Ep 19: From Watches to Wallabi

Speaker A: Hey Michelle.

Speaker B: Hey Tyler.

Speaker A: Did you hear about the marketing automation software that got cut from the football team?

Speaker B: No. What, uh, happened?

Speaker A: It was infuse and soft. Welcome to the Lion's Share podcast for marketing leaders by Marketing Leaders, brought to you by Fidelity Development. All right everybody, and welcome to episode 19 of the Lion's Share marketing podcast. I'm one half of your co, uh, hosting team, Tyler Sickmayer, CEO of Fidelity Development. Joining me is our lovely co host, Michelle Stansberry, our communications director. Michelle, welcome.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: So we have a great episode today. Uh, some wonderful e commerce insights from a friend of ours, James Martinez over at Safari, formerly uh, Invicta watches beforehand. So he has a lot of experience with building e commerce brands from scratch. And we have a great interview to get to there. But before we do, Michelle, what's in the news?

Speaker C: News team assemble.

Speaker B: Well, we've been uh, looking at some new technology by ad blocker for their Facebook ad, ah, blocker. They've been creating some products that Facebook uh, overwhelms very quickly. But uh, they're now entering their second month of their new ad blocker. Plus that ah, looks like it's gonna hold up to Facebook's engineers.

Speaker A: Yeah, really interesting technology here. Of course all marketing leaders know about ad blocking software. It's been around for a minute, but there's been this sort of cat and mouse game back and forth between Facebook's engineers and ad blockers engineers, uh, trying to win out, which obviously can impact the performance of campaigns on Facebook, especially the ones that target desktop. It's interesting Michelle. This isn't really a mobile problem yet. Most folks don't go to the trouble of downloading and installing mobile ad blocking software on their phones, but they do on desktop. No one likes those nasty pop ups. So really we understand the spirit of the ad blocker from that standpoint of being able to eliminate some of the annoying ads that we all see when we browse the web. But it's much more problematic on an established site like Facebook. So again, if you're doing a lot of Facebook targeting with your ad campaigns and desktop is a significant part of that, you're not going to reach the full audience that you might be forecasting to reach because of Ad Blocker. And it's not a game changing problem yet, but it's growing. And if adblocker continues to make technological advances that Facebook can't keep up with, this might be a much more serious problem sooner than we think.

Speaker B: Absolutely. I mean desktop is still a major force for ads and if uh, Facebook's engineers, like they haven't been able to create a blocker to block the ad block, then that's going to create some real challenges with the paid exposure on Facebook. But there are other options. Going old school and just creating really awesome, great content for Facebook is one of those options. If you have content on Facebook that, ah, people are going to want to organically share and engage with, it'll reach a much, much larger audience than a less well thought out social campaign. So perhaps it could bring a little bit of attention to organic Facebook and seeing what marketers can do to create really engaging and even viral content.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And taking that even one step further, of course we always talk about influencer marketing and we've got some great content there in previous episodes as well. We'll put some links in the show notes if you want to go back and check out some previous episodes where we dished on influencer marketing. But right now though, Michelle, with Facebook especially, has there ever been a better time to use social influencers than right now with the advanced metrics to track them as well as the ad blocker advances against non native content on Facebook?

Speaker B: Absolutely. This is a great chance to try out influencer marketing if you haven't already or if you have to amp up what you got. I mean, one of the challenges in the past with influencer marketing is you don't really understand what sort of reach somebody has to your target audience. There's a lot of phony follows and likes that were bought. There was a little bit of uncertainty of what is this influencer marketing actually going to, uh, achieve you as a brand. But now with how amazing insights and analytics are, you can really see what an influencer is doing and how they're going to reach your target market or

Speaker A: if they are absolutely spot on. Michelle. There's another loophole actually with the ad blocker software as well. Apparently they can't block ads that are promoted by another entity. So for example, let's say a client is mentioned in the news, they got some great earned media coverage, they can pay to promote that news article and that won't get picked up as a paid ad by the ad blocker. So there are some workarounds, but there's a lot of hoops to jump through. So really my advice to brands and to Fidelita's clients is, uh, just stay patient with it, keep developing great content, uh, stick with your paid ad campaign. And as easy as it is to get sucked into, um, all the impressions that you're not getting from this campaign, I'd stay more focused on hardline metrics around results. So tracking how many conversions you're getting on your site, whether you're shooting for email signups or whether you're shooting for E commerce conversions or whatever your goals are for your Facebook ad campaigns, I would focus more around the bottom line results of the campaigns themselves rather than any inventory that you might not be receiving because of ad blocking technology.

Speaker B: And if you aren't already, which you should be, obviously make sure you're optimized for mobile. Make sure your ads are, make sure your website is, make sure your conversions are, because that's where a lot of traffic is coming in regardless. And that hasn't been as much of an issue for the ad blocker. So you should already be optimized, uh, for mobile. But if you're not, get on it.

Speaker A: Perfect. Uh, Michelle, thank, uh, you. And uh, without further ado, let's get to our interview with James. Hey, guys. Very excited to have my friend James Martinez, the E Commerce manager over at Safari limited with us today. James, welcome to the Lion's Share marketing podcast.

Speaker C: Hey guys. Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker A: Great. So James, tell us a little bit about your path to Safari. Obviously it's not your first time running, uh, an e commerce startup.

Speaker C: No, it's funny that you say that because this is actually going to be my third startup, E Commerce one. It's a great experience. You learn a lot while you go through it. But Safari, um, had an opportunity and they're strictly, uh, B2B customers and, you know, company and they wanted to branch out to the B2C side. So that's where I joined in.

Speaker A: So James, obviously you were at Invicta Watches before you jumped over to Safari. Uh, what are some of the differences that you've noticed so far, uh, between your time, uh, running the E Commerce department at Invicta and your time at Safari so far?

Speaker C: So at Invicta, uh, when I first started, we didn't prepare for such quick growth. I actually started there and it was pretty funny actually. First day I showed up to work, I was like, okay, where's my team? And I was it. Once we started getting the ball rolling, you know, adding products, updating the catalog and started doing some ppc, the orders just started coming in. And at Invicta, uh, I was at a time, the ppc, the email marketing guy, the pick and packer, the customer service, it was a lot of hats to one. But at Safari, we're a little bit more prepared and they've actually forecast pretty well, so you know me starting there. We already have uh, team members dedicated to the E Commerce department. We have systems in place where a lot of these things are. Now go through the systems and you know, picking and packing. We have our staff as well. So it's a lot more organized because they want to be ready. So you know, when we start from that one to 20 to 30 to 100 to 300 orders, you know, the system can take it.

Speaker A: Okay, great. And so tell me, uh, what does your team look like there? You mentioned you've got a fairly robust team in house at Safari Ltd. So what's that team look like?

Speaker C: So I have an E commerce system specialist. He basically assists me with any E commerce related tasks. Ah. So that's either uploading a catalog, updating a catalog, updating inventory. We're also going into, into marketplaces, so setting up those feeds and setting up those set products. We also have a marketing staff that helps out with kicking out email campaigns, setting up email automations or marketing automation and also forecasting any new promotions that we're going to have. Especially now, you know, with holiday season coming up.

Speaker A: Okay, great. Obviously, you know, James, I know you told me this is uh, your third e commerce startup that you're helping build out from scratch. What have you learned along the way when it comes to building out an E commerce startup?

Speaker C: Oh my God, so much. And I say that like laughing just because you'll be amazed how many things I guess you still got to do even after so much time has elapsed. But one of the things that I've learned, you just have to be organized. Right. So when you get there or when we start up a new E commerce, you kind of have to write, I would say like the top 10 important tasks to do within like the first 90 days. So that's to me going to dictate what's going to happen the next, you know, three, six months, you know, and really focusing on, okay, what can I do now to bring in orders and what can I do now to bring in revenue? So it's not changing a little graphic on a homepage. It's okay, do I need to get a Google feed up or do I need to set up email templates, stuff like that. So uh, you know, throughout the years I've learned a little bit of what I call a recipe, you know, to try to set me up for success and set the company up for success so we can get the department up and going.

Speaker A: Okay, great. How do you go about prioritizing your marketing? Spend when you don't have much of a track record, obviously sometimes when a marketing leader takes over an E commerce job, they can at least look back at the analytics and get some sense of what worked or didn't work. But now you're looking at, uh, you know, with a startup you don't really have that track record to build off of. So how do you go about prioritizing your marketing spend with when you're really starting from scratch like you said?

Speaker C: It's funny because since this is my third startup, a lot of companies, they don't think that when it comes to E commerce that you would have a budget for spend or you know, that any cost is associated with it. It's just, okay, we have a website and we have someone to help me sell, let's just sell. But it's not that easy. You do need to put some marketing dollars on it. You do need to put professionals like an E commerce manager, an agency to help you out with ppc. So one of the things that I do, uh, and that I've kind of learned throughout the years is I'll take a look at first a budget. So is there a budget for sales? Right, so a sales goal? One of the things I did at Safari is, I think it was about my first day that I was there. I was like, okay, I need to know what is it you guys said as a budget to see where we're at, how much we're missing and how much are we behind? So from there I started looking at the monthly breakdown. And the rule of thumb is I'll do about 15% of whatever the goal is for that month. I'll allocate it, you know, I'll come up with my number for spend. So, and it's not just, hey, you know, I got 7,000 and yeah, I have nothing to compare it to, but you know, I'm going to spend the entire seven. No, it's, I'm capped out to the seven. And I'm going to try to maximize my return to get to where I need to get to for goal. And hopefully where you want to get to is get to a spend where you're making over goal. And you don't typically have to use your entire spend, but uh, I usually allocate, uh, about 50% of whatever the monthly goal is.

Speaker A: Okay, great. When you join a team like Safari Limited in literally the 11th hour before all the Q4 chaos sets in, for those listening at home or recording this in mid October, James, how do you go about setting your priorities when you're new into a role and you're literally right in The Thick of Q4.

Speaker C: Super important. Organization is key and being in E commerce, I mean anybody that's in E commerce, you learn yourself how Q4 treats you. Q4 is not built for the weak, is built for the tough. So I mean it's all about strategy and planning. You have to have your planning done. I like to do the whole before November. Try to have as much as you can because November, December, all you're focusing on is sales. You're not focusing on system implementations, you're not focusing on changing anything because you don't want to do that when you have high traffic. One of the things that I'm doing now at uh, Safari is I'm trying to get all my marketing plans, email schedules, campaigns and working with a developer are super important to try to get everything in order before the holiday season. I literally started there and once I knew after a month of uh, what Safari is and who was our customers and stuff like that, it's full throttle because you have to be ready for the holiday season.

Speaker A: Excellent. And speaking of technology, what platform are you using over there at Safari?

Speaker C: Right now we're using Magento but we are going to switch out of Magento and we're moving into Shopify.

Speaker A: Oh, got it. Okay, very good. So one of the many migrating, not necessarily by choice but migrating during the M M1 mandate as I'm sure many of our listeners are familiar with that have to deal with the technology side of E commerce.

Speaker C: Right, right. And you know, and when I got there at Safari the decision was already made to move out of Magento to Shopify. And they're both great platforms, they're both super powerful. But one of the things that Safari had informed me like oh, you know, we're building this website and we're trying to launch it in the middle of November or late November and rule of thumb is, you know, you don't want to make big system changes when you have holiday rush coming in because you don't want to be in a position where you change something and you wake up the next day something didn't go right system wise or anything like that. So just keep that in mind whenever it comes to holiday season.

Speaker A: Great advice there James. And uh, tell me what do you see as the next great opportunity for E commerce marketing leaders?

Speaker C: I think to me just making it easier for customers. For example, Apple Pay has blown out the water. You select checkout, you put your thumb and it's just done not to reach into your wallet. You don't have to do none of that. That's one of the things that I really like now. But, you know, I actually read an article of, uh, virtual reality, what is it? The Samsung VR, where you could actually walk into a store and be able to look at something and virtually pick it out from a shelf and see if you like it so you can shop. I think that is super cool.

Speaker A: Excellent. And, uh, tell me, what are your social channels of choice at Safari? Obviously you've got a B2B brand with a burgeoning B2C presence. You're targeting primarily, uh, parents, I would assume. Tell me a little bit more about your social, uh, media channels of choice.

Speaker C: Right, so we have, you know, the standard, which is The Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, we kind of have all of them, but the one that we advertise on is Facebook, being that it's integrated with Instagram. So, you know, those are the two most used social media platforms. So whenever we come up with a campaign, we'll just use Facebook and it'll fire out to Instagram. And the good thing about using Facebook is that they're always constantly changing their marketing strategy. So, you know, they always keep up to date with the newest trends and the system is very easy to use when it comes to building out campaigns. So I really like Facebook. But I mean, we have again, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter.

Speaker A: Okay, excellent. And uh, going back to Invicta for a moment, James, ah, tell me, what was the key to your success in growing that E commerce brand as aggressively as you did?

Speaker C: Honestly, I would say it's more than one thing. But two of the most things that I would say that helped me a lot at Invicta to drive sales would be, you know, first it starts off with your product, right? So make sure you have a good product, make sure your catalog is up to date and make sure you got good pricing. The next thing is your marketing, your digital marketing. So having a trusted partner that helps you build out your campaigns, that understands your brand, that understands, you know, even me, the way I work, that, uh, helped me reach goals that I wanted to reach is super important. What I always say, my PPC guy is like, I treat him like gold because I mean, these people really go out and fight for you out on the web. You know, there's over billions of websites out there. And you know, how are you going to get that person in? How are you going to get that person on the other side of the computer to get onto your site and put in their credit card on your site. Having product priced and good online marketing strategy is super important.

Speaker A: Okay, excellent. And, uh, what are some of your biggest challenges that you've seen so far in your short time at Safari?

Speaker C: At Safari, one of the biggest issues that I have is limited resources when it comes to a web developer. So we are currently using Magento, but we don't really have anyone to kind of help us with implementations or fixes or, or even if that a stable Magento platform. Because with Magento you constantly need someone to help you and also you're constantly changing things, right? So you're looking at your analytics, you're seeing, hey, should I change this? Should I move this to there? Should I make this button green instead of blue? That whole of thing is my challenge at Safari, which is just trying to get a developer that I can work with to be able to make system changes, enhancements, fixes, whatever it is.

Speaker A: Okay, excellent. Last question for you, James. Really appreciate your time with us today. Uh, any advice out there for e commerce marketing leaders listening in? If they had one key takeaway from you as far as advice they could take action on when they're done listening to this podcast, what would that be?

Speaker C: Advice. Guys, all I recommend is get organized. Think about what will bring you revenue at the end of the day. Don't let every day go by and you're not really making a change at the core. So look at your core, see what's going on on your website, do a priority list. Right? So I do a list and I think of 20 things off the top of my head when I'm analyzing my business. And then I'll mark a star on the ones that are going to bring me cash, and those are the ones that I work on first.

Speaker A: Excellent. Very good. James, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for jumping on the Lion's Share Marketing podcast.

Speaker C: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Speaker A: All right, cheers. All right, and that concludes episode 19 of the Lion's Share Marketing podcast. If you haven't subscribed already, please do so. You can find us on SoundCloud, Stitcher, iTunes, the Google Play Store, and pretty much anywhere else podcasts are downloaded, so a lot of options there. Appreciate you guys tuning in and sticking with us all the way through the episode. Uh, until next time, Cheers. You've been listening to the Lion's Share podcast, brought to you by Fidelitus Development, your marketing partner for better brand loyalty.