My guest in this episode is the epic Facebook marketer and six-figure account manager, Nick Shackelford. As many stories go, he didn't start out in marketing. He thought he would find his rhythm after achieving the status of a professional soccer player at the age of 25. He soon found out, though, that it was not his passion and after a chance encounter with a Pepsi marketing rep, he was introduced to a whole new world. Nick now has the experience of managing more than 165 brand accounts throughout his career and he knows how to take a brand from chump to hero.
Fidget spinners. We all know those handy little contraptions that help lots of people keep their hands occupied while they patiently contemplate their next power move. During the time they were starting to become popular, Nick and his team noticed something about the marketing tactics all of the suppliers were using. They were all using the same term: "fidget spinner".
They realized that the only players winning in that market was the companies who made the bearings used to construct them. So, what secret sauce did Nick use to set himself apart from the crowd and gain dominance over the market by winning major distribution contracts? They gave it a branded name – Fidgetly. This power move proves that sometimes success can be found in something so simple as the brand name. It was his first business and it set the stage for a complete turn around to crush the market.
In essence, if you're petrified to spend the money to get the leads, you're not using the right approach. After 11 months of mentoring under Tim Burd, he was able to get the reps, the justification, and the trust to go and figure things out on his own to prove that his first success would not be a one-hit-wonder. The biggest lesson he learned is to not let the fear prevent you from taking a calculated risk toward a big payoff opportunity. Fear is the number one killer of any business. Media buying is no different.
In eCommerce, the LTV and repeat rate is perhaps even more important than many of the traditional business models. If your brand is forgetting the loyal repeat customers in your effort to get new ones, you're doing it wrong. One way to help retain your customers is to devise new ways of scaling your products. Nick uses the example of a plastic fidget spinner. Perhaps scaling your product up in terms of value by offering a metal version will bring a more sophisticated customer back for a repeat sale. The big question to ask yourself: Does your product allow for a congruent upsell or down-sell version? And, the congruent product must make sense. Selling yoga pants and offering a yoga headband or a makeup brush with your line of makeup, those are easy sells. However, trying to sell a basketball to someone buying a soccer ball is an illogical pair and likely won't be very lucrative.
No matter the amount that is being spent, both the big fish and the little fish need to ask the same question: How much do you need to lose in order to measure your success? $100 budget is going to severely limit your testing capabilities. You will not get the feedback you need to accurately measure the success of your campaign. Now, if you have a $25,000 budget, it gives you the ability to strategically split into different campaigns. So, in other words, sometimes you will need to think of your campaigns in terms of you are not buying a customer, you are buying the data needed to make your campaigns more efficient.
