Modern Merchant Podcast [EP 28]: Why Your Marketing Strategy Needs Dennis Rodman w/ OMG Commerce’s Brett Curry

Below, you will find a transcript of the episode.

Jamie McCarthy:

Hey everybody. It’s Jamie McCarthy here, your host of the Modern Merchant podcast. Today we’ve got Brett Curry on, he’s the CEO of OMG Commerce. Hey Brett.

Brett Curry:

Hey, what’s up?

Jamie McCarthy:

So OMG Commerce, you guys are an ecommerce marketing agency. If you don’t mind just kind of diving right into introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about how OMG Commerce sort of came to be.

Brett Curry:

Absolutely. So I am a marketing junkie from old. I remember as a teenager, young teenager liking infomercials, which is such a weird thing. I’d watch the Ginsu knife commercials or other commercials and just be mesmerized. And I liked the salesmanship of it. And I always thought I was interested in sales and I did get into sales right after college. But so always loved marketing, always loved ads, started doing some radio sales and TV and then some SEO. And anyway, built this agency 2010 with a business partner, Chris Brewer. And so we then grew and decided, “Hey, we love ecommerce.” And I guess about 2012, really fell in love with Google shopping. So I started writing about Google shopping, speaking about Google shopping, and then things kind of exploded. So we’re a team of about 60, closer to 65 actually, and we help great ecommerce brands accelerate growth. And we primarily do that through Google search shopping, YouTube, and then Amazon. And yeah, we love taking great brands that have great stories and then helping them grow faster.

Jamie McCarthy:

I love that. And that’s always one thing that you hear that newly emerging brands really kind of struggle with, it’s that it’s scaling. It’s really making sure that they’re positioning themselves correctly. I try to stay away from the LinkedIn gurus. There’s a lot of information out there and it can be super overwhelming. So I think obviously dialing into marketing is super strategic and I think it’s super important to actually let the pros who do it best to take over for you.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Yeah, totally. And a couple things that are happening. One, ad costs are increasing. The level of overwhelm for customers is at an all time high. So we’re being bombarded with messages all the time. So to break through the clutter and to do so in an affordable way, and to turn that scroller, that viewer, that shopper, into an actual customer is difficult. And so certainly people can do it. It’s not rocket science, but it is more challenging now than it has been in the past, but there’s still more opportunities now as well. So it’s a bit of a pros and cons there, for sure.

Jamie McCarthy:

And when you say opportunities, are you referring to just so many different channels now that you guys have the ability to market on, right?

Brett Curry:

Yeah. So many challenges and … So many challenges. There are challenges too. So many opportunities. And even though privacy issues are real and changes post iOS 14, which a lot of marketers have PTSD now thanks to iOS 14, just changed the game for us. There’s still really interesting ways you can target that if we were to go back in the day to when I first started in marketing in the early 200s, it would’ve blown my mind to know the type of targeting we have now.

So on YouTube and Google. So on YouTube, as an example, you can target people based on what they’ve been searching for recently on Google and on YouTube. So if I sell a hair product, if I sell a concealer for hair, touching up roots, I can target people that have recently searched for how to touch up gray roots on my hair. So I know someone is interested in what I have to sell, that type of targeting use to not exist. And because it’s Google’s data, Google owns that data. It’s not going to go away. You can still target those people through Google’s platforms. So that’s pretty awesome. So there are just more opportunities than there used to be. And even though we are a little bit bummed post iOS 14, there’s still plenty of opportunities to scale.

Jamie McCarthy:

And so I noticed on your website specifically too, Brett, you guys refer to your amped strategy. So I’m assuming that ties in a little bit to that. Can you explain to us what is AMP and how’s that different from other ad strategies?

Brett Curry:

Sure. So AMP is an acronym and it just sounds cool. And I want to make t-shirts, to get some tattoos that say AMP, that’s in the future. We’ll see. But basically it stands for accelerated marketing portfolios. And so we’re all about accelerating growth, but the idea behind this is I think there’s this real danger, a lot of good intentioned marketers and brand owners approach digital marketing, and they approach it with laser-like focus and say, “Hey, we have to hit this return on ad spend.” Or we have to get this CPA, this cost per acquisition, or CAC, customer acquisition cost. And we’re laser focused on that. And I like that, and it’s not wrong. But when people get into trouble is when they say, “Hey, we need to hit a 3X return on ad spend.” And then they try to apply that same metric to all of their channels.

They want YouTube to be the 3X. They want top of funnel, Facebook to be the 3X. They want search and shopping to be a 300% return ad spend. And that’s just not the way it works. So two analogies that I’ll give you really quickly that I think will help. One is that of a portfolio, and that’s why we call it this. So really you want to look at your campaigns in total and yes, you want to measure them individually, but you want to more look at the total impact, right? Because campaigns are not islands, campaigns work together. You do more with YouTube, that’s going to increase what you do with search and shopping in organic and direct traffic and all of that. You spend more on Facebook, top of funnel, same thing. Going to have a lift in other areas. So are you a sports fan? Jamie? Do you like sports?

Jamie McCarthy:

Oh, absolutely. Go Jags.

Brett Curry:

What’s your … Go Jags. Interesting.

Jamie McCarthy:

Yeah. It’s been a rough life.

Brett Curry:

It’s been a rough life. So I’m a Chiefs fan from Kansas City. So bright days, bright days right now for Patrick and the boys. I’m going to use a basketball analogy though, because I think it’s a little bit easier, but same would apply to football. So I’m a big Chicago Bulls fan from back in the day, Jordan era, the best. So you could look at that team so that, the Jordan, Pippin, Rodman, that team, if we were to look at that team and we were to look at Dennis Rodman and say, “He scored four points last night, I think we need to bench him.” He only scored four points. Jordan scored 40, Rodman scored four. We got to bench Rodman. Someone who knows basketball, be like, “Well, that’s crazy. Rodman got 20 rebounds. And he played amazing defense. And he’s a really valuable part of this team.”

So you have to have the same mindset when you look at your campaigns. Not every campaign has the same objective, not every campaign has the same strength. YouTube at the top of funnel, you got to kind of consider what people are doing when they’re on YouTube. They go to YouTube to watch something, even if it’s a cat video and they’re wasting time, they’re still there to watch the cat video, not click on your ad. Or they’re there to watch a how to video or how to ask somebody out or how to solve this math problem or whatever. They’re there to do something specifically. So your ad was not on their agenda. So them to click on your ad and buy right away, that’s a big ask, but there have been so many brands that have been built on the back of YouTube, brands like Purple Mattress and Squatty Potty and Poopourri, and the list goes on and on.

But if you were to look at YouTube and say YouTube should have the same performance as Google shopping, or as branded search, or as remarketing, you’re going to be disappointed all day long. But if you look at it and say, I know what YouTube’s job is, YouTube’s job is to get a view and to lift every other campaign lower in the funnel. Or to get someone to visit my site, and then we’ll remarket to them and close them. So that’s where we want to look at it like a team where you’re measuring, we still want to hold each campaign accountable, but we want to measure it according to its strengths. We don’t want to measure Rodman based on his scoring ability. We want to look at his rebounds and his defense. We don’t want to measure YouTube just by its direct conversions, but by its overall brand lift and by some direct conversions as well. So that’s the idea, it’s a smarter campaign approach and then a smarter way to market or smarter way to measure actual performance.

Jamie McCarthy:

Got it. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. You wouldn’t just tell Rodman, “Hey, sorry. You’re not going to get this championship ring. Right.

Brett Curry:

Hall of famer, just one of the greatest players of all time, but didn’t score. But that’s fine. He was a savant and a genius in other areas.

Jamie McCarthy:

Yeah. I love that. And that’s actually leading into one of the questions I wanted to ask you is as far as KPIs are concerned, in addition to just revenue, is there anything else that you are tracking to help determine if your strategy is successful or if maybe you need to tweak or change some of your strategies?

Brett Curry:

Yeah. For sure. So I think there’s not a single metric that is the metric to go to. I think it’s really important to understand what does each metric tell us and what are we trying to do? So I think ROAS, return on ad spend, is a pretty limited metric. It’s important. We got to look at it. We measure for every campaign, but it’s limited. I think for a lot of people, more of like the CAC LTV equation is more important. So what does it cost to acquire a new customer? And then what is a new customer work worth to us over the next 30, 60, 96 months, whatever and beyond. So that CAC LTV equation is really important. But typically for clients, we’re looking at all of that. So clients say, “Hey, we want to be at a 200% return ad spend, at 300% return on ad spend. And we want to be at a 50% new customer rate.” Or whatever.

So we’re looking at those things and we drill down into specific campaigns. Then we’re also looking at other metrics. So for YouTube, ultimately I want to look at, hey, what do engagements look like? What videos are people actually engaging with past the 10 second mark? What videos are people clicking on? What is my CPC? Even though with YouTube, as an example, you’re paying for the view, you’re not paying for the click. Google’s still going to calculate that click for you. What is my CPC and how does that compare to other top of funnel efforts? So you want to drill into those things as well, but ultimately at the end of the day, it’s more about what are our business objectives and are our campaigns properly supporting that? So another metric that a lot of people use is MER, or media efficiency ratio. So that’s kind of looking at global return on ad spend. So total money in total money out, what are we spending on all of our ads versus what are we driving in sales? And that’s a good way to sanity check the numbers, right?

Because pre iOS 14, everybody was taking credit for everything. If you totaled your Facebook ROAS and your Facebook conversions and your Google conversions, you were doing double the revenue that you were actually doing, because both were taking credit for every sale. Now tracking is harder and because of iOS 14, platforms have a more difficult time taking credit for conversions. So now some platforms under report what’s happening. So if you look at that global number, total money in, total money out, or MER, that helps too, because then you can have guide rails of, hey, I always want my MER to be a 400% return aspect or 300 or whatever. And then at the campaign level, it’s going to be less than that. But looking at that global number helps too. But I think it’s more about, I’m a big believer in what are our business objectives. We want to grow by X. We want X number of new customers or this percentage of new customer revenue versus returning. And then you look at the right metrics to get you there.

Jamie McCarthy:

Sure. And so when you refer to MER, are you looking at that quarterly? Is that annually? How do you typically track that?

Brett Curry:

Yeah, I think you look at it almost on a daily basis. I always caution people, don’t overreact to one day. I still like to see what’s happened on a daily basis, but ultimately you want to look more at seven day, 14 day, 28 day windows on things like that, but I’m still looking at that numbers on the daily just to see what’s going on.

Jamie McCarthy:

Yeah. I love that. And then Brett, you really understanding where and when, and marketing’s important obviously, but we’re talking about the what. As far as the type of content that you’re putting out, that’s obviously just as important. So what are your favorite types of content? Obviously it probably differs per channel, I would assume. And then probably per brand, per brand that you’re working with that could probably vary too, but just-

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Yeah. Great question. So it I’ll give you a few examples. We’ll talk YouTube a little bit. I think a lot of the same things, and I’m a YouTube guy, so that’s why I talk about it. Right? YouTube and search and shopping, but a lot of the applies to Facebook or other channels that involve video. I’ll talk a little bit about display. And I think when my frame of reference is more Google discovery ads and Google display network, but the same thing would apply to Tabula or Outbrain or Native Ads or even Facebook, that type of thing. But I think at the core you have to look at well, here’s what I think has happened to some brands.

I think there was a period in time when the Facebook algorithm was amazing and it had all the data it could possibly want, too much data. Probably a scary amount of data if you look at this from a consumer lens, rather than a marketer, it’s like the marketer in me is give me all the data. The consumer in me is like, “Hey, back off, buddy, I don’t want you to know everything that I do.”So the algorithm had everything I could ever want. And so really you could survive off of, eh, so-so creatives, you just could. Now that things are harder, you really got to lean into good creatives. So am I appealing to someone’s self-interest? Am I really leaning into the benefits of the product? Why would somebody buy this protein shake versus another protein shake? Is it really that it’s cruelty free or is it more about best taste or is it that it’s easy on my stomach or whatever? Why would I choose this coffee over another coffee? What is it that appeals to me most?

Making that clear that right up front where people see that and then as best as we can segmenting the message to the audience. So message market match is super important. So let’s talk YouTube for a minute. I think as you look at YouTube, the type of YouTube ads we run are called true view, meaning they’re the pre-roll ads. So you’re there to watch your cat video or whatever. And the skippable ad pops up. Five seconds. You’re forced to watch this video. Some people will view that ad. They’ll be mad, they’ll curse under their breath. They get their finger over the skip ad button.

Jamie McCarthy:

They’re ready for it.

Brett Curry:

But maybe, just maybe, that ad will hook them and they’ll keep watching and they’ll keep engaging and maybe they’ll even click through. So the key there is really in the hook, how do we get someone to stop and pay attention? So we like to look at things like a pattern interrupt. What’s something out of the ordinary? What’s something a little bit different? And then we like to get to a benefit very quickly. So a couple of good examples, a good pattern interrupt is, did you ever see the Poopourri video from of old?

Jamie McCarthy:

Yeah, I did. That was, I think probably one of the first ad campaigns where I just really kind found myself being so mesmerized by it. Yeah.

Brett Curry:

Yeah.

Jamie McCarthy:

Yeah. There’s no other way to say it. Just so focused on it, watching it.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s so good. And the interesting thing about that ad is the Haron brothers made it and I haven’t seen it run recently. Poopourri, I think shifted gears, but there was that opening scene. I hope this doesn’t gross anybody out too bad, but the opening scene, really pretty girl in a dress red hair. She’s got a beautiful British accent. I think that was strategic because I think if you’re going to talk about poo, you need to be classy as well. But anyway, she’s sitting on a public toilet in her dress and she says, “You would not believe the mother load I just dropped.” And you’re like, wait a minute. What is going on? So that’s like the extreme, you don’t have to use humor. You don’t have to obviously not bathroom humor for most products, but pattern interrupt, girl in a dress, talking in a public toilet talking about stuff you’re not expecting in an ad.

That’s a pattern interrupt. And then it weaves in the benefit and there’s a combination of benefit and problem solution and then humor and then problem solution and humor. And that’s kind of the way that works. So that’s a good example, but you can also start with just a real focused problem. We’ve got a client that sells low acid coffee for people that have acid reflux or sensitive stomach. So there’s a lot of people that love coffee, but can’t drink it because of the acidity. So there’s a few different hooks and now I’m actually drawing a blank, but hooks are like, hey, do you still love coffee, but you had to stop drinking it? Or did your body change, but your coffee didn’t? There’s some different hooks that we use like that. So the hook is super important. The hook is more important than anything else, but we talk about hook than really focusing on the benefit of a problem solution focus, nice product demo after that. So seeing the product in action,

I’m from Missouri, our state animal is the donkey, very charming. And we’re also called the show me state. So it’s like you have to show us. We don’t believe you unless you show us. But that’s a good example. That’s a good frame of reference. Think about people from Missouri when you’re making your ad, you have to show people, you can’t just tell them, you’ve got to prove it. So showing the demonstration. We love then UGC or social proof, like seeing reviews, seeing actual videos of actual customers, that type of thing, very, very important. And then offering a call to action. Like, hey, go and check out this thing, go see an action here, go try a sample, whatever the case may be.

So that’s super important. That’s all made much simpler if you’re doing display or something. Another, a friend of ours runs this coffee business and they sell K cups. And so their top performing display is, hey, I almost threw out my Keurig until I found this. So they’re instantly hooking someone if you have a Keurig machine, The coffee’s probably not the best. And so maybe you’re dissatisfied with your level of coffee. So you’re about to throw out the Keurig, but you should maybe check this thing out first. So really getting that proper hook is the most important element there. And then everything else comes after that, right? Audience targeting, the actual media, the way you bid, the way you track and things like that. So I don’t know if that answers your question or if you have any follow ups there.

Jamie McCarthy:

Yeah, no, 100%. And you said something interesting about really kind relying on customer reviews on social proof, really kind of relying on case studies. I feel like I see more and more brands, especially on Instagram, on TikTok, those channels really kind relying on that a lot more. They’ll have someone make a video. I came across the other day, it’s this protein powder pasta, and it’s kind of one of those, wait, what? It was 100%, it was just a scroll stopper for me. And it was. It was just that, it was a girl who was just, I’m sure paid to just make this quick video in her kitchen of her telling us all about this pasta. So I feel like I’ve seen a lot more of that. And I don’t know if you’ve kind seen that too in the companies and brands that you’re working with.

Brett Curry:

For sure. And one of our clients is Overtone. They’re coloring conditioner. So it’s kind of the temporary color conditioner, but it’s vegan. It’s cruelty free. It’s like avocado based or it’s got avocados in it. So it’s healthy for your hair. But then we have this video that we run where there’s this girl and she’s holding the canister of the Overtone and it’s purple or something. And she’s like, “It happens. I’m coloring my hair today.” And so she’s super excited about it. So lots of emotion. And then it shows fast cuts. We got lots of content creators and real customers showing how they put it, how they apply it to their hair and then the results. So it’s both showing the benefit of, hey, I’d like to have blue hair. I want to have pink hair, whatever mixed with, oh, this is easy to use mixed with, oh, vegan it’s cruelty free, it’s healthy, all those things.

So yeah, that type of content I think, is going to continue to be more and more popular because it’s authentic shows the product in use shows real customers. It doesn’t feel as much like an ad, which is important. I do think, and especially on social, ads that don’t feel like ads are super important. And I don’t run traffic on TikTok or Facebook, but lots of friends that do. YouTube, it can feel a little more like an ad and it’s still, okay. YouTube still feels a little more TV where social platforms, especially TikTok, but also Instagram and Facebook, it needs to not feel like an ad.

Jamie McCarthy:

Right. Yeah. That’s super interesting. And yeah, I think I’m kind curious now to just continue to look out for those, it feels less salesy, which I think allows people to feel much less intimidated by the entire process.

Brett Curry:

Right. So yeah, you’ve got to realize that there’s that sales resistance. So if you can lower that, we all want to buy stuff. Consumers love to buy things. And this became very clear during the pandemic, during lockdowns, there was some retail therapy going on. People were afraid, people were depressed or whatever. They were buying stuff online a lot. ‘Cause they couldn’t go to stores either, but there’s retail therapy going on. There is sales resistance. So if you can make someone feel like, hey, this is authentic. This doesn’t feel like an ad.

Then if someone can see the ad and think that person’s like me, that I can see myself using that product or doing that thing, someone needs to see themselves in the ad. One of my favorite marketing quotes comes from this radio guy from a long time ago, named Roy Williams. He said that no one goes physically where they haven’t first gone in their mind first. So you want to paint this picture where someone is imagining what it’s like if they buy the hair color, or they’re imagining what it’s like if they buy the shake and they start feeling great and start losing weight, they want to imagine what it’s like doing that thing, whoever’s using your product. And so if you can do that in the ad, then they’re more likely to actually do that in person.

Jamie McCarthy:

I love that quote. I feel like every marketer should just have that posted somewhere.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Agreed. Totally agree.

Jamie McCarthy:

So to shift gears just a little bit, because I was digging through the site the other day and you mentioned obviously you guys do a lot of the Google display ads, but you also have a pretty strong focus on Amazon. And thinking through there’s a lot going on with Amazon today, we don’t have to, I don’t know if anyone has enough time to dig into all of that, but for new or emerging brands, do you think it’s important for them to have some sort of a presence on Amazon? Should they, sure, they may have their own standalone website, but or should they be on Amazon if they want to see any kind of success?

Brett Curry:

So I think the way Amazon is now, you can’t ignore it. You have to be very strategic. So if you’re not going to be on Amazon, you need to have a good reason why. And I do think there’s a case to be made. I know several brands that built the brand off Amazon. So they were good at traffic generation. They had a website that converted, they had a product that was great. They built up this brand. Couple of examples. One is Native deodorant. Do you know Native deodorant?

Jamie McCarthy:

Mm-hmm.

Brett Curry:

And that now they’re shampoo and sun care and lots of other things. So Moise Ali, known him for a long time. We run all their Google and YouTube to this day. They built their brand off Amazon, but then they later-

Jamie McCarthy:

Interesting.

Brett Curry:

…. Got on Amazon. What’s interesting is that Moise is quoted as saying, I wish I’d got on Amazon earlier. Right? Because they immediately saw a lift. And what we’re seeing when we take a brand that’s really successful off Amazon and we put them on Amazon, we’re seeing typically 10 to 15% lift, easy, easy. And it usually doesn’t cannibalize off Amazon sales because there’s a lot of people that will only buy on Amazon. Think about your parents. Your parents are potentially in this category where they’re like, “Nope, I don’t trust other sites. Amazon’s easy. That’s where I want to buy.” So you can get a sales lift there. Another example, Boom by Cindy Joseph. So shout out to my buddy Ezra Firestone, built a very successful brand. We helped them launch on Amazon’s. We built out all their Amazon business. Immediately created about a 12%, 15% lift in sales with no cannibalization for their off Amazon business. So you have to consider it, right?

It’s 50% of all ecommerce sales. But I think it’s a harder skill to build a business off Amazon because conversion rates are lower off Amazon. You’ve got to have some kind of competitive advantage of, you got to know how to drive traffic or know how conversion rate optimization or ideally all of those things. So I do like the brands where you can be successful off Amazon and then you launch on Amazon and now you can really just blow up. I think the other thing that brands need to consider is I think the days are gone when you can just build a business on Amazon that’s just product focused. That’s not brand focused. I think if you want to build a business that you can sell or scale, you need to build a brand on Amazon, meaning where someone buys your product on Amazon, but then when someone asks them about that product, like, “Hey, where did you buy that?”

I’ll give you an example. I started eating cleaner. So I’m eating millet now. Which if you don’t know what millet is, it’s like quinoa, only maybe not as tasty. It’s a rice substitute. So I’m eating a lot of millet because it’s good for me. And anyway, so I bought this. It’s like called Anthony’s Organics or whatever. It’s a really cool brand. I found it on Amazon, but now I started shopping this brand off Amazon too, because packaging is nice. The product was great. Reviews are really good. Versus I can think of lots of stuff that I bought on Amazon. I got no idea what the brand is. I would never go look for that brand. The product was kind of eh, and I only bought it because it was on Amazon. So you have to think about building a brand on Amazon.

So that means product packaging. It means building out your listing. It means thinking about photography and video and why should you exist? Why is your product better? So real merchandising and thinking about that. So that’s where seeing success, people that are actually building a brand on Amazon. But I guess if I had to condense that into a short piece of advice, it’s you can’t ignore Amazon forever. Maybe you want to start off Amazon, but probably at some point you’re going to have to buddy up with Bezos and you’re going to have to make it happen. You have to do something on Amazon, most likely.

Jamie McCarthy:

Yeah. Be frenemies, if you have to.

Brett Curry:

Exactly.

Jamie McCarthy:

That’s that’s interesting though. Because I would almost think it’s the opposite. I’d almost think as a new business, maybe just because costs are lower. You’re not having to manage an entire site. You’re not having to, or at least, again, this is in my mind because I’m not a marketer, spend a ton on ads trying to drive traffic to your site. A lot of people of assume Amazon just sort of naturally does that for you.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. So it’s a really good point. So the other piece that I would say there is, it is easier probably to build a brand, to launch a product on Amazon. Right?

Jamie McCarthy:

Sure.

Brett Curry:

There’s tons of traffic there. Conversion rates are really high people know if they buy something on Amazon and don’t like it, Amazon’s going to return it or they can take it to Kohl’s or whatever and return it. So it’s sometimes easier to launch on Amazon, but you still have to think about building a brand. And it does seem easier to once you have a brand off Amazon to then launch on Amazon than it is to launch on Amazon and then try to go D to C.

Jamie McCarthy:

You try to pivot.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. So it’s difficult because the economics are often different. You can’t launch on Amazon and be a low price leader with very thin margins and then try to go D to C off Amazon. It just doesn’t usually work typically. But if you can launch off Amazon and then go to Amazon, that’s almost always successful, but you are right. It’s simpler, more straightforward, to launch on Amazon and get sales quicker on Amazon.

Jamie McCarthy:

Sure. Yeah.

Brett Curry:

It’s just harder to pivot it later.

Jamie McCarthy:

And it is it’s obviously too, if you want to be a successful brand, you’ve got to think long term, right? Sure, you can make a few sales on Amazon in the first few months. Awesome. But then what, right? If you’re looking to scale and grow.

Brett Curry:

And I think most brands, there are a few brands we run into that they just want to build and be profitable forever. But a lot of brands want to sell, a lot of brands, you want to build up their brand and sell it at some point in time. And I know from friends with a lot of private equity groups and people that are into mergers and acquisitions and buying brands, and if your business is more than 50% Amazon, you’ll get less value for that, versus if it’s more 50/50, or even higher than 50% off Amazon you’ll get a higher valuation. Your business is more valuable to that potential investor or that potential buyer. So that’s another reason to think about let’s do both, on Amazon and off Amazon.

Jamie McCarthy:

That’s an incredible piece of information to consider for any brand out there listening. I think that’s yeah. That’s something that, again, people just, I don’t think, think about initially in the beginning. On that note too then Brett as far, and this is a super loaded question. So I’m just going to preface it there.

Brett Curry:

Awesome. I’m looking forward to hear it.

Jamie McCarthy:

Are you terrified yet?

Brett Curry:

More just curious now, I’m just super interested. This’s going to be awesome.

Jamie McCarthy:

Yeah. I got you hooked. There we go. Are there any common mistakes that you find with brands or ecommerce retailers that they tend to make or anything that when you sit down with a company that you’re considering taking on or considering working with, what’s sort of that common theme that you see where you just are sort of face palming?

Brett Curry:

Yeah. So one of the mistakes that we see made is what I kind talked about in the beginning of expecting all ad channels, all ad platforms to perform the same. They don’t. If we look at Amazon as an example, you’ve got your sponsored product ads, which are, if you search for a product on Amazon, a lot of the results are ads. It looks like a normal product listing, but it’s an ad. Those perform very, very well. And they should. So comparing that to, say, Amazon DSP, which Amazon DSP allows you to target people based on their Amazon shopping behavior, but you can target them on Amazon, off Amazon with display ads. Those aren’t going to work the same, right? They’re going to perform a little bit differently. So that’s one of the mistakes. I think another mistake is people try to use the same creatives across platforms.

So we see this a lot where someone says, “Hey, I tried YouTube and it didn’t work well.” What did you run there? Well, I took my Facebook ad and I put it on YouTube and it didn’t work. And the pace, the length, the structure of a YouTube ad is different than a Facebook video ad in most cases, same can be said, and I’m not a TikTok guy, but I know you can’t take your YouTube ad and just put it on TikTok. It doesn’t work. So different mindset, different use case, different platforms. You got to build your ad for the platform. That’s another very common mistake. I think another thing people don’t think about is a lot of the issues you may have if your return on ad spend, isn’t what you want it to be, or your global MER isn’t what you want it to be. It might not be the ads.

It might be your page. It might be the landing page or your site. And so I think that’s a big mistake where people just focus on new traffic or just focus on driving new customers, and they don’t think about what am I missing on this landing page that’s preventing a new shopper from becoming a customer. So I think now, and especially as the economy gets weirder and ad costs go up, you’ve got to focus on conversion rate optimization. So we’re big believers in actual user testing and getting user feedback and doing split testing on AB testing on landing pages, all super, super important. So CRO is important. And then I think the other piece that people miss is they don’t think about retention marketing and loyalty marketing enough. And hey, I love top of funnel traffic. I love being able to scale a campaign on YouTube or seeing a campaign scale on Facebook, but what’s even sexier at times is email.

What if you could increase your email campaigns and your SMS campaigns to where you’re driving, maybe you’re driving 20% of your revenue now through email, what if that could be 40% of your revenue through email? That’s possible. And that’s what a lot of successful ecommerce brands see. So I think we’re going to see that as well as the economy gets stranger and who knows what’s going on with inflation and other things is leaning into retention marketing is going to become more and more important. So that comes down to list segmentation and getting really thoughtful about what content you’re sending via email and subject lines and offers and all those things. So, yeah, I think it’s thinking about retention as well. And then just not being lazy. I think having a lot of agencies and marketers, it’s easy to be lazy, and good marketing is hard work. Saying the right thing to the right person at the right time, it’s hard, but it’s supposed to be, and it’s hard for your competitors too. And so if you’re better at it, you’re going to win more than they will. And that’s the name of the game.

Jamie McCarthy:

Yeah. It’s interesting that you’re saying email and I’m kind of that same way too. I sit down to crank out some of our copy for our campaigns and there are just days where I’m just like, what am I going to write about? What do you want to hear?

Brett Curry:

Yes. Send an email that’s 20% off subject line, that could work at times. But yeah. Are we using curiosity in our subject lines and are we driving both opens and click throughs because your email service provider wants to see that, your deliverability will go up if people engage more. Are we occasionally sending an email that actually gets people to reply to it? If you see that, your email service provider will love that. So yeah. All kinds of things to do and email, it’s so funny.

I’ve been in marketing a long time now and that I haven’t heard this in a while, but I used to every three or four years, people will be like, oh yep, email’s dead. Nope. My kids don’t use email. So eventually email will die. And I’m like, well, that doesn’t make any sense. Your kids don’t use email because they don’t have a job. But once people get a job, everybody uses email. And anyway, I don’t hear anybody talk about email being dead now. I think everyone has seen the light, that email is probably here forever. Sure. But I think it’s likely under leveraged for most brands. And that’s something that brands need to fix.

Jamie McCarthy:

Super useful and valuable information. I’m really excited to have not only other marketers listen to this, you don’t want them stealing all your secrets, but hearing a lot of our brands [inaudible 00:37:35].

Brett Curry:

Lots of business to go around. So it’s okay. Steal whatever I’m saying here. It’s totally fine.

Jamie McCarthy:

No, it’s incredibly valuable. So I’m really excited that, you’re able to come on Brett. And really, before we hop off, I just had a final question. I feel like everybody always asks, what are you reading? And I feel like now, what are you listening to has become the new what are you reading? Yeah. So for you, I know you have Spicy Curry, that’s your podcast. So in addition to your own podcast, are there any others that-

Brett Curry:

I just listen to own. I really don’t think anyone else has good advice. I listen to my own podcast and that’s it? No, actually. So actually I do have Spicy Curry, which is a new podcast, it’s series based, think I’ve got eight episodes. I also have Ecommerce Evolution, which I’ve been doing since 2017, just recorded or just published the 200th episode not long ago, which is awesome. So check those both out. All ecommerce focused, got big names on there. Ezra Firestone, Mickey Agarwal from Tushi. She’s phenomenal. She’s brilliant. So go check those out. But I love listening. I am an auditory learner. I retain well when I listen. So when I’m driving, I’m listening to Audible, I’m listening to podcasts. So I’ll give you a couple of examples. This is not a recent one, but I think this ties into what we’ve been talking about here.

There’s a great book called Building A Story Brand by Donald Miller. That’s a great audio book. And really he talks about how do you tell your story as a brand in a compelling way? And he’s an author, written a lot of books, but he kind of compares good ads to good storylines. And anyway, you’ve got to listen to the book, it’s fantastic. In terms of podcasts, there are several that I’ve listened to. For ecommerce and retail news, I love a show called the Jason and Scot Show and that’s Scott with one T not two Ts. It’s a great podcast.

I also love Ecommerce Fuel. Shout out to my buddy, Andrew Udarian. It’s all about ecommerce. And then Ecommerce Influence, another buddy Austin Braner, so shout out to those guys. So those are great podcasts. And then like a lot of entrepreneurs I’ll listen to occasionally to the Tim Ferris podcast or [inaudible 00:39:53] that guy’s awesome too. But yeah, I’m always listening to something and just started a new book at the recommendation of a business coach called Nonviolent Communication, which is a really weird title, but I’m just getting into it and it’s super interesting.

Jamie McCarthy:

We’d assume that most communication would hopefully be.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, exactly, exactly. But it’s actually about how to have hard conversations that still have emotion in them, but don’t … Anyway, yeah. So it’s barely into it, but it’s interesting so far.

Jamie McCarthy:

Super interesting. I’m going to have to check those out. I listen to podcasts and audio books when I’m at the gym and some people think that’s super weird instead of listening to that actual music.

Brett Curry:

You’re getting better. You’re getting smart. You’re building your body and you’re building your mind.

Jamie McCarthy:

And my brain.

Brett Curry:

I love it. I love it. Keep doing it.

Jamie McCarthy:

It’s a BOGO.

Brett Curry:

Don’t let anybody tell you that … Exactly. It’s a BOGO. Exactly.

Jamie McCarthy:

Yeah. Awesome. That’s awesome. Well, thank you again so much, Brett. It was great having you on. Where can people find you?

Brett Curry:

Yeah. So the easiest way is at omgcommerce.com. That’s the agency site. So if you have questions, we have resources like there’s a top YouTube ads guide. If you want to see what are some of the top performing YouTube ads right now, it’s a free guide. I’ve got blogs and resources, got stuff on Amazon. So OMGcommerce.com. I am on the socials. So LinkedIn, connect with me there. Facebook, that’s fine too. And yeah. Would love to connect.

Jamie McCarthy:

Awesome. Well, thanks so much.

Brett Curry:

Thanks Jamie. This was awesome. You’re a great interviewer. Keep it up. This was really good.

Jamie McCarthy:

All guys. Thanks again so much for tuning in to another Modern Merchants podcast episode. If you want to learn more about us, check us out at flxpoint.com, that’s flex point without the E dot com. We’ve got our Modern Merchant blog up there. It’s full of the latest ecommerce information and news. Also go ahead and subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on socials @Flxpoint. We’ll see you again next week with another episode.