While I’ve spent most of my marketing career focused on driving traffic that converts, I know the importance of a good landing page and sales funnel.  A few months ago I met The Lady Boss. Kaelin Poulin and her husband Brandon when I spoke at an event in Atlanta.   I was struck by how good they’ve been at building funnels, building community, and selling products.  First a little about Brandon, then an overview of our discussion.   Brandon Poulin is CEO and Co-Founder of LadyBoss, the first global weight loss system and support community for women. With the help of his rockstar wife Kaelin and their leadership team, he has helped transform the lives of over 140,000 customers across the world. With its 4 unique product lines having accumulated tens of millions in revenue, Brandon and his team at LadyBoss are disrupting the weight loss industry by simply focusing on helping women lose weight while loving themselves again.   What we cover in this episode: How to approach building a new funnel? Keys to a successful funnel Diagnosing and improving struggling funnels Building a community and a following like a Boss Plus more!

When I first met Charlie Youakim the CEO and co-founder or Sezzle I was surprised by a few things he told me: Millennials prefer to pay with debit cards Only 1 in 3 millennials have credit cards Not having credit cards impacts the way millennials shop online and most don’t like the hassle of applying for a card.   Some regulations put into place after the recession in 2008 like prohibiting credit card companies from marketing on college campuses and raising the legal age to sign up for a credit card to 21 instead of 18 have all played into this.     Sezzle has put together an interesting product that allows both merchants and customers to get what they want.  The interesting thing is that Sezzle didn’t start with their current offering. As a long-time entrepreneur I was fascinated to hear how Sezzle pivoted from their original idea (which just didn’t take off) to its current offering with great success.     How outerwear company 686 raised AOVs by 22% and increased total sales by 5% by offering payment plans How athleisure store Inflow Style raised AOVs by 40% and increased totals sales by 8% by offering payment plans How and when to pivot as an entrepreneur The 3 ways to grow a business and how payment plans can help with all 3. Plus the history of credit cards (call me a nerd, but this was interesting to me)...

While exit pops, lead magnets, page takeovers are not necessarily new, I love the approach that Lindsey and her team at Hello Bar take to improve online conversions.   I met Lindsey through a good friend of mine and was immediately impressed with her approach. She’s strategic in her use of conversion tools.  Many merchants just sort of throw tools together and hope that something works. Anyone who’s listened to this podcast for any length of time knows that I’m a huge fan of good data and letting data speak.  Lindsey takes a data driven approach to creating better use of conversion tools and lead magnets.   Here’s a quick look at what we dive into on this call: Why customers actually prefer page takeovers to other exit pops (and the numbers back it up) Headline tips from marketing masters and why your current headlines might suck How Neil Patel gets more conversions on his properties Headline formulas to get more clicks, signups and sales Lead magnet ideas that drive conversion vs. lead magnets that lead to eye rolls. Plus more conversion optimization gold   Want a free 30-day trial of hellobar? Check it out here.

f you aren’t using YouTube at least for remarketing - you’re missing out.  With over 1 Billion monthly users and average session durations of over 40 min. (longer than what most people spend on Facebook in a day) YouTube has the attention of your prospects and customers.     Not only does YouTube have your prospects and customers eyes and ears, they also have a really attractive advertising offering - TrueView.  With the TrueView pre-roll (aka “before” videos) you as the advertiser only pays if someone actually watches your video or clicks through to your site. If someone skips before the :30 mark, you pay nothing.  Pretty cool.   Throw some really advanced audience targeting features on top of that and you have all kinds of options for both top and bottom of the funnel marketing on YouTube.     This episode is a recording of a talk I gave in San Diego at Social Media Marketing World.  In it I cover the following:   How your prospects are using YouTube and how that should influence your strategy The best audiences to target with your ads 5 Tips to creating great video ads that hook prospects and get them to take action YouTube for Top of Funnel - the bulk of this talk is about remarketing, but YouTube has some great benefits for Top of Funnel which I outline here.   Targeting options - If you go Top of Funnel what kind of targeting options should you consider. Plus more!

  Tracey Wallace has a unique perspective on eCommerce.  As Editor-in-Chief at BigCommerce she has the distinct privilege of rubbing shoulders with the top eCommerce brands on the BigCommerce platform.  And the BigCommerce is home to some pretty impressive eCommerce stores such as Skullcandy, Cargill, Sharp, Camelbak and more….   In this podcast we talk about some key eCommerce success factors and how some of the best and brightest store owners on BigCommerce are winning.  We dive into important topics such as:   Why you need to spend time perfecting your Product Detail Pages (PDPs).  As a reference see what companies like Bliss World Cosmetics, Kelty and Solo store have created amazing PDPs.   How to build community by leveraging micro influencers and by creating amazing content. Payments! How understanding Amazon Pay, Apple Pay and Consumer Financing can help you improve checkout and increase conversion rates.   Plus more!

Even if you’re on another platform you have to pay attention to what Shopify is up to. Now with over 500,000 stores using the platform, when Shopify makes a shift the whole industry feels it.   I wanted to know the latest and greatest from Shopify so I invited on the King of Shopify himself, Kurt Elster on to the podcast.   In this episode we dig into some new releases and how they impact you including:   How Shopify Stacks up in the ecommerce platform ecosystem Shopify myths that need to be busted - such as “Shopify is bad for SEO.” Dynamic check out - Now that Amazon’s one click checkout patent has expired Shopify has built their own version...and it’s awesome. Now Fraud protection is built in and available for those who use Shopify pay. Want to get all of your marketing app data in one place?  You can with Shopify’s new Marketing dashboard. Kit how you can have a legitimate automated “bot” employee Thinking of replatforming?  What questions should you ask before you do? Plus more!

To scale an ecommerce business you can’t be a one-trick pony when it comes to traffic generation.  Pushing past 7 figures into 8 figures and beyond requires a focus on reaching customers at every stage of the shopping funnel.  Having a “hodge podge” mix of campaigns won’t cut it either. You need a team of campaigns that attract customers at different stages of the funnel and pulls them through to conversion.     Recently I spoke at a marketing conference in St. Louis on the topic of full funnel growth.  I outlined 7 keys for smart full funnel growth including:   Why You Need a Team of Campaigns - how getting your campaigns to work together is a lot like building a world-class basketball team.   Better measurement - when you apply the wrong measurements to your campaigns you stifle growth.  Bad data leads to killing successful campaigns prematurely or running weak campaigns for too long.   How Google Shopping, AdWords and YouTube work together - While Google Shopping is super competitive now, I remain extremely bullish on using it as a channel.  Add to that a powerful AdWords strategy and then a YouTube strategy built for eCommerce and look out! Big things can happen.

I know what you're thinking…Ross and Rachel?!?  From Friends?  Well, no, but this is even better (for your business). It’s really Ross Johnson and Rachel Bell of Trill Media. One of the topics that I'm super interested in is influencer marketing.  What was made popular by the Kardashians is actually something that's been around forever - endorsements.  But with social influencers it's a whole new ball game and one you can do and succeed at…and sometimes for as little as $100 paid to an influencer.   Along with influencer marketing we also lay a foundation for growth using Instagram.  Many of the fastest growing eComm brands I know are investing both time and money into Instagram.   Here are some of the growth tips we tackle in this episode: - How to collaborate with influencers - How to partner with complementary brands on Insta - Tips for using giveaways to add engaged followers - How to use Story Takeovers  - How to be transformational rather than transactional  Check out the episode here…

  Even if you're not a numbers person, you need to understand the math behind your marketing.  The good news is that this is not nearly as complex as it seems.    This does NOT mean you need to be a math wiz kid, or a coder, or a master of analytics.  But you do need to know the story your data is telling you.     Chris Mercer (known mostly as Mercer) is one of the smartest analytics guys I know.  But more than just understanding the technical side of analytics, Mercer knows how to find actionable data.   That's what understanding the math behind your marketing is all about…finding what needs to be fixed or improved to help you grow.     In this episode we discuss: - Go to Google Analytics with a specific question in mind.  This is important.  Most people pop open their Google Analytics account and just wander around.  You need to go to the data asking a specific question.   - Learn to ask good questions of your data.  Often you don't take the right action, because you aren't asking the right questions. - Why averages are worthless, but segmentation is key - Understand the usefulness behind Mercer's Mantras "Find the truth in the trend" and "the power is in the pattern". - Why properly tagging your traffic may be the most important data cleanup step you take - How Google Analytics, Data Studio, and Google Tag Manager fit together - Plus more!   Check out these great resources from Mercer: https://measurementmarketing.io/

  For most marketers, Facebook Messenger is the ultimate black box.  What is it really?  How are customers using it?  What's a marketer to do with it?  These are a few of the many important questions that marketers may have a hard time answering.     The temptation for some marketers is to treat Messenger marketing like they would email marketing.  Big mistake.  It's a very different platform at a very different stage of maturity compared to email.     Then there's the question of chatbots…what are they?  How can we use them without being super creepy?   I had the perfect guest for this Episode - Dan Gamito of ManyChat.  ManyChat is leading the charge in a lot of ways when it comes to Messenger Marketing and the use of chatbots.  In this episode Dan does an amazing job of demystifying and educating.  Here's a look at what we cover:   - Understanding tribal mentalities on Facebook and how that influences Messenger - Understanding how consumers are using Messenger and, more importantly for this discussion, how they want to interact with brands on Messenger (and how they DON'T want to interact with brands). - How a pregnancy brand used messenger to deliver the perfect message at the perfect stage of pregnancy to an interested audience. - How a shoe company used messenger to reduce product returns by almost 30% - Much more!