October 29, 2024 • 37 mins
Ever wondered how to turn a small community into a powerhouse for your brand? Discover the surprising journey behind Gio, a unique non-alcoholic beverage brand, and learn how building an engaged audience before launch can create excitement and momentum. Inspired by Ryan Daniel Moran's innovative approach, we share how sharing weekly updates—even about minor details like flavor tweaks—has fostered a growing community eager to be part of our story. We also discuss the power of social media platforms, particularly TikTok, and how they can transform marketing efforts for brands, even those that may seem less glamorous.
Join us as we explore the art of fostering community engagement and loyalty, diving into strategies for interactive product packaging and maintaining active communication via automated email campaigns. Discover how involving your audience in decision-making, from flavor naming to product development, can cultivate a sense of ownership and drive brand growth. We highlight the importance of aligning with existing communities and leveraging their influence to elevate your brand's visibility and engagement, as well as the balance between providing excellent customer service and maintaining authenticity in marketing efforts.
In our conversation we discuss marketing expert Janelle Page and uncover the secrets to building genuine connections with influencers and creating captivating stories for even the most mundane products. Learn how creative marketing campaigns, like the viral "Will it Blend?" series, can inspire innovative approaches to engage audiences and ensure ongoing brand success. By focusing on building loyalty within your existing audience and exploring potential partnerships, you'll learn how to unlock new avenues for revenue and growth.
🚀 Transform your brand on Amazon by building a powerful customer list with the After Purchase Funnel Blueprint course. Click here to get the full course for free.
➡️ Ready to go deeper into your Amazon FBA journey to accelerate your success? Get your hands on ALL of the Brand Fortress HQ resources, mentorship, and knowledge base by visiting us at BrandFortressHQ.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another Brand Fortress HQ podcast
Tactics Tuesday.
Today we're going to be talkingabout how to leverage a
community to power your brand,and I'm really excited to have
this conversation because Ithink we have a couple of
different angles on how you cando this with your brand.
So the first one I want tostart out with is you know, I
actually handed over to you,Matt, because I know you're
doing some really excitingthings with Gio, the brand that
(00:21):
you're building out in the open.
Things with Gio, the brand thatyou're building out in the open
, and how you guys are buildingand looking at leveraging
community as a part of yourlaunch for this, you know, very
new brand.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yes, I still don't.
Oh, there we go.
I was looking for the go livebutton on LinkedIn.
That it's taken a little bitlonger than it usually does, but
I just hit it.
Give me one second so I canfocus on your question.
All right, got it.
So yeah, with GEO.
So one of the things that wedecided from the very beginning,
the goal that we set and Ithink it initially started out
to be a stretch goal, but Ithink we're going to blow past
(00:53):
it we wanted to have 500 peopleon a pre-launch list.
There's a book that I read nottoo long ago from Ryan Daniel
Moran that kind of laid out whathis building a brand kind of
process looks like.
And that's really one of thefirst things that he does is and
he calls it a tiny littleaudience of about a hundred
people and the power thatsomething like that has and his
(01:13):
mechanism for getting those ahundred people on a list or just
building the brand out in theopen from the very beginning.
And that's what we did.
So kind of what that lookedlike for us is, first of all, we
have a really unique productdid so kind of.
What that looked like for us is,first of all, we have a really
unique product.
It's a non-alcoholic I don't Ihesitate to call it a seltzer,
because I think that word'soverused but it's essentially a
(01:33):
kind of like a seltzer I don'tthink of like a white claw or a
truly but non-alcoholic and withsome functional ingredients.
So you know, I think thatthey're both of those like the
non-alcoholic it's.
I think it's more of a trend.
It's not a trend anymore.
I think it's more of a movementthat is kind of spanning the
globe as a matter of fact, butthen also that functional piece.
So there's a couple ofinteresting things about our
(01:54):
product.
We're, I don't want to say abrand new category, because
those two categories exist, butwe're really the first that's
combining those two things.
So there's a lot of cool thingsto talk about.
There's a lot of things thatpeople are already talking about
Sober, curious and functionalingredients and supplements and
things like that.
So, building it out in the open,I think this brand lends itself
really well to that, becausethere's, like I said, there's a
(02:15):
lot of cool things to talk about.
But really I just go live oncea week and I just talk about you
know what happened, and even ifit's just kind of hey, we just
got new samples from our, fromour manufacturer.
We didn't love them.
Here's, you know, we made awhole bunch of changes to
flavors and potentially thebitterness of a particular
ingredient.
So really just building it outin the open and having a
(02:35):
discussion around some things.
But we've used that kind of oursocials to ask them about flavor
names and you know if theythought that we should go with
dual fruit flavors as opposed tokind of mocktail names and like
we've actually used the littlebit of an audience that we have.
I mean, we probably have acouple hundred followers across
all of our socials that areorganic.
Yes, we do have some friendsand family, but we do have some
(02:57):
people that just came from justorganic posting.
We're posting pretty regularlyand we actually we hired a
social media agency to handle alot of that for us, as opposed
to us having to post ourselvesand come up with that content.
So really for us it's buildingit out in the open, kind of
getting people excited about thebrand, but also getting them on
a pre-launch list is kind ofhow we're approaching this brand
(03:17):
.
I mean, we're still a month anda half away from, hopefully,
when we launch and we alreadyhave a couple of hundred people
on that pre-launch list, whichis going to be like fuel to the
fire once we get ready to launch.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
So, matt, if you could share a little bit, what
did that buildup look like?
I mean, because obviously whenyou start a new brand you start
from zero.
So, social media wise, how longdid it take kind of posting and
putting some content out thereand doing those lives before you
started to see more than ahandful of followers?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
So initially it started like I feel like
Instagram and Facebook are slowin that you know there's not
from an organic standpoint, youdon't really get a lot of
exposure in the beginning.
Tiktok, on the other hand, ifyou're posting regular content
now, we haven't really got tothe place where we're posting
really engaging content yet,because we really need the cans
(04:10):
in order to actually createcontent, the kind of content
that we want.
Really.
Our brand is built around.
What we know about people thatare going to consume our
products is that they do consumealcohol.
They're not people that don't,but they're also people that
enjoy social activities.
They like going to baseballgames and festivals and concerts
, but they don't want to drinkalcohol on a Tuesday night.
(04:32):
So, like those types of people,I think it's hard to build up
just from an organic standpoint.
On Facebook and Instagram, wehaven't really spent anything on
advertising because we don'thave a product to sell yet.
So I would say where a lot ofour organic followers have come
from are just regular posting.
On TikTok Now, again, it's notgreat content yet because we
(04:52):
don't have actual cans.
It's just kind of informationaland educational about some of
the ingredients that we're using, but I would say, the vast
majority of the organicfollowers that aren't friends
and family or people that knowother brands that we work with,
all came from TikTok, for themost part.
We have a couple videos thathave gotten over a thousand
views.
I mean nothing viral yet and Idon't expect that to happen
(05:15):
anytime soon but it has created,it has amounted to followers on
all three of those mainplatforms Instagram, Facebook
and TikTok.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
All right and I think that's a really good example of
if you're launching a new brandor a new product, of maybe what
that looks like.
As far as social media, I thinkwhat I want to do now is Mike
is pivot to you because you havean email list and a brand
within the pool tools categorythat maybe isn't, as you know,
social media, sexy as somethingyou know and kind of in the
(05:46):
zeitgeist, like what Matt'sworking on.
So talk to me about you knowhow you've built that audience
and how you're building kind ofthat community and then
leveraging that community inorder to move the brand forward.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
I mean, we've talked about this a number of times
because obviously we were veryfocused on kind of the
post-purchase process,especially for Amazon sellers,
and what that means in terms ofthe ability to build a brand,
and what does that actually looklike?
How do you define building abrand right?
And I would say that from ourperspective, amazon is great.
(06:22):
You can make a lot of salesthere, there's a lot of volume,
but if you're not building thatlist, of course you're in
jeopardy always because Amazoncould always shut you down.
We've talked about that a lot,but in our case it was the
warranty that we utilized inorder to build that list.
It was a fairly simple means.
To an end, we have a really,really high-powered warranty,
(06:45):
and so it just makes it thatmuch more likely that someone
will register after the fact.
We do a number of things in ourproduct packaging to encourage
that even further.
One of those is making surethat you know we either use a
hang tag or we use somethingsimilar that it requires the
user to interact with thatinsert in some way before they
can actually use the product,rather than just tossing it out
(07:06):
with the box or whatever.
You don't have to remove it.
I can't just ignore it.
That has improved ourregistrations, making sure that
there are additional reasons forthem to register.
There's a contest that they'reentering and that sort of thing.
So we get pretty goodregistration rates.
But the biggest thing is isthat once you have them on the
(07:27):
list, you have to do somethingwith it.
A cold list is not of that muchvalue.
So if you add a bunch ofcustomers to a list but you
never send them any emails, thenyou haven't really accomplished
anything and you certainlyaren't building a brand.
So the biggest thing is is thatwe do have an automated process
that sends out I don't knowabout 30 emails, something like
(07:47):
that, maybe a little less, thatare automated on a weekly basis,
so that you know foressentially, you know, six
months.
You know they're receivingregular mailings from us that
are basically telling them howto maintain their pool, how to
use our tools better.
You know other productrecommendations of different
brands, things that we thinkthey might want to pay attention
(08:08):
to, stuff like that.
But then also the way that weend up using that in a community
sense is that we also build ourwe'll say not the brand out in
the open necessarily so much.
But each individual productlaunch becomes public in the
sense that we're launching it infront of our community, which
(08:29):
is our email list.
So from start to finish, thatprocess involves them.
So at the first steps, it'swhat would be the new products
that you would want to see.
Then we take that and we narrowthat down to the ones that we
think we have the best shot atbeing the best of category that
fit our warranty structureeffectively, that we think
(08:51):
there's improvements that we canmake that are significant
within the industry.
Then we go back to the list andwe say, ok, these are the three
that we think are the bestoptions for ProTuff.
Which one would you want?
And they vote again.
And so, ok, whichever one isvoted, then we go forward with
that.
Or maybe we go forward with allthree, if they're all great.
But then as we walk throughthat, as we're, you know,
designing the product, as we'readding features what features do
(09:13):
you want to see?
What are the features that youhate about other products?
What color would you want it tobe?
You know.
And then, once we get theproduct developed, then the
prototypes you know who wants tobe a beta tester, things like
that.
So it's all very organic and,again, if you've been listening
to the podcast for long enough,you probably already heard that
messaging.
But I think it's important torecognize that as you do that it
does build that very communitynature where they feel like
(09:37):
they're a part of the brand.
They feel like they're a partof something bigger.
And when you launch thoseproducts, anybody on your list
that has any amount of use,let's say, for that product that
you're about to launch is goingto buy.
They are absolutely going tobuy it, and you don't have to
give a 50% off discount.
10% or 15% or 20% is oftentimesenough to stimulate a pretty
(10:01):
significant purchase rate out ofthat community, to stimulate a
pretty significant purchase rateout of that community.
And so the ease with which youcan launch products that way and
the profitability of thoselaunches is miles ahead of
anything that you can do if youdon't have that community built.
And it doesn't matter where thatcommunity is.
I would say that email is goodbecause it's your community.
(10:23):
If you build it on social, it'snot technically yours.
You can be shut down at anytime, just the same way that
Amazon could shut you down ontheir platform.
So in that sense, I wouldsuggest that building a
community via social is a meansto an end, and I think the end
should still be an email list atthe end of the day.
But social is a very useful,you know, avenue for doing that,
(10:45):
especially on the front end.
If you don't have a brand, youdon't have a product where
you've got inserts in the backend that you're, you know,
funneling into a list.
If you don't have any of thatyet, then social is a tremendous
avenue and mostly socials thathave that kind of organic
component where you don't haveto pay for traffic on the front
end.
So TikTok, youtube Live orYouTube Shorts, that sort of
(11:05):
thing I think are tremendous andI would also say for anybody
who has a very unsexy productlike pool cleaning tools.
We have been actually amazed atthe fact that our TikTok content
, even though none of it isparticularly viral in nature,
it's not all that terriblyinteresting.
You know some of it is UGC, youknow reviews and things like
(11:28):
that, but a lot of it isn't.
I have been amazed to find thatour average view count per
video is about 500 views, whichyou know if you're posting
regularly.
500 views on every single videothat you put out.
That's a lot of eyeballs onyour brand and every once in a
while especially if you'regetting in that 500, every once
(11:49):
in a while you're going to kickoff one that gets a few thousand
or 10,000.
So if your product is not asexy product, I would say do not
discount the usefulness ofsocial platforms like TikTok.
I did for quite a long time Iignored TikTok, assuming that we
really just weren't a good fit.
Turns out I think we areactually a decent fit and we
(12:10):
actually have some ideas abouthow to be much more interesting
on that platform and possiblygain some virality for some of
our videos.
So we could talk about thatsome more.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, I think that's such an important point is that
you know, depending on whereyou're at with your brand and in
that kind of process, like youknow, you might have a brand and
products that are in thezeitgeist that already have,
naturally you know, kind ofaudiences that are very engaged,
built into them, and sometimesyou don't.
And if you don't, you know whatI like about that.
Mike is thinking about hey, howcan I take an angle in order to
(12:45):
make this, you know, unsexyproduct brand category, whatever
it happens to be, how can Imake it interesting?
So I think you know that's areally good point.
Before we dive into that, though, I'm just really curious, based
on what you said for your emaillist, because I think this is
so important, I just want todouble click on it is that you
know, yes, having an afterpurchase you know system is
(13:09):
really important in order tocollect those email addresses
because you can take those withyou anywhere.
But having that interaction andbuilding up that community,
like just collecting that emailaddress is not enough, like you
do actually have to send outemail messages.
I'm curious on those kind of 30messages um, how long did it
take you in order to build thatand how you know what is.
(13:31):
Is that something that you lookat like once a quarter or how
do you?
What does maintenance on thatlook like?
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Sure, If I'm being completely honest, maintenance
on that has been zero for quitea long time.
You know we have added someadditional.
You know, when an article cameup that we thought was useful,
maybe we've added that as anemail, but as a rule maintenance
on it has been nil.
I wouldn't recommend that.
I don't think that's the bestapproach.
(13:57):
Fortunately, most of thecontent that's in there is very
evergreen content within thepool space.
So you know it's not that bigof a deal that we haven't really
done that.
But we also haven't taken thetime to to split test any of
them.
You know, check differentsubject headings, you know
things like that.
Like, we is more brand loyaltythan it is anything that that
(14:35):
customers really have come tothat place where they just
really love our brand because ofwho we are and what we do for
them.
And so when we send an email, alot of times I think our open
rates have a lot less to do withhow interesting the email is
and more to do with the fact ofwho sent it.
And so they just open it, right, like maybe there's a little
(14:56):
tidbit in here that might beuseful to me, you know, even if
the subject heading isn'tparticularly interesting, right?
So we get now and we've talkedabout this before so we have to
be careful with.
You know citing numbers withoutqualifying it, but we get about
a 50% open rate for every emailthat we send out.
Obviously, that's not accurate.
Apple users you know that thatcredits it as opened, you know,
(15:17):
even if it's not technicallyopen.
So I'm sure that our open ratesare not actually 50%, but
everybody has to track it thesame way.
You don't have a way to trackit any other way.
So if you're comparing againstmost other email lists out there
, we have a much higher openrate than most other email lists
and I think most of that comesdown to they're very brand loyal
.
It doesn't have so much to dowith how interesting the emails
(15:39):
are, it's that they really loveour brand.
So, on that front, if you wantpeople to open your emails, do
good things for them, treat themwell, have a really amazing
product with a terrific warrantyand wonderful customer service
and all of those things right,because if you're doing those
things right, even if you areincredibly boring, they will
(16:00):
still pay attention to you justbecause they like you.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Yeah, I think that's the key point is, again, you
know the authenticity piece ofit and taking care of people.
Like I know, as you know,someone who spends a lot of time
marketing.
We get I get caught in thistrap of like, oh, what is the
perfect, you know wording forthat subject line and the best
copy and that type of stuff andyeah, those things can help but,
at the end of the day, like,people want to connect with
(16:24):
other people and so if you'reauthentic but you know outside
of that email, then you're goingto see your open rates be a lot
higher and your marketingoverall be a lot more effective,
because people really areinterested in what you're doing
as a brand and who you are as aperson, in addition to having a
really good product a real, areally big part, not just emails
(16:48):
but also, like you, mikementioned TikTok.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
I think I really do think that their algorithm is
significantly based onconsistency and how often you're
posting.
I think that is, in a lot ofcases, as important as the
quality of the post, especiallyin the beginning when TikTok
doesn't really know who you arewho to show your videos to.
So I think consistency is a bigpart of that.
(17:12):
But one of the things I wantedto say about an audience and for
me, when I started thinkingabout starting an Amazon brand,
my experience was with a healthymeal prep business that we
launched about 10 years previousand the audience that we
attached ourselves to wasn't onethat I created personally, but
it was one that already existed,that my product or my service
(17:36):
was complimentary to.
So the CrossFit community atepaleo food.
That was kind of where theywent hand in hand.
So my meal service was a paleomeal service that we went and
marketed to CrossFit gyms, mealservice that we went and
marketed to CrossFit gym.
So because I created a win-winscenario for the CrossFit gym
(17:56):
owner, it was a value add forhis gym, but also we gave him an
affiliate commission for anymeals that he sold delivered to
his gym.
So he was incentivized to tellpeople.
But they wanted it anyway.
So, like I didn't have to do,michael went the long route on
building his list and because ofthat they're very super engaged
, they trust him, they know him,they like him, they know the
(18:17):
brand.
Like he said, for me it was anaudience that had already
existed, so I didn't.
It wasn't I don't want to saythe easy way, because there was
still a lot of work involved increating those relationships and
that kind of stuff.
But you don't have to create alist or an audience from scratch
, like there are other existinggroups out there.
The other thing that we wereable to kind of piggyback along
(18:39):
with were Facebook groups, notonly in the CrossFit space but
also for our Amazon brands.
You know, like our, my firstbrand was a barbecue accessories
brand and we partnered with aFacebook group that had about
40,000 members in it that wereall super passionate about
barbecuing and smoking meat andthings like that.
So again, it wasn't an audiencethat I created, but it was one
that we attached to the brandand a lot of things become a lot
(19:02):
easier.
So for me, I think that one ofthe things that I want to make
sure that people understandwhile we're talking about this
is that building an audience isa specialized skill I think that
not a lot of people have noteverybody has, certainly and
there's a lot of people outthere that have that skill but
don't know how to monetize theaudience that they've created.
So, matching your brand with anexisting audience, it makes
(19:25):
sense and it's not big and scary.
It's just reaching out toFacebook group owners and saying
, hey, you know, I have thisbrand idea, you have an audience
for it.
How can we, how can we cometogether?
So I think that's also a reallygood way to leverage an
audience with one that youdidn't have to build yourself.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
I think people would be really shocked actually to to
learn just how many individualsthere are out there that have
managed to build a community,and and I would I would say that
many of them have built thecommunity by accident, like it
was not ever intended to be whatit's become.
Right, they were just verygenuine individuals that were
(20:03):
very passionate about someparticular topic or some sport
or whatever it was, and thiscommunity just became.
And so now those people are inthe position of they recognize
that there's value in thatcommunity.
They recognize that otherpeople are monetizing their
(20:23):
communities, so there's reallyno reason they shouldn't also be
able to do so.
But they don't know how.
Most of them don't have anybusiness experience, they don't
have any marketing experience,they don't really know any of
that.
And so you know there is agoldmine out there.
If you would just simply takethe time to look for communities
that already exist, where thepeople that you want to sell to
(20:46):
are already in that community.
If you reach out to 20communities, even if you don't
do anything else other thandetermine that they're in the
right target market, right Likethey have the right people, you
don't even have to researchanything else, just reach out to
them and make the offer, like,hey, I see that you've got a
list.
You know you've got thiscommunity.
It looks like you knoweverybody really loves you and
(21:06):
what you're doing.
You know we have this productthat we think would be or the
service that we think would bereally amazing for them.
You know, could we partner up insome way?
You would be surprised I wouldbe amazed if at least two or
three of those you knowcommunity leaders didn't reach
back out to you and say, oh, I'mso glad you contacted me.
I have no idea how to monetizethis list.
(21:27):
I would love to do that Rightnow.
You might get 17 people whodon't respond or who respond
back and they're like, nah, Iknow what I'm doing, I don't
need your help, whatever.
But if you get two or threeresponses back to say, oh yeah,
we'd love to do that, what couldyou do with that?
I think you know there's,there's gold there.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Well, and just to piggyback off of that, you know,
one thing that comes to my mind, that's been in the news a
little bit recently, is, if youthink about who the you know,
the ultimate YouTube creator isat least right now, it's Mr
Beast, who has dipped his toesinto a number of different types
of products and actually runinto some pretty significant
problems.
(22:05):
And so I bring that up because,you know, most of the listeners
of this podcast and the peoplein our community really know how
to develop a product, how toget it manufactured and how to
make a really good product thatpeople are really going to want
to buy, and that is a wholeother different skill set.
So I think that's reallyimportant to keep in mind is
(22:26):
that, matt, like you said, theseare very different skill sets.
I mean, obviously Mr Beast isamazing at building an audience
and making really engagingYouTube videos, but doesn't have
, you know, the expertise atthat same level, for you know,
launching a brand and productsand need somebody with that
experience.
And so you know, maybe it's notto the Mr Beast level, but
(22:49):
there's a lot of other creatorsout there that have built
communities that you know don'thave a tenth of the experience
of you, know the people that arelistening to this podcast do
and what it takes in order todevelop a product, get it
manufactured and get itdelivered to customers.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
For sure, deliver to customers For sure.
I don't know what her name is,and by the time this episode
goes live, I want to be able togive her credit, because I heard
her speak on stage and I think,michael, you probably did too
at one of the BDSS events.
I don't remember her name, butthis is what she does she pairs
influencers or celebrities withphysical product brands.
(23:29):
Janelle, janelle or yeah,janelle or Janelle.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, we need to give her some sort of credit in the
show notes or something likethat, but I mean that's what she
does.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
This is exactly what she does, I think, now because
she's perfected the findingsomeone that has the eyeballs
and connecting them with aphysical product brand.
I think she's actually creatingthe brand from scratch for a
lot of these influencers.
Now Janelle Page, I think, isthat her last name?
Speaker 3 (23:56):
I believe that's correct.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
I'm trying to find her right now actually, but yeah
, this is what she does and it'sessentially what I did with the
Facebook group.
Now, obviously he wasn't aninfluencer, but I would argue
that there's 100,000 members inhis group now are probably more
engaged than if I were to havegone and found just like a the
rock influencer or somethingalong those lines Like I have a
(24:17):
hundred thousand people thatthese are the guys that are out
checking their brisket at twoo'clock in the morning.
They aren't someone that justsigned up for something free on
an email list or saw someone ina movie and decided to hit
follow on their social profile.
Like these are people that arevery interested in what we sell.
So I would say that thataudience is probably more
engaged than me going out andfinding someone that has a
(24:38):
million followers of just kindof random people.
So, yes, I mean she does thatand she's made a lot of very
successful brands just bypointing eyeballs that already
existed in one place and pointedthem to products that they were
already buying anyways.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
It is Janelle Page that is P-A-G-E and she's
terrific and, man, she got a lotof energy.
I'll tell you what, that's forsure.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Well, Matt, you bring up a really good point, because
I think it circles back to youknow, something you mentioned
earlier, which is, you know somepeople might get caught up in
hey, I only have a thousandpeople on my email list, or only
a hundred people following mybrand, or, you know, this
influencer or community only has1000 members.
At the end of the day, itreally matters.
(25:22):
You know how passionate thosepeople are Because, I mean, it's
not hard to build an email listwith 10,000 emails.
You know it's pretty easy to dothat, but are they going to be
people that are, you know, truefans of your brand are going to
be engaged and are going to beinto the solution that you're
providing through your brand andthrough your products.
(25:43):
I would much rather take athousand of those that are
really truly engaged, as opposedto an email list of 100,000
people that could care lessabout the brand or the product
that I'm working with.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Yeah, I agree.
Yeah, one of the things beforewe wrap up today that I think is
useful to think through.
I kind of mentioned it earlier,but we talked about this whole
social piece and that you can bea boring product and a boring
brand and you can still actuallyhave a following there, and
especially if you're connectingwith the right audience that has
(26:18):
a passion for what you do oryou know, whatever.
But there's also an aspect ofthat where you know and this is
the reason why I thought ourbrand was a bad fit for social,
you know is that there's thisaspect of how excited do people
get or how much are they goingto share things, or how viral
could you make a video aboutsuch and such a brand or topic?
(26:41):
And you might think well, youknow, cleaning pools is not
something that you can makeviral, and to some degree that's
accurate.
But you know, we actually havecome up with a few ideas that I
will say we have not yetimplemented, but I am entirely
convinced that at least one ofthem, if not more of them, could
end up producing some resultsfor us.
(27:01):
One of them is because we offeran unlimited and unconditional
lifetime warranty on ourproducts, what that allows us to
do is we're super liberal withthe warranty, we'll cover
basically anything loss, theft,you know it doesn't matter,
right?
So I don't know how many peoplein the audience remember this,
(27:22):
but there was.
So Blendtec is like a rival toVitamix blenders and they had a
series that they did that, abunch of viral videos that they
ran.
It was a series of videos andit was called Will it Blend and
the idea was to prove, obviously, how tough a Blendtec blender
is and that it can blend uppretty much anything.
But by extension of that, theywere blending up just about
(27:45):
anything you can think of.
So they were throwing iPhonesin there and they were throwing
in, you know, action figures andbroomsticks and you know, I
mean whatever you could think ofthat you might be able to shove
in there to try and break ablender.
That's what they were doing,and every time, of course, it
blended it all up and it neverbroke, you know, and that sort
of thing.
So it became this you know, wow, blendtex are indestructible.
(28:06):
But it was just fun to watchthe videos and see what the next
thing was that they were goingto blend up.
So this idea came to me a fewweeks ago, which is because of
our warranty and because wecover anything doing a series
that's and I don't know thatthis is the right name.
I'd really love to come up witha better name for it, but is it
covered?
And it would basically just bethese stupid antics.
(28:27):
We need either one or multipleinfluencers or whatever, who
would potentially dress up aseither people cleaning their
pool or pool pros, whatever it,as either people you know
cleaning their pool or pool pros, whatever it is.
We're thinking we may focus onpool pros, but the idea of all
of the ridiculous things thatcould potentially happen to your
pool tools that we would stillcover.
(28:48):
You know.
So you know things like you.
You're in the the, the uh, oneof your clients, you know pools,
and you set your tool down, thedog gets a hold of it and
you've got a tug of war with thedog on the side of the pool.
The net rips.
We cover it, right.
Somebody steals it out of theback of your truck.
We cover it.
You're driving down the road.
(29:08):
The pole falls out of yourvehicle and it gets run over by
12,000 vehicles.
We cover it.
You know.
That's sort of a and you couldget really crazy and out of the
norm, let's say, with some ofthe things that you could do
with that, I don't know if it'sgoing to work.
I think we need to find theright person to do it, but at
the same time, it takessomething really really boring
(29:29):
and potentially makes itsomething quite interesting that
we might be able to make aseries out of.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
One of my favorite channels to watch on TikTok.
You say boring and I bet thisguy didn't initially think that
his business would be good forTikTok.
He's a guy that goes around topeople's lawns that are just
terrible, like overgrown, morethan you can even imagine.
He basically offers them a freeto cut their lawn for free and
(29:56):
he does an amazing job.
He films it and for me likeit's very satisfying to watch
him go up and down theespecially if it's the worst the
lawn is, the more satisfying itis to watch him do that.
But I mean this guy getshundreds of thousands of views
on his videos and you can seepeople commenting like he
travels the country now and doespeople's lawns because they saw
him on TikTok and they wantthis guy to do their lawn.
(30:18):
So I mean I would imagine thathe changed the trajectory of his
boring service business byposting regular videos of and he
was giving it away, like thatwas.
The other part of his videos isthat he was offering this for
free to the people, which was,you know, it tugs at your
heartstrings a little bit, so itmade people resonate a little
bit more with the guy.
But I mean every video that Isee of this guy when he pops up
(30:40):
in my in my feed, is hundreds ofthousands of views of him
cutting someone's lawn.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
And same thing like you know pools, like we could do
green to clean, you know, orsomething like that.
Or you know there's there's allsorts of you know potentially
unique ways that you couldintroduce your product, no
matter how boring the product is, and I didn't realize that,
honestly, until pretty recently.
But I think if we can just be alittle creative with it and
(31:05):
think outside the box.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
I think almost anything you can do that with
yeah, and I think that I meankind of bringing it full circle
just gives you such an advantageespecially I know we're talking
about social media, but thenyou start looking at, you know,
amazon or even selling off yourown website of being able to
build an audience, have acommunity and then not only to
drive traffic there if you'redoing, you know, some sort of
(31:27):
sale or promo.
But I think probably the biggestthing you know that you guys
have both talked about is thatin order for a brand to be
healthy, like you do have to belaunching products on a fairly
regular basis.
And having that community is ahuge advantage to test out new
ideas, to get feedback on like,what product do they want next?
(31:48):
Because then you know, not onlyyou know you don't have to be
the expert as the business owneror the brand owner, but also
you're engaging them in theprocess.
So it becomes, to a certainextent, you know their brand as
well, and I think that that's avery powerful aspect of it when
they feel like they've got, youknow, some ownership over the
brand and are working with youtowards a common goal.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Well, no matter how big or small that list is, that
you might have, the reality alsois is if it's a targeted list.
You know you might, let's say,you've got a thousand people on
your list, but it's a verytargeted list.
And if they are, if the majorityof them are telling you this is
the product, these are thefeatures that we want, this is
the color that we want, this is,you know, whatever there are
hundreds or thousands of timesmore people out there that fit
(32:34):
that exact same targetdemographic.
They're going to think theexact same way, and so if they
have told you this is theproduct and this is how we want
you to make it, you are nearlyguaranteed to have a winner
product that a whole bunch ofother people are also going to
want because they think the sameway that this target avatar
does.
So you know you just you saveyourself a lot of headache.
(32:55):
A lot of you know failedlaunches and you know again,
they're profitable because youdon't have to offer a 50, 60,
70% off.
You know discount code in orderto get enough people buying it,
that you get.
You know the snowball thatyou're looking for.
You know you can sell it nearlyfull price and still get that
snowball running.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Yeah Well, I think this is a good place to wrap, as
we kind of, you know, wrap upthis episode.
What's, maybe you know, oneaction item that you guys would
have for listeners as they thinkabout, kind of either building
a community or leveraging thatcommunity for their brand.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
I would say go to Facebook and type in a an
interest of a group of peoplethat would that are purchasing
your products.
I know that you already know ofwho that group of people are
and find.
I guarantee that there's aFacebook group of those people
that are all in this group thattalk about this particular
subject in products like yourson a regular basis and all you
(33:54):
have to do is find them and evenif you don't, if it doesn't
turn into a partnership like itdid for me and my products, even
just being in that community ofpeople and listening to how
they talk and what they talkabout and what products they
mentioned, you're going to be alot farther.
Just just social, listen ifyou're not going to do anything
else.
But I guarantee you there's aFacebook group of people that
are filled with are filled withpeople that buy products like
(34:16):
you're selling and you can dothat right now.
It doesn't cost you a dime.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Yeah, I would say two things.
One, if you're already sellinga product or multiple products
and you are not really engagingwith that post-purchase process,
definitely do that.
You know there's gold therethat you're missing out on and
those launches will be mucheasier, I guarantee it, if you
(34:41):
walk that road.
I would also say, in relationto what Matt was saying, the
alternative to that, oradditional component to that, is
, you also have available to you, I guarantee it, dozens of
other brands that exist outthere that are selling to the
same audience but are notselling a competing product to
(35:04):
yours.
Therefore, there's no reason atall that you should not be
considering a partnership withthat company so that you can
share the audience.
Every company is always lookingfor more ways that they can
monetize the audience that theyalready have.
And if a company only sells XYZproduct, but they have a
(35:24):
community of 10,000 people andthey want to find a new way to
monetize it, what do they need?
They need products that theydon't already sell to sell to
that community.
You have a product, go talk tothem, set up some affiliate
arrangement, you know, whateverit is, I mean, there's ways to
make a partnership work in thatscenario and I guarantee, if you
contact enough other companiesthat are complimentary to your
(35:46):
own and selling to the samecustomer avatar, you will find
some good partners and you willmake more money.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah, and I'll.
I'll leave it with you know, beinteresting you know no matter
how you're doing that, reachingout to your audience, whether
it's email or social media andthat you know could mean you
have a really powerful brandmission.
It could be that you're doing,you know, something to educate
or entertain your audience, butjust be interesting in that
process.
And I think you know and andquite frankly you know, probably
(36:15):
49 out of your first 50attempts are probably going to
fall flat, and that's okay.
But be interesting in thatprocess and I think you'll be
happily surprised to see howyour customers and your audience
react to that and how that paysdividends for your brand down
the road.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
And oftentimes different, is enough to be
interesting, just different.
I mean, we sell pool tools.
There's nothing interestingabout a pool tool, but it is
interesting that we sell anunlimited lifetime replacement
warranty.
That's completely unconditional.
Nobody else does that.
It's not interesting in and ofitself, except for the fact that
it's different than everybodyelse in that category.
So it becomes interesting as aresult because of what customers
(36:55):
get out of that.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
So yeah, absolutely, and so I would just, yeah,
encourage listeners out there tofigure out what is that
interesting thing about yourbrand in order because it will
really make a big difference asyou look at building a brand on
Amazon and beyond If you havesomething that you can be
interesting with to really grabpeople's attention and build
those connections, yeah,
Welcome to another Brand Fortress HQ podcast
Tactics Tuesday.
Today we're going to be talkingabout how to leverage a
community to power your brand,and I'm really excited to have
this conversation because Ithink we have a couple of
different angles on how you cando this with your brand.
So the first one I want tostart out with is you know, I
actually handed over to you,Matt, because I know you're
doing some really excitingthings with Gio, the brand that
(00:21):
you're building out in the open.
Things with Gio, the brand thatyou're building out in the open
, and how you guys are buildingand looking at leveraging
community as a part of yourlaunch for this, you know, very
new brand.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yes, I still don't.
Oh, there we go.
I was looking for the go livebutton on LinkedIn.
That it's taken a little bitlonger than it usually does, but
I just hit it.
Give me one second so I canfocus on your question.
All right, got it.
So yeah, with GEO.
So one of the things that wedecided from the very beginning,
the goal that we set and Ithink it initially started out
to be a stretch goal, but Ithink we're going to blow past
(00:53):
it we wanted to have 500 peopleon a pre-launch list.
There's a book that I read nottoo long ago from Ryan Daniel
Moran that kind of laid out whathis building a brand kind of
process looks like.
And that's really one of thefirst things that he does is and
he calls it a tiny littleaudience of about a hundred
people and the power thatsomething like that has and his
(01:13):
mechanism for getting those ahundred people on a list or just
building the brand out in theopen from the very beginning.
And that's what we did.
So kind of what that lookedlike for us is, first of all, we
have a really unique productdid so kind of.
What that looked like for us is,first of all, we have a really
unique product.
It's a non-alcoholic I don't Ihesitate to call it a seltzer,
because I think that word'soverused but it's essentially a
(01:33):
kind of like a seltzer I don'tthink of like a white claw or a
truly but non-alcoholic and withsome functional ingredients.
So you know, I think thatthey're both of those like the
non-alcoholic it's.
I think it's more of a trend.
It's not a trend anymore.
I think it's more of a movementthat is kind of spanning the
globe as a matter of fact, butthen also that functional piece.
So there's a couple ofinteresting things about our
(01:54):
product.
We're, I don't want to say abrand new category, because
those two categories exist, butwe're really the first that's
combining those two things.
So there's a lot of cool thingsto talk about.
There's a lot of things thatpeople are already talking about
Sober, curious and functionalingredients and supplements and
things like that.
So, building it out in the open,I think this brand lends itself
really well to that, becausethere's, like I said, there's a
(02:15):
lot of cool things to talk about.
But really I just go live oncea week and I just talk about you
know what happened, and even ifit's just kind of hey, we just
got new samples from our, fromour manufacturer.
We didn't love them.
Here's, you know, we made awhole bunch of changes to
flavors and potentially thebitterness of a particular
ingredient.
So really just building it outin the open and having a
(02:35):
discussion around some things.
But we've used that kind of oursocials to ask them about flavor
names and you know if theythought that we should go with
dual fruit flavors as opposed tokind of mocktail names and like
we've actually used the littlebit of an audience that we have.
I mean, we probably have acouple hundred followers across
all of our socials that areorganic.
Yes, we do have some friendsand family, but we do have some
(02:57):
people that just came from justorganic posting.
We're posting pretty regularlyand we actually we hired a
social media agency to handle alot of that for us, as opposed
to us having to post ourselvesand come up with that content.
So really for us it's buildingit out in the open, kind of
getting people excited about thebrand, but also getting them on
a pre-launch list is kind ofhow we're approaching this brand
(03:17):
.
I mean, we're still a month anda half away from, hopefully,
when we launch and we alreadyhave a couple of hundred people
on that pre-launch list, whichis going to be like fuel to the
fire once we get ready to launch.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
So, matt, if you could share a little bit, what
did that buildup look like?
I mean, because obviously whenyou start a new brand you start
from zero.
So, social media wise, how longdid it take kind of posting and
putting some content out thereand doing those lives before you
started to see more than ahandful of followers?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
So initially it started like I feel like
Instagram and Facebook are slowin that you know there's not
from an organic standpoint, youdon't really get a lot of
exposure in the beginning.
Tiktok, on the other hand, ifyou're posting regular content
now, we haven't really got tothe place where we're posting
really engaging content yet,because we really need the cans
(04:10):
in order to actually createcontent, the kind of content
that we want.
Really.
Our brand is built around.
What we know about people thatare going to consume our
products is that they do consumealcohol.
They're not people that don't,but they're also people that
enjoy social activities.
They like going to baseballgames and festivals and concerts
, but they don't want to drinkalcohol on a Tuesday night.
(04:32):
So, like those types of people,I think it's hard to build up
just from an organic standpoint.
On Facebook and Instagram, wehaven't really spent anything on
advertising because we don'thave a product to sell yet.
So I would say where a lot ofour organic followers have come
from are just regular posting.
On TikTok Now, again, it's notgreat content yet because we
(04:52):
don't have actual cans.
It's just kind of informationaland educational about some of
the ingredients that we're using, but I would say, the vast
majority of the organicfollowers that aren't friends
and family or people that knowother brands that we work with,
all came from TikTok, for themost part.
We have a couple videos thathave gotten over a thousand
views.
I mean nothing viral yet and Idon't expect that to happen
(05:15):
anytime soon but it has created,it has amounted to followers on
all three of those mainplatforms Instagram, Facebook
and TikTok.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
All right and I think that's a really good example of
if you're launching a new brandor a new product, of maybe what
that looks like.
As far as social media, I thinkwhat I want to do now is Mike
is pivot to you because you havean email list and a brand
within the pool tools categorythat maybe isn't, as you know,
social media, sexy as somethingyou know and kind of in the
(05:46):
zeitgeist, like what Matt'sworking on.
So talk to me about you knowhow you've built that audience
and how you're building kind ofthat community and then
leveraging that community inorder to move the brand forward.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
I mean, we've talked about this a number of times
because obviously we were veryfocused on kind of the
post-purchase process,especially for Amazon sellers,
and what that means in terms ofthe ability to build a brand,
and what does that actually looklike?
How do you define building abrand right?
And I would say that from ourperspective, amazon is great.
(06:22):
You can make a lot of salesthere, there's a lot of volume,
but if you're not building thatlist, of course you're in
jeopardy always because Amazoncould always shut you down.
We've talked about that a lot,but in our case it was the
warranty that we utilized inorder to build that list.
It was a fairly simple means.
To an end, we have a really,really high-powered warranty,
(06:45):
and so it just makes it thatmuch more likely that someone
will register after the fact.
We do a number of things in ourproduct packaging to encourage
that even further.
One of those is making surethat you know we either use a
hang tag or we use somethingsimilar that it requires the
user to interact with thatinsert in some way before they
can actually use the product,rather than just tossing it out
(07:06):
with the box or whatever.
You don't have to remove it.
I can't just ignore it.
That has improved ourregistrations, making sure that
there are additional reasons forthem to register.
There's a contest that they'reentering and that sort of thing.
So we get pretty goodregistration rates.
But the biggest thing is isthat once you have them on the
(07:27):
list, you have to do somethingwith it.
A cold list is not of that muchvalue.
So if you add a bunch ofcustomers to a list but you
never send them any emails, thenyou haven't really accomplished
anything and you certainlyaren't building a brand.
So the biggest thing is is thatwe do have an automated process
that sends out I don't knowabout 30 emails, something like
(07:47):
that, maybe a little less, thatare automated on a weekly basis,
so that you know foressentially, you know, six
months.
You know they're receivingregular mailings from us that
are basically telling them howto maintain their pool, how to
use our tools better.
You know other productrecommendations of different
brands, things that we thinkthey might want to pay attention
(08:08):
to, stuff like that.
But then also the way that weend up using that in a community
sense is that we also build ourwe'll say not the brand out in
the open necessarily so much.
But each individual productlaunch becomes public in the
sense that we're launching it infront of our community, which
(08:29):
is our email list.
So from start to finish, thatprocess involves them.
So at the first steps, it'swhat would be the new products
that you would want to see.
Then we take that and we narrowthat down to the ones that we
think we have the best shot atbeing the best of category that
fit our warranty structureeffectively, that we think
(08:51):
there's improvements that we canmake that are significant
within the industry.
Then we go back to the list andwe say, ok, these are the three
that we think are the bestoptions for ProTuff.
Which one would you want?
And they vote again.
And so, ok, whichever one isvoted, then we go forward with
that.
Or maybe we go forward with allthree, if they're all great.
But then as we walk throughthat, as we're, you know,
designing the product, as we'readding features what features do
(09:13):
you want to see?
What are the features that youhate about other products?
What color would you want it tobe?
You know.
And then, once we get theproduct developed, then the
prototypes you know who wants tobe a beta tester, things like
that.
So it's all very organic and,again, if you've been listening
to the podcast for long enough,you probably already heard that
messaging.
But I think it's important torecognize that as you do that it
does build that very communitynature where they feel like
(09:37):
they're a part of the brand.
They feel like they're a partof something bigger.
And when you launch thoseproducts, anybody on your list
that has any amount of use,let's say, for that product that
you're about to launch is goingto buy.
They are absolutely going tobuy it, and you don't have to
give a 50% off discount.
10% or 15% or 20% is oftentimesenough to stimulate a pretty
(10:01):
significant purchase rate out ofthat community, to stimulate a
pretty significant purchase rateout of that community.
And so the ease with which youcan launch products that way and
the profitability of thoselaunches is miles ahead of
anything that you can do if youdon't have that community built.
And it doesn't matter where thatcommunity is.
I would say that email is goodbecause it's your community.
(10:23):
If you build it on social, it'snot technically yours.
You can be shut down at anytime, just the same way that
Amazon could shut you down ontheir platform.
So in that sense, I wouldsuggest that building a
community via social is a meansto an end, and I think the end
should still be an email list atthe end of the day.
But social is a very useful,you know, avenue for doing that,
(10:45):
especially on the front end.
If you don't have a brand, youdon't have a product where
you've got inserts in the backend that you're, you know,
funneling into a list.
If you don't have any of thatyet, then social is a tremendous
avenue and mostly socials thathave that kind of organic
component where you don't haveto pay for traffic on the front
end.
So TikTok, youtube Live orYouTube Shorts, that sort of
(11:05):
thing I think are tremendous andI would also say for anybody
who has a very unsexy productlike pool cleaning tools.
We have been actually amazed atthe fact that our TikTok content
, even though none of it isparticularly viral in nature,
it's not all that terriblyinteresting.
You know some of it is UGC, youknow reviews and things like
(11:28):
that, but a lot of it isn't.
I have been amazed to find thatour average view count per
video is about 500 views, whichyou know if you're posting
regularly.
500 views on every single videothat you put out.
That's a lot of eyeballs onyour brand and every once in a
while especially if you'regetting in that 500, every once
(11:49):
in a while you're going to kickoff one that gets a few thousand
or 10,000.
So if your product is not asexy product, I would say do not
discount the usefulness ofsocial platforms like TikTok.
I did for quite a long time Iignored TikTok, assuming that we
really just weren't a good fit.
Turns out I think we areactually a decent fit and we
(12:10):
actually have some ideas abouthow to be much more interesting
on that platform and possiblygain some virality for some of
our videos.
So we could talk about thatsome more.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, I think that's such an important point is that
you know, depending on whereyou're at with your brand and in
that kind of process, like youknow, you might have a brand and
products that are in thezeitgeist that already have,
naturally you know, kind ofaudiences that are very engaged,
built into them, and sometimesyou don't.
And if you don't, you know whatI like about that.
Mike is thinking about hey, howcan I take an angle in order to
(12:45):
make this, you know, unsexyproduct brand category, whatever
it happens to be, how can Imake it interesting?
So I think you know that's areally good point.
Before we dive into that, though, I'm just really curious, based
on what you said for your emaillist, because I think this is
so important, I just want todouble click on it is that you
know, yes, having an afterpurchase you know system is
(13:09):
really important in order tocollect those email addresses
because you can take those withyou anywhere.
But having that interaction andbuilding up that community,
like just collecting that emailaddress is not enough, like you
do actually have to send outemail messages.
I'm curious on those kind of 30messages um, how long did it
take you in order to build thatand how you know what is.
(13:31):
Is that something that you lookat like once a quarter or how
do you?
What does maintenance on thatlook like?
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Sure, If I'm being completely honest, maintenance
on that has been zero for quitea long time.
You know we have added someadditional.
You know, when an article cameup that we thought was useful,
maybe we've added that as anemail, but as a rule maintenance
on it has been nil.
I wouldn't recommend that.
I don't think that's the bestapproach.
(13:57):
Fortunately, most of thecontent that's in there is very
evergreen content within thepool space.
So you know it's not that bigof a deal that we haven't really
done that.
But we also haven't taken thetime to to split test any of
them.
You know, check differentsubject headings, you know
things like that.
Like, we is more brand loyaltythan it is anything that that
(14:35):
customers really have come tothat place where they just
really love our brand because ofwho we are and what we do for
them.
And so when we send an email, alot of times I think our open
rates have a lot less to do withhow interesting the email is
and more to do with the fact ofwho sent it.
And so they just open it, right, like maybe there's a little
(14:56):
tidbit in here that might beuseful to me, you know, even if
the subject heading isn'tparticularly interesting, right?
So we get now and we've talkedabout this before so we have to
be careful with.
You know citing numbers withoutqualifying it, but we get about
a 50% open rate for every emailthat we send out.
Obviously, that's not accurate.
Apple users you know that thatcredits it as opened, you know,
(15:17):
even if it's not technicallyopen.
So I'm sure that our open ratesare not actually 50%, but
everybody has to track it thesame way.
You don't have a way to trackit any other way.
So if you're comparing againstmost other email lists out there
, we have a much higher openrate than most other email lists
and I think most of that comesdown to they're very brand loyal
.
It doesn't have so much to dowith how interesting the emails
(15:39):
are, it's that they really loveour brand.
So, on that front, if you wantpeople to open your emails, do
good things for them, treat themwell, have a really amazing
product with a terrific warrantyand wonderful customer service
and all of those things right,because if you're doing those
things right, even if you areincredibly boring, they will
(16:00):
still pay attention to you justbecause they like you.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Yeah, I think that's the key point is, again, you
know the authenticity piece ofit and taking care of people.
Like I know, as you know,someone who spends a lot of time
marketing.
We get I get caught in thistrap of like, oh, what is the
perfect, you know wording forthat subject line and the best
copy and that type of stuff andyeah, those things can help but,
at the end of the day, like,people want to connect with
(16:24):
other people and so if you'reauthentic but you know outside
of that email, then you're goingto see your open rates be a lot
higher and your marketingoverall be a lot more effective,
because people really areinterested in what you're doing
as a brand and who you are as aperson, in addition to having a
really good product a real, areally big part, not just emails
(16:48):
but also, like you, mikementioned TikTok.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
I think I really do think that their algorithm is
significantly based onconsistency and how often you're
posting.
I think that is, in a lot ofcases, as important as the
quality of the post, especiallyin the beginning when TikTok
doesn't really know who you arewho to show your videos to.
So I think consistency is a bigpart of that.
(17:12):
But one of the things I wantedto say about an audience and for
me, when I started thinkingabout starting an Amazon brand,
my experience was with a healthymeal prep business that we
launched about 10 years previousand the audience that we
attached ourselves to wasn't onethat I created personally, but
it was one that already existed,that my product or my service
(17:36):
was complimentary to.
So the CrossFit community atepaleo food.
That was kind of where theywent hand in hand.
So my meal service was a paleomeal service that we went and
marketed to CrossFit gyms, mealservice that we went and
marketed to CrossFit gym.
So because I created a win-winscenario for the CrossFit gym
(17:56):
owner, it was a value add forhis gym, but also we gave him an
affiliate commission for anymeals that he sold delivered to
his gym.
So he was incentivized to tellpeople.
But they wanted it anyway.
So, like I didn't have to do,michael went the long route on
building his list and because ofthat they're very super engaged
, they trust him, they know him,they like him, they know the
(18:17):
brand.
Like he said, for me it was anaudience that had already
existed, so I didn't.
It wasn't I don't want to saythe easy way, because there was
still a lot of work involved increating those relationships and
that kind of stuff.
But you don't have to create alist or an audience from scratch
, like there are other existinggroups out there.
The other thing that we wereable to kind of piggyback along
(18:39):
with were Facebook groups, notonly in the CrossFit space but
also for our Amazon brands.
You know, like our, my firstbrand was a barbecue accessories
brand and we partnered with aFacebook group that had about
40,000 members in it that wereall super passionate about
barbecuing and smoking meat andthings like that.
So again, it wasn't an audiencethat I created, but it was one
that we attached to the brandand a lot of things become a lot
(19:02):
easier.
So for me, I think that one ofthe things that I want to make
sure that people understandwhile we're talking about this
is that building an audience isa specialized skill I think that
not a lot of people have noteverybody has, certainly and
there's a lot of people outthere that have that skill but
don't know how to monetize theaudience that they've created.
So, matching your brand with anexisting audience, it makes
(19:25):
sense and it's not big and scary.
It's just reaching out toFacebook group owners and saying
, hey, you know, I have thisbrand idea, you have an audience
for it.
How can we, how can we cometogether?
So I think that's also a reallygood way to leverage an
audience with one that youdidn't have to build yourself.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
I think people would be really shocked actually to to
learn just how many individualsthere are out there that have
managed to build a community,and and I would I would say that
many of them have built thecommunity by accident, like it
was not ever intended to be whatit's become.
Right, they were just verygenuine individuals that were
(20:03):
very passionate about someparticular topic or some sport
or whatever it was, and thiscommunity just became.
And so now those people are inthe position of they recognize
that there's value in thatcommunity.
They recognize that otherpeople are monetizing their
(20:23):
communities, so there's reallyno reason they shouldn't also be
able to do so.
But they don't know how.
Most of them don't have anybusiness experience, they don't
have any marketing experience,they don't really know any of
that.
And so you know there is agoldmine out there.
If you would just simply takethe time to look for communities
that already exist, where thepeople that you want to sell to
(20:46):
are already in that community.
If you reach out to 20communities, even if you don't
do anything else other thandetermine that they're in the
right target market, right Likethey have the right people, you
don't even have to researchanything else, just reach out to
them and make the offer, like,hey, I see that you've got a
list.
You know you've got thiscommunity.
It looks like you knoweverybody really loves you and
(21:06):
what you're doing.
You know we have this productthat we think would be or the
service that we think would bereally amazing for them.
You know, could we partner up insome way?
You would be surprised I wouldbe amazed if at least two or
three of those you knowcommunity leaders didn't reach
back out to you and say, oh, I'mso glad you contacted me.
I have no idea how to monetizethis list.
(21:27):
I would love to do that Rightnow.
You might get 17 people whodon't respond or who respond
back and they're like, nah, Iknow what I'm doing, I don't
need your help, whatever.
But if you get two or threeresponses back to say, oh yeah,
we'd love to do that, what couldyou do with that?
I think you know there's,there's gold there.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Well, and just to piggyback off of that, you know,
one thing that comes to my mind, that's been in the news a
little bit recently, is, if youthink about who the you know,
the ultimate YouTube creator isat least right now, it's Mr
Beast, who has dipped his toesinto a number of different types
of products and actually runinto some pretty significant
problems.
(22:05):
And so I bring that up because,you know, most of the listeners
of this podcast and the peoplein our community really know how
to develop a product, how toget it manufactured and how to
make a really good product thatpeople are really going to want
to buy, and that is a wholeother different skill set.
So I think that's reallyimportant to keep in mind is
(22:26):
that, matt, like you said, theseare very different skill sets.
I mean, obviously Mr Beast isamazing at building an audience
and making really engagingYouTube videos, but doesn't have
, you know, the expertise atthat same level, for you know,
launching a brand and productsand need somebody with that
experience.
And so you know, maybe it's notto the Mr Beast level, but
(22:49):
there's a lot of other creatorsout there that have built
communities that you know don'thave a tenth of the experience
of you, know the people that arelistening to this podcast do
and what it takes in order todevelop a product, get it
manufactured and get itdelivered to customers.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
For sure, deliver to customers For sure.
I don't know what her name is,and by the time this episode
goes live, I want to be able togive her credit, because I heard
her speak on stage and I think,michael, you probably did too
at one of the BDSS events.
I don't remember her name, butthis is what she does she pairs
influencers or celebrities withphysical product brands.
(23:29):
Janelle, janelle or yeah,janelle or Janelle.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, we need to give her some sort of credit in the
show notes or something likethat, but I mean that's what she
does.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
This is exactly what she does, I think, now because
she's perfected the findingsomeone that has the eyeballs
and connecting them with aphysical product brand.
I think she's actually creatingthe brand from scratch for a
lot of these influencers.
Now Janelle Page, I think, isthat her last name?
Speaker 3 (23:56):
I believe that's correct.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
I'm trying to find her right now actually, but yeah
, this is what she does and it'sessentially what I did with the
Facebook group.
Now, obviously he wasn't aninfluencer, but I would argue
that there's 100,000 members inhis group now are probably more
engaged than if I were to havegone and found just like a the
rock influencer or somethingalong those lines Like I have a
(24:17):
hundred thousand people thatthese are the guys that are out
checking their brisket at twoo'clock in the morning.
They aren't someone that justsigned up for something free on
an email list or saw someone ina movie and decided to hit
follow on their social profile.
Like these are people that arevery interested in what we sell.
So I would say that thataudience is probably more
engaged than me going out andfinding someone that has a
(24:38):
million followers of just kindof random people.
So, yes, I mean she does thatand she's made a lot of very
successful brands just bypointing eyeballs that already
existed in one place and pointedthem to products that they were
already buying anyways.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
It is Janelle Page that is P-A-G-E and she's
terrific and, man, she got a lotof energy.
I'll tell you what, that's forsure.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Well, Matt, you bring up a really good point, because
I think it circles back to youknow, something you mentioned
earlier, which is, you know somepeople might get caught up in
hey, I only have a thousandpeople on my email list, or only
a hundred people following mybrand, or, you know, this
influencer or community only has1000 members.
At the end of the day, itreally matters.
(25:22):
You know how passionate thosepeople are Because, I mean, it's
not hard to build an email listwith 10,000 emails.
You know it's pretty easy to dothat, but are they going to be
people that are, you know, truefans of your brand are going to
be engaged and are going to beinto the solution that you're
providing through your brand andthrough your products.
(25:43):
I would much rather take athousand of those that are
really truly engaged, as opposedto an email list of 100,000
people that could care lessabout the brand or the product
that I'm working with.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Yeah, I agree.
Yeah, one of the things beforewe wrap up today that I think is
useful to think through.
I kind of mentioned it earlier,but we talked about this whole
social piece and that you can bea boring product and a boring
brand and you can still actuallyhave a following there, and
especially if you're connectingwith the right audience that has
(26:18):
a passion for what you do oryou know, whatever.
But there's also an aspect ofthat where you know and this is
the reason why I thought ourbrand was a bad fit for social,
you know is that there's thisaspect of how excited do people
get or how much are they goingto share things, or how viral
could you make a video aboutsuch and such a brand or topic?
(26:41):
And you might think well, youknow, cleaning pools is not
something that you can makeviral, and to some degree that's
accurate.
But you know, we actually havecome up with a few ideas that I
will say we have not yetimplemented, but I am entirely
convinced that at least one ofthem, if not more of them, could
end up producing some resultsfor us.
(27:01):
One of them is because we offeran unlimited and unconditional
lifetime warranty on ourproducts, what that allows us to
do is we're super liberal withthe warranty, we'll cover
basically anything loss, theft,you know it doesn't matter,
right?
So I don't know how many peoplein the audience remember this,
(27:22):
but there was.
So Blendtec is like a rival toVitamix blenders and they had a
series that they did that, abunch of viral videos that they
ran.
It was a series of videos andit was called Will it Blend and
the idea was to prove, obviously, how tough a Blendtec blender
is and that it can blend uppretty much anything.
But by extension of that, theywere blending up just about
(27:45):
anything you can think of.
So they were throwing iPhonesin there and they were throwing
in, you know, action figures andbroomsticks and you know, I
mean whatever you could think ofthat you might be able to shove
in there to try and break ablender.
That's what they were doing,and every time, of course, it
blended it all up and it neverbroke, you know, and that sort
of thing.
So it became this you know, wow, blendtex are indestructible.
(28:06):
But it was just fun to watchthe videos and see what the next
thing was that they were goingto blend up.
So this idea came to me a fewweeks ago, which is because of
our warranty and because wecover anything doing a series
that's and I don't know thatthis is the right name.
I'd really love to come up witha better name for it, but is it
covered?
And it would basically just bethese stupid antics.
(28:27):
We need either one or multipleinfluencers or whatever, who
would potentially dress up aseither people cleaning their
pool or pool pros, whatever it,as either people you know
cleaning their pool or pool pros, whatever it is.
We're thinking we may focus onpool pros, but the idea of all
of the ridiculous things thatcould potentially happen to your
pool tools that we would stillcover.
(28:48):
You know.
So you know things like you.
You're in the the, the uh, oneof your clients, you know pools,
and you set your tool down, thedog gets a hold of it and
you've got a tug of war with thedog on the side of the pool.
The net rips.
We cover it, right.
Somebody steals it out of theback of your truck.
We cover it.
You're driving down the road.
(29:08):
The pole falls out of yourvehicle and it gets run over by
12,000 vehicles.
We cover it.
You know.
That's sort of a and you couldget really crazy and out of the
norm, let's say, with some ofthe things that you could do
with that, I don't know if it'sgoing to work.
I think we need to find theright person to do it, but at
the same time, it takessomething really really boring
(29:29):
and potentially makes itsomething quite interesting that
we might be able to make aseries out of.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
One of my favorite channels to watch on TikTok.
You say boring and I bet thisguy didn't initially think that
his business would be good forTikTok.
He's a guy that goes around topeople's lawns that are just
terrible, like overgrown, morethan you can even imagine.
He basically offers them a freeto cut their lawn for free and
(29:56):
he does an amazing job.
He films it and for me likeit's very satisfying to watch
him go up and down theespecially if it's the worst the
lawn is, the more satisfying itis to watch him do that.
But I mean this guy getshundreds of thousands of views
on his videos and you can seepeople commenting like he
travels the country now and doespeople's lawns because they saw
him on TikTok and they wantthis guy to do their lawn.
(30:18):
So I mean I would imagine thathe changed the trajectory of his
boring service business byposting regular videos of and he
was giving it away, like thatwas.
The other part of his videos isthat he was offering this for
free to the people, which was,you know, it tugs at your
heartstrings a little bit, so itmade people resonate a little
bit more with the guy.
But I mean every video that Isee of this guy when he pops up
(30:40):
in my in my feed, is hundreds ofthousands of views of him
cutting someone's lawn.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
And same thing like you know pools, like we could do
green to clean, you know, orsomething like that.
Or you know there's there's allsorts of you know potentially
unique ways that you couldintroduce your product, no
matter how boring the product is, and I didn't realize that,
honestly, until pretty recently.
But I think if we can just be alittle creative with it and
(31:05):
think outside the box.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
I think almost anything you can do that with
yeah, and I think that I meankind of bringing it full circle
just gives you such an advantageespecially I know we're talking
about social media, but thenyou start looking at, you know,
amazon or even selling off yourown website of being able to
build an audience, have acommunity and then not only to
drive traffic there if you'redoing, you know, some sort of
(31:27):
sale or promo.
But I think probably the biggestthing you know that you guys
have both talked about is thatin order for a brand to be
healthy, like you do have to belaunching products on a fairly
regular basis.
And having that community is ahuge advantage to test out new
ideas, to get feedback on like,what product do they want next?
(31:48):
Because then you know, not onlyyou know you don't have to be
the expert as the business owneror the brand owner, but also
you're engaging them in theprocess.
So it becomes, to a certainextent, you know their brand as
well, and I think that that's avery powerful aspect of it when
they feel like they've got, youknow, some ownership over the
brand and are working with youtowards a common goal.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Well, no matter how big or small that list is, that
you might have, the reality alsois is if it's a targeted list.
You know you might, let's say,you've got a thousand people on
your list, but it's a verytargeted list.
And if they are, if the majorityof them are telling you this is
the product, these are thefeatures that we want, this is
the color that we want, this is,you know, whatever there are
hundreds or thousands of timesmore people out there that fit
(32:34):
that exact same targetdemographic.
They're going to think theexact same way, and so if they
have told you this is theproduct and this is how we want
you to make it, you are nearlyguaranteed to have a winner
product that a whole bunch ofother people are also going to
want because they think the sameway that this target avatar
does.
So you know you just you saveyourself a lot of headache.
(32:55):
A lot of you know failedlaunches and you know again,
they're profitable because youdon't have to offer a 50, 60,
70% off.
You know discount code in orderto get enough people buying it,
that you get.
You know the snowball thatyou're looking for.
You know you can sell it nearlyfull price and still get that
snowball running.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Yeah Well, I think this is a good place to wrap, as
we kind of, you know, wrap upthis episode.
What's, maybe you know, oneaction item that you guys would
have for listeners as they thinkabout, kind of either building
a community or leveraging thatcommunity for their brand.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
I would say go to Facebook and type in a an
interest of a group of peoplethat would that are purchasing
your products.
I know that you already know ofwho that group of people are
and find.
I guarantee that there's aFacebook group of those people
that are all in this group thattalk about this particular
subject in products like yourson a regular basis and all you
(33:54):
have to do is find them and evenif you don't, if it doesn't
turn into a partnership like itdid for me and my products, even
just being in that community ofpeople and listening to how
they talk and what they talkabout and what products they
mentioned, you're going to be alot farther.
Just just social, listen ifyou're not going to do anything
else.
But I guarantee you there's aFacebook group of people that
are filled with are filled withpeople that buy products like
(34:16):
you're selling and you can dothat right now.
It doesn't cost you a dime.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Yeah, I would say two things.
One, if you're already sellinga product or multiple products
and you are not really engagingwith that post-purchase process,
definitely do that.
You know there's gold therethat you're missing out on and
those launches will be mucheasier, I guarantee it, if you
(34:41):
walk that road.
I would also say, in relationto what Matt was saying, the
alternative to that, oradditional component to that, is
, you also have available to you, I guarantee it, dozens of
other brands that exist outthere that are selling to the
same audience but are notselling a competing product to
(35:04):
yours.
Therefore, there's no reason atall that you should not be
considering a partnership withthat company so that you can
share the audience.
Every company is always lookingfor more ways that they can
monetize the audience that theyalready have.
And if a company only sells XYZproduct, but they have a
(35:24):
community of 10,000 people andthey want to find a new way to
monetize it, what do they need?
They need products that theydon't already sell to sell to
that community.
You have a product, go talk tothem, set up some affiliate
arrangement, you know, whateverit is, I mean, there's ways to
make a partnership work in thatscenario and I guarantee, if you
contact enough other companiesthat are complimentary to your
(35:46):
own and selling to the samecustomer avatar, you will find
some good partners and you willmake more money.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah, and I'll.
I'll leave it with you know, beinteresting you know no matter
how you're doing that, reachingout to your audience, whether
it's email or social media andthat you know could mean you
have a really powerful brandmission.
It could be that you're doing,you know, something to educate
or entertain your audience, butjust be interesting in that
process.
And I think you know and andquite frankly you know, probably
(36:15):
49 out of your first 50attempts are probably going to
fall flat, and that's okay.
But be interesting in thatprocess and I think you'll be
happily surprised to see howyour customers and your audience
react to that and how that paysdividends for your brand down
the road.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
And oftentimes different, is enough to be
interesting, just different.
I mean, we sell pool tools.
There's nothing interestingabout a pool tool, but it is
interesting that we sell anunlimited lifetime replacement
warranty.
That's completely unconditional.
Nobody else does that.
It's not interesting in and ofitself, except for the fact that
it's different than everybodyelse in that category.
So it becomes interesting as aresult because of what customers
(36:55):
get out of that.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
So yeah, absolutely, and so I would just, yeah,
encourage listeners out there tofigure out what is that
interesting thing about yourbrand in order because it will
really make a big difference asyou look at building a brand on
Amazon and beyond If you havesomething that you can be
interesting with to really grabpeople's attention and build
those connections, yeah,
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