In this episode, host Josh interviews Dr. Travis Zigler, a former optometrist who founded “Eye Love”, a brand focused on healing dry eye naturally and funding free eye care clinics. Travis shares his journey from optometry to e-commerce and Amazon PPC, leading to the creation of Profitable Pineapple Ads. He discusses the importance of finding personal fulfillment beyond business, explains the 80/20 rule for Amazon advertising, and offers actionable strategies for optimizing PPC campaigns and product listings to drive growth and impact.
Chapters:
Introduction to Dr. Travis Zigler and His Journey (00:00:00)
Josh introduces Dr. Travis Zigler, his background in optometry, e-commerce, and founding “Eye Love” and Profitable Pineapple Ads.
Starting Profitable Pineapple Ads and Finding Personal Worth (00:01:08)
Travis discusses starting the agency, the importance of finding self-worth beyond business, and his and his wife’s personal missions.
Mission Trips and Foundation Work (00:02:59)
Travis shares about their charity work, mission trips, and the value they find in giving vision to those in need.
Pivot to Amazon PPC and Agency Origins (00:03:33)
Transition to discussing Profitable Pineapple Ads, why Travis started focusing on Amazon PPC, and the agency’s early challenges.
Simplifying Amazon PPC: The 80/20 Principle (00:05:50)
Travis explains the 80/20 rule in PPC, focusing on what works, and how this approach improved results for their clients.
Scaling the Agency and Using Software (00:06:47)
Describes the agency’s growth, adoption of software, and scaling to 120 clients with a team of 11.
Simple PPC Strategies and Case Studies (00:07:55)
Travis outlines actionable PPC strategies, focusing on top-performing products and keywords, and how this benefits clients.
Optimizing Listings and Campaign Structure (00:10:00)
Details on optimizing product listings, using professional images, and structuring ad campaigns for maximum impact.
Three Actionable Takeaways and Final Thoughts (00:11:25)
Josh summarizes key takeaways: self-reflection, the 80/20 principle, and implementing focused PPC or blog strategies.
Episode Wrap-Up (00:15:02)
Closing remarks, gratitude, and looking forward to future meetings.
Links and Mentions:
Companies and Foundations
Eye Love
Eye Believe Foundation
Profitable Pineapple Ads Agency
Websites
ProfitablePineapple.com
Concepts and Strategies
80/20 Pareto Principle: 00:05:50
Single Keyword Ad Campaigns: 00:10:00
Transcript:
Josh 00:00:00 Today, I’m excited to introduce you to Doctor Travis Zigler. He is a recovering optometrist turned ecommerce entrepreneur. He is the founder of Eye Love, whose mission is to heal 1 million dry eye sufferers naturally. Doctor Travis and his wife, Doctor Jenna Zigler, used the profits from Eye Love to Fund free clinics in Jamaica and the US through their charity, the Eye Believe Foundation. And due to the success of Eye Love, others have asked if Doctor Travis would help them grow their businesses online and more specifically with Amazon, which led to the creation of the profitable Pineapple Ads Agency. Well why pineapple? Well, why not specializing in Amazon PPC? Doctor Travis blogs about Amazon PPC and selling on Amazon, and also has a free Amazon PPC Masterclass, which you can check out at Profitable pineapple.com. So welcome to the podcast, Travis.
Travis 00:00:57 Josh, happy to be here and glad to be glad to be providing value to your audience, so looking forward to it.
Josh 00:01:03 You had previously started profitable pineapple ads before the exit.
Josh 00:01:07 Is that true?
Travis 00:01:08 Yeah, so we started about four years ago and the exit was about a year ago. Okay.
Josh 00:01:12 And so so yeah, you had already started it. So you already had something else going on, right? Do you feel like that helped?
Travis 00:01:18 It did help. But to go back to your question about tips and pointers, it’s all about where you find your worth in life. And a lot of us as entrepreneurs find that worth in what we’re doing in our business. We bury ourselves in busy work because that’s what we feel like is our worth. And it’s all about that is finding what makes you feel. I don’t want to say worthy, but find out what makes you feel good inside. I’m a creator. I love to educate and so I educated with my dry brand. We had a show called The Dry Eye Show. It was a podcast and a YouTube station. But then in the agency side, I also am. I teach people all the strategies that we used. And so I love to educate people on how to do stuff.
Travis 00:02:05 And I was a professor at Ohio State. So I find my value in education, in masterminding with people, in networking. And so as long as that didn’t go away when we sold our business, then I would be fine. My wife, on the other hand, I don’t think she knows as much. She finds it in motherhood a little bit. But we have we have two kids and they’re in school during the day, so. But she also finds it in I think writing is her kind of passion. Is email, copywriting, blog posting and creating that value for people in the written form. But when Eye Love kind of is going away or has gone away, and it’s changed over the last year and a half, she didn’t get to do that as much as she used to. And so her kind of value and her worth that she felt kind of went away. And so she kind of felt empty inside. And it’s very hard. So as an entrepreneur, we need to find our worth in something that we can continue doing even when the business is gone.
Travis 00:02:59 That doesn’t mean busywork. It just means focusing on what you feel like you were put on this earth to do. And mine is education. And then focusing on our foundation’s mission, which is giving people vision that don’t have access to eyecare. And so we go on mission trips three, two to 3 to 4 times a year, and we donate to those causes as well. And that’s because that’s where we find value, is giving people vision because that helps their lives, of course. And then also educating and creating for people to help them learn things as well.
Josh 00:03:33 All right. Let’s pivot now Travis, into profitable pineapple ads. you know, tell us why you got started in PPC. And let’s talk about some of the, you know, tactics that have been working in PPC specifically for now. And then. I know you’ve got in the Billion Dollar seller summit. you shared some advanced tactics about implementing blog strategies and some of that cool stuff. And so we’ll get to that. But let’s talk about just regular old PPC to begin with and your journey to where it got to you.
Josh 00:04:06 Right now with your agency?
Travis 00:04:08 Yeah. So the agency was just born out of a need that we had. And again, listening to the universe and how it’s coming at us and taking action on it. And so what happened was we hired multiple agencies, seven agencies total tried six softwares. This was back in 2016 and 2017. And finally I hired a good friend of mine who had a very respectable agency and software. And I thought, you know, I think they’re going to do a great job. If they can’t do it, then I got to figure it out. And unfortunately, it just didn’t work out. And what I found with agencies constantly is they just spend a lot for a little return. And they always promised, yeah, it’s coming, it’s coming. We’re just getting the data. The problem is I kind of knew what to do with the Amazon PPC, so there was a lot of data already there that didn’t need to spend a bunch to get more data. And so that kind of frustrated me to the point of, I’m going to figure this out myself and do it.
Travis 00:04:57 And so, you know, in the middle of 2017, I just decided to dig my heels in and just start learning PPC more than I already knew, and trying to figure out how I can teach this to other people. So I hired my first. We’ll call him an employee, but you can also say co-founder of the agency with me. It was my best friend from college, and we kind of worked through this together. And I think you met Adam at DSS last time we were there. Yeah. and, you know, we just figured out Amazon PPC together, and then I was at the amazing comms conference one day, and I heard Yvette speak, and she speaks in metaphors, which is fantastic. But her whole philosophy and strategy around PPC, it was just like one of those moments. And I was like, this is it. And what she talks about is just pretty, pretty simple. Just simplifying your Amazon PPC. And so the way I teach it is the 8020 Pareto principle.
Travis 00:05:50 20% of what you’re doing in life produces 80% of your results. So 20% of what you’re doing for your business produces 80% of the results. 20% of your products produce 80% of your revenue, 20% of your customer search terms produce 80% of your revenue on PPC. 20% of the ACS you’re targeting produce 80% of the revenue from the ACS. And so it was all just about simplifying PPC to a point of focus on what’s working. And when we did that, it made PPC easier. It took less time, but it increased our profits. It decreased our IT costs, but it increased our revenue as well. And so we did this for our own account, saw that it worked. Other people had been asking me to do their PPC for them, so we took on two clients. As a result, Adam managed those two clients using the exact same philosophy that we just discussed and their accounts took off. And so we’re like, I think we have something here. The problem was it was very manual. There’s no software involved.
Travis 00:06:47 And then finally we started using a software called Cortile, which you might be familiar with. I always recommend if you’re going to use quartile, go through us, don’t go through quartile. And so just please do that. But and now we’ve developed our own simplified strategy using a software. So now we can scale it even more. so now we’re up to about 120 clients. We have a team of about 11 people, and it’s a lot of learning lessons in that too. But it all started from a need to figuring it out, to simplifying it and then just scaling it from there. And it works incredibly well. And it’s something that, you know, it’s been a it’s a fun journey and I’ve got to do it with my best friend as well. And so we get to go to conferences together and have a good time.
Josh 00:07:31 I love that. Share with us what are some of those simple PPC strategies that that you implement? And maybe you could parlay this into some case studies that you’ve been able to, you know, create with these 120 clients that you’ve worked with, share with us.
Josh 00:07:46 You know what happened when they came on. What are some of those simple strategies and the account setup that you do that allowed them to improve their results?
Travis 00:07:55 Yeah. So let’s jump into just the simple strategy. So we talked about 20% of search terms are creating 80% of your results. And so what we do is we literally focus on that 20%. So let’s say you have and also the 20% of products that are producing 80% of your results. The big problem that I see is most Amazon sellers are following too many different strategies, and they hear something on this podcast or this podcast in this YouTube video, and then they try to implement all that. And it’s just this like smorgasbord of strategies that doesn’t make sense together. And is my strategy the only way to do it? No. But if you just follow one strategy, that’s the key thing. And just keep following that. And my strategy may not work for you. So then after you try mine for, let’s say, six months to a year, go to somebody else’s.
Travis 00:08:39 So but you got to stick to one. So once we find out that 20% of products that are producing 80% of the results, we focus on those that 20% of products. So let’s give a real world example. We have ten products. Two of them are your heroes. Focus all of your time and effort and money on those two products. Now you’re asking yourself what about the other eight? Aren’t those going to flounder? Yes, they will a little bit, but your energy is being spread around those ten products that if you just focus on these two, your profits, your revenue will go up. And then eventually you’ll take those revenues or that increase profit and then start working on the other eight products. And so that’s kind of key point. Number one is just focus on the products that are really working. Get to the other products later. Because when you focus on the products that are working, you’ll take off those sales enough, get those momentum, and then you can go start putting that towards the other products.
Travis 00:09:29 And then when you download a search.
Josh 00:09:31 You mean by go ahead. Sorry. What do you mean by focus on the products that are working. Right. So you’ve got let’s say you got ten products, ten products, two that are crushing it. Right. What do you mean by focusing on them? Like creating ad campaigns only for those two and not creating ad campaigns for the others? Or are you saying, yeah, maybe create ad campaigns, but really start refining and optimization on only two of those products? specifically, can you dive into a little bit more detail there?
Travis 00:10:00 Yeah, great segue into the next step. So now we’ve picked our products to focus on. Now what we’re going to do is make sure the listings are optimized. Of course, pictures look good, pictures are professional. Don’t get 3D renderings, get actual pictures and get lifestyle images. Pay somebody to do some photography for them to make them look really good. That’s kind of key. Step number one make sure you have your ratings and reviews up and then focus on the search terms.
Travis 00:10:27 So you’ve probably been running advertising on those. So download that search term report. Find the search terms that are winning for that product and scale those. So what we do is we take those search terms I am a single keyword ad campaign guy. So that means one keyword, one ad group, one product per campaign. And that’s so we can customize the entire campaign around that specific product. So that’s we can customize budgets, bid adjustments and top of search placements and all that. And we can we can just customize the whole thing for that one keyword or search term, whatever you want to say for that one search term, for that one product into an exact match campaign. And we take all those search terms that are working and put them into single keyword ad campaigns that are exact match. So we can scale those. If your budget allows it, we then put those same search terms into broad match, single keyword ad campaigns. Broad match. And so after you do that every month, this will create new search terms that you can then continue to scale up and up and up.
Travis 00:11:24 Does that make sense?
Josh 00:11:25 Okay. That makes sense. I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from each episode. Here are three takeaways that I noted. Travis, let me know if I’m missing anything. So I would say number one, this goes back to the earlier conversation we had when you were exiting your brand is, I think, getting very clear with who you are as a business owner and what it is that you bring to the world. Right? Not like what is your, you know, special secret sauce that you bring to the world. What is your mission that you’re sent here to do, but also kind of relate that to your brand mission as well, right? Because I think you need to pair those up. It’s not just about making as much money as you can, right? And if if that is, then maybe do a little bit more self-reflection and try to dig into, you know what? How can I create a brand that actually has a mission to better society? Because that’s the type of brands that people do want to follow.
Josh 00:12:25 It’s also the type of brands that other people want to acquire. So first and foremost, I think the actual takeaway is for everybody do a little bit of self introspection and identify your value to the world. number two is focusing on that 8020 principle. I think that is a huge takeaway for our brand. We have over 1300 SKUs. So it is very daunting to say, hey, go implement all of these blog strategies for all of our products, right? It’s like, oh, I don’t even know where to start. But if you just start scaling it back and be like, all right, where’s what’s my top selling product category? Let’s just start there. Right? And I think what you laid out so eloquently There Travis is. Even before you start driving all this external traffic and juicing up your PPC campaigns, your first thing that you talked about is like, hey, go make sure your content is is up to snuff on Amazon. Do you have good images like have you invested in real lifestyle photos of your products? Do you have A+ content? Do you have good copy on your listing? Because if you’re just driving external traffic and even more traffic on Amazon to that listing, you’re only, you know, kind of you’re not optimizing your results there, and you’re going to have to spend even more than you would if you just had an optimized listing.
Josh 00:13:45 So once you take that, you know, I think the final takeaway is to implement either the PPC strategy that we talked about or this blog strategy for yourself. With the blog, you’re basically creating an ad, right, that is centered around a problem that your product is solving. Okay, you create a blog post about that problem, and then obviously your solution to that problem is your product that you’re recommending, and you invite people to go purchase that product on Amazon. So that’s the way that that funnel set up. And then likewise with PPC, it’s identifying those keywords that are driving most of your traffic and then lighting up those PPC campaigns as an exact match. Single keyword campaigns and then doing the exact same thing on Google. So I think there’s more than three actionable takeaways. There’s probably like 6 or 7 that I just listed there. but each of those I think, go back. There’s a lot of things that you can implement in your business. Choose one, focus on it and start making some.
Josh 00:14:48 Take action and generate some results from there. Do you think something’s up? All right. Travis, anything else you would add?
Travis 00:14:56 I think I think you sum them up better than I could have summed them up. And I’m actually the one that said it.
Josh 00:15:02 Well, it was easy for me to just consume and take notes. Well, Travis, thanks so much for your time today. I look forward to running into you at another conference coming up.
Travis 00:15:10 Appreciate it.
