eCommerce Evolution

I’m sure you’re aware of chat marketing.  But if you’re like most marketers and Amazon sellers, it’s still an area of immense opportunity for you. Maybe it’s even still a bit of a mystery to you. Michelle Barnum Smith is the Queen of chat marketing for Amazon sellers.  I had a chance to sit down with her and discuss some super powerful ways to grow your Amazon business with chat marketing that you...

Strengthening customer relationships.  Building valuable assets.  Improving and documenting SOPs.  Growing email and remarketing lists.  Watching every episode of the Michael Jordan/Chicago Bulls Documentary - The Last Dance. That’s just a few of the ways Ezra and Co are surviving and THRIVING in the current climate.  Ezra is often the first person eCommerce entrepreneurs turn to when they need ad...

My guest today knows a thing or two about growing DTC eCommerce brands to 8 figures and beyond.  His agency, Wavebreak, focuses on email, SMS and loyalty marketing for growing eCommerce brands.  On today’s episode we talk about how email marketing has shifted in light of the pandemic and how it will likely continue to shift in the months and weeks ahead.   Here’s a quick look at what we cover: How...

This is an episode a couple of years in the making.  I’m a huge Ryan Daniel Moran fan.  We had dinner together after an event for speakers at an event in LA a few years ago.  Then we both got busy.  Ryan came on the show to discuss some burning topics facing all entrepreneurs right now.   Advice for an eCommerce company who’s struggling right now in the pandemic Advice for an e-commerce company wh...

Currently, over 77% of our eCommerce clients are either still UP in sales even during this time of extreme uncertainty or are the same (plus or minus 1-2%).  Yes, some are hurting - but for most eCommerce businesses you CAN do something about sluggish sales right now.  We’ve learned a lot in recent weeks on what messages resonate with prospects and what falls flat.  In this episode (taken from a r...

Supply chain, lock down, store closures, falling ad costs, rising costs of sanitation…just a few of the areas impacting retail and e-commerce right now.  In my interview with Eamon Kelly of Edgewater Research, we talk about the following hot topics to recent data points. How ad costs are impacted on Amazon, Facebook and Google during the crisis What categories are seeing spikes vs. dips in sales…t...

Original Grain has an origin story that’s as cool as it’s products…and as cool as it’s founders. In this interview, we tackle some critically important topics for all DTC brands.   We discuss building a product that has an authentic story that resonates. We look at the Original Grain approach to sourcing and designing that next winning product. We hear the Original Grain example of launching succe...

Economic Crisis - time to panic or time to press ahead?  While challenging and painful, there are huge opportunities right now.  Some of the world’s most successful companies grew leaps and bounds during recessions (Toyota, Kellogs and many others).  On this show investor, mentor and brilliant marketer and entrepreneur Roland Frasier and I talk about what you need to do to survive and thrive right...

Liz Germain is a YouTube Marketing legend.  We met when I was speaking at an event for eCommerce brands at the YouTube LA Offices.  Between her own fitness channel and her client’s channels, she’s helped rack up over 100 million organic video views on YouTube.  Wow. In this interview, we deep dive into how she does it. From the content, she creates to the research that inspires it. We also discuss...

We’ve all had the following experience.  We’re on a quest for a specific product hoping if will fulfill a very specific need.  So we visit a product page on Amazon or another eCommerce site hoping that this might be the product we’ve been eagerly searching for….But, to our disappointment the product page doesn’t clearly tell us if the product will meet our need or not.  So we don’t buy. Uh-oh. Pop...

Quick - what’s the best, most effective viral video ad you’ve seen?  Poo-Pourri? Purple Mattress? Maybe Squatty Potty? Chatbooks? Each of those videos (plus dozens more) were created by my guest today and his team at Harmon Brothers.  And not only where these videos viral hits…they SOLD stuff. Funny. Memorable. And persuasive to the tunes of hundreds of millions in sales. That's hard to accomplish...

The thought of going International with your eComm business is both exciting and scary. It also seems like a HUGE undertaking. New tax codes, laws, and confusing acronyms to deal with like VAT and GST. Plus we still have the dated mindset that says we only expand internationally once we’ve maximized what we can get here in the good ole U S of A.   Kevin Sanderson will challenge your thinking and b...

Transparency. Sustainability. Social responsibility. More than just buzz words these are now expectations that consumers have of the brands they buy from. In this episode, we dive into what it means to be a mission-driven eCommerce brand. We share lots of powerful examples like Everlane, All Birds and more. My friend Ezra Firestone’s company Smart Marketer has the perfect slogan - Serve the World...

There are over 150 million Alexa devices in use today.  Google has sold upwards of 50 million of its Google Home devices.  While most devices are used primarily to listen to music or play games or control appliances like lights and heat and air…voice commerce is on the rise too. In this episode, I interview Anmol Oberoi the Founder and CEO of Emitrr - a voice-first SaaS Platform.  We dive into voi...

Shopify apps are great.  Someone else spends hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, developing functionality that you can use for just $30 per month.   Apps on Shopify are so easy to install and so seemingly harmless that many store owners install dozens and dozens of apps - many of which they uninstall or never use.  This approach can have serious unintended consequences. In this episod...

It’s safe to say that your SEO approach is likely outdated.  If you’re looking for the latest hack, trick or SEO loophole - you’re barking up the wrong tree.  If you’re obsessing over ranking and traditional keywords then you may be off target. In this episode we talk about why “intent” is now the most important word in SEO and content marketing.  We look at how search behavior is changing. We als...

Mike Ugino is the CMO and co-founder of Sellbrite a SaaS platform for marketplace sellers.  Sellbrite was recently acquired by GoDaddy. In this episode we breakdown how Mike and his business partner Brian approached building the company with selling it in mind.  We also talk about what the acquisition process was like including saying no to GoDaddy initially. In this episode we uncover some golden...

Who doesn’t love a good story? As humans, we’ve relied on storytelling for entertainment, education, and preservation of culture since the beginning of time. Storytelling is also for marketers.   During my first sales job at a local radio station my boss sagely advised me that “facts tell, but stories sell.” I’ve never forgotten that lesson. In this episode, I chat with the charming Jaime Cross th...

Jeremiah Allen has been driving growth for small-to-medium-sized eCommerce companies since 1997 — before the internet was cool — and has helped hundreds of company founders grow. While he still enjoys client work, in 2017, he began acquiring and building his own eCommerce brands. In this episode, we get super TACTICAL. It’s a deluge of tips and tricks on how to improve your checkout process. There...

Sayan is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of InvigorateNOW Health Sciences, an innovative health supplement brand. He’s also the creator of Sark Media Direct, a direct marketing consultancy that specializes in helping entrepreneurs grow to seven figures and beyond in the health and e-commerce industries. Passionate about combining cutting edge online marketing strategies with traditional dire...

For our 100th episode we wanted to do something different. Rather than one guest, we invited 6 of our most popular guests we’ve ever had on the show. Since we’re wrapping up 2019, we decided to ask these super smart eComm pros what their top predictions were for 2020. They did NOT disappoint. We cover some GREAT predictions including: How and why some merchants will shift some of their focus away...

Molly Pittman is a bit of a legend in the digital marketing space.  Bartender turned marketing intern for Ryan Deiss, turned VP of Marketing for Digital Marketer, turned entrepreneur - Molly’s story is an inspiring one.  And she flat knows her stuff! In this episode, we dig into some real gems.  We do go pretty deep on what’s working now on Facebook, but we also talk about the benefits of building...

Charles Livingston knows a thing or two about rapid growth.  He turned a supplement offer into a 12 million per year business. And now his Coffee Company - Lifeboost Coffee has grown 1,000% in less than 1 year.  What’s the secret to this kind of growth?  Good Marketing and becoming a “yes” company.   Charles is also known for having his picture displayed in every single Ezra Firestone presentation...

I recently saw Rachel speak at an agency event in New York City.  I was blown away. Rachel has quite the resume. Forbes listed Rachel as one of its “30 under 30 Who Are Changing The World”, Fast Company named her one of "The Most Creative People in Business", AdAge named her one of "The Most Creative People of The Year," Entrepreneur named her one of the "50 Most Daring Entrepreneurs," Inc named h...

Matt Clark is the Chairman and Co-founder of Amazing.  Amazing is the company behind the most successful info product/training course of all time - Amazing Selling Machines.   He and his partner Jason Katzenback also run SellerCon - one of the leading events for Amazon Sellers.   In this episode we take a quick look into what’s new on Amazon and then we dive deep into a subject I’m quite passionat...