The Ecommerce Influence Podcast: Advanced Acquisition And Retention Strategies For Fast-growing Online Brands

As the world of digital marketing continues to become more integrated it becomes increasingly difficult to analyze your metrics across various channels. This is particularly true when it comes to attribution. Late last year Facebook launched a new attribution tool that will allow you, for the first time, to easily compare data across all of your paid channels at the same time. If you’re running ads across multiple channels, you won’t want to miss this episode. Andrew talks about the Facebook Attribution tool’s best features, how to set it up, and why you should start using it right away. Enjoy! Episode Highlights: 5:48 Facebook’s new Attribution tool: what it is and how it works. 7:53 Some of the common issues people run into with attribution. 11:58 Why you should start using the new Facebook Attribution tool. 15:26 How to set up the Facebook Attribution tool. 18:48 A big benefit of the Facebook Attribution tool? Discovering hidden profits. 19:30 The difference between various attribution models and the ques

One of the most exciting (and frustrating) parts of being a marketer today is that platforms are constantly evolving and our strategies have to evolve with them. Today we’re joined by Susan Wenograd, Account Group Director at Aimclear, who brings her insights on the changes that are coming in 2019 and how ecommerce business owners and marketers need to start thinking differently about their paid social strategies. Susan talks about how paid media is moving from a direct response channel to an integrated one, the impact this has as content and budgets are split into increasingly smaller parts, what to do when you start seeing a decreasing ROAS on Facebook, and the role brand awareness plays in all of this. If you’re investing in paid media, you will not want to miss this episode. Enjoy! Episode Highlights: 8:50 How the marketing landscape changed in 2018, especially with paid social, and what ecommerce business owners and marketers need to be aware of moving into 2019. 11:34 As paid media becomes more of an i

In 2018, I radically changed my approach to setting goals and running my business. As we enter a New Year, I wanted to put together an episode focused on how to set goals that will leave you more fulfilled. Instead of setting massive goals, I ask myself simple questions and make strategic changes to my business and life based on my answers. Those strategic changes led to more profit, less stress, and more personal freedom. In this episode, both Andrew and I share a glimpse into our businesses and our personal plans for 2019.  We also offer you some straightforward questions you can use to help you set more fulfilling goals in 2019. This episode will give you a head start for 2019. Enjoy! Episode Highlights: 2:09 How Austin is approaching 2019. 4:16 The reason Austin wants to discuss goal setting and the impact it made last year. 5:24 2 questions Austin is asking himself right now. 8:05 Andrew shares a crazy story about a client who sold his business accidentally. 10:14 Other questions Austin is asking himsel

The Google Medic update a few months ago caused a big upset for many people in the ecommerce space. Our guest today, Nat Eliason, is an expert in content marketing and SEO, and he shares his insights into what happened, the outcome, and why he thinks Google is smart for the changes they’ve made, even those some of his own clients were impacted. Nat joins us on the podcast for the second time and you won’t want to miss his discussion about why solid, well-written content is still the best way to drive traffic to your site and his recommendations for the best tools for auditing your site and improving SEO. Enjoy! Episode Highlights: 4:44 Why Nat practices intermittent fasting. 7:36 How Growth Machine has grown over the last year since Nat’s first time on the Ecommerce Influence podcast. 11:10 Why creating awesome content is still the best way to drive traffic to your site. 14:21 Nat explains why it’s better to be paying a bit more for better writers and better content. 15:30 How the 80/20 rule applies differen

Today, we’ve got an excellent interview with Wharton Professor and entrepreneur Peter Fader. He's a two-time guest. We wanted to bring Peter back on the show because he’s an expert in customer lifetime value and customer centricity. How do you predict lifetime value? What models should we use to predict lifetime value? This is what Peter spent his entire career focusing on. In this episode, Peter is going to talk about the difference between contractual businesses and subscription businesses. He's going to talk about share some big name eCommerce businesses that on are track to go out of business because of their product-centric model. It's a deep dive into customer centricity, lifetime value, and it's something I think you guys will enjoy. Episode Highlights 4:37  The work Peter Fader did with Zodiac that made Nike wanted to buy it. 8:45 What is lifetime value and its importance to your business. 9:54  Tips on making more money. 10:27  What really sets Amazon aside that makes their number two better than ot

If You’ve Been Listening To This Show For The Last Few Months, You’ve Heard Us Make Predictions About How To Approach Q4 Advertising. Many of those predictions worked out well. Others, not as much. There were a TON of Facebook bugs this year that came out of nowhere and really fouled people up. Now that we’re through the busiest part of the season, we’re bringing you an episode on BFCM advertising and what we learned. Andrew brought in four top media buyers to give you a detailed Black Friday/Cyber Monday recap. You’ll learn how it went down, what they learned, so you can adjust and improve your strategies going into the new year. Enjoy! Episode Highlights 5:13 How value optimization helped one client get a 7X ROAS during Black Friday. 6:55 The amped-up offer and focused traffic-driving strategy that worked for Ryan Kovach. 8:34 Bid caps: how are they working for low spends vs. high spends. 10:06 What exactly is a bid cap? 11:27 The importance of putting in the work before Black Friday/Cyber Monday that led

For over 12 years, Jeana LeClerc has been operating two businesses. She’s owned a local spa in Redding, CA and sold skin care products on ArtofSkinCare.com. Her business has grown and changed over the last decade, but her commitment to her customers has not. In the last year and a half, her business has taken off. She has grown from a two-person team to an eight-person team and completely changed the way she operates. Jeana shut down her local spa and doubled down on her online store. After narrowing her focus her passion for the business has been completely reinvigorated. I love a good founder story and today’s episode delivers. Jeana tells her story and shares a few of the learnings that have allowed her to get to the next level. I hope you enjoy! Episode Highlights 4:53 How Jeana went from being a stay-at-home mom to starting her own business. 8:58 The most helpful thing Jeana learned at her first Intensive with Brand Growth Experts. 10:20 How Google Adwords helped Jeana make a come back after leaving Ama

Today’s episode is a little bit different, in a good way. We've had some great questions recently in the Brand Growth Experts Membership. They were so good we decided to answer some of them for you guys who are the listeners. We answer questions including how to attribute Amazon sales, how to weed out inactive email subscribers, what type of an ROI you should expect on your Facebook Ads, and Andrew explains the best way to set up a budget and test Facebook ads. This is a meaty episode. Enjoy! Episode Highlights Links and Resources Brand Growth Experts Membership Brand Growth Experts Foxwell Digital Become a Member If you liked this episode, you're going to love the Brand Growth Experts Membership.  It’s a community of top ecommerce business owners and marketers who I coach one-on-one to help scale up their businesses. Together we’ll create a plan that will help you scale up your business, and then I’ll help you execute it. If you want to make sure you’re growing as quickly and sustainably as possible, click

If Someone Looked Under The Hood Of Your Business, What Would They Find? If you hired someone new today, would they be able to easily access the information they need to get the job done? Or would they be sifting through a clutter of files, or, worse yet, is everything they need to know stored only inside your brain? Our guest today is Tiago Forte, founder of Forte Labs, a company that specializes in productivity. Tiago talks about the importance of building and maintaining a solid knowledge management system for your business, otherwise known as a “second brain.” Having a second brain not only makes it easier to onboard new employees as your business scales, but it can also help increase your overall organization and productivity. Andrew and I learned a ton from this episode and we hope you enjoy it! Episode Highlights 5:11 The goal of Forte Labs: Finding transformational paradigm shifts in productivity. 7:10 The impact of an international upbringing on Tiago's work and mindset. 9:17 Tiago's big realization

One of the most common questions Andrew gets from his clients is: how do I optimize my Facebook ad account? Today he talks about RCAB-P, his five-step process for optimizing and improving Facebook ads. We'll cover the number one thing you need to do before you start optimizing, and walk through each of the five steps in detail to help you successfully optimize your ad account. Enjoy! Episode Highlights 3:41 The first thing you need to do before you start optimizing your Facebook ad account.  5:13 How much you should be spending before you start thinking about optimization. 6:10 Step one in the optimization process: Reporting Metrics. 7:23 The fundamental questions you want to answer with your metrics report. 9:01 Understanding secondary metrics, and a common metric that Andrew doesn't recommend tracking. 11:01 Step two: Optimizing Creative (your most important lever for optimization). 11:33 The new creative ad feature Facebook just rolled out. 12:57 Creative optimization: using different creative at differen

What if you could make more money in a single day than your business previously made in its entire lifetime? That's what happened for Mark Arruda last August, typically his company's slowest month. Mark, owner and CEO of Constantly Varied Gear, joined us earlier this year to talk about how he uses Facebook Messenger in his business. Today, he's back, and in the eight months since we last had Mark on the show he's continued to ramp up his Messenger marketing and is seeing incredible results. In this episode, Mark shares the Messenger strategy he used that fateful day in August, and the other tactics he's using to grow his list and drive sales. Enjoy! Episode Highlights 7:13 The Facebook Messenger tactic Mark's using to gain Messenger subscribers and how it connects with his on-site lead capture. 9:56 When Mark got started with Messenger bots and how long it's taken him to build his current system. 11:09 How allowing customers to vote on products via Messenger has been incredibly successful for Mark. 14:39 A g

Earlier this week Andrew shared his story, and now we’re turning the tables. Today I talk about how I went from pursuing a career in investment banking to realizing I wanted to become an entrepreneur and eventually starting Ecommerce Influence. Digital marketing has evolved so much over the last decade, especially for ecommerce, and my career has evolved along with it. I’ll share how I built a business I'm excited about while also creating a lifestyle that gives me freedom and flexibility. Enjoy! Episode Highlights 3:54 Why Austin started Ecommerce Influence 5:07 Moving away from the typical agency: The birth of Brand Growth Experts 7:09 Austin's early career pursuits begin in China 8:14 When Austin realized he wanted to become an entrepreneur 9:38 Start-up life and learning how to become an entrepreneur 12:02 If you can sell a $100,000 product with triggered emails, you can sell anything with triggered emails 14:25 How working for a start-up provided the best education for growing a business 16:42 Austin st

One of the questions we love asking our guests is: how did you get where you are today? It’s a question our listeners frequently ask Andrew and I too, and in today’s episode, Andrew is going to share his story. Andrew has been working in digital advertising since before the inception of the Facebook News Feed in 2009 and he’s learned a lot along the way. He shares his first experience working in “new media,” tells the story of how Foxwell Digital was born, and talks about what success means to him. Enjoy! Episode Highlights 3:18 How Andrew got started in digital marketing 6:04 A congressional campaign leads Andrew out East and into "New Media" 8:11 Andrew's experience working in Congress during the invention of Facebook Ads 12:45 When Andrew launched his first newsfeed advertisement 14:29 When social proofing meant getting the most Likes 15:46 The birth of Foxwell Digital 18:15 How Andrew and Gracie went from teaching seniors how to use iPhones to getting their first official clients 21:06 How Andrew and Aus

Happy fall. Happy Q4. Andrew and I love this time of year. It's when so many of the companies we advise make the majority of their revenue. A lot of you that are listening know how high the stakes are. It looks like things are, as we predicted, even more competitive than last year. But so far, things are going good. We're getting ready for the big show here so we decided to bring in the big guns. Today we’ve brought back Justin Marshall from Adhoc Media to talk about how he’s getting his clients ready for the holidays. Justin is a 2x guest. His first episode was one of our all-time most downloaded and this one doesn’t disappoint. Enjoy! Episode Highlights 6:10 How Justin explains the phases of Q4 to his clients. 7:43 Why you shouldn't just be pushing traffic to your site without a focus on conversions. 10:11 The offers you should be considering through the holiday season. 14:30 Not sure what creative you should be using? Checkout what's working best for Adhoc Media and their clients. 18:36 Why you should be

When you're just starting your business and running it small and lean, it’s easy to implement new projects right away. Right? If you go to a conference and get a new idea, you can go in and execute it. As your business and team scales up, it's no longer possible to implement your ideas immediately. You need to plan and get your team involved. Many businesses get stuck here and never move forward. They feel momentum but can’t take advantage of it because they can’t effectively manage their marketing at scale. This leads to stress, burnout and missed opportunities. How do you transition from doing everything right away to having to plan it out and delegate it out? This often requires taking a step back before stepping forward. In today’s episode, we’re going to share a 3 step process to help you manage your marketing at scale. Episode Highlights 6:03 What it means to be at scale. 10:29 The questions you should be asking when planning to scale you business. 11:54 How discovering your Kolbe score can unlock your

In today’s episode, we explore how Kettle & Fire went from a couple of guys boiling bones in a pot to closing $8 million dollars in Series A. I first met Jack Meredith in January when I hosted a Private Intensive here in Austin for him and his team. He was the first employee at Kettle & Fire, and they’ve been on a rocket ship of growth - mostly fueled by affiliate marketing. For most companies, affiliate marketing starts out as exciting opportunity but ends in disappointment. Not so with Kettle & Fire. If you are familiar with the paleo world, you’ll quickly notice they’ve got all the top health influencers and affiliates as supporters. Today, Jack shares the process that led to actually getting those people to support and promote Kettle & Fire. He also shares challenges they've faced as they have scaled, how to think about growing a team, and a framework for thinking about new projects. I had a great time recording this episode and I hope you enjoy it! Episode Highlights 10:31 The first step

About two weeks ago, my wife and I moved into a 100 year old bungalow here in Austin Texas. When you decide to move into an older house you expect certain things aren’t going to work. Each day you start adding to a checklist of all the things you’re going to need to fix. That’s the easy part. The hard part is getting the right people out to fix what’s broken. In addition to managing my team here at Brand Growth Experts and producing the Ecommerce Influence podcast, I’ve been coordinating electricians, plumbers, and painters to fix things at our house. Construction workers in Austin are so busy right now that getting people to show up is like herding cats. It’s been a lot of work and inspired today’s episode about managing a team. In this episode, I’m going to walk through the framework I use to accomplish more with my team in much less time. Enjoy! Episode Highlights 6:10 The Scrum methodology and how it works for Product Management. 8:12 Step 1: The Data Dump: Getting all of your ideas on to paper 9:56 Step

About four years ago, Allan Shoemake was Skyping with his daughter and hated how the poor lighting was impacting the video quality. He strapped a couple of LED lights to the side of his phone case and LuMee was born. Two years later, Kim Kardashian West picked LuMee as one of her “selfie secrets” and the company exploded from there. Our guest Jeremy Horowitz is LuMmee’s Ecommerce Manager. He attended my email Intensive last August and then he went on to have a ton of success with email. In today’s episode, he shares what they've been working on, what's been working well, how they think about growth. I think you’ll really enjoy this tactic and results heavy episode. Enjoy! Episode Highlights 7:03 The email strategies that are currently working for Lumee. 8:50 The pages you should be placing pop-ups to increase your sales. 10:15 Why you should be using heat maps to find the holes in your funnel. 13:46 How Lumee changed their approach once Kim Kardashian West started promoting their cases. 19:50 How surveying y

Today, we’re continuing our theme of “things you should do right now to prepare for Q4”. I’m not going to let you get to the end of October without a plan for the holidays. Not this year. We're going to start early so you can avoid that annual freakout. In this episode, Andrew and I share the key differences between Facebook and Instagram advertising this year and last year. There are a lot of similarities (creating good offers, creative, etc) but we’ve noticed some big changes and in this episode we’ll help you approach Q4 with your Facebook and Instagram ads the right way. Enjoy! Episode Highlights 5:17 Here are the big differences between this year and last year when it comes to marketing with Facebook & Instagram. 13:11 Why you should be separating out ad placement and setting up ads that only run on Instagram in Q4. 14:35 How to social proof your ads and why this process is so valuable. 17:45 The changes in how Facebook lets you bid in the auction and the approach you should take during Q4. 21:10 An

I have a fascinating episode for you today. This week, Andrew Foxwell sat down with Jason Moser, a senior analyst for the Motley Fool investment research team. You might be wondering why we are interviewing someone who helps people pick stocks for a living. It turns out, Jason's whole job at the Motley Fool is to research and analyze companies in the e-commerce sector and learn how they are innovating. This is a big picture episode and they talk about a whole bunch of things. Andrew and Jason get into talking about Wayfair and Amazon. They also talk about the state of ecommerce, Shopify, Facebook, Instagram, and a bunch of other things. I think you'll really like this episode and I look forward to hearing your feedback on it. Enjoy! Episode Highlights 6:05 How Ecommerce brands are innovating the marketplace. 9:00 The two trends you should be exploring if you're a growing ecommerce brand. 11:27 How creating your own version of Amazon's "Prime Day" can generate revenues greater than Black Friday. 13:52 What Sh