growth planning and are you using Google Keyword Planner to validate the search volume for those keywords and the average cost per Look for those or are there other tools that you’re using?

Eric Kooymans 15:03

Yeah, so Google Keyword Planner used to be great back in the day, but the actual started limiting people’s data based off of how much you spend. And so it’s not really as it used to be. So we use a tool called keyword CAG. It’s like 40 bucks a month, and it allows you to do it. And it allows you to see what the search volume is by Google that allows you to see what the search volume is, on, on, on Amazon, on YouTube, on on Bing on all the different tools. And then when you do it, you can export the data, and it’ll actually give you the 12 month trend. And so that’s, that’s, that’s really kind of the goal. And, and it’ll give you a bunch of different ideas. And that that’s, that’s from a keyword research tool, that’s kind of the primary one that we use, when it comes to a competitor analysis tool. You know, we never want to jump into a pool unless we know what’s going to work. So. So with that, we also do a deep competitor analysis was okay, I think I want to do this product. You know, maybe we have, you know, for example, a t shirt, you know, brand and maybe we want to go look at the motors and accessories, maybe that’s a hat, a hoodie or whatever that it might be. Well, in that situation, we then do the keyword research around that, see what the big opportunities are, and then do use a tool called sem rush, which allows us to put in the URLs that are there, it it tells us how this business is doing. Is it trending up? Is it trending down? How many backlinks does it have? What is the site authority, but the the last big thing and the most important big thing is where do they get all the traffic, they would gives us a list of all the rankings that they currently have. So that we can say, hey, if this competitor where they are against us, this is how well they’re doing. And maybe they’ve done a bad job. And maybe they’re doing a great job. But the whole point is, is we want to do an audit on everybody that’s in the space that we’re going to go up against and learn what we don’t know. And that’s how we that’s how we scale. We’ve got everybody’s good nuggets, and all the good stuff that Google provides and put together a great strategy and not just the best, the best, the top ones, but what’s the cost effective ones? You know, what are those tail terms that are middle the road that are good, that are cost effective, that we could then go and scale and be able to go from there?

Josh Hadley 17:03

I love that makes a lot of sense. Alright. So we’ve now got our demand growth strategy based on their keyword research. And then kind of what’s the next step from there?

Eric Kooymans 17:13

Yep. So the last piece or the second piece of this, we just talked about the we had the keyword research, and then the competitor analysis. The next piece is also we need to do a little bit of a paid analysis. And what we mean by that is that we want to know all the ads, and all of the the if we’re going to do look at doing paid marketing, we need to understand how are things going and who’s doing it. And what we mean by that is on SEMrush, there’s also another tool called SpyFu, that allows us to put into URLs, and it will show us all of the Google ads and the search ads that people are running. And that tells us to say what’s their hot button? Are they offering free shipping? Are they not? You know, are they offering whatever discount, you know, kind of one is. And then with that on Facebook, they have a tool called Facebook library, and it will show us all the ads that somebody’s run. And and you can really see it when they have like one version and they like change it 100 different times, like hey, that’s probably got some legs so that that that that’s a good one. It’s working for them over it’s just like a one and done. They’re using video or not, you know, what are those opportunities, because if we’re gonna go do some ad, do some ads and pay for some marketing, we want to make sure it works. We don’t want to like hope it works. And so that’s, that’s kind of the big, you just need to know what we got going up against. And the understanding how many competitors, what’s the average cost per acquisition? And can we afford to play in this space? And maybe we need to make some make some tweaks, maybe we didn’t make our average order value a little bit higher, maybe we need to knock through that $59 price point, which is kind of that sweet spot that we have found? Maybe it needs to be 79. Maybe it needs to be 99. But that’s that’s kind of the phase one. That’s the fit that last phase of the strategy when it comes to that

Josh Hadley 18:51

Makes sense? How do you determine what that cost per acquisition is going to be without having data? Or actually having done that and tested it? Right? Yeah, getting actual data? Like, how do you come up with? Hey, I think this is going to be 40 bucks compared to this. You’re looking at 150 bucks per acquisition? Right? There’s a wide range? Yeah, that’s

Eric Kooymans 19:12

A great question. So there’s actually a there’s a neat part about the stats that are out there, there’s actually ways that we can pretty much estimate not like, based off our conversion rate, but industry standards, we can get a pretty good estimate. So there’s a tool, a company called WordStream. They provide paid marketing services around 550,000 businesses, and they run a survey twice a year, and about 17 different industries. And they put together what is everybody’s average CPC average. And I’ll provide these links in the show notes. But what their average cost per click is what their average click through rate is, then what their average cost per acquisition is, as and the neat part about that is, is that then if we were to take our keywords and let’s just say we’re You know, we were going for, you know, let’s just use, for example, a t shirt or women’s t shirt, for example, or, you know, whatever that it might be, there’s a CPC number that’s on there. And that’s where we can basically, there’s a formula that can be run that says, okay, based off of, you know, the number of people searching, and the average click through rate, that potentially, we would have this many click throughs. And then from there based off of that, you know, and based off the industry conversion rate, and maybe you even know what your conversion rate is on your website, then you could say, based off of that conversion rate, that’s how many people would actually buy something, and then we can then do the math based off the cost. And I there’s a whole formula, but needless to say, we run it for every single keyword. And, and the whole goal of that strategy is, is that maybe we want to go for women’s shirts. And that sounds like a great idea. But, but there might be something a little bit lower down that’s like, for example, a, you know, a, for example, slim cut shirt, that might be half the cost, and we then save on those types of things. And so that’s really, or maybe it’s, for example, a Mother’s Day gift, or a whatever that might be for the audience, and we try to find what the opportunity is, and define okay, if this cost per acquisition is $35, then how can we get that down at $23? And if it’s $23, having you than the $9? You know, for example, then we say, Okay, does a $36 cost per acquisition, average order value work, and we can do the math, you know, but that’s kind of the goal that we want to have a plan A, a plan B and A Plan C, because nothing goes as planned. Marketing for the point is we can guess and not trying to jump in and say, Oh, well, that just means we didn’t plan well, you know, and we didn’t have a good plan for step one, step two, step three. And and that’s the goal, you know, with that. So when it comes to and one thing we had mentioned about this whole piece of that keyword research is, just because you do this one set of products, doesn’t mean that you can’t venture out into a couple other categories. Because you want to have a group of products, that’s a success. And maybe your average order value is a good price. And you’ve got a bunch of great margins. And you could just do one, and that would be great. But unfortunately, you know, in today’s world, we have found that you really need a couple of different products in a bundle. And it can’t be like the kind of car salesman upsell tactics, it actually has to be something that helps not just improve somebody’s life, but changed. They got to be passionate about it, you know, and that’s the thing that we’ve really tried to find. Okay, let’s look at the product development. And how do we get a POC assortment that, you know, maybe it is a shirt, a hat and a hoodie? But the point is, what’s the why behind it? What’s the passion that makes somebody want to go and do that, not for them, but their kids or grandkids and everybody else? That whoever is the person shopping. And once we do that, and we do the keyword research, we can then build a bundle that gives you a cost per acquisition, that sorry, it gets your average order value that a cost per acquisition would work. And it goes from there.

Josh Hadley 22:58

That makes sense. And then are you directing that traffic to a funnel like a landing page? Or are you going just directly to a Shopify or WooCommerce storefront? Like, Are there best practices that way? Right? Click Funnels, you could do just a dedicated funnel. And then you could have a bunch of upsells after that, or you could just direct them to your brand page. Like do you have any recommendation now that way?

Eric Kooymans 23:23

Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great, great question. And this just so you know, like, this is where I would say 90% of businesses get it wrong. Okay, so So let’s talk about this. So so so first off, when you have your, there’s two pieces to this pie. First, before we get into the funnels and all the different details. There’s one other low hanging fruit that everybody here is listed as podcast and they have a Shopify or WordPress site needs to set up because there’s some really easy, low hanging fruit is basically Google Shopping, or all the shopping different speeds that are out there. And those are things that is the best converting, easiest to set up. And usually works for and most cases if you’re if your average order value is is is at a certain point that that makes sense for what your industry is, but it’s always worth everybody to test. Just because you can literally with with with WooCommerce, there’s a there’s a plugin called Pro feeds. With Shopify, there’s like a dozen of them that you could do. There’s even full service tools like sales and orders that.com that will set all this up for you and have a one click Shopify integration and all the different details but you put it into Google Shopping, Facebook has one for Facebook marketplace, Bing has its own pink shopping TikTok Hasulam. All of these places, you know, Instagram, Pinterest, all of them now have shopping feeds, but you could set it up with one source that one one of these plugins can do it. There’s also the sales and orders they’ll just take care of for you. You don’t have to worry about a thing. You just sign up 500 bucks, and they take care of it all for you. So it’s a pretty cool tool. But the caveat is that that’s kind of phase one. What if you have to webshop Shopify site, a would actually just drive products to your to your to your WooCommerce site, it would drive products to your product page. And that’s kind of phase one. So that’s just the first piece. Now to your other question, that’s the most important one, that this is where 90% of people get it all wrong is that they send it to their homepage, or maybe to just a product page. And that’s great. But the caveat is, is that we, those work the best if they’re there to to, if they already know who you are, and they know what they want to buy, and they gotta go from there. But usually, when you’re doing paid traffic, this isn’t as warm that they, they just were doing something else, and they saw your ad. So you’ve got to warm up a little bit, and you have to remove some of the distractions, that hurts your conversion rate. So the average conversion rate on Shopify is around like one point. Like, it’s in that 1% range. And that’s a situation that that’s an issue. But to your point about funnels, you know, this is a situation where we’ve seen, you know, an average funnel in between five and 7% conversion rates, and some that are really well even can be higher than that. So we think about what Shopify does, it provides you a great way to have a shopping. Same thing with WooCommerce, it provides you a great shopping cart, but that’s like rebuilding Amazon. Our goal is now to rebuild Amazon, we want to be able to scale and like really be able to do an unlimited marketing budget to be able to do that. And the way that we do this is with a funnel type page. And it could be something that is done on the product page where you have kind of an upsell, you know, kind of one page shopping functionality. But there are some tools you mentioned Click Funnels as an external tool that works. You know, Russell Brunson is does a great job. And that’s a total explorer. But however, if you’re in Shopify, there’s a tool called Shopify Zipa phi. And that’s a tool that allows you to do not at within the Shopify confines, you know, there, you know, Ezra, Ezra Firestone built the plugin, and he’s very great marketer and does a lot of things there. And then there’s also for WooCommerce, there’s a tool called funnel kit, and it and it does a really, really great job and has great upsell funnels and even some automation functionality with it. But the whole goal is, is that you want to be able to customize the product page. And what we mean by that is, it’s not actually a product page anymore, it now is a direct response landing page, we remove the top navigation. So we don’t we re eliminate some distractions that are there, we also then put together a lot more use of video and or graphics around that testimonials. And whatever credibility answers we could come up with that that would be you know, reviews that would be used in featured by all the different things that are there. And of course, test, you know, all the testimonials and use cases that we could do. And our goal is to have our call to action above the fold. And and then from there, as they scroll, they want to learn more, that’s fine, you can have some calls to action there. But if you think about it, we have seven seconds, somebody clicks on an ad to be able to get him to pull the trigger. So So with that, we need to convince them we got to earn their trust. And we got to do all that. And, and a pretty quick timeframe. So so that’s where we will talk about some of the inbound marketing opportunities well around that. But when it comes to paid ads, we need to make sure that we have an average order value of a bundle of products, that changes somebody’s life, not just like helps and like get some, you know, provides them something but it gets them really excited. And then from there, when they click the add to cart, or they do that, we would prefer that at that point to be able to have a process where it is a an order bump, or it’s something that is a complimentary to what they have. It’s a it’s a no brainer impulse. It’s like the cash register at the store, you’re like, oh my gosh, I gotta have that. Well, in this situation. If you have a three pack bundle, how do we you know, have the bag that goes in it? Or, or you know, if you have a book and a journal and a you know, what about a pen, you know, whatever that is, but our goal is, is we’re taking out the cost per the shipping or the cost per acquisition, we got to have those add ons that help us get the average order value well, and then the most importantly, and this is but that most people do that to get is that when they check out and they actually hit the button they checked out on the thank you page. Well, there’s a thank you page there and you’ve just collected their information they just paid for they already are customer they’re already sold. But what about hey, you bought a great gift for your daughter, congratulations. She’s gonna love it. What about her friend, I’ll give you half off in the second one or I’ll give you 20% off on set. And it’s a one click not a not a flashing lights and all this other stuff. It’s a you just solve the problem. They had a big why you then gave them an awesome solution. They’re stoked about it. And now we’re like, how do we help them through it? And sometimes it’s a video saying hey, congratulations, I love this product. My kids love it. But you know what, what about our friends, you know, and that’s a situation where it’s usually a no brainer and And you give them some great offer. And your goal is just now you’ve taken your order ball took out shipping. And if you took care of the second one, and now removed all your talks, and the best part about what you just said is now you have no marketing budget, it’s an infinite marketing budget if you can work out that formula. And that’s perhaps something that’s, that’s kind of a quick summary of that.

Josh Hadley 30:20

I love it. Where do influencers come into play with this? Or do they?

Eric Kooymans 30:25

Yeah, well, influencer marketing, back in the day, literally printed money. I mean, it was a situation where somebody would be able to things could go viral, you’d put some videos out there. And you know, Shannon, one time called me, the guy who referred me he’s like, we’re getting about an order a minute, and we got pointed out supplies and anything, we’re going to be out of stock tomorrow at about noon. We’re like, okay, you know, sorry, those are the great, those are the glory days of influencer marketing, but influencer and really inbound marketing, where you use influencers to build trust and credibility, that’s essential. And really not just for the sales that you’re going to bring. That’s important. Hopefully, you get some bumps, and all of that. But if you do it for a ROI only basis, that’s not that that’s going to be but oftentimes you will be not as excited as it used to be back in the day. But the whole goal of it is building backlinks to your website, if you have your own website, meaning people do, you know, do the different things so that they’re building, and you know, get on the different gift guides of the different holidays of the year, be able to do different interviews, be able to send products for review, I say, if you have 100 products, 10 of those have to go to get reviews on if it’s a YouTube influencer, if it’s a wherever that it is, but you know, Instagram, Pinterest is a thing of its own. You know, Instagram is a place of its own. And if you can find some good in there, those will bro but you’re doing it also for and can you do a review on your website, and you want to get a link back to you, and or put the podcast transcript or whatever the show notes, whatever that it is. But the goal is, you have to get influencers to talk about you. Because then with that, even if it’s going to Amazon, because your goal is is that you’re increasing your overall rankings by the more backlinks that you have. And that’s where influencer marketing is really the key to it. And if you’re going to have your own website, they say every page of content that you spend an hour writing, you should spend four hours, this is coming from Howard Dean, not me, this is one of the best SEO content, you know, marketers out there, you should spend four hours out there trying to market your products, to be able to get these influencers to talk about it. And that’s, you know, you talk about those at some point. But there’s a lot of opportunity around that. I love

Josh Hadley 32:38

that. And I think a big component of all of this, Eric is, and maybe we’re skipping way ahead, but it’s being able to create a community around your brand, right? Loyal brand followers, people that purchase your products, and then they become repeat purchases, right. And I think that’s where kind of like for an Amazon seller, if you can unlock, repeat purchase behavior, and find a way to capture somebody’s information, whether it be through insert cards, or whatever. That’s what’s going to really like exponentially grow your brand. You’re no longer just relying on those front end sales to keep your brand profitable. Do you have experience is that something that you guys work on is, you know, hey, how do we keep this customer engaged, and continue to sell more to them and really increase our lifetime? average order value, right?

Eric Kooymans 33:35

That’s the key to all, you know, when we talk about a whole kind of side of the business, we think of Amazon as a tool to allow you to do what we’re just about to talk about better, just because our goal is to build a business that we own that we control, and that we can control the fate of and the growth or, or UPS or downs of that. And so that’s a situation where we say, hey, let’s take our Amazon profits, and to be able to put that into building this brand into building what we call Customer evangelists. These are people that love our brand. There’s a book called creating customer evangelists. That was written about 10 years ago. And it is a really great, you know, a great tool that talks about how do we how do we empower them and how do we grow them. And the neat part about it, there are tools, one for WooCommerce. That’s called this called WP affiliate WP, there’s a handful of ones that are on Shopify as well, that are basically a referral marketing tools. And what this is, is the ability to, to when somebody signs up, you can say, Hey, can you share this to your Facebook page? Or can you share this, and then from there, when they do that, you’ll get 10 bucks a referral or you’ll get whatever that the, the whatever your carrot can be. But the goal is they love it. They’re already the customer that you have, and how do you build that that relationship over time and really create your own volunteer shows force and that’s kind of you know, that that’s kind of piece number one But then also, you know, you hear about what Jeep did with their brand. And then you know, Ford tried to do the same thing with the bronco. And they’re sending gifts out sending things that are to their loyal customers not to, not to, because they’re looking for them to buy another car, they do it to try to want to wear the t shirt, they have the apple sticker on the back of the car to do whatever that it is to show that they are loyal, and a and to be a top of mind. Because they they love to talk about them as they see it, they use it they have the shirt they have to have, whatever that it is, it allows them to talk and to be excited to stay excited about your brand, and about the products that you have. And you’re empowering them to say, Hey, this is the greatest thing ever. And the best salesperson is somebody on Facebook or social media going, Hey, this is a product you got to have. And then they like it. They share it. Oh yes, I liked it too. And it just kind of goes crazy. And that’s, that’s that’s the nice part about today’s world. But you have to give the tools to be able to get somebody to Okay, I’m gonna go do it right now. Yeah, no, and one here at the end that a story of somebody that really changed a company that changed the world. they’ve mastered this. And we’ll go over we can go over that a little bit. But it’s. So that’s kind of a quick overview.

Josh Hadley 36:10

I love it, Eric. All right, I think you’ve we’ve got a great overview of kind of a bigger picture here. Eric, where should we start diving in deeper here? For our listeners to really extract value from everything that you’re talking about? And practically, like, how can somebody go execute on these strategies, right, we can hear all these things and sounds good, I need to have a lower acquisition cost than what my average order value is going to be? Yeah, I need to create a good customer lifetime value and have all these fun ways to engage with the brand. Much easier said than done. Right. So let’s dive into some of those actionable strategies that you would share with our audience to begin implementing some of these best practices.

Eric Kooymans 36:55

Sounds good? Well, the biggest thing I would just say, and it’s a good point that whatever that you do, we don’t want to get overwhelmed and go, Oh, my gosh, I gotta do everything. Because if you do a lot of everything, you won’t be good at one thing. And the goal is that we take one thing, and we do it really well. And so if you have kind of a sweet spot around a brand, or a collection, or, or a a group of products that do really well, let’s say we have some good marches around that, let’s put together a little thing, let’s go say, alright, let’s take that group of products. And let’s make a bundle, let’s be able to have the, you know, infrastructure in place to be able to do a, a pick and pack of three products. And with that, then have it all in place on the building that, you know, if it’s if it’s one funnel, or one landing page that basically has the ability to market the why behind it, not just, you know, not just a you know, not just the, you know, the features of the product was a real, why behind it and just go deep on one product. And then with that, you can of course, we want to set up the Google Shopping, we want to be able to have a good landing page with some good upsells or potentially cross sales with that, and that was workout one, we do some testing, and we’re talking 10 $15 A day type scenario, test it, see how it works. And then from there, you know, within two, three weeks, you might be able to know kind of if you’re moving in the right direction or not. And then you’re able to kind of scale in those things. And that’s kind of, you know, their goal when it comes to to that. And the biggest thing is we just want to have enough average order value to be able to have some bad days to have holidays, to have slow times that aren’t going to do well. So that we could then be able to scale, you know, and, and, and to do so cost effectively.

Josh Hadley 38:37

So starting with, you know, I think the big takeaway is like start with your winners first, right? If you have a large portfolio like we do, where it’s over 1000 skews, don’t think that you need to build out a funnel for every 1000 Here, you know, each of those individual skews and have 1000s of funnels and focus on those top ones.

Eric Kooymans 38:57

Yeah, and just know, we talked about the, like a growth strategy, you know, for something with 1000 products, we tested products, we tested products, we normally just put out what are the big holidays that are threaded time. And from there, what are three, you know, two to five bundles for each of the different ones, what are a couple of lifetime ones, like year round ones, you know, and then with that, be able to have curated goals, you know, to be able to say I’m gonna go spend, you know, three, or five, or three or 5000, or 10, or 20,000, or whatever that might be for this three month span, I’ll have two weeks of testing, three weeks of pranking, and let’s see how that goes. And then from there, too, you know, and this to be able to go holiday by holiday and be able to scale those things. But our goal is not just to build a November to December business, our goal is to build a year round business. So we really have to be able to scale with each of the different times of the month patient who’s pounds of the, you know, the holidays, beer and and to be able to scale through all of that.

Josh Hadley 39:55

Eric, if we were gonna go ahead.

Eric Kooymans 39:58

Well, there was one piece that we he talks about where to start. And this is something that is a new thing that’s out there that I wanted to make sure that we should recover just because in the last two years, the whole product market has changed, and most people didn’t even see it coming in. So it’s a situation where I love to kind of talk about it when it comes to Amazon. It’s a b2c business. And it’s something that, you know, they’re the best of the best. But there’s actually a new marketplace, it’s been around for a while, but the last two years, is a company called Faire. And this is a company that basically mastered the whole affiliate referral marketing business. And they rode the COVID wave where they said, Okay, let’s give everybody a bunch of different referrals. So we can go over what that is. But now they built over 600,000, retailers, and 85,000 brands in like 17 countries. So any of the smallest brands that are out there, to the biggest brands can go and apply if it’s within the niches that they provide. And with that provide a b2b opportunity. And again, this is less margin. But and so that doesn’t work for everybody. But the point is, you can pick what your margins are. And and then part of it is, is that you’re basically getting small businesses that are only making 100, that 200 to $200 orders that are all wholesale company wholesale. But with that, you’re able to then scale and you don’t have to pay to be on a profit on the platform, you’re actually paying on a 15 to 20%. commissioned to fair to be able to do it, but that’s only after work, you’re not paying to hope it works. And so that’s a situation where, where we have a bit of a conflict client that’s in that 10 to $15 million range on Amazon, and in the first year or two year and a half out there wrapped around, you know, trending, you know, a couple million dollars when it comes to that just by pushing the products on there. And that’s a situation where it’s not loading their customers where they could do certain things. It’s not doing the driving that fair would recommend you do. This is just being where it is. There’s not many marketplaces in today’s world that actually like you could set up, I’m gonna get on Walmart and be all excited, which you should do, everybody should do, but it’s not gonna go Whoa, yeah, no. And then it’s like, with fair, it is one of those where if you have good products, good quality, and you have margins that you can work in is a good opportunity to be able to test and to be able to explore.

Josh Hadley 42:22

When you get brands that go from Amazon to fair, do you see that they have to kind of like create a new UPC code, or they have to kind of repackage their product so that it is more retail ready. And also a new UPC code in the fact of, you know, if somebody is going to resell this product, right, you don’t want them jumping on your Amazon listing, because they’ve got it at this lower price. Now they start eating some of your margin, as well. So any advice that way?

Eric Kooymans 42:52

Yeah, that’s a great question. And this is something that you definitely want to kind of think through. You know, the whole marketplace and arbitrage type side of things, because it is something that’s true, people will buy it, and they will go automatically sell on those places. There are there is a thing unfair, where you can have a not sold on Amazon button. And there’s different things that they have, where you have promotions, where you could, you know, do certain things and repackaging of that other side of things. And if you have the capabilities and the budget, that’s great. But really, you want to build your just like your Amazon business you want to build your therapist is the best part about fairs, you get to keep the customer you get their information, you get all the different details, and you can market to them, send them things, you know, all the different details that are there, then you can email to them and all the everything that you’re kind of building. And and the biggest thing around the UPC is is is that well, let’s, let’s see if it works. Let’s see if we have an audience. That is the right niche. These are boutiques these are, you know, kind of smaller type scenarios. And And is it the right audience? And then once it is the right audience, this, let’s step back, what happens if we made these three pillars for Amazon, these three other colors for this? That’s a conversation to have. But the big point is, is that it’s a two way conversation with your customers, you can actually email them and say, What would you like and they’ll respond back to you, you can just come back a comment and and you can really kind of have that dialogue. And you can run promotions do different things that trade shows twice a year. And it’s an interesting place. It’s the one of the biggest changing of all retail side of things. Trade Shows are really struggling because now one retailer can go online to any retail, you know, any customer that’s out there and find products that are there, and the BLDC sell them so it’s a neat opportunity.

Josh Hadley 44:35

I love that. Now, Eric, as we begin to wrap things up, I want to get even more basic with you know, if somebody’s going to go from Amazon, and they want to create this kind of omni channel presence and they’re gonna start, you know, creating their Shopify store and driving traffic to it. What did it what are like the what’s your number one recommendation of this of the platform to get on first, whether it be Facebook or TikTok, or Google to drive traffic to a landing page, like, you can only choose one right, let’s talk about the basics of the basics of the basics here. Sure, take your top product, right. And then well,

Eric Kooymans 45:17

there’s two pieces to that. So one, if you have a Shopify store, I would have, the first thing I would do is set up Google Shopping, just because that’s literally the same day you set up all of your store, that all those different details and you can actually start fulfilling products, you could set up a Google Merchant account, which then connects to your Google Ads account. And it’s literally a quick connection type scenario. And, and everybody here should easily be doing Google Shopping. And and again, you have to, you have to be able to to we’ve already talked about the strategy piece. So that’s got to be there, you got to be ready for a little bit of a cost acquisition. But it’s something that if you know, we kind of say that SEO and long term marketing that that’s that that’s the three to six months, but the one to three months, when you first get started, what do you do in that time? Well, first thing I do is start with Google Shopping. And of course, you got to do all the content marketing, you need to do all of the influencer marketing all of that, but how do you move the needle tomorrow? It’s with Google Shopping. And then from there, the next thing is building a bundle around, you know, what is your one thing that you could do, and the next place I was started is not the TikTok to the world, you know, that they might be great. There might be opportunities that are there. But it’s really I would start with, with the after our Google side of things that we just talked about Google Shopping, to start with a Facebook ad towards very targeted audiences. And that’s the big thing, you can choose interests, you don’t want to just say, Hey, everybody, tell you what to say, No, I want to choose female between This age and this age that like, you know, whatever that it is, and you know that that’s an audience that is there. And that’s a good place to be able to start talking about booty avatars, and go target each one of those. And then with that, you can find that you might be thinking, you’re going for Millennial Moms, that have a young young child, and you might actually learn that it’s the grandma that actually buys for the value of the parents. And that’s where, but you gotta test that you don’t know that. So that’s kind of a quick overview of that. That’s perfect.

Josh Hadley 47:11

Eric, this has been amazing, I’ve got a lot of value out of this, I think everybody’s got some quick wins of what they can do and where to just begin, right. And I think the important thing that everybody needs to take away, is that you’ve just got to test right, you’re probably not going to, you know, hit the bull’s eye. Right from the start, you’re gonna have to make some refinements along the way. Eric, is there anything that we haven’t covered up until this point that you think we really need to share with the audience?

Eric Kooymans 47:40

Now? Well, the only thing I would say just the last part is when it comes by all the ChatGPT stuff and the stuff that’s out there, you know, it’s definitely changing the world. And what I mean by that is the way people search and shop and the way people do things, it’s already changed. And the biggest thing is, is that it’s going to change it even more in the next day. And so we would just say is, is that you can leverage the content, if you’re on Amazon, you can put all you can put your five description and all of your reviews, and it would give you what are the top five bullet points that you need to have on your Amazon listing that could be jacked up, you can do that all day long. And it does it based off of problems and things that people don’t understand, to be able to make great reviews that great, great the bullet points that you can have. Also, when it comes to your website, if you have to have content on it. Again, Google does not like you know, spun content or AI type content. But if it adds value, if it’s something that has stats, it has testimonials and has all the different things that allow you to to be able to do it, I would just always pay attention, you know, and to be able to understand, you know, where the world’s going because it’s it’s changing quicker than we could have imagined. And, and it’s easy to see where it’s going. So So yeah,

Josh Hadley 48:54

I love it. Those are some great quick wins with implementing AI and ChatGPT definitely stay on the cutting edge of all of that because it is changing week over week.

Eric Kooymans 49:05

And Google’s also embraced it. So that’s the big thing. I was like, oh, Google’s gonna slap it down. No big deal. And then all of a sudden, like, oh, it’s gonna be better. I might. Oh, okay. So here we go. So it’s, it’s your stay, you know, so we’ve got to figure it out and to be able to adjust with the times for sure.

Josh Hadley 49:21

Agreed. Eric, before we wrap up today’s episode, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from each episode. Here are some three actionable takeaways that I noted. But Eric, you let me know if I’m missing anything. All right. So action item number one is you just touched on this turn on Google Shopping. If you’ve already got your Shopify or WooCommerce setup, the first quick win would be just replicate that all of that with Google Shopping. And I think you also mentioned to there’s a plugin that will do the same thing and just turn on Facebook, shopping and all those other Shopping platforms as well, is that correct? That’s correct.

Eric Kooymans 50:02

That’s correct. So there’s, there’s plugins for each of the different platforms that will go to every feed, not just those two. But any feed that’s available, it will allow you to build an artist’s pre made templates for those feeds. And then if you want to use just one, there’s a tool called sales and orders that they have a self service and a full service, they’ll take care of all for you just call them up, set it up, they’ll take care of it, you’re done. So those are the kind of two things out in the show notes, we’ll provide links to all the different plugins, so that you have those as well.

Josh Hadley 50:32

Awesome, super valuable. Action item number two, would be to start focusing on, you know, what are those bundles of products that you’re going to need to create. And so I think that’s an important aspect of all of the conversation that we had today is take the ones that are winning, and group them together, whether they be seasonal items, or whether they’re serving, you know, a particular holiday or Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, group things together, because that’s where you’re going to need to package things together in order to be able to pay for and afford the cost of those ads that you’re going to be driving traffic to,

Eric Kooymans 51:11

as well. So let’s there’s bundles and upsells. And cross sells are the key to scalable growth, and honestly, no marketing budget, you just want to be able to scale and grow to people spend $30 million a year on Facebook ads, because they’ve worked out a funnel, you just got to figure that out. What’s the formula?

Josh Hadley 51:27

You’ve got to come up with that? And then action item number three, I’m going to put this as as Faire. I think you mentioned that this is just another kind of correlates with action item number one of just like, you’re just putting yourself out there, right? Like, just put more fishing poles in the water, so to speak. And I think Faire does that. And I love what you talked about, instead of getting caught up with, I’ve got to change my UPC code, I’ve got to come out with just specific designs only for fair, I think that the easiest thing is just take your best selling products, put them out there, see what happens, understand what some of the potential risks could be, and then start pivoting accordingly. Right, if you see somebody that starts selling on your Amazon listing, you could take it down and not, not sell back to them on Faire, right. And but continuing to pivot. So Eric, kind of I guess my biggest takeaway is just start with the low hanging fruit of just get out there even further. And there’s so many tools that allow us to do that Google Shopping, the different marketplace, plugins, and then you’ve got Faire, that just allow you to kind of expand your presence outside of just Amazon. Is there anything else, Eric, that we haven’t touched on that you think we nailed?

Eric Kooymans 52:47

One of the things that? You know, this is a really good start? Yeah, it’s, I think the biggest thing that you said just get started. And and then also where possible, if you can’t do one piece in a fine team that can help you. That’s the biggest thing is that you can’t, if it’s if Google Shopping and if you’re not ready to give it a go, you can you can then there’s people that you can hire their sales and orders that you can do, there’s also you can go to Upwork, you can go to find an agency, find go on Indeed, or ziprecruiter, put some ads out to find people that know how to do it, because you gotta be able to scale. And if you can’t, if you do it all yourself, it might it might be in the game, but you want to be able to scale and grow. And that’s where finding a great team to be able to do so

Josh Hadley 53:31

is great. Yeah, Eric, on that note, obviously, you have your agency. And I think there’s so much that goes into all of these strategies that we talked about working with an expert is very important, especially if you’re a business owner, you’re not going to be able to master all of these things. So Eric, tell us more about what does it look like when a brand comes to you? What is kind of like your fee structure kind of look like? Is it all just kind of like tailored to every brand individually? Is it a revenue, share profit share, tell us a little bit more about the way your agency set up? The lay of the land? For our audience? What if they’re considering going to an agency like yourself to help them execute this?

Eric Kooymans 54:13

That’s great question. That’s a great question. So the biggest thing is, is that I would just say first, all agencies aren’t created equal. So you want to make sure that that you find the right one that understands not just branding and not just, you know, building a, you know, an online presence, but really more than that direct response type marketing, you want to have somebody that understands, you know, funnels that understands, you know, paid ads and ROI based marketing. That’s the key thing, just because you can have a great website and make no sales. So that’s kind of you got a great brand, but actually not be able to sell anything. So that’s just kind of a good you want to have a comprehensive view with that. Then when it comes to harness your strengths. This is a situation where we put together a full audit of kind of where you are, the end is no cookie cutter type scenario. This is we look at we do a full audit on where you are The they put together a detailed growth strategy and what that looks like, and to be able to be able to scale from there. So the whole goal when it comes to what, what, what out of the fee structure and all the different details, if you have a great website and a brand, and you just need little pieces, there can be just little things where it’s maybe a project based or retainer type based fixing of issues and or scaling and doing different things about nature, the best opportunities around kind of an outsourced cmo type scenario where it’s basically, hey, I don’t have I just have great products, and I have a great team to be able to build those products, but we need a team to help market them. And that’s a situation where, you know, kind of having a having, you know, a team of people coming behind you to go sorry, I will take this and run with it when it comes to marketing within your goals within your brand confines. And to be able to scale and leverage not just, you know, not just one marketing person, but actually a team of people, that’s kind of that’s been, we’ve seen the best success just because, you know, you want to be able to scale and our biggest goal is that we’d be able to actually build a team for you and be able to actually be able to replace yourself to be able to think go and step out just because our goal is to build your, your business to enable you to be able to fish to be able to grow and to be able to scale, you know, and that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s how we work. So. But needless to say, we want to just build long term relationships to be able to scale and get referrals. And that’s that’s a win win for everybody.

Josh Hadley 56:21

Where can people reach out to learn more about Harnessing Strengths and even reach out to you personally?

Eric Kooymans 56:26

Yep, so with Harnessing Strengths , you go to harnessingstrenghts.com, and press the “book” button, and we’ll setup a schedule and consultation. And and you can reach out to me on on Facebook, on LinkedIn, or wherever you can pick the contact us on Harnessing Strengths as well. They’ll be able to go from there, hopefully all the information shown as well. So

Josh Hadley 56:49

awesome. I love that. Now as we wrap everything up, Eric, I’ve got to ask you that three questions that I asked every guest. So number one is what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Eric Kooymans 57:01

Well, I think for the conversation that we had today, I think everybody needs to read Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson. So the older book that’s more around a online course thing. But the from there, it really talks about the strategy of funnels, and kind of what that is, and the psychology around how you do it, I shift arm, that industry for many, many years. As soon as like, you gotta read it. And honestly, I read it in one sitting on a Sunday morning, and it was the greatest thing. You can get it on Audible, you can do whatever, but you want to get the book because it has all the strategies and the psychology around it. And you can apply to any industry that’s out there, you know, take out some of the car salesmen tactics, and some of the big, you know, balloon type marketing, but use the good principles and apply it to good, coordinated strategy. And that’s a great place to start.

Josh Hadley 57:45

I agree. I have read that book. And it is a really good book, I would recommend that as well. All right, question number two, what is your favorite productivity tool or software that you’ve discovered? that you think is a game changer? Yeah, well,

Eric Kooymans 58:00

I’m sure this isn’t new to everybody. But I think it’s definitely been one that we use the most is really extracted to one is called Slack, where we basically have a channel for every single project that we have going on. And we asked to set it up with all of our different clients, then with that are able to then talk have many different conversations at once. But to be able to have all the you know, with a remote team be able to work as over sit in the same room. And all of that teams does a good job as well. You know, when it comes to if you already have Microsoft Office 365, that does it as well. But Slack has been one that we use, you know, all the time, corresponding with our project management system, which one uses teamwork that allows us to put all the cast for all the different things and we have the on Amazon department and all the marketing all the different details. And it allows you to have task based, not just board based, but very task based, check them off, and everybody gets lowered. Everybody knows what they’re working on as a Gantt chart to work out the details. So that’s kind of true, but we weren’t using together you can add a Slack and add a tactic and go from there.

Josh Hadley 59:00

I love it. Great strategy. Last but not least, who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why?

Eric Kooymans 59:10

Well, Sam Oh of Ahrefs. He has a YouTube ah, residence. He has a YouTube channel. And they do that they’re kind of more on the the SEO kind of backlink influencer marketing, you know that they sell a SAS system but Sammo you know, he has great videos that dude a very easy, understandable way to talk about all things of of not just about just building your website, but even certain types of affiliate marketing b2b things in a b2c, all the different details and how to get your brand more exposure. And that’s something that anything that Sammo says I would, I would you know, he’s a smart guy and that whole team is a great big company. So I love it.

Josh Hadley 59:53

Well, Eric, thank you so much for your time today. I know I took a lot away a lot of action items for myself, and I think our audience saw a lot of value in this as well today. But thank you for your time and coming on the podcast.

Eric Kooymans 1:00:07

Absolutely, great! And we appreciate your time and feel free to reach out with any questions with the show notes or provide all these details. So you can look at that and if there’s any questions, feel free to reach out to your time today. Thank you, Josh.

Outro 1:00:19

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