Hey! Ezra here.

I just went with my team to Barcelona for Facebook & Ecommerce Mastery LIVE, a two-day training for agencies, affiliates, ecommerce entrepreneurs and their teams.

Join us behind the scenes to see what we learned.

3 Big Questions: Ecommerce Hot Seat with Molly Pittman

Hey, it’s Molly!

I just got off the speakers’ stage where Ezra and I had the opportunity to do a super fun hot seat session.

We audited a brand called SmoothieBox, and the business owner, Vin, had 3 big questions for us:

1. How do I increase retention?

Vin said that If he can get a SmoothieBox customer to stay with the brand for at least 90 days, then they will most likely stay for a whole year. (It sounds incredible, but that’s what you normally see in subscription businesses.) So these first 90 days are really pivotal.

For more brands, the secret to retention is keeping customers engaged. So we gave Vin some tips around content marketing and different ways he can continue to excite people through those first 90 days so they actually stay in the program.

2. How do I scale my Facebook ads?

For his top-of-funnel acquisition, Vin was mostly relying on a contest. In my opinion, while contests can make great marketing campaigns, they aren’t a reliable strategy for acquiring customers at scale. (Most people who are opting into contests on Facebook just want free stuff.)

So to help him brainstorm better front-end offers, we gave Vin my Customer Avatar Ad Grid:

This tool helps you match up different customer avatars (top) with effective hooks that will appeal to them (left).

Using this Ad Grid, Vin will be able to figure out who he’s actually selling to and why they’re interested in buying.

For example, maybe he could focus on moms as an avatar, and as his hook, he could offer a smoothie bundle that they drink over 28 days to feel better and have more energy.

3. How do you get stuff done?

Vin wanted to know, How do you keep the noise out? How do you actually know what to do?

To help, Ezra encouraged him to focus on more effectively leveraging his team. Vin sounds like someone who’s really driven and capable, which results in him trying to do too many things on his own. But in order to get more done he’s going to need to rely on his team more.

This hot seat session was a lot of fun, and I can’t wait t to see where SmoothieBox is in the near future.

Molly Interviews YouTube Expert, Tom Breeze

Hey! Molly again, here with Tom Breeze.

Tom has an agency called viewability.co.uk, and you can learn more about Tom there.

We saw Tom speak at the Affiliate World Conference, and now he’s speaking here at Facebook & Ecommerce Mastery.

In this interview, find out what he’s been talking about at these events, and Tom’s best advice for small business owners and entrepreneurs

(This conversation has been edited for clarity.)

Molly: What did you talk about yesterday?

Tom: Yesterday we spoke a lot about YouTube as a platform for people who are selling anything from lead gen to ecommerce, and how to get started in the very best way: how to create your videos in the best way, what it takes to get really good clickthrough rates and view rates, what numbers and metrics to be looking for, and then how to build out and find your audience and put your offer in front of people in the right way.

Molly: We’re in rooms filled with affiliate marketers here. How is it different for affiliate marketers than it is for your normal brand owner?

Tom: What’s really interesting is that brand owners are trying to get as much omnipresence as possible. They’re trying to be everywhere, build up their brand, let people know who they are, and have various touchpoints across multiple platforms.

With affiliate marketers, they tend to be looking for the best offer to promote and looking for strategies that they can put in place, and I get that completely.

So it just takes a slightly difference mentality. And the difference I see between an affiliate marketer and a performance marketer is that, while they’re very similar, affiliate marketers are looking to find brands they can trust and love, and feel like, “Right, I actually want to promote that and get that out to people as best as possible.” So they want to learn the platforms where that product will fit.

And I feel like that’s the big opportunity. Understanding which platforms fit for which products, and how to run the best campaigns on those platforms.

Molly: Makes sense. So, there’s a lot of discussion about Facebook getting more expensive, about Facebook getting harder. That’s definitely happening, but I don’t think the world’s ending or anything. It’s natural for an ad platform to mature in that way.

But it is peaking a lot of interest in YouTube ads. Where do you think the opportunity is with YouTube ads right now?

Tom: So yeah, this is a strange thing. I’ve been through the SEO world, I’ve been through Google ads when it first started, and I’ve been through Facebook as well.

YouTube is almost where Facebook was maybe 3 years ago. It’s a huge opportunity. Everyone’s on YouTube. It’s not like it’s a niche little platform. Everyone’s going to YouTube. Everyone’s going for many different reasons, so I feel like the opportunity is huge, but there’s a little bit of a barrier to entry.

Yes, you have to create video. And yes, you have to be pretty good at video. But also, you’ve got to be able to target people in a slightly different way than you would on Facebook.

So there’s a bit of a hurdle in terms of getting those assets together, but if you’re an affiliate marketer, then normally these assets have been given to you and they’ve been tried and tested and the offers are pretty good. So it’s just a case of understanding how to run traffic on that platform, and YouTube is actually pretty simple when you break it down into its components. It can just look scary when you first look at it, but when you’ve got all the right pieces of the puzzle and you put them all together, then you can get incredible results.

We tend to find with the clients we promote that, while it might take us a little longer to get into the platform and get solid results that are reliable, after three or four months we’re rivaling their Facebook traffic with most the brands we work with. And they prefer YouTube because it has that consistency and that reliability and, while we might not be able to hit as much volume, the numbers are really solid and there aren’t huge fluctuations.

You can build it in a way that’s really predictable, because you’re not pushing your message into someone’s News Feed. You’re saying, “Hey, when you come to YouTube, I’ll be there,” and you’ll be in multiple locations because there are so many videos and the inventory is always expanding. So it’s not a fight for one News Feed, it’s actually a huge platform and you can appear anywhere.

Molly: Awesome. And as you guys know, it’s so important to diversify your traffic sources. So, if you’re on Facebook and you’re looking to diversify, then in my opinion YouTube is the second best platform to use right now, and Tom Breeze is your guy so check him out!

Team Building with Smart Marketer

Ezra back with you. I’m here with the Smart Marketer team — Chris from design, Pepijn and Colleen from Management, and Molly from ads and strategy…

And let me tell you — we’re #OutHereDoinIt.

It’s so amazing to have the opportunity to get together with these people, especially since we’re a remote team.

I asked them what they thought about the event, and the experience as a whole.

Here’s what they had to say.

(This conversation has been edited for clarity.)

Ezra: What have you gotten out of this? What has the experience been like? Why do you think it’s good to be out here?

Do you advocate for teams getting together?

Colleen: I definitely advocate for teams getting together, especially in Europe! But I have to say, one of the things that I really enjoyed hearing as a common theme was, “This is a people business.”

I know this event is more focused on affiliates, but I just love hearing that people matter. This message is starting to get into a lot of businesses, and that’s really refreshing to hear.

Molly: This is a very different audience than we usually reach, so it’s been really cool to spread the message of “people over progress,” and to know that’s resonating.

I also know that when we together and have these experiences with our team, the bond deepens between all of us. You exactly can’t measure that in business, but I think it’s the most important thing you can do, really.

Ezra: Yeah, It’s a non-quantifiable value, how tight your team is. No one talks about that, but it ultimately allows you to create better products, collaborate better and win in the marketplace. I think that’s a secret that we’ve figured out that a lot of businesses don’t figure out. It’s worth investing in the experience of bringing your team together.

Pepijn: It sounds cliche, but networking is so hugely important. And until you actually go to a few events, you’re thinking, “You know, I’m not sure this is really going to bring us anything.” But you get a lot out of it. It’s non-quantifiable, like Ezra was saying.

Chris: I think human contact and connection is the biggest thing. There’s an enthusiasm here. Bringing people together is really important, and for anyone who is working remotely, like myself, who feels more insular and is usually home by themselves staring at a computer, to actually make that physical connection and be with people in person, it adds a whole other layer and brings everything closer.

And you can take that enthusiasm with you. I feel like I have so much energy and motivation to bring back to my work.

Ezra: Yeah, I think that’s a good point… It’s hard when you work alone. You forget about the energy that comes from being around a group of people who are enthusiastic.

This is my team, coming to you from Barcelona.

Thanks so much for watching. We’ll see you in the next one!

Highlights:
1:25 Ecommerce Hot Seat with Molly Pittman
4:07 Molly Interviews YouTube Expert, Tom Breeze
8:10 Team Building with Smart Marketer