Content & Commerce 2017: Brand, Content and Community.

Ezra: Hey, [Brett]. You know, we were talking about some multi-channel remarketing, sort of the concept of, when you’re driving traffic via Facebook using multi-channel remarketing. So, how are you doing that for e-commerce businesses, kind of what do you think about that strategy?

Brett Curry: Okay. So, we like to really look at, pay from YouTube as a remarketing channel, to someone just typing in your brand name or something related to your brand name, if they can’t remember exactly who you are, they saw you on Facebook or on Amazon. But I see a lot of people that will find you on Amazon and say, “Hey, what else do they sell?”

Ezra: As someone who’s been in this industry for so long and had so many different successes in different areas, what are you focused on right now with relationship to e-commerce?

Ryan Coisson: What I did is I went back to basics, focused way more on building an audience, building the list, and specifically email list. Because I think social media followings and things like that are great, but I wanna have control over the actual asset. The other thing that I focused on now with physical products is, we used to sell all kinds of tchotchke items, for lack of a better phrase, but all kinds of random stuff. And now, I’m focused more on going deep in something…

Ezra: In one vertical.

Ryan Coisson: In one vertical that I actually care about, that there’s lateral products to sell, both physical and digital.

Ezra: What did you talk about at this event?

Ryan Moran: Yeah, I mean, the first thing I talked about is the fact that being an entrepreneur is a really good thing in the world. That it is, I think, the most selfless thing that you could do, even though we sometimes associate it with being selfish, because it’s about getting ahead. I think that is the best possible thing that you can do for your community and the rest of the world.

Ezra: Because then you have resource to distribute…

Ryan Moran: Well, you can’t get resources without providing value to get those resources in the first place. So, in a free market economy, if you are going to get ahead, you have to provide something that is of more value than what you are charging. But beyond that, what we talked about is how simple and easy it is for most of the people in this room to be able to add an additional seven or eight figures to their top line of revenue because the people here already have audiences, they already control some media, they already know how to market a little bit to get in front of people. If you control at least 10,000 eyeballs, you can have about a seven-figure income stream if you partner that with really any channel. Mine is Amazon because I do a lot of physical products.

Ezra: And when you look at, kind of, where things are as far as commerce online today and what you’re looking at as a business owner, where’s your head?

Ryan Deiss: E-commerce started as, you just built a store with products and people would come and they would buy. That doesn’t really exist anymore, right? If you’re not creating campaigns and funnels and stuff to bring people to buy a product, then it’s probably not gonna happen. But if that’s all that you do, then you don’t have a business, right? So, we have to both be great at the offer side, you know, and creating those offers that are gonna bring people. But then we have to be really good at the content and the community side to keep them and to get them coming back.

Ezra: And when you’re looking at creating a content strategy for say a physical products brand, how do you start to look at like what to create if you’re maybe confused about what you should be creating?

Russ: Honestly, you wanna be looking at all the stages of the funnel. So, you wanna be looking at, what am I producing that is growing awareness at the top of the funnel? Is it blog posts, podcasts, vlogs…

Ezra: Long-form audio content and long-form written content.

Russ: Yeah, great. And YouTube videos. I mean, these are great things at the top of the funnel that do things like grow awareness, get people engaged.

Ezra: Have you been looking much at like what e-commerce folks are doing for ads, what they’re paying attention to, or what you look at when you like maybe give advice to like a e-commerce person?

Molly: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I really don’t think there’s a huge difference in terms of selling e-comm versus B2B versus information. I think there are certain tactical differences, but we’re always selling to humans. I think e-commerce is actually a bit easier. Easy might not be the right word, but it’s a bit more straightforward because it is a physical good. So, a lot of times with information, you’re not just trying to sell the product, you’re trying to explain what it is because it’s not something tangible.

Ezra: You can’t just see it. This thing does this.

Molly: Right, it can’t be held. It’s not a notebook or a pencil or something that you can hold. But I think something a lot of e-commerce brands are missing is that brand, is that personality.