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#47: 3 Tips to Training your Marketing Team

marketing
UMAI social circle cpg podcast

#47: 3 Tips to Training your Marketing Team

Welcome to episode 47, where we’ll discuss our top tips for training your marketing team. Our co-founder Alison will dive into the importance of ongoing education and training in the agency and marketing space. At UMAI, our approach has always been to hire & train bright individuals with potential and focus on ongoing education for our team. We’ve developed our own comprehensive training course, drawing from our decade of experience as in-house marketers, as well as in our marketing agency. In this episode, Alison will share key insights to elevate your marketing team’s skills and help your brand scale. Let’s get started! 🤓
 

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:58 – 2:37] UMAI Marketing’s top tips for training marketers
[2:38 – 5:14] Tip 1: Document Everything
[5:15 – 7:52] Tip 2: Incentivize Continued Learning
[7:53 – 10:41] Tip 3: Onboarding and Ongoing training
[10:42 – 11:31] Check out our Marketing Training resources!
 

Mentions from this episode: 

Learn more and Start growing with us –

UMAI Marketing socials  –

Get the Black Friday Cyber Monday Kit, here
 

Stay in touch:

Join UMAI’s Facebook Group: CORE 

#47: 3 Tips to Training your Marketing Team

 
Alison Smith: [0:17]
Howdy, listeners. We’re Alison.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:18]
And I’m Karin.
 
Alison Smith: [0:19]
And we love growing CPG brands.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:22]
We’re the founders of a digital and social media marketing agency, UMAI Marketing, and creators of The Consumer Goods Growth Course, where we’ve helped grow dozens of brands to six and seven figures.
 
Alison Smith: [0:32]
We’re former in-house marketers turned consumer goods marketing educators, who’ve set off on a mission to provide CPG founders and marketers with actionable strategies that drive community and sales. We’re talking real results.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:46]
If you’re wanting to learn simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies needed to drive real brand growth, without breaking the bank or sacrificing your social life, then this is the podcast for you. Let’s get into today’s episode.
 
Alison Smith: [0:58] 
Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode number 47. We’re calling it Our Top Tips for Training Your Marketing Team. Alison here, and I’m here to talk to you about something that is near and dear to our heart, and really something that every single one of our team members values as well. That is ongoing education and training. It’s very important if you’re in the agency or marketing space. So when we started UMAI, Karen and I knew that we wanted to find talented, smart individuals with potential, but not necessarily experts in their field. We’d rather hire someone smart and savvy rather than, say, field experts who may not be a great culture fit, and give them the training and education that they need to develop their skills.

So from the beginning, we drilled building out SOPs for everything, and even created our own course to train anyone, including our team, how to be a great marketer. We put everything we knew in this training course that we learned from the past 10 years of being in-house as well as in our own marketing agency serving multiple CPG brands at the time. So in today’s episode, we’re going to be sharing a few of our best tips on how to train your new marketing hire or get your marketing team to the next level to help your brand scale. All right, let’s get into it.

[2:28]
Tip number one, document everything, especially anything that is repeatable or anything that you know is the best way to do something that you want the rest of your team to follow, or something that is inherently difficult or the average person would need direction. Documenting it is going to speed up that process for anyone on your team. Most of these documents come in the form of a written SOP, or standard operating procedures, or we use a lot of video, so video captures using Loom or a screen recording via QuickTime Player is great. As you start collecting all of your SOPs, all of your video how-tos, create a library of them. For example, ours is stored in a Google Drive folder, and we have sub-folders with all of the different marketing levers that we pull, so like one for social media, one for email, and we try to use keywords so someone can come into our internal SOP Drive folder and quickly search for exactly what they need.

These have become super handy, obviously when we bring and onboard someone new to our team, but also with interns. We have generally three-to-six-month intern contracts, and it could get overwhelming retraining every quarter, so instead what we do is we give them exactly the SOPs that they’re going to need, exact videos that they’re going to need, and they can get started right off the bat. And final thing about documenting everything. This was something that Karin and I ingrained in our team, every single person that came on, our first hire, we said, “Everything you do, we want to see an SOP for it,” and this just made it super streamlined. We could review those SOPs instead of shadowing that person for a week. We could just look at their SOP and say, “You should do it this way. This way would be faster,” or we’d learn something new. And then if that person went on to a different role and we hired someone else, they had everything that they needed upon onboarding, so a huge thing to do when you’re starting a company or an agency is to drill that into your team, “Do it yourself. Write as many SOPs. Do as many videos as you can,” as you go through different processes.

[5:15]
Okay, tip number two is incentivizing continued learning. Sometimes, the education and the value of learning alone are incentive enough for marketers. Generally, marketers love learning. It’s really part of our job. But if you can find out what incentivizes your team beyond just the value of education or beyond just getting better at developing their skills, then you can better ensure that your team is constantly learning, improving, and evolving, which is only going to be great for your own business.

For example, we give our team a yearly stipend for them to spend on any new course to take, so they’ll just know that they have a certain amount of money a year. Sometimes we go over it, but they will just come to us and be like, “Hey, I think I really need a course on project management. I think I’m taking too long to get things moving through a Basecamp, or our project management system. I think if I took the time to learn more, then we could be even more streamlined as a team.” And it’s like, “Okay, do it. Let’s go. Here’s your money. We’ll buy it for you,” and generally, more of the team members step up and also take someone’s course too.

We also have no-call Fridays, because Fridays, for us, if you do need to take Friday off, go for it, but having a quiet Friday allows our team to reserve some of that time to learning, online learning through courses, reading, email newsletters, blogs, et cetera, so Fridays are generally our time to learn. 

And then the final thing I’ll say about incentivizing continued learning is we do a quarterly anonymous survey to our team. If you have a small team, it might be difficult to know, to be anonymous, but making it anonymous just helps people know that they can be as honest as possible, and we simply just ask them, “What motivates you to do a good job?” And a few other questions. And the answers are all over the board. Some people, it’s money. Some people, it’s just words of affirmation. Some people just need to know that they’re supported by the team, and that they are supporting their own team, which is awesome. So really try to dive in and understand what each person needs to be better, work harder, et cetera, because it’s not always what you think it’s going to be.

[7:53]
And then finally, tip number three is onboarding and ongoing training, so ensure your onboarding is the best user experience possible. Onboarding your team, you should spend a good chunk of your time making sure it is streamlined and easy to comprehend, so take your time onboarding new employees, and let them shadow the person who is currently doing that role for as long as possible. For our team, onboarding lasts eight weeks, so what happens in week one is just getting a deep dive, downloading all of the materials. We have an onboarding deck, with videos and links to everything, just getting familiar, meeting the team, things like that. And then shadowing starts, and shadowing lasts around four weeks, so they’re going to shadow the person who is currently doing that job for four weeks. If you can do that on your team, the more time they get to see how the job has been done, the better, and during that shadowing period, they also start providing feedback on what they think could be improved, what could be better. It’s always great to get new eyes on a role that’s been in existence for years, and maybe hasn’t changed that much or evolved.

And then after that four-week period, the next four weeks are them kind of stepping into a leadership role, stepping into that role, and having the person who previously had that role shadow them. So they might be on any client-facing calls or team calls, but silent, and then providing feedback after the call, and then they’ll also have a weekly call, usually with the person whose role they’re taking over, just to talk through any questions, or any feedback, or anything that they think could be better with the role.

But it also doesn’t stop at onboarding your team, especially for marketers. As things change constantly in this space, so if you want your team to stay current and optimized, it’s important that you provide ongoing training or continued learning, so sending your team to things like marketing conferences, having them sign up for webinars or other virtual events, or doing like we do and giving them a stipend or purchasing a online course for them. While this is maybe an additional upfront cost, it is absolutely worth the investment in not needing to rehire and onboard again. That takes a lot of resources to do, and it’s better to have retention with your employees, so having to rehire and onboard is obviously losing a lot of valuable time, and we all know that time is money.

[10:42]
All right, y’all. That is it for our top three tips for training your team to stay current and continue to create better and better marketers. Investing in your team is investing in your business, so if you’re ready to make an investment in training or continued marketing education, you absolutely should check out the Consumer Goods Growth Course. It’s the digital blueprint that will allow you to train your marketing team and drive consistent sales for your CPG, and you can do it all in just six weeks. It’s what we use to train every single person that comes on our team. If you want to learn more about it, you can go to umaimarketing.com/training, and as always, you can DM us on Instagram @umaimarketing if you have any questions after listening to this episode.

Karin Samelson: [11:32]
Thanks for listening to the UMAI Social Circle, y’all. We’re here to support you in your CPG journey, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any new podcast episodes. And while you’re at it, please leave us a review on your listening platform of choice. Shoot us a DM @umaimarketing on Instagram if you have any topics you want us to cover on new podcast episodes.

Alison Smith: [11:50]
And don’t forget to access our free masterclass, where we’re showing you how to create a solid marketing strategy. You can access that at umaimarketing.com/masterclass. And we’ll meet you back here for the next episode.
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#46: Mary Ruth’s Promo Email Deep Dive

promo email
UMAI social circle cpg podcast

#46: Mary Ruth's Promo Email Deep Dive

We’re talking about boosting your Q4 profitability! 🤑 As we gear up for the exciting holiday season, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday, now is prime time to start laying the foundation for your most successful sales quarter ever. And guess what? It’s time to start planning your promo emails!

In this episode, we’re going to talk about how to create promo emails that get you results; we’re talkin’ opens, clicks, and SALES! We’ll look at a successful example from MaryRuth’s Organics, and we’ll share three key tips for writing effective promo emails: urgency, social proof, and simplicity. 

Let’s dive into the world of promotional emails and seize the sales that lie ahead. Success is just a few clicks away – so let’s get started! 📩
 

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:58 – 1:47] Introduction to promo emails
[1:48 – 3:25] Mary Ruth’s Organics killer promo email strategy
[3:26 – 5:15] Tips for creating effective promotional emails
[5:16 – 7:50] Three promo email must-haves
[7:51 -9:06] Closing + BFCM Kit is now available!
 

Mentions from this episode: 

Learn more and Start growing with us –

UMAI Marketing socials  –

Get the Black Friday Cyber Monday Kit, here
 

Stay in touch:

Join UMAI’s Facebook Group: CORE 

#46: Mary Ruth’s Promo Email Deep Dive

 
Alison Smith: [0:17]
Howdy, listeners. We’re Alison.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:18]
And I’m Karin.
 
Alison Smith: [0:19]
And we love growing CPG brands.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:22]
We’re the founders of a digital and social media marketing agency, UMAI Marketing, and creators of The Consumer Goods Growth Course, where we’ve helped grow dozens of brands to six and seven figures.
 
Alison Smith: [0:32]
We’re former in-house marketers turned consumer goods marketing educators, who’ve set off on a mission to provide CPG founders and marketers with actionable strategies that drive community and sales. We’re talking real results.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:46]
If you’re wanting to learn simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies needed to drive real brand growth, without breaking the bank or sacrificing your social life, then this is the podcast for you. Let’s get into today’s episode.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:58]
Hi, y’all. I’m here to keep sharing tips on how to make Q4 your most profitable quarter yet. Black Friday, Cyber Monday planning is in full swing and it’s the perfect time to dive in and start setting up the groundwork for the biggest sales of the year. In today’s episode, we’re going to be talking all about promo emails. So to start, we’re just going to talk about what a brand that we really love, who kills it with e-commerce did, and then give you some tips on what to do with your emails coming up. So we are going to be talking about MaryRuth’s Organics. It’s a supplement company that has supplements for babies, toddlers, adults, just about everybody, and their e-commerce really crushes it.
 
[1:48] 
What they did, they had four daily emails over four days, hyping the sale on Black Friday through Cyber Monday. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. They didn’t have an early sale or anything like that, they just did it for those four days last year. The emails were super short and sweet and contained large headlines detailing the promo, included lots of social proof in the form of testimonials and they had plenty of product blocks to encourage folks to click through and purchase. Product blocks meaning pulling in from Klaviyo and it’s your product in it, it shows the pricing and it has a button to click and shop now. Subject lines were really straightforward and three of the four subject lines featured the promo really prominently. They also included some urgency, with language like, “Limited time,” and “Extended,” and the use of the hourglass timer and alarm clock emojis to really just push opening it right now, getting the product right now and utilizing the sale. The CTA buttons, the call to action buttons were really active. They used active language like, “Shop sale now,” and “Bundle up,” to encourage increasing average order value and bundling and, “Last days to save,” again with the urgency and, “Save now.” So that is a really high look at what they sent last year. 
 
[3:26]
But you’re asking, “Hey, what am I going to do this year?” So here are some additional tips. How many emails should I send during my promo? What we generally say is it depends on how long your promo is. So for shorter promos, send an email every day, if you’re able, just like MaryRuth’s did, they had a four-day promo and they sent an email every single day. For longer promos with a longer duration, send a reminder email at least every two to three days, depending on how long it is.
 
You want to make sure that it’s top of mind for your customers and they’re getting reminders often, especially it’s longer. And you might be asking yourself, when should I send these emails? What we want you to do is test your sends throughout the year and find the typical day and time that you get your highest opens and clicks. So there is some preliminary work that you need to do. You need to be testing a lot during the entire year to make sure that you know the data, you know you have the analytics that tell you, “Hey, send it on Mondays. Send it on Wednesdays. Send it in the mornings. Send it in the afternoons to be able to get the highest opens, clicks and revenue from your emails.” Make sure at the very least though that you have an email going out the day your promo launches, an email going out 24 hours before it ends and then make sure to resend your emails to non-openers. That first and last one are super important to sending to non-openers. So you can do that on the backend, you can toggle and segment based on if they’ve opened, clicked or just generally engaged with your emails. 
 
[5:16]
And what should be in those emails? The three things that we want you to focus on with your promo emails is urgency, as we’ve discussed. Social proof, like testimonials showing that other people like your product and the people that are reading your email will as well. And keep it simple, a simple design. You want to make sure that everything is above the fold. A click to your website, all of the important details, no one has to keep scrolling through their email to be able to figure out exactly what you’re offering them.
 
And then a few subject line recommendations. Keep it straightforward and direct. You don’t need to get all fancy with your language here, just keep that copy super straightforward and direct and put the promo details front and center. If you’re offering 50% off, 40% off, 30% off, make it very clear in your subject line that that’s what you’re doing. And then again, I’ve said it once, twice, three times already, I’m going to say it a fourth time, add in some urgency, especially for those last couple of emails you sent. “Last chance to get this deal. Last chance to get the biggest deal of the year.” And then there’s an option to add in a first name field to really make your customer feel special. Think of yourself as a consumer. When I get an email in my inbox that says, “Hey, Karin, open this for 50% off.” I’m like, “Oh my gosh, no problem. I will. I’ll get on it.”
 
And then some call to action recommendations. Again, use active language. You can also test using second person pronouns like you, your, yours. And an example of that is, “Get your discount now.” It just has that personalization and connection to the person reading your email. You can also test using your most bold, branded colors and make sure the color contrast is really there. So for example, try to avoid using a yellow call to action button with white font on it. You want to make sure it’s bold and super easy to read. And add those call to actions throughout the email. Put them everywhere, put them in buttons, put them in hyperlink in the plain text, put call to actions everywhere to get somebody to click through and purchase. And of course, as mentioned, make sure to have at least one call to action above the fold. So that can be a tiny, thin banner at the very top of the email, it can be a hyperlink if it’s a plain text email, it can be a call to action button right underneath a header text.
 
[7:51]
So those are some super basic examples of how to send, what to put in your subject line, how to design the email. And never forget those three things that we mentioned, it’s that urgency, social proof and simple design for your promo emails and you’re going to crush it. So if you want to make Q4 the most profitable quarter yet without the headache of not knowing what to share and when, we’ve made it super easy on you, you now have access to the Black Friday, Cyber Monday kit. It’s a comprehensive checklist that details all of the assets that you need in order to execute a high converting profitable holiday promo. Or just about any promo really.
 
It’s the same strategies we’ve implemented to make our clients millions in revenue over the years. The kit also contains done-for-you templates that allow you to plug in your brand info, export and schedule with a few clicks of a button. Check it out now at umaimarketing.com/bfcm-kit. That’s umaimarketing.com/bfcm-kit. Now let’s go get those sales.
 
Karin Samelson: [9:07]
Thanks for listening to the UMAI Social Circle y’all. We’re here to support you in your CPG journey, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any new podcast episodes. And while you’re at it, please leave us a review on your listening platform of choice. Shoot us a DM at UMAI Marketing on Instagram if you have any topics you want us to cover on new podcast episodes.
 
Alison Smith: [9:25]
And don’t forget to access our free masterclass where we’re showing you how to create a solid marketing strategy. You can access that at umaimarketing.com/masterclass. And we’ll meet you back here for the next episode.
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#45: How to decide on your promo offer (ft. Carley)

UMAI social circle cpg podcast

#45: How to decide on your promo offer (ft. Carley)

Hi there, CPG friends! Welcome to Episode 45, where we’re diving deeper into how to choose a successful promo offer for your brand. With Q4 just around the corner, it’s time to gear up and make some serious cash! And guess what? We’re here to equip you with the best tips and tricks to make this sales quarter your most successful one yet.
 

Today’s episode is extra special because we have our amazing team member Carley Jones joining us to share her promo expertise and insights. Together, we’re going to unleash six revenue-driving tips that will help you pick killer promo offers, and set the stage for a profitable Q4.

So buckle up; next stop: choosing your Q4 promo offer. 🎉

 

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:59 – 3:50] Introduction to Planning Your Q4 Promos
[3:56 – 5:55] Tip 1: Test Promo Offers First
[6:54 – 9:09] Tip 2: Determine Your Promo Profit Margin
[9:10 – 13:59] Tip 3: Determine Your Web Needs
[14:00 – 20:06] Tip 4: Keep it Simple
[20:07 – 22:42] Tip 5: Test Messaging
[22:43 – 28:34] Tip 6: Don’t Overdue Sales!
[28:35 – 30:03] Closing + How to Work with Us!
 

Mentions from this episode: 

Apps mentioned –

Learn more and Start growing with us –

UMAI Marketing socials  –

Get the BFCM Kit, here
 

Stay in touch:

Join UMAI’s Facebook Group: CORE 

#45: How to decide on your promo offer (ft. Carley)

 

Alison Smith: [0:17]
Howdy, listeners. We’re Alison.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:18]
And I’m Karin.
 
Alison Smith: [0:19]
And we love growing CPG brands.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:22]
We’re the founders of a digital and social media marketing agency, Umai Marketing, and creators of The Consumer Goods Growth Course, where we’ve helped grow dozens of brands to six and seven figures.
 
Alison Smith: [0:32]
We’re former in-house marketers turned consumer goods marketing educators, who’ve set off on a mission to provide CPG founders and marketers with actionable strategies that drive community and sales. We’re talking real results.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:46]
If you’re wanting to learn simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies needed to drive real brand growth, without breaking the bank or sacrificing your social life, then this is the podcast for you. Let’s get into today’s episode.
 
Alison Smith: [0:59]
Welcome to Episode 45, Six Tips for Picking a Killer Promo Offer. We’re going to be talking about our promotional offers to get you ready for the lovely Q4 season. Q4 is generally, the biggest sales quarter for brands like yourself to make a large chunk of change. So we are here to get you prepped and eager to put together the best sales quarter yet. Today is an extra special episode, as we have our team member, Carley, on with us today. Welcome, Carley.
 
Carley Jones: [1:41]
Thank you.
 
Karin Samelson: [1:43]
Yay, Carley. How are you doing today?
 
Carley Jones: [1:47]
I am good. I’m excited to be on my first podcast ever.
 
Karin Samelson: [1:53]
Ever, I know.
 
Carley Jones: [1:55]
Glad it’s with you guys.
 
Karin Samelson: [1:56]
How have we not had you on? I don’t know. But for anybody who’s listening, leave a extra special review saying Carley was your favorite guest ever, so it can live on. But Carley Jones has been with UMAI for a really long time. How long has it been now, Carley? Three years?
 
Carley Jones: [2:16]
Almost three years.
 
Alison Smith: [2:19]
Almost three years. I’ll file it.
 
Carley Jones: [2:20]
The end of this month.
 
Karin Samelson: [2:21]
Oh, it’s so crazy. We’ve only been around for five, so more than half of that time. And we’re so thankful for her. Carley started on as our marketing coordinator, creating a lot of content for us. She has a side hustle, she’s amazing at photography, and then she moved into account management. So, a lot of our old clients definitely know Carley, and current clients, really. Now, she is our project manager here at UMAI, and she helps us execute some amazing promos for our current clients.
 
Carley Jones: [2:53]
Yeah, it’s crazy. Time flies when you’re having fun. I can’t believe it’s almost three years. Thank you, guys.
 
Karin Samelson: [3:00]
Three years is a long time.
 
Carley Jones: [3:03]
A very long time. Very, very proud of that, and all of the growth and stuff that we’ve had. So yeah, thank you guys so much for having me. I know that it’s a super, super busy time. It’s Q3, so we’re all gearing up for our Black Friday, Cyber Monday campaigns, but just keep in mind that these tips can be applicable for any sort of promo, throughout any quarter. Keep that in mind as you’re listening to this or watching it.
 
Our recommendation is, typically, one major promo per quarter, with smaller segmented offers each month, and we’ll obviously get into this a little bit more, but Black Friday, Cyber Monday should be your biggest sale of the year, to really, really end that year strong. So, let’s get into our six tips for picking a killer promo offer.
 
Tip number one, this is, test promo offers ahead of time for big sales seasons. We typically don’t recommend testing new offers on Black Friday, Cyber Monday. You really want this sale to do well and testing offers can go really well or really bad. So, do it ahead of time, figure out what works for your audience, really.
 
So, let’s say that you want to run a tiered offer for Black Friday, Cyber Monday. We’d highly recommend testing a smaller threshold during a Memorial Day sale or a Labor Day sale, to determine which of those tiers would work best, and then replicate that offer later on with different pricing thresholds. This can really, really help you determine what your audience is going to respond best to.
 
Alison Smith: [4:49]
Yeah, I will say, not only what you just said, Carley, to help understand what customers will respond to, but also there’s so many different web apps and things that have to get integrated and it’s just almost like a trial run for you or your team too, to make sure this isn’t going to be an absolute shit show day.
 
Carley Jones: [5:12]
Yeah, yeah. It’s definitely a lot easier if you’ve tried something before and you know what apps work, and you know what customer service issues you could potentially have, and then rework from there. So, definitely important to think ahead and test ahead.
 
Karin Samelson: [5:28]
Yeah, and who wants to be stressed out during the holiday season? These are literally called Black Friday, Cyber Monday and holiday promos. No one wants to worry about this. We don’t want you to worry about it, so.
 
Carley Jones: [5:39]
Yeah.
 
Karin Samelson: [5:40]
We have a wide variety of folks who we chat with and learn alongside, and some brands are brand new. Brand, brand new. Either they haven’t even started their branding, they just have this concept, or they’ve just launched last month. So, what advice would we give to a new brand that just launched and doesn’t have very much sales data to work off of?
 
Carley Jones: [6:04]
And we’ve experienced this a few times as well, as an agency, and we definitely recommend starting with building email leads and test segmenting offers there. Your best bet to determine what’s going to work with your audience is to run some sort of email AB test, with a percent off offer versus a dollar off offer. And the winner of this test can really help determine which type of offer would be good to move forward with. Regardless of if your audience is a hundred people or 50 people, you can always see what the winner is and move forward from there. Like we said before, I mean, it really is all about testing, when it comes to that.
 
Karin Samelson: [6:43]
Now, we can go in-
 
Alison Smith: [6:45]
That’s our motto.
 
Carley Jones: [6:47]
Yeah, just keep testing. That’s what we always say, and it’s definitely one of the biggest rules that we abide by.
 
We can go into tip number two, now. This is, determining your promo profit. To do this, you will have a formula. You’ll need to first determine your gross profit margin. To get this, use the formula net sales minus cost of goods sold or COGS, divided by net sales. Then you’ll need to pull in your average order value. This can typically be pulled from Shopify or some sort of reporting software. And once you know your gross profit margin and your AOV, you can then play with percentages and dollars off, to see which offer will fit within your profit margins. We do have a calculator for this. I’m not sure if it’s something that we’ve shared, but definitely can. This could help determine a tiered offer like we mentioned before, where it’s a multiple dollars off or percent offs, that are stacked on one another. Or, even be used to help determine a free shipping threshold as well, just based on your profit margins.
 
Alison Smith: [7:57]
Yeah, so that calculator that Carley just mentioned, it is our Break Even Calculator. We’ll add it to the show notes, so that you guys can input all your numbers. And it’ll basically, tell you how much you can spend to acquire a customer, what your profit margin’s going to be. And also, I know we just threw a lot of formulas and weird abbreviations and things at you, so we’ll break all of that down in the show notes. No need to make notes, it’ll all be there.
 
But, okay. So for newer brands or brands that haven’t launched yet, but they’re prepping for launch, they have no idea what their AOV is. They can just use their COGS to understand how much they can discount or spend to acquire a customer and break even, right?
 
Carley Jones: [8:48]
Yes, you can definitely just go off of that cost of goods sold. That’s a really good base to make your profit margin off of, to really help determine what’s doable for your brand. And it’s also good, because once you have an idea of what your offer can be, then you can actually get into the nitty-gritty and promo logistics, and all of that.
 
So that kind of segues us into tip number three, which is, determine if a promotional landing page is needed. This will really depend on what your offer is and how robust that offer is. If it’s a simple 15% off site-wide sale, the answer of needing a promotional landing page is probably no. A website banner with a clear CTA would more likely suffice in that instance. But, if you really, really want to hit it out of the park for a sale like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, we definitely recommend it, having a landing page, regardless of what that offer is. This makes it super, super simple for your customers to purchase and get the discount that they are actually looking for. It just keeps URLs simple. It keeps your homepage simple. It really, really simplifies the whole process, whenever you have that landing page.
 
Alison Smith: [9:59]
Yeah, absolutely. Because you can hide things like menu at the top, so people aren’t going off and clicking off. It’s just like they’re there, they’re focused, they know where to click, and that’s all you want.
 
Carley Jones: [10:11]
Yeah.
 
Alison Smith: [10:14]
But, yeah. So let’s talk more about web stacks. Love some apps. So what are your favorite apps and software? What are we currently using for landing page builds?
 
Carley Jones: [10:30]
There are so many, and honestly, it really just depends on what integrates seamlessly with your Shopify plan, if you’re using Shopify. Personally, I prefer Show Grant Shogun. It’s an app that integrates really, really seamlessly with most Shopify themes. So we usually will use that for promo landing pages or early bird opt-in pages that are related to promos.
 
We’ve also used PageFly in the past. It can be a little bit tricky to use this platform, but it does have a drag and drop feature that makes the actual design and build of a landing page super seamless. To keep it easy, you can also just do existing product pages that you have, or collection pages if it’s a site-wide sale or something, and make super slight edits to headers, to include the sale offer language. You can also include price markdowns on the actual page or creating a percent off banner in Canva to add to the page. The possibilities with that are super, super endless, and usually look a lot more natural because it’s an actual product page for your site that matches your theme. But whatever you decide to do, just keep it simple.
 
Alison Smith: [11:43]
Another one of our mottos. Yes, keep it simple, smarty. That’s like, it’s so easy as a marketer or just a business owner, entrepreneur, to just be so into shiny object syndrome, wanting to test it and do it all. So we often have to remind ourselves when we’re building out promotional launches, wait, someone always asks, “Is this too complicated? How do we just make this really streamlined and easy?” And generally, when you do that for promos, your revenue’s going to be higher because if you are confused, your customer is likely going to be confused.
 
Carley Jones: [12:28]
Absolutely.
 
Alison Smith: [12:31]
So I will also mention some other apps that we’ve used in the past and we like to. And this just kind of goes back to why you want to test your promo before, because sometimes you’ll want to use Shogun for instance, but it doesn’t connect with another app that you need to use for this promo. So that, it’s so important to make sure everything’s going to work together. So some other ones we are Instapage and Zipify. I think Zipify, is that Ezra Firestone’s? I think that might be his product. And then also-
 
Karin Samelson: [13:08]
Hey, Ezra, give us some commish if anybody use Zipify.
 
Alison Smith: [13:13]
Yeah, we need that affiliate. And then also we wanted to share our little sneaky tip to find what your competitors are using for their promos, or just all the time for conversion rate optimization. So to do this, all you have to do is go to your competitor’s website and then right click with your mouse, and then choose Inspect, and then it’ll just be a bunch of code and stuff. But in that code, you can actually find out exactly what your competitors are using for popups, or any plugins, or anything that will help with conversion rate optimization. So if you feel like getting sneaky, use that little tip, but okay, let’s get into tip number four, Carley.
 
Carley Jones: [
Sneaky. I love it. So like Alison mentioned before, she mentioned KISS. So tip number four is, keep it simple. Complicated promo logistics can really lead to a customer service headache. Trust me, you don’t want to launch an offer and then immediately receive 60 customer service inquiries about a broken link, or an invalid promo code, instead of seeing sales or 60 happy customers. It can really, really just put a huge damper on things. And if your promo isn’t successful from the start, it can be really, really hard to come back from that, because then you’ll have to send oops emails or an oops SMS, which can be successful. But if you don’t have to deal with that stress, just make sure that things are running smoothly ahead of time by keeping it really, really simple.
 
We almost always will recommend utilizing automatic discounts for most offers when it’s applicable, to avoid that probable misspelling or user error that comes along with using promo codes. No matter how simple a code could be, like Welcome 15, you’re still going to get customer service inquiries about it. You’d be surprised. So if you can avoid it, definitely do so.
 
If you do have to use a promo code, we highly, highly recommend creating something called an addended link. Shopify will actually automatically make this for you, now. They used to not, but now they do. You can actually make these yourselves with a Google URL builder or something, and use it across platforms to promote your offer. What it does is it attaches the code, whatever you made in your platform, to a unique URL, and applies that code to someone’s cart automatically, as long as their cash is clear. If it’s not clear, it won’t automatically apply it. So there can be some issues there, but it does avoid the promo code debacle that sometimes happens.
 
Karin Samelson: [16:07]
Yeah, and if you’ve been selling online or have ever done a promo before, you know how easy it is for people to make mistakes because it’s a constant. You’ll constantly get people like, “Why isn’t this code working?” It’s like, “Well, because you didn’t put it right.” So just making it super easy for them so that you make more money. And we’re all about working smarter, not harder, and keeping it really simple. And we know that apps can make our lives so much easier, and make a really positive difference in our campaigns. So what apps would you recommend to make this process just even more seamless for potential customers?
 
Carley Jones: [16:45]
Yeah, so some apps are better than others, so definitely do your research. Do it on your own. Look at the Shopify store, look at what reviews people have, and also just ask around to your network and see what people are using. Testing apps ahead of time is really going to ensure that there are no bugs. The last thing you want to do is install an app, thinking it will work on the day of a promo, and then it goes live and it crashes your checkout page. That’s happened. That’s happened, because some apps do have bugs.
 
So some of my personal recs that have worked well for our clients in the past, there’s an app called Bundler that works with most Shopify themes, and it allows you to create sort of mix and match bundles and stacks discounts on top of them automatically. So it can be a really, really easy way to make bundles for your page.
 
There’s an app called notably, Tiered Discounts that does exactly that, and it’s one of my favorites. It does operate using codes, but it actually applies to the cart automatically, and stacks to create a really, really awesome tiered discount feature. And, it pops up when you’re getting close to that threshold. It’s just super interactive and it’s done really, really well for some of our Black Friday, Cyber Monday promos.
 
Karin Samelson: [18:04]
Carley, real quick, what is a tiered discount?
 
Carley Jones: [18:07]
So it’s like anytime that there’s a percent off or a dollar off discount that’s stacked. So let’s say you do 10% off 35, and then 15% off 45, and so on, and so on. You can have as many stacks as you want with this app, which I found really interesting. But, we’ve found that over the years of using these tiered discounts and this app in particular, that the mid-tier code, so whatever your middle offer is, if you have three, usually gets the most uses out of the higher and lower tier codes that aren’t used as much.
 
This can really help with AOV, if your pricing thresholds are set a little bit higher. So knowing your profit margins comes in handy when developing discounts like this. So yeah, just a little tidbit that your mid-tier is probably the one that’s going to be used the most. So make sure you set that threshold where it’s going to help your AOV out a little bit, because there’s just something with consumer behavior and consumer psychology where it’s like they see the lower one and they’re like, “Oh, I want to spend a little bit more and get a little bit of a better discount,” but then maybe the higher one’s too much. So the mid-tier one just comes off a little bit more appealing.
 
Alison Smith: [19:18]
Yeah, it’s always great to give people choices, but lead them to what you want them to do. And with our tiered discounts, I believe how we think about it is when there’s three tiers, the first tier is usually around our normal AOV, and then the second tier is like 20% or so more, and then we go from there for the third-highest tier, if that’s helpful for anyone. When you’re actually trying to set these, obviously, test them for your own business, every niche is going to be different. All these talks about apps is making me hungry, too.
 
Karin Samelson: [19:59]
Oh, my God.
 
Alison Smith: [20:00]
I’m like, mm-mm, apps.
 
Karin Samelson: [20:03]
Whoever is editing this, please keep that. Please keep that in.
 
Carley Jones: [20:07]
Now let’s move into tip number five. So this is, pay attention to how the promo is worded. How the offer is presented to a customer can really make or break the potential of getting a sale. For some, 15% off is less attractive than a dollar off offer and vice versa. Testing, like we mentioned in step one, will really help determine what your audience responds best to. With our clients, it really just depends. Some of them, percent off offers work better, some installer off offers work better. It really, really just depends on that audience.
 
Creating a sense of urgency is also key to adding to your promo messaging. Someone is way more enticed to buy if they know a sale ends in 24 hours, versus a sale that lasts seven days. For instance, they may see one of your emails and not buy, since they know the sale is going on through end of month. So keep hyping that scarcity, and set a time limit until that sale is gone for good. It’s really, really important to have that sense of urgency across your promo assets.
 
Karin Samelson: [21:17]
We as consumers, we’re not just marketers, we’re consumers too. And if you give me a deadline, I’m going to want to purchase. I don’t want it to end without me getting something I’ve been looking at. So I love that tip. And even more so, what do you feel about timers on emails or on the website’s cart pages?
 
Carley Jones: [21:40]
Definitely recommend having something, some sort of countdown timer. There’s a ton on Shopify. There’s some that can even be integrated with your email platform. The one that I am used to using is called Countdown Timer Ultimate. There’s so many, but it can really, really get the message across that this sale is ending soon and you need to make your purchase now. And definitely recommend having that on either your main website page, where it’s just a timer that’s ticking. I’ve even seen them on the little header bars. Not header bars. Those are called something way more legit than that, but like the top bar.
 
Karin Samelson: [22:20]
Announcement bar.
 
Carley Jones: [22:21]
Yeah, announcement bar on your webpage. Definitely having them added to your cart at checkout so people can see when that sale is actually ending. And then of course, on those product pages or your landing page like we mentioned before, to create that sense of urgency. So that app was called Countdown Timer Ultimate. We’ll have it linked in the notes. But yeah, now it’s time for our final tip and it’s a big one, so keep that in mind.
 
Tip six is, don’t train your audience to expect a sale. You’re probably thinking that we just spent all of this time talking about promos, and best practices, and what to do and what not to do, but please, please, please remember to use promos sparingly throughout the year. You do not want to train your audience to only buy when there’s an offer on the table. They’re just going to wait till you send the next promo email or they run across your next promo ad. And that can really, really hinder getting sales.
 
Timing for promos will almost always vary, but you don’t want your customers waiting for the next week long sale to purchase. You have to create that, “I need to order now,” feeling, since they don’t know the next time that it’ll be discounted. Obviously, we all know consumer behavior. People are expecting a sale on Black Friday, Cyber Monday. That’s a little bit different. Sometimes they will wait, but other times they’ll be like, “Okay, I need this now. I’m going to buy.” Getting customers to buy at full price will be a year long effort.
 
But keep in mind that, promos can still sweeten the deal for certain customer segments. So if you have people who’ve never bought but keep engaging with you or adding to cart, this is when those abandoned cart emails will come in super handy with offers attached, or enticing returning customers to buy after a certain period of time that they haven’t. So, that’s where win back offers will come into play. It really, really just depends on being strategic and not always offering a site-wide sale, all the time to everyone.
 
Alison Smith: [24:25]
We talk about segmentation all the time, but it’s just so important to hit the right person with the right offer at the right time. But it’s also so easy to fall into kind of like a dopamine trap with promotions, as a brand owner or marketer. You’re sending your list a really great promo deal, and then a ton of money rolls in within a 48-hour period. And it feels good, and you’re like, “Wow, I want to do this all the time and just get a huge cash infusion.” But really what Carley’s talked about is, what you’re doing is you’re training your list to expect it all the time if you continue to do this. And then sales are just going to start dwindling between these periods, and you’re going to be attracting only low value customers, versus creating a brand that’s full of super engaged lifetime fans.
 
So Carley, let’s talk about what the right range of promos for a CPG, D2C brand is throughout the year.
 
Carley Jones: [25:31]
Yeah, outside of those Evergreen offers, like we mentioned, so the win backs, your welcome email flows, manning carts, all of that, we’d recommend having two to four major site wide sales a year. If you go the two sales a year route, having a summer and fall sale is typically the way to go. Just kind of break it up by season. Fall sale will obviously be the Black Friday, Cyber Monday time, but if you opt for four sales a year, this typically will equal out to one sale a quarter, which is what we try to do for our clients. And, can include New Year’s, Memorial Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and then holiday sales.
 
These can vary. The timing of these can vary, based on the brand that you have. If you have a brand that is applicable to kids’ products, maybe having a back to school sale makes a little bit more sense, than a Memorial Day sale. Really, really think about what your brand is, and your mission, and who it is that you’re targeting to determine these four sales a year, because it’s going to be different.
 
This does not mean that you can’t run a promo every month, because you can to specific audiences, just not everyone. Maybe hit your top engaged email list with a flash sale, or entice a non-purchaser segment with the deal that they just can’t refuse and it gets them to buy. The promo possibilities are super, super endless, and you just have to find what works for your audience and keep refining it.
 
One of the tips that we don’t have on here is really looking back at past promotions. Look at what you did before and see what performed and replicate it again. It can be really, really easy and simple to do that.
 
Alison Smith: [27:17]
Yeah, so just to kind of recap what Carley just said, because it is so easy and we see it all the time, where people are just like, “Oh, I want to run another sale, another sale.” And then you create so much more work for yourself, too, if you become that brand and you’re just constantly doing that.
So kind of a recap is, we recommend two to four site-wide sales, and that’s where it’s visible on your website. You’re maybe running ads, you may post on social, and you send emails. And even within all those things, you can still segment with email marketing. You still can segment out who exactly you want to send to, to make sure that you’re getting good deliverability. Same with ads. You want to make sure you are spending money that’s going to make money, so you can still do things to kind of reign it in.
 
But, two to four site-wide promos max a year. Everything else can be to a very specific list, and no one else knows it’s happening on the rest of your list. And that’s really cool. You can get really, really smart with your segmented little promos that you can run.
 
Karin Samelson: [28:35]
Awesome, guys. Okay. So that was a lot of information all at once. And so, just to recap all of the amazing tips that Carley has shared for us today. Tip number one, test promo offers ahead of time for big sales seasons. Tip number two, determine your promo profit. Tip number three, determine if a promotional landing page is needed. Tip number four, keep it simple. Tip number five, pay attention to how the promo is worded. And tip number six, don’t train your audience to expect a sale.
 
Alison Smith: [29:06]
That’s right. I hope everyone got a ton of value from these six quick and dirty tips to run a great promo. And if you’re ready to make this year your most profitable year yet, we are now actually taking on our Q4 clients. So we’re accepting new clients for Q4. I believe we have three spots left at the time of this episode. So, if you want to come work with us, you can apply on our website. We’ll help you reach your ideal customers, we’ll help you optimize, strategize, and create high performing social email, and ad content and campaigns for your brand. So to do that, you can book a call with us at umaimarketing.com/profit. If you also go to our website, there should be a little form that you can click on and fill in, and we’d love to chat with you.
 
Karin Samelson: [30:04]
Thanks for listening to the UMAI Social Circle, y’all. We’re here to support you in your CPG journey, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any new podcast episodes. And while you’re at it, please leave us a review on your listening platform of choice. Shoot us a DM at UMAI Marketing on Instagram, if you have any topics you want us to cover on new podcast episodes.
 
Alison Smith: [30:21]
And don’t forget to access our free masterclass, where we’re showing you how to create a solid marketing strategy. You can access that at umaimarketing.com/masterclass, and we’ll meet you back here for the next episode.
 
 
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#44: BFCM Case Study: How to Plan an 80% Revenue Increase Promotion!

UMAI social circle cpg podcast

#44: BFCM Case Study: How to Plan an 80% Revenue Increase Promotion!

We’re diving into the exciting world of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 🎉 With Q3 just around the corner, it’s time to gear up and start mapping out your holiday promotions to end the year on a high note.

In this episode, we’ll be taking a look back at last year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaign we executed for a skincare client. In this BFCM case study episode, we’ll review how we planned, executed, and analyzed the biggest sales event for D2C CPG of the year! And how we secured this client an impressive 80% increase in revenue year over year.

By the end of this episode, you’ll be armed with valuable insights to help you plan your very own killer Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or holiday sale. Get ready to take your sales to new heights! 🚀

 

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:59 – 2:12] Introduction to our Black Friday, Cyber Monday (BFCM) Case Study
[2:13 – 6:52] Set Your Goals and Debrief
[6:53 – 8:17] Prioritize Value and Education Before Launch
[8:18 – 10:14] Master Testing and Optimize
[10:15 – 11:38] Audit Your Channels
[11:39 – 15:17] Organize, Plan, and Create Assets
[15:18- 18:00] Create an Early Bird Phase
[18:01 – 22:31] Execute Your Launch via Email, Ads, Organic Social, and Web!
[22:32 – 30:36] Recap: Analyze Your Goals and Determine Where You Succeeded or Missed the Mark
[30:37 – 31:47] Closing
 

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#44: BFCM Case Study: How to Plan an 80% Revenue Increase Promotion!

 

Alison Smith: [0:17]
Howdy, listeners. We’re Alison.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:18]
And I’m Karin.
 
Alison Smith: [0:19]
And we love growing CPG brands.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:22]
We’re the founders of a digital and social media marketing agency, UMAI Marketing and creators of the Consumer Goods Growth Course, where we’ve helped grow dozens of brands to six and seven figures.
 
Alison Smith: [0:32]
We’re former in-house marketers turned consumer goods marketing educators, who’ve set off on a mission to provide CPG founders and marketers with actionable strategies that drive community and sales. We’re talking real results.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:46]
If you’re wanting to learn simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies needed to drive real brand growth without breaking the bank or sacrificing your social life, then this is the podcast for you. Let’s get into today’s episode.
 
Alison Smith: [0:59]
Hello everyone and welcome to today’s episode. Allison here. Today, it is just me and we are talking Black Friday, Cyber Monday. As we all know, we’re heading in into Q3. We know what that means. It’s time to start planning your holiday and Black Friday, Cyber Monday promos to close out your year strong.
 
In today’s episode, we’re going to look back at our Black Friday, Cyber Monday promo from last year for a client in the skincare space. This client is a small, two-person team who created a super strong brand using social media alone, and we were brought in in 2022 to execute their emails and social ads to really capitalize on all the organic hard work that they’ve been putting into their business. We’ll talk about what worked for this CPG brand’s BFCM, Black Friday, Cyber Monday promotion that garnered an exciting 80% increase in revenue from the previous year so that you can also plan a killer Black Friday, Cyber Monday or holiday sell yourself.
 
[2:12]
All right, let’s get into it. The first step that we did and that you should also do before starting to execute your promotion is setting your goals and also debriefing from last year’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or holiday promo. You’re going to want to review what worked and what didn’t from your previous promos. So if you don’t already have all that data, pull it into a sheet or a document and add the timeline, what offers you use, what channels you use, and really understand what worked, what didn’t, what channels you didn’t even need to execute. Really think about what you’re capable of executing for this year and try this time to just focus on a few of the highest ROI channels for promotions rather than too many low-return, high-effort channels. That’s something we see a lot for smaller or medium-sized brands even. They make promotions too messy with too many moving parts and it ends up flopping.
 
Obviously, our goal for everyone is to get them omnichannel, but it’s better to execute really well on a few strong channels than execute and flop on too many channels and stress yourself out. So something to consider. When we did this for this brand, we looked back at top performing promos in the past and we identified four different offers that worked really well and had high revenue from our customers. The first one was a tiered promo. A tiered promo is usually there’s three different cart values with different percents attached to them. For example, save 10% when you order $50 or more, save 15% when you order $75 or more, and then save 20% when you order 100 or more. That’s what we call a tiered promo. We also saw that bundles worked really well. So bundling skews that are alike or products that people generally buy together, bundle them together. Usually when you do this, you’re going to be able to offer a more significant discount that’s really attractive.
 
And then the third offer that worked really well for this brand was a free gift with purchase. Usually, the free gift is after they purchase a certain tiered amount or if they purchase a certain bundle or skew, they get a free awesome gift as a reward. And then finally, seasonal or small batch or limited edition products did really well for this particular brand.
 
So we were identifying these four different offers and analyzing them to see what we wanted to run with for this year’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday. After we did some of that offer and promo analysis, we went ahead and started setting our goals. We set a primary goal of increasing our revenue by 20% when compared to the previous period last year. 20% is pretty much a standard increase for a lot of brands. We didn’t have a lot of historical data to go off of, hence using a pretty standard 20% here.
 
And so after you set your primary goal, which generally is going to be sales or revenue, then it’s important to set your secondary and tertiary KPI goals. These are the KPIs that are going to help you measure along the way as your promo unfolds and are more of the actions that get you to that end goal, that end primary goal. For us, they were increasing our average order value for ads by 20%, another 20% standard increase. We wanted to hit a combined ROAS, return on ad spend of 400%. We wanted to make $17,000 in our email promo campaigns alone, and we wanted to hit a 2% click-through rate with our email promo campaigns. So you can see that the secondary and tertiary KPI goals are specifically different channel goals that will help us get that end primary KPI of a revenue increase.
 
[6:53]
After you have set your goals and done some analysis and debriefing of your previous promos to understand what resonates with your customers, the next step in the process is to ensure that you’re currently or have plans to give value and education before your pre-launch or pre-promo starts. Really the quarters before Q2, Q3 should really be about giving value to your leads, to your followers, establishing that trust and then giving them the best pre-purchase and post-purchase experience possible to really establish that know, like and trust. So your emails and your social media and even your ads at this point should not be super salesy. Your goal is still to gain sales, but you’re not really running promos or big discounts or anything like that. You’re really speaking about the value of your product, your brand’s mission, using social proof like that to make the sale. You’re not going headfirst into promos at this point. Again, you’re giving a lot of education throughout your ad creatives and your email and your posts as well. At this time, before your pre-promo launch, focus on giving value and education.
 
[8:18]
Okay, and then next we get into the test and perfect stage. After we’re ensuring that we are set up to give value in the months and weeks before we start the actual promo campaigns, we do need to ensure that all things are functioning across all the channels that we use. We need to ensure that our website conversion rate was optimized and it was fast. For this client, we ran a speed test, which you can also do for free with Google PageSpeed. We also installed an app called Lucky Orange. It’s like a heatmap that you can install on your website. I believe they have a free version as well. You can watch people actually go through your website, go through your checkout flows, everything and see if there’s any issues on your site that people are getting stuck on or that are bringing your conversion rate down.
 
We then tested our different offers that we talked about just before those four different offers that we identified and we tested them two small segments of our top engaged leads. We didn’t use our bigger promos and bigger discounts because we reserved those for Black Friday, Cyber Monday maybe one other time a year. We don’t want our audience to expect that kind of discount. We tested those different types of offers with a smaller level or smaller discounts, lesser valued gifts. So highly encourage you if you’ve planned earlier enough to test out different offers to your top engaged email leads, see what they’re going to like best. You can even survey your list and ask them what they want this Black Friday, Cyber Monday.
 
[10:15]
After we did the testing, we also audited our email automations. We audited our ad campaigns and our social media channels to ensure that everything was firing correctly and deliverability was good. We wanted to make sure our ads were optimized, there was no issues with any of the pages that we are linking to and that our social channel’s bio was… the bio description was optimized for search. And then finally we researched and decided on our web stack or the web apps that we’d need for the promo. That does take some time to, if you’re using Shopify, to sort through all the different apps that they have and find the right one that actually connects with everything that you needed to connect to. So get started on that early, but look for apps like if you need an announcement bar that talks about the sale sitewide, if you need a cart upsell app to help people hit certain thresholds, if you’re doing like a free gift with purchase, if you need a sales page builder for this particular promo. So think about all the things that you could use over this promo period that would really help increase your conversion rate and then go ahead and install them and just make sure that they actually do what you need them to do because we’ve run into that a few times.
 
[11:39]
After the test and perfect phase, then we get into the organizing, the planning, and the actual creation of the assets in these campaigns. We decided on which offer we wanted to move forward with, which was, for this brand, we went with the free gift with purchase. If they purchased over $100 with a product, they got a free really awesome $25 gift. The gift we chose, we even put some thought into that as well. The gift we chose was a great stocking stuffer or it was something that anyone would want as their free gift. So it was kind of a universal great gift. We decided on that offer, then we made a what we call a promo brief.
 
A promo brief is it’s really great if you’re working with a team, an agency, or even riding solo. It’s just a quick one-page document or a quick Google Sheet that outlines the promo start and end dates, the URLs that you’re going to send all traffic to, the links to all of your asset folders, like your email assets, your social assets, your ad assets, and then any other important notes about the promo. It’s really your and your team’s one-stop doc to get a full rundown of everything that you need to know to execute so that you’re not stressing on promo day, wondering where files are or where you’re sending traffic or anything like that. And then you can also use this sheet or document that you created to come back to to make notes on when you’re debriefing on what worked and what didn’t.
 
And then as part as the organization and planning process, we then added all of the assets we needed into our content calendar. We just filled in the different days on our calendar on when these assets would go live on email, ads and social media so that we had a visual representation as well on the timeline of this promo. We decided we were going to need four emails, four ads and four social media posts that we were going to repost to stories as well. And then the messaging and creatives that we made for this promo really spoke about hyping the promo. We talked about the value of the product and the free gift and the benefits it would provide to the customer. And then of course we talked about the scarcity and urgency, that this is limited time, we often run out of stock, things like that.
 
If you’re wanting our assets for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and holiday promos, we actually will be launching our Black Friday, Cyber Monday kit very soon. It’s going to have Canva templates for emails, Canva templates for ads, Canva templates for social media. It’s going to have a sheet for all of your KPI and goal tracking, a place to do your promo briefs and debriefs, and then also a pre and post promo checklist and a few other things too. It’s basically everything you need to have a successful promo. If you do want access to the Black Friday, Cyber Monday kit when it comes out, send us a DM on Instagram now, @umaimarketing with the letters BFCM and we can tell you more about it. Moving on though.
 
[15:18]
After the organized plan and create phase, now we get into the pre-launch phase. We call this our early bird phase, and this is really about asking people to raise their hand and tell you that they want to buy your product. Our strategy for this promo was to gain existing and new leads about two weeks before the promotion started to get a super engaged list ready to send the promo to first. As we knew, getting these people on an early bird list was going to help increase deliverability of our emails and likely lead to an increase in earnings per recipient. With ads, email and social, what we did is we announced that folks could go sign up to our early bird list and get first dibs on accessing the sale. All we did was make a super simple landing page to capture and tag these leads with Klaviyo. The copy was made to get the lead excited for this sale and it was like coming soon and dramatic. Also, show them love by giving them an exclusive first peak at the promo, first dibs on the promo.
 
So it had both of those elements for the copy. And then to do a pre-launch early bird strategy, simply just send one, maybe two emails to your list and do the coming soon hype that they would be getting exclusive first access to this offer. Send that email to your entire list and direct them to that landing page where they can opt in and get tagged with the early bird segment. And then for ads, run prospecting and retargeting ads to that same landing page. Getting people to pre-opt in. The cost per lead on ads should be, if you’re sending to a landing page, around $3 for totally new cold audiences. Retargeting, it should be even less. Or you can run an on Meta lead form type of ad where they just opt in straight on Facebook and Instagram. Those cost per leads are $1 to $2. They’re super-duper cheap. So you’re not spending a lot of money gaining these leads. And then on social, you’ll just post just like similar to your email or your ad that your followers can go to the link in your bio and sign up to your early bird landing page to get first access to your sale. That’s the early bird strategy. 
 
[18:01]
Now, we’re going to get into the actual launch. We created three emails total announcing the promo. They spoke on the value of the products, the scarcity of this promo, and then finally hyping on the urgency that the promo was ending soon. We sent the promo announcement and all other promo emails first to our early bird segment. So the early birds were in their own segment then to our top engaged leads. Your top engaged leads are generally people who have interacted with the last three to six of the last emails that you’ve sent. And then finally, our third segment that got the email was the rest of the list. But you want to keep them separated because they’re going to have different levels of deliverability and you want to ensure that as many people as possible actually get the email in their primary inbox. That’s why we practice this type of segmentation for promos.
 
We also practice resends. Instead of creating more emails, which you absolutely can do, we won’t hold you back, but if you don’t have time to create six emails versus three, what we do a lot of times is we just resend the same email at a later date with a different, hopefully juicier subject line to people who didn’t open the initial email. Because if they didn’t open that initial email within three to six days, they’d probably already archived it. They’re probably not going to read it. So try getting their attention again with just a new subject line and it’s going to be a brand new email body for them. They likely have not seen it.
 
And then with ads, we created three ads for the actual promo. They were UGC style ads. We are really a UGC native first agency. That’s just what works and converts for CPG brands on Meta. These ads introduced the promo and the free gift, the benefits of the free gift. We also added testimonials, showed how to use the products, and it had a really strong call to action and we were sending the promo emails and the ads straight to our collections page with more details about purchasing $100 worth of product to get that free gift. And then for organic social, we use the same messaging as above in different high-performing formats like using reels and carousel posts. For social, you can add that link in your bio and use that call to action to tell them to go to the link to shop.
 
Again, for web, since this was a cart threshold offer of $100, like I mentioned earlier, we created a collection for this offer with the details just at the very top of that collection. And again, we sent all traffic here and then we also used an announcement bar to highlight the promo if someone landed on any page organically on the website so that they could just click that announcement bar, gets taken straight to the collection where they got some information and were able to directly shop. The reason we didn’t use a sales page for this is because it was an order threshold product. If you are doing something like just a bundle or something a bit more specific, absolutely test using a sales page if that’s something within your wheelhouse. Sales pages generally are higher converting than your original regular website because a lot of times you’ll remove a lot of the clutter, like menus and extra things like that, and it’s just a very focused way to get someone to buy.
 
We also used a cart upsell app. If you just search that in Shopify app store, you should find plenty. But that helped customers reach the threshold. So every time they added a product to their cart, a little sidebar popped up and it said, “You are $55 away from getting your free $25 in value gift.” That really helped people understand where they were at in getting that free gift and help them increase their cart value. That was a pretty broad recap of the strategy that we used for this client’s 2022 Black Friday, Cyber Monday. 
 
[22:32]
We talked about our goals in the beginning, so let’s recap and see how we did. With revenue, we ended up knocking our revenue goal out of the park. We had a goal of a 20% increase, but we were able to secure an 80% increase in revenue when compared to the previous period. Our biggest revenue driver was actually attributed to our ad campaigns. We made over 50% of our revenue from ads alone. We had a really great cost per acquisition before our promo started. So our evergreen ad campaigns had a really good cost to acquire a purchase. We knew our audiences really well. We had tested our audiences a lot. We had tested our best messaging and creative types months beforehand and leading up to the sale. So our ad account was very much optimized at this point. I want to make that clear. We had a very optimized ad account.
 
We also started our promo ads earlier than any of our other channels. Ads started before we announced on email and social media. A lot of people start their Black Friday, Cyber Monday promos either on that Friday or like the Thursday before. We started a lot earlier to ensure that we had better deliverability with our ads in the auction. Because with the ad auction over this time period, it gets slammed and there is no room for any player, costs start to rise. We started only ads earlier because we knew this was going to happen, and that allowed us to really secure more touch points to drive people to purchase. It allowed us to slowly optimize these promo campaigns versus just dumping a ton of money per day for four days. We got to kind of spread out the budget and increase it slowly as we saw profitability.
 
[24:37]
If you’re planning on running ads for a Black Friday, Cyber Monday or holiday promo, really in the post iOS 14 world, it does take a bit longer to optimize your campaign. So we would recommend, if possible, trying to launch those campaigns earlier than any other channels where you’re going to announce the promo. And then our secondary and tertiary goals. First up is average order value. We were able to hit over a 30% increase in average order value month over month versus our 20% goal, which is awesome. That was huge for us, and that was a huge reason for our revenue being so successful. Also, our ROAS goal, return on ad spend goal, we set it for a 400% return on ad spend. We were able to hit 450%. So we were 50% more than our goal. Let’s kind of break that ROAS down. We generated 345% returns on our completely cold prospecting audiences and attracted tons of new customers via this promo for even higher lifetime value down the road. So really great returns on brand new people, especially for a promo and for the first time hearing about this brand. And then our retargeting campaign had a return of ad spend of 5.5 or 550%, which is right in the range that we wanted it to be, which is awesome.
 
I will say a note on prospecting during promos, that means like going out and targeting cold people who don’t know about your brand. These types of campaigns generally need a minimum about $100 a day for them to work. So if your budget is a lot lower than those requirements, we would recommend just focusing your efforts on retargeting your list during a Black Friday or other promo at this time until you’re able to spend around the $100 a day mark. And then another one of our goals was our cost per acquisition goal. Because we launched our ad campaigns early, we were able to optimize the campaigns throughout the month, which was something that I think we’ll likely do again if the budget is there. We actually saw a $2 cost per acquisition reduction month over month. Our goal here was just keep cost per acquisition the same because we do know that it rises during this time. So a reduction was a fantastic bonus. I think a big reason on how we did this is of course we retargeted with I think around 20% of our ad budget. The remainder of our budget went to prospecting for this promo, and we actually used a completely open audience. We didn’t use any lookalikes or interest groups. It’s because we knew that our pixel was well seasoned, our account was well optimized. With that open audience, that was the biggest driver for our reduction in cost per acquisition. It was really important though that we had enough budget to actually optimize and drive down cost per acquisition. So remember that note that if you’re not around the $100 a day mark, you’re not able to spend that much on your ad campaigns, focus on retargeting for now. 
 
[28:12]
And then finally, our email revenue and click-through rate goals. We just nearly missed our click-through rate goal. I think our goal was a 2% click-through rate for our promo emails. We hit 1.7, but we did exceed our email promo sales goal by over $3,000, which is great. Overall, the email promo campaigns generated $20,000 in extra revenue for the promo alone, which we considered a win even though we didn’t hit the click-through rate goal.
 
With our emails, we really got straight to the point with these emails. Email promos generally just, you can highlight the sale. The copy can speak about value and things like that, but it should be really clear when someone opens a promo email, what the offer is and where to click. That’s really your main goal here. We also tested all of our subject lines to get the highest opens and used our client’s top send times too. So even if you’ve done all the subject line and send time testing beforehand, I would still recommend creating at least two different subject lines, testing send times at the time of sending these promos and allowing your email platform like Klaviyo to test this. What we do generally is we test the subject lines and after 20% of the list has been sent, Klaviyo will choose the winner and send the remainder 80% of the list with the winning subject line.
 
And then going back to missing our click-through rate goal for our promo emails. What we think happened here was our resends did drive down this metric. Remember, we would resend to non openers, but these resends also did help us exceed our revenue goals. So it was kind of a win-lose there. After looking at the data, we think we could have increased our click-through rate and actually hit our goal and maintained our revenue on our resends if we didn’t resend the entire non opener list, but instead resent to people who didn’t open and are more engaged. So something to consider if you’re going to test resending your email this promo or holiday season.
 
[30:37]
That’s a wrap up our Black Friday, Cyber Monday case study. We hope you enjoyed this case study episode and hopefully got some fresh ideas. If you’re ready to make this year your most profitable yet, we are now taking on Q4 clients and would love the chance to work with you. We are here to reach your ideal customers, help you optimize, strategize, and create high performing social email and advertising campaigns for your brand. Let’s make your Q4 the most profitable yet. Book a call with us at umaimarketing.com/profit and we would love to chat. Thanks for listening y’all.
 
Karin Samelson: [31:24]
Thanks for listening to the UMAI Social Circle, y’all. We’re here to support you in your CPG journey, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any new podcast episodes. While you’re at it, please leave us a review on your listening platform of choice. Shoot us a DM at UMAI Marketing on Instagram if you have any topics you want us to cover on new podcast episodes.
 
Alison Smith: [31:34]
And don’t forget to access our free masterclass where we’re showing you how to create a solid marketing strategy. You can access that at umaimarketing.com/masterclass and we’ll meet you back here for the next episode.
 
 
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#43: 6 Tips for Using Canva to Create Quality Content Faster

canva
UMAI social circle cpg podcast

#43: 6 Tips for Using Canva to Create Quality Content Faster

Hey, y’all! 👋🏼 Today, we’re chatting about one of our FAVORITE tools to make content creation easier, whether you’re a marketer, social media enthusiast, founder, or even a small business owner. We’re talking about the wonderful world of Canva! If you’re not using it yet, no worries. We are here to share 6 quick-and-dirty tips on how you can use Canva to whip up high-quality content quicker than ever. So, get ready to level up your social game and create content in a flash with these awesome Canva hacks! Let’s jump right in! 🤓🎨

 

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:59 – 5:13] Introduction to Canva
[5:15 – 8:01] Tip 1: Create Your Brand Kit
[8:02 – 12:34] Tip 2: Pull in Gifs as Memes
[12:35 – 14:15] Tip 3: Explore Stock Imagery, Videos, and Audio Elements
[14:16 – 16:42] Tip 4: The Power of Background Remover and Magic Eraser
[16:43 – 18:45] Tip 5: Canva Assistant “Magic Write”
[18:46 – 20:45] Tip 6: Utilize Templates Whenever Possible
[20:49 – 21:21] How to Access The Consumer Goods Social Media Marketing Kit
 

Mentions from this episode: 

Learn more and Start growing with us –

UMAI Marketing socials  –

Get the Social Media Marketing Kit, here
 

Stay in touch:

Join UMAI’s Facebook Group: CORE 

#43: 6 Tips for Using Canva to Create Quality Content Faster 

 

Alison Smith: [0:17]
Howdy listeners, we’re Alison.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:19]
And I’m Karin.
 
Alison Smith: [0:20]
And we love growing CPG brands.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:23]
We’re the founders of a digital and social media marketing agency, UMI Marketing and creators of the Consumer Goods Growth course, where we’ve helped grow dozens of brands to six and seven figures.
 
Alison Smith: [0:33]
We’re a former in-house marketers, turn consumer goods marketing educators who’ve set off on a mission to provide CPG founders and marketers with actionable strategies that drive community and sales. We’re talking real results.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:46]
If you’re wanting to learn simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies needed to drive real brand growth without breaking the bank or sacrificing your social life, then this is the podcast for you. Let’s get into today’s episode.
 
Alison Smith: [0:59]
We’re all about working smarter and not harder when it comes to marketing and creating content. Luckily, there are a whole lot of resources. Today, we’ll be talking about one of them, Canva, that make your life as a marketer, a social media marketer, a founder, a small business owner, so much easier. We’re going to give you our top six tips on how you can use the awesome tool of Canva to create quality content a whole lot faster.
 
Karin Samelson: [1:37]
Woohoo.
 
Alison Smith: [1:38]
Karin and I are on today together. Karin, how’s it going?
 
Karin Samelson: [1:42]
It’s going good. It’s a Friday and Alison and I have to work on… I know. What are we doing on a Friday? We are pretty strict about not having any calls or any meetings on Friday, but we were like, “Oh gosh, we got to stay on track.” Sometimes, you just got to do what you got to do.
 
Alison Smith: [2:02]
That’s right. We got to do what we got to do. Yeah, usually Fridays, no calls. Like Karin said, we’re pretty strict on that. It’s the time that you can do all the things that you didn’t get to do on the week or even deep thinking. Also, personally, if I have any errands, I’ll do that on Friday. During the week, There’s not really a whole lot of time to do that.
 
Karin Samelson: [2:31]
Exactly. Yeah, I told my partner, I was really annoying about it, I was like, “We have a very strict no call policy on Fridays, but tomorrow, yes, we have.” He was like, “You mean you rarely do.” I was like, “No, we never do.”
 
Alison Smith: [2:49]
Yeah, this is a rarity. Yeah, my partner said the exact same thing. He was like, “I thought you didn’t really do that on Fridays,” whatever.
 
Karin Samelson: [2:59]
Jokes on us.
 
Alison Smith: [3:00]
It’s also Summer Friday, so it’s extra bad of us, we’ll into it. Sorry for all the complaints, but yes happy to do it.
 
Karin Samelson: [3:11]
Yeah. While unfortunately, this podcast isn’t sponsored, wish it was, shout out Canva, we really just love Canva because of all the time it saves us. All of us know Photoshop, a lot of us know Illustrator, but Canva, it makes it a breeze for us. It’s a graphic design platform that helps make marketing content and even things like presentations really easily. You can use Canva on a free account or you can pay for the premium version to have access to a few more features. We’re going to be covering some of those features that you’ll need the Pro access to but we’ll also be sharing some things that can be utilized on the free version as well.
 
Alison Smith: [3:56]
I will say I was a diehard Adobe gal-
 
Karin Samelson: [4:00]
Same.
 
Alison Smith: [4:02]
… For a very long time. And I think you, Karin, were popping up in Slack. Caleb’s tight in Austin, they were in billboards everywhere at the same time. I was like-
 
Karin Samelson: [4:14]
Oh, I don’t remember that.
 
Alison Smith: [4:15]
There was a billboard on 290, I think, towards the airport, and I was just like, “No, Adobe’s where it’s at.” Our entire suite is in Adobe, so I was Anti-Canva. I was like, “It’s so basic.”
 
Karin Samelson: [4:34]
It’s for noobs.
 
Alison Smith: [4:35]
Yeah, it’s for noobs. I’m actually a noob, I’m not a graphic designer, but anyways, I thought I was cool because I could use Photoshop. But they have developed so much even past this past year, they have increased all their offerings, they have so much. We’re going to talk about all of it, highly recommend anyone, especially if you’re not developed graphic designer, illustrator, Canva is for everyone. Sponsor us, Canva.
 
Karin Samelson: [5:07]
Why are we not affiliates? That’s okay. Maybe by the time this airs, we’ll get a link for y’all.
 
Alison Smith: [5:14]
But first and foremost, this is our first tip, and this is setting your foundation, this is what you should do really before really diving in. It’s uploading your brand kit into Canva. What does that mean? That’s your brand colors, your typography, your logo, all of your product photos, product images, all of that.
 
Step one is just get all of that in there. It’s just going to make it a lot easier if you create an organized folder with your brand kit. It’s going to prompt you to do that, it’s basically going to ask you to fill that all in. Just don’t skip that step, it’s just imperative to making everything streamlined and easy.
 
Some example folders that you can make within your brand kit, within these folders would be your product images of all your SKUs, you can also make a folder for your social posts. We like to segment all of our social posts by their type, so we’ll have a folder for our Carousel posts, a folder for our reels, a folder for our static graphics. That makes it really easy because exactly where everything is. Also, say, you know, need a carousel post for the week. You go into that folder, you can do the one before, edit it. It’s just going to be a lot, lot faster for you to crank out some content.
 
Pro-tip, you can also have a folder for presentations too. If you’re an agency and you have to do a lot of webinars or proposals, pitch decks, if you’re a brand and you have to create a lot of investor presentations, you can have a folder for these. You don’t have to make these ugly old school, I think of my dad’s presentations. Those are out. You can make beautiful presentations with Canva templates, PowerPoint presentations, and make them beautiful and all your brand kits there, so it’ll be super simple to pull everything in. That’s really going to help you add that branded touch and really impress any investor or retailer or whoever that you’re presenting to.
 
Going to make a strong brand aesthetic and that’s tip one, create a brand kit in Canva.
 
Karin Samelson: [7:50]
While you might be like, “Yeah, duh, guys,” there are some of you that may not have updated your brand kit in Canva. That is just like, we have to say that.
 
The next tip we have for you is pulling in GIFS for memes. You see brands having memes in their content and static posts and reels and wherever they want to use them. You’re like, “Where do they pull that GIF from? How do they do that?” They’re probably most likely doing it in Canva. We are constantly talking about how we need to be posting more video content since that is just one of the best ways to reach new cold audiences on social but we also know that it can be really time-consuming to make videos from scratch. Again, work smarter, not harder, and create some meme reels. That means just a reel that’s a short form piece of video content that has a meme on it.
 
Meme, meaning it has text on it, but then you can pull in GIFS to make it super relatable and just making it a full overarching mean. You can pull things like relatable tweets direct from Twitter or Reddit or Pinterest, and or you can pull in again, those GIFS and add some clever copy that you think will resonate with your audience. We’re going to get into the nitty-gritty on some of these just to help you help guide you on where to go in Canva. But obviously, you can Google any of the things that we’re saying and find out how to do it by reading it there.
 
But first, you’re going to want to create a new design in reels dimensions. That’s 1080 by 1920. We’re always trying to be vertical here. Simply add one of your brand colors as the background color, or you can step it up a notch and use a template that you add your brand elements to and more on that later. The next, you’re going to scroll on the left. On the left, you’re going to have a lot of different options. One of the options is going to be apps. When you click into apps, you’re going to search for Giphy, which is spelled G-I-P-H-Y. Once you’re in Giphy within Canva, then you can search for any GIF you’d like. Think of your customer avatar and your ideal demographic when searching for GIFS and think of things like popular bands or popular shows and movies or celebrities that your audience resonates with.
 
All you got to do is type that in, find one you like, click on your favorite, add some text if that relates to your audience and the GIF you chose and that’s really it. You’re adding some text, you’re adding a relatable GIF, and you’re exporting it as a video and that is a reel. That is a very, very, very easy short form video piece of content that you can make and one up that and duplicate it a couple times and make a few while you’re in there and that’s three different videos that you can post throughout the month.
 
Using GIF within Canva for meme reels is something we really, really like doing.
 
Alison Smith: [11:07]
Any video, is it going to be highlighted by social platforms for the most part? Is that a better idea to make a video than a static image for the most part?
 
Karin Samelson: [11:23]
Yeah, I would say for the most part. There’s no black and white terms, everything is gray on digital for the most part. What we try to do is try to make as much as we can into a piece of video content, but to always test other versions of it too. If you’re like, “Okay, I’ve done a whole lot of those, let me try to do it in a square version,” and it’s static, it’s not moving, it’s just an image and some text and it’s still a meme, try it out, see what happens. See if you get more shares on that. But for the most part, try and make as many videos as you can.
 
Alison Smith: [12:03]
And that’s a quick and dirty tip to make videos, so that’s awesome.
I noticed you’re JIF and you’re not GIF. You’re GIF. Team GIF.
 
Karin Samelson: [12:13]
I’m Team GIF.
 
Alison Smith: [12:17]
Oh, you’re Team GIF.
 
Karin Samelson: [12:18]
I’m Team GIF. We’ve discussed this in the past.
 
Alison Smith: [12:22]
Oh no.
 
Karin Samelson: [12:23]
I’m only Team GIF. Even though the creator of them calls them JIFS. that is peanut butter and I am not interested.
 
Alison Smith: [12:32]
Don’t get it confused.
 
Okay, moving on to our third tip, stock imagery. There is stock imagery in Canva if you didn’t know this. Gone are the days where I have three bookmarks of the stock sites that I need to search through to maybe find what I need. It’s all on Canva now, which is super easy. It’s just a one-stop shop.
 
When you’re creating a new design, there’s a tab called Elements on your left-hand sidebar, and you can search in the Elements for whatever you need. You can find all the photos, it’ll also show you different… Other than Elements, it will also show you videos, graphics, audio even, so it’s all going to be in there. Say you need a background photo or you’re creating an ad and you need some stock imagery to help fill some things, just search what you need. People at a party chatting, it’s going to be in there, it’s free to use, royalty free imagery that you can just simply pull in and no more searching the web for stock imagery or stock video or paying whatever royal imagery, whatever it’s called, 5.99 for an image. Tip number three, Canva has stock imagery as well, and video and audio in Elements.
 
Karin Samelson: [14:06] 
It’s a one stop shot, that’s what we want here. We want to make it super easy. If you’re going to pay for it with a Pro version, use it as much as humanly possible.
 
The fourth tip we have is to utilize tools like the background remover and or the Magic eraser. Again, we have always been Adobe hype women, but this is so much freaking easier. While it’s not as refined, social isn’t about being as refined anymore. Just do what you can with what you have. With the background remover, you can remove the background on most images with just the click of a button.
 
If you have a product image that you want to add onto a graphic, but it’s currently photographed on maybe a colorful or a busy background and you can’t find the PNG of it, just use the background remover. You can navigate to this by uploading an image into the design and then clicking edit photo. And if you have a Pro account, you’ll see the BG remover in that left-hand panel. You’re going to click that and then instantly watch the background disappear.
 
In the same way that the background remover works, you can also use the Magic Eraser to get rid of any unwanted objects in your images. This does work best if the background isn’t too busy. While it’s not perfect, it can be quite helpful when you’re just working quickly or you don’t know Photoshop or work with anyone who does. A tip is just keep going over the sections you’re trying to remove if it doesn’t erase completely on the first go around. But eventually, it will completely erase.
 
There’s actually another AI tool in beta right now that will allow you to completely replace an object in an image with something else that you dream of. This is a bit more advanced and definitely not a foolproof method, it can come up with some hilariously imperfect things, but it’s just something that you could also play around with.
 
Alison Smith: [16:08]
Actually, I’m an AI stan. Do you know what a stan is?
 
Karin Samelson: [16:14]
Yes. I know it. 
 
Alison Smith: [16:17]
I just learned what it is. I thought people were trying to say fan and we’re saying stan, so I googled it. For those of you who don’t know, a stan is a Gen Z turn for a super fan. I’m sure everyone knows but me, but I just learned it, so I wanted to show off my Gen Z terminology. Love me some AI and that brings us to hot tip number five, Canva Assistant Magic Write.
 
I’m just obsessed with AI. I use it for everything. It gets weird, but it’s really fun to play with. Like Karin said, sometimes things get really weird. It’s like, okay, for sure this is a robot and use a human touch but Magic Write is also in the Canva platform, and it’s a lot like ChatGPT if you guys have been using that. It’s going to write you headlines or any text or anything you need. It’s at the bottom corner, I believe of where you’re designing. You should see it, it’s like a little sparkle graphic. But when you see it, try it out, click it. It’s only available on the Pro plan though. If you don’t have the Pro plan, you can just go into ChatGPT and use that instead if you’re just not able to think of copy.
 
Yeah, use it. It can help you write headlines or short pieces of text. You’ll just want to use a human touch and go in and adjust it based on your brand, your tone, make sure it sounds like it’s not a robot. Love it. Love that Canvas… They’ve launched a lot of AI in the past few months, so really, really cool, fun tip to speed things up.
 
Karin Samelson: [18:14] 
Yeah, for sure. It’s not going to be perfect. Whatever prompt you put in there, no matter what it is, it’s never going to be perfect. It will get pretty close and maybe eventually, it will be perfect, but right now, it’s not. But you can use it as just inspiration, like Alison said. You can use it for headlines, for those Carousel posts that you’re creating, or even example texts for those meme reels that we talked about. Let it do the hard work for you to get your juices flowing, and then you can refine it and make it make sense.
 
The last tip we have for you is to utilize templates whenever possible. Literally, everything that we’ve shared today, templates would really, really, really help it. If you’re not graphically or creatively inclined, utilizing those templates is just going to up level the overall design and give you more time to focus on all of the other important stuff that you’re doing.
 
Canva has a number of free templates, but if you really are looking for proven top performing graphics, check out the social media marketing kit for designs that are super high performing. We have seen and tested them on hundreds of other consumer packaged goods brands and these are the best of the best on what we see bringing in the biggest amount of reach and brand awareness as well as engagement. You can find them at umimarketing.com/social-media-marketing-kit. It’s the social media marketing kit and we’ll link those in the show notes for you too, because it’s really hard to remember things like that. Yeah, check it out. It has a lot of templates that are going to make your life a lot easier because you don’t need to start from scratch on most things. That’s a waste of time in our opinion.
 
Alison Smith: [20:06]
And like Karin said, we’ve been doing this for a long time, working with a lot of brands, and we have to create 16 to 20 pieces of content per brand per month, so we’ve definitely seen what works and what doesn’t, and we kind of just pulled the top performers and it’s just like, “Here you go,” just start smarter instead of testing. Definitely check it out, it’s a pretty cool kit.
 
Yeah, that wraps up our six top tips for Canva.
 
Karin Samelson: [20:47]
Woohoo, well thanks for listening, everyone.
 
Karin Samelson: [20:49]
Thanks for listening to the UMI Social Circle, y’all. We’re here to support you in your CPG journey, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any new podcast episodes. While you’re at it, please leave us a review on your listening platform of choice. Shoot us a DM at UMI Marketing on Instagram. If you have any topics you want us to cover on new podcast episodes.
 
Alison Smith: [21:08]
And don’t forget to access our free masterclass where we’re showing you how to create a solid marketing strategy. You can access that at umimarketing.com/masterclass, and we’ll meet you back here for the next episode.
 
 
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#42: How to Utilize User Generated Content to Drive Sales

#42
UMAI social circle cpg podcast

#42: How to Utilize User Generated Content to Drive Sales

In this episode, Karin discusses the importance of utilizing user-generated content (UGC) as a cost-effective way to drive sales for consumer goods brands. UGC refers to content that’s created by customers, content creators (or even your mother, brother, best friend, next door neighbor), and it’s known for its authentic appearance and messaging. Karin shares some effective strategies for leveraging UGC to increase sales and engagement, even on a limited budget.

Tune in to learn more about how UGC can benefit your brand and how to make the most of it. 📸

 

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:58 – 1:57] What is UGC and how you can utilize it to drive sales
[1:58 – 2:35] Building community first on social with UGC
[2:36 – 3:08] Using UGC for high-converting social ad creative
[3:09 – 4:27] Exploring alternative sources of UGC
[4:28 – 5:05] Closing and plug-ins
 

Mentions from this episode: 

Learn more and Start growing with us –

UMAI Marketing socials  –

Stay in touch:

Join UMAI’s Facebook Group: CORE 

#42: How to Utilize User Generated Content to Drive Sales

 

Alison Smith: [0:17]
Howdy listeners, we’re Alison.

Karin Samelson: [0:19]
And I’m Karin.

Alison Smith: [0:20]
And we love growing CPG brands.

Karin Samelson: [0:22]
We’re the founders of a digital and social media marketing agency, UMAI Marketing, and creators of the Consumer Goods Growth Course, where we’ve helped grow dozens of brands to six and seven figures.

Alison Smith: [0:33]
We’re former in-house marketers turn consumer goods marketing educators who’ve set off on a mission to provide CPG founders and marketers with actionable strategies that drive community and sales. We’re talking real results.

Karin Samelson: [0:46]
If you’re wanting to learn simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies needed to drive real brand growth without breaking the bank or sacrificing your social life, then this is the podcast for you. Let’s get into today’s episode. 

[0:58] Properly utilizing user-generated content is a great and cost-effective way to drive more sales for your brand. In today’s episode, we’re talking about how consumer goods brands can utilize user-generated content the right way to help drive sales. Hi everybody, it’s just Karin on today, and it’s a beautiful day. Well, it’s not that beautiful, it’s a little rainy and gloomy outside in Austin, Texas today, but it’s a great day because we’re going to be talking about driving sales with UGC. UGC is an acronym for user-generated content, and UGC is brand-specific content created by customers or brand advocates. It really is lo-fi, it looks like something very native on your feed while you’re scrolling. And right now, it’s some of our highest performing content and we’re going to give you a few ideas on how to utilize this content to drive sales.

[1:58] First thing you can do is start requesting permission to repost when someone tags you on social. That can help foster community and trust in your brand, which will always lead to more sales down the road. And you can also start sharing as much UGC as you can to your Instagram stories. So when someone tags you on their feed or mentions you in their stories, make sure to share that to your stories and add a link, a link sticker to your product pages on those slides so that you can try and get as many folks as you can to your website. You want to drive traffic to your product pages, you want them to look through your offerings and purchase. UGC is constantly some of our highest performing ad creatives on social as well. So you’re going to want to have a lot of UGC style ad creatives running and testing constantly.

If you want to use tagged content, so if a creator uses your product, tags you in it and you’re like, “Ooh, that would make it a really good ad,” just make sure to always get permission to repost creators’ content and you will have to specify that those are going to be used for ads. A lot of times, creators definitely want to know that. 

[3:11] And so if you’re like, “Cool, Karin, that’s great, that would be really easy if we already had creators tagging us. But what can I do if we just launched or we don’t have a lot of tagged UGC, we don’t have a lot of people using and tagging us?” The answer is ask friends and family to shoot some video testimonials for you. If you have a bit more of a budget, you can even utilize on-website apps like gogander.io to source more custom content from users. Or you can use apps like minisocial or creator.co, which pairs brands with microinfluencer creators who can produce user-generated content on demand and at more scale. So if you have a budget.

[3:55] Other ways you can source UGC is running a giveaway on social, where customers can share pictures or videos of themselves using your product. And as long as you offer a really nice, a really juicy prize to incentivize these folks to enter to win, you might get some really, really good content. Just make sure to have some fine print in there in the giveaway rules that says that you’ll be allowed to utilize those videos for marketing purposes once they enter to win. 

[4:28] So those are a few ways to source some UGC, whether you pay for it or you source it from your community or you just ask your friends and family, because we know that UGC performs and helps drive sales. So the more UGC a brand has the more social proofs and likelihood someone will follow along to learn more and eventually try the product. It’s all about that social proof and UGC really satisfies that in a lot of ways.

So that’s about it. We wanted to make it short and sweet and actionable. So if you have any questions, let us know. But thanks for listening, really appreciate you guys spending some time with me today. 

Karin Samelson: [5:05]
Thanks for listening to the UMAI Social Circle, y’all. We’re here to support you in your CPG journey, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any new podcast episodes. And while you’re at it, please leave us a review on your listening platform of choice. Shoot us at DM at UMAI Marketing on Instagram. If you have any topics you want us to cover on new podcast episodes.

Alison Smith: [5:24]
And don’t forget to access our free masterclass, where we’re showing you how to create a solid marketing strategy. You can access that at umaimarketing.com/masterclass and we’ll meet you back here for the next episode.
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#41: 4 Easy Ways to Increase Email Clicks & Opens

UMAI social circle cpg podcast

#41: 4 Easy Ways to Increase Email Clicks & Opens

In today’s episode, Alison discusses the importance of email marketing as a direct and effective way to build a relationship & sales with leads. She shares four easy-to-implement tips to increase email open and click-through rates. Email marketing is a valuable marketing strategy that often gets overlooked – on this episode, learn how to make the most out of this valuable tool!

Let’s dive into these tips and start driving results for your email campaigns. 💌

 

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:59 – 1:48] Why you should be spending more time on email marketing for your brand
[1:49 – 2:22] Four of our top tips for boosting open and click-through rates
[2:23 – 4:05] Tip #1: Personalization is key
[4:06 – 5:34] Tip #2: Perfecting your subject line
[5:35 – 9:46] Tip #3: Creating attention-grabbing call-to-actions
[9:47 – 13:20] Tip #4: Segmenting your list for efficient marketing
[13:21 – 14:06] Closing

Mentions from this episode: 

Learn more and Start growing with us –

UMAI Marketing socials  –

Stay in touch:

Join UMAI’s Facebook Group: CORE 

#41: 4 Easy Ways to Increase Email Clicks & Opens

 

 
Alison Smith: [0:17]
Howdy, listeners. We’re Alison.
 
Karin: [0:19]
And I’m Karin.
 
Alison Smith: [0:20]
And we love growing CPG brands.
 
Karin: [0:22]
We’re the founders of a digital and social media marketing agency, UMAI Marketing, and creators of the Consumer Goods Growth Course, where we’ve helped grow dozens of brands to six and seven figures.
 
Alison Smith: [0:33]
We’re former in-house marketers turned consumer goods marketing educators who’ve set off on a mission to provide CPG founders and marketers with actionable strategies that drive community and sales. We’re talking real results.
 
Karin: [0:46]
If you’re wanting to learn simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies needed to drive real brand growth without breaking the bank or sacrificing your social life, then this is the podcast for you. Let’s get into today’s episode.
 
Alison Smith: [0:59]
Email is such an important marketing tool for any brand. It’s a way for you to have direct access to someone via their inbox, which allows you to create a meaningful relationship with your leads. In today’s episode, we’ll cover four easy things you can do to increase your opens and click-throughs right now.
 
Hey, everyone. Alison here. Hope everyone is enjoying their spring wherever you are in the world. Here in Austin, Texas, we didn’t really get a true winter. We had an ice storm for about a week. The whole city shut down, but then it jumped straight into spring/a little bit of summer. It’s pretty hot out there, so hope everyone’s having a good transition into their springtime.
 
[1:49] So today, we’re going to cover four of our top tips to help you increase your open and click-through rates for email marketing. We are huge advocates of email marketing. A lot of people find it a bit snoozy, a bit boring, but it is truly the OG of marketing. It’s been around for a long time, and it worked back in the day and it works now. It’s one of our highest drivers of ROI. So let’s hop into these four easy things that you can start implementing for your email marking right now.
 
[2:23] Number one, send from a name versus your brand. For example, instead of sending from hello@umaimarketing, we send from alison@umaimarketing or Karin from UMAI Marketing as when a brand says an email, people are ingrained to think it’s going to be salesy or promotional or spammy when it’s just a brand name. So instead, choose a front-facing person on your team and use their name as your send from. It can be the founder, the CEO, it can be the marketing director. It can be even a made up name, really, if you need to do that. But choose a name, a front-facing person to send all your emails from so that your audience can actually picture this person and they can picture that this email is written and coming from a person as they read through.
 
In fact, 42% of people surveyed said that the first thing that they look at when deciding to open or just archive an email is the sender or the from name. So using a first name of a person is going to help you grab attention, and likely it’s going to get you more opens than just sending from your brand. And it also builds that know, like and trust that we always talk about, because it’s coming from a person versus this brand entity that people can’t really put a face to. So that’s tip number one. Send from a name versus your brand’s name. It’s going to be more personal, which equals more opens which equals more clicks which then equals more sales.
 
[4:06] Tip number two is your subject lines. So start optimizing and testing your subject lines. We love to use first name merge tags in our subject lines. So instead of saying, “Open this email to get 20% off,” it could say, “Hey Alison, get 20% off now.” Calling that person out, knowing their first name and calling them out, it increases open rates significantly. We’ve tested this over and over and over again, and it is a huge driver for opens.
 
The step that you have to take, though, to get that first name is when you have a popup on your website asking for people’s email address, also add the first name field. You can make it required or you can make it not required depending on what the conversion rate, if it messes with your conversion rate by making it a required field. But overall, we actually make it required. And throughout the marketing funnel, by having that name, even if it drops conversion rates slightly by having that first name, and merging that first name into things like subject lines and then all throughout email bodies, it really personalized the email. It really makes the user feel like they’re being spoken directly to. And overall, it’s going to help opens and sales and conversion rates overall.
 
[5:35] Okay, and number three, make your CTA button stand out with contrasting colors. A CTA button is your call to action. It’s the little button that you’ll see on websites, on emails. We abbreviated it to CTA. But you want to draw the reader’s attention to where you want them to click by using bolded text in that button. You can even increase the text size of that button, and definitely use a different, contrasting color than your email body background. So if you’re using a cream-colored background, use a bright orange or a bright green color for your button.
 
One thing I will say is there is a whole psychology about colors. I am not super well versed with that. Go ahead and get into a Google hole on it. It’s pretty interesting.
But we often stay away from red as our CTA button because red, for people, mean stop. So often, we’ll use colors like a bright green or a bright orange, things like that. And of course, follow your brand guidelines. Hopefully, you have some really contrasting bright colors that you can use in your emails.
 
Also, ensure that you have that CTA button above the fold. So above the fold means that the user, when they open the email on mobile or desktop, they don’t have to scroll to see a CTA button. It is right there. As soon as they open the email, it is right there staring them in the face. They can click. They are told exactly what they need to do. And this really helps increasing your click-through rate by having that above the fold, telling someone exactly what they need to do, what you want them to do before they have to scroll.
We also recommend using action-oriented text on your buttons, like save 20% now. Telling someone what to do is really the motive here. You really need to tell someone what you want them to do.
 
So if it’s going to the site to shop a promo, it’s generally like, “Take 20% off now. Save 20% off now.” Things like that. If it’s just shopping generally, you can use shop now, get the insert product now, things like that. You also want to keep it short and sweet. A long button doesn’t look nice. You want someone to be able to glance at it and be able to… for their brain to register it. So keep it as short as possible. And again, we like to test our first-person pronouns in our CTA button. So if you’ve done that step with your pop-up to grab your lead’s first name, you can merge their first name into your CTA and make it super personalized and make it like you’re speaking directly to them. So instead of saying, “Get started now,” your buttons would say, “Get started now, Alison,” which is really, really powerful.
 
Another thing with CTA buttons is you should use them to address concerns, meaning agitate or addressing the problem or pain point. Again here, so if you have a nice hook at the top of your email that is hitting a pain point, you can sum it up inside of your CTA. So for example, if you’re selling a special ready-to-drink beverage that addresses dehydration, your CTA could highlight that pain point again by saying something like, “Stay hydrated,” as the copy on the button.
 
And then finally, about CTA buttons. I could talk all day about CTA buttons, but finally you want to create urgency as well. So again, if there’s a promo or a limited-time deal or a product that might go out of stock, use copy that is highlighting that urgency. For example, something like, “Get it before it’s gone.”
 
[9;47] Okay, our fourth and final tip for increasing your opens and click-through rates is segmenting your list and only sending weekly broadcasts to your most engaged leads. So some background here. We recommend that brands send at least one broadcast a week to their list. That does not include all of the automated flows that are running behind the scenes that are indoctrinating, selling, doing all the things on autopilot. We recommend sending a fresh broadcast as well, where you’re updating about something that happened with your product that week, just general education and maybe you got into a new retailer. Those are great for broadcast topics. But only send those to top engaged leads.
 
So what you can do if you’re inside MailChimp or Klaviyo, instead of sending to the whole list, make an audience that is people who have engaged with an email in the last 60 to 90 days or have engaged with the last five to 10 emails, is generally the range that we use. It’s going to be a shorter time if you’re a larger brand with a lot more leads. You can extend the timeline, say people who’ve engaged in the last 90 days, if you’re a smaller brand and really need to capitalize on the leads that you do have. So again, only top engaged folks should get your weekly emails, and it’s important to create and keep that cadence.
 
So if you can’t commit to a weekly broadcast, then start with once a month. Once you feel comfortable getting in that groove, that cycle of once a month broadcast, bring it up to two a month. Once you get able to make that content wheel work for you, that’s when you can get to weekly. What we don’t want you to do is condition your leads to expect a weekly email from you and then all of a sudden, things get crazy. You’re going to expo. You don’t have time to write your weekly email, so it falls off. Because those audiences are conditioned, that’s going to be a bit of a shock to them and they’re going to think something’s gone awry with your business. So just be very real with yourself on what you’re able to do and keep that cadence.
 
And then finally, tying that back, that segmentation of engaged leads only for those weekly broadcasts, the reason is you don’t want to send weekly emails to unengaged users as that’s going to drive down your deliverability for everyone else. So say you are just sending your email to everyone on your list. Once it gets delivered and it bounces or people mark it as spam or people don’t open it, then your email client is going to start marking down your deliverability because they think that your emails aren’t good, people don’t like them. So it’s going to lower your deliverability score and it’s going to shoot you in the foot for the long term. So what you want to do is focus on engaged folks only and only send to them, and that’s going to help you increase your opens and click-through rates down the line.
 
[13:21] Okay, we hope you enjoyed these four top tips to get higher open rates and click-through rates with email marketing, and are able to start implementing them ASAP. We’ll see you back here for our next episode.
 
Karin: [13:33]
Thanks for listening to the UMAI Social Circle, y’all. We’re here to support you in your CPG journey, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any new podcast episodes. And while you’re at it, please leave us a review on your listening platform of choice. Shoot us a DM at umaimarketing on Instagram if you have any topics you want us to cover on new podcast episodes.
 
Alison Smith: [13:52]
And don’t forget to access our free masterclass, where we’re showing you how to create a solid marketing strategy. You can access that at umaimarketing.com/masterclass. And we’ll meet you back here for the next episode.
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#40: Top Google PPC Tips from Andy Janaitis of PPC Pitbulls

UMAI social circle cpg podcast

#40: Top Google PPC Tips from Andy Janaitis of PPC Pitbulls

In this episode, Karin and Alison, co-founders of UMAI Marketing, are joined by Andy Janaitis, Founder and Chief Strategist of PPC Pitbulls. PPC Pitbulls is an agency that works with small businesses in the eCommerce space, helping them build authentic customer relationships and increase sales online.

Andy shares his background on how he started the agency and his passion for serving purpose-driven, passionate founders with a product they believe in. Tune in to learn more about Andy and his journey in eCommerce marketing, as well as some top tips for running Google Ads.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to improve your eCommerce marketing strategy! 

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:59 – 3:22] Meet Andy, founder of PPC Pitbulls 
[3:30 – 6:13] Why smaller brands are the perfect fit for this PPC agency
[6:15 – 10:05] When is the right time to start running Google Ads?
[10:07 – 12:50] What benchmarks should a young brand have before they start Google Ads
[12:51 – 15:26] What should be your Google Ad starting budget?
[15:27 – 21:22] DIYing your own Google Ads
[21:23 – 24:35] Andy’s top tips on optimizing your campaigns
[24:36 – 27:08] Andy’s journey in PPC marketing CPG brands
[27:09 – 28:10] Closing and how you can reach PPC Pitbulls! 

 

Mentions from this episode: 

Learn more and Start growing with them –

Andy Janaitis  –

Stay in touch:

Join UMAI’s Facebook Group: CORE 

#40: Top Google PPC Tips from Andy Janaitis of PPC Pitbulls 

 

Alison Smith: [0:17]
Howdy, listeners. We’re Alison.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:19]
And I’m Karen.
 
Alison Smith: [0:20]
And we love growing CPG brands.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:23]
We’re the founders of a digital and social media marketing agency, UMAI Marketing, and creators of the Consumer Goods Growth Course, where we’ve helped grow dozens of brands to six and seven figures.
 
Alison Smith: [0:33]
We’re former in-house marketers turned consumer goods marketing educators, who’ve set off on a mission to provide CPG founders and marketers with actionable strategies that drive community and sales. We’re talking real results.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:46]
If you’re wanting to learn simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies needed to drive real brand growth without breaking the bank or sacrificing your social life, then this is the podcast for you. Let’s get into today’s episode.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:59]
Welcome to the UMAI Social Circle, where we talk consumer goods tips to help business owners and marketers grow. We’re Karin and Alison, co-founders of UMAI Marketing, and we’re being joined by Andy Janaitis, Founder and Chief Strategist of PPC Pitbulls, where he works with passionate product people to build authentic customer relationships and more sales online. Thanks for joining us, Andy. How are you?
 
Andy Janaitis: [1:25]
I’m doing great. Thank you for having me.
 
Karin Samelson: [1:27]
Yeah, thank you for coming. We had the opportunity of being on Andy’s podcast and it was so much fun that we had to have him join us and meet all of you. So thanks again, Andy, for joining us. Well, we’d love to start by just learning a little bit more about you, so if you could share your background on how you came to be the founder of PPC Pitbulls.
 
Andy Janaitis: [1:49]
Definitely. I started off more in the digital space, but a little bit outside of the marketing world, more as a software developer and product engineer for a number of years. And then 2020, right before the pandemic, I had had been known that I wanted to start my own business. And after years of working in the agency space and specifically working with a lot of larger companies, a lot of corporate entities, both government and non-government, really knew that wanted to go a different route and work with some of the smaller businesses that I had touched with in my career but hadn’t gotten a whole lot of time with.
 
So that’s exactly what I did. I worked with a colleague at the time and we both, we tried a few different things out and ultimately settled in on Google Ads. A Google Ads niche agency, focused in the eCommerce space. Really just found, after having worked with a couple different types of businesses, that we really, really enjoyed serving the small business, passionate founder, typically purpose-driven, who has a product that they’re really, really passionate about.
And yeah, it’s just been a great journey since then. We didn’t know at the time that the pandemic was right about to hit, and I also had my son, my first son, right about the same time so it was a crazy couple years there. But yeah, now we’re just getting settled in and finding our stride in the eCommerce marketing world here.
 
Alison Smith: [3:22]
That’s awesome, yeah. I wish we all knew about the pandemic hitting. A lot of us would’ve made a lot of different choices, right. But yeah, I want to ask you more about why you like the smaller brands. Is it because the founders are involved, or tell us why?
 
Andy Janaitis: [3:42]
Yeah. I mean, and the short answer is it’s just a little bit more fun. When we started out, we said that we always wanted to make sure that we had this have-a-beer rule, so we don’t want to be working with anybody that I wouldn’t want to go and have a beer with and just hang out with for a little while.
 
But I think a more technical answer, it’s always great to work with somebody who has the passion. So from a marketing perspective it’s great that, hey, when we need to start pulling out why is your product special, what it is that we need to use to develop a relationship with a customer and let them know what’s so great about this product, it’s great when there’s an easy answer there. When somebody is quick to tell you, “Hey, this is my story and this is why I put blood, sweat and tears into this product.”
 
And then on top of that, it’s nice just working with these businesses that people can make decisions. I had a background working in some more corporate areas where it was, hey, we can come up with the best idea in the world, but it’s got to go through seven layers of hierarchy and approval and all these different things. Yeah, it’s just really refreshing, and we love working with founders where we can bring an interesting concept to the table and they can execute on it and we can find some impact right away.
 
Alison Smith: [4:53]
I mean, I completely agree with everything that you just said. Working one-on-one with founders is so nice, not only because they’re able to really guide you in their mission. But because of the decision-making, especially if you’re in the paid media space, there’s been a lot of huge changes over the past two years and you have to pivot super quickly. And I can’t imagine working for a super large corporation where you can’t just make those quick pivots, so that’s cool to hear.
 
Andy Janaitis: [5:33]
Definitely. And I’m sure it’s probably very similar with the types of clients you serve as well, that it helps to have a little bit of a mission focus, I feel like, where it’s easy, or not easy, but certainly there’s a playbook out there for succeeding in Google Ads or Facebook ads for some of these massive conglomerates with giant budgets, where there’s just a whole different goal set. But it’s really cool to work with some of these mom-and-pop shops or smaller founders, where it’s you’re helping them to succeed and helping them to compete with the big guys.
 
Karen Samelson: [6:05]
And on that note, we have a lot of people that come to us and they’re like, “Okay, what marketing levers should we be pulling? When, why, how?” From your perspective, how do these brands know when Google Ads will start working for them? When should they start?
 
Andy Janaitis: [6:24]
We look at a couple of key components, and a lot of this is probably similar to both components from your CORE 3 program, and I love that concept of like, hey, it’s a simple group of levers that you can pull right off the bat. I think what we look at are, one, do you have a website set up? Are you selling your products on a site that’s ready to drive conversions? People hit the site, do they actually get through the checkout process without a lot of friction? Some of the real basic stuff that you’d actually be surprised how often isn’t set up or you all probably aren’t that surprised, I’m sure. Things like having good, solid automated email flow set up, making sure that you are getting the most out of each individual customer relationship and the ability to build that ongoing relationship.
 
And then, as we go beyond that, make sure that we’re measuring when people hit the website and measuring customer behavior so we understand that, hey, if a purchase came through, where did that come from. It’s amazing, a lot of our work is running initial audits where we sit down and look through all of the marketing efforts that our clients or prospective clients are doing. And one of the first questions we’ll always say is, “Okay. Well, what channel is your most successful right now? Where are most of your purchases coming from?” And oftentimes people don’t necessarily have an answer to that.
 
So I think that’s one of those first things, where you’ve got to be measuring what’s happening on your website, understanding where purchases are coming through, and having some purchases too. I always tell people not to let Google Ads, or probably similar with Facebook ads, just§ be your first purchase that comes through the door. You just stood up a Shopify site and, “Let’s just turn on a bunch of spend and see what happens.” It always makes sense to, whatever it takes, to go ahead and get some purchases coming through first to test that all those things are set up, that everything’s working properly. So those are some of the main components that we want to have in place.
 
And I’d say maybe more from a technical perspective, a lot of that is getting everything set up. The big thing to underlie all that too is understanding what your goals are, or having a goal. Don’t just listen to a podcast and say, “Hey, Google Ads is great. It sounds like we can make some money there. Let’s go ahead and turn it on. Let’s start spending some money.” It’s really important to understand, if you’re running ads today or if you’re doing other work, organic work, email work, what is it about Google Ads that’s going to be different from that, and how can that add to those channels and help to work alongside them? Why would you use one channel over the other? Understanding a lot of those different nuanced takes and not just, “Hey, let’s flip the switch and look for profits.” I think that’s really important.
 
Alison Smith: [9:15]
Yeah, absolutely. Everyone wants to be omnichannel, but there’s definitely a time and a place. And I like that you’re asking brands to understand and realize their goals before they just … And also their time and their commitment, before they do something like that themselves.
 
But I want to take it back to what you were saying about certain web and KPIs that you look for before you start running PPC for brands. And we’re the exact same. We won’t work with a brand, with paid media, paid social, if they don’t have a converting website. Because what’s the point? You’re just throwing money at a wall and seeing if it sticks and it likely won’t, it’s a lose-lose for everyone. So curious, when you are talking to brands that are looking to use your services, if you have any thresholds or numbers, like conversion rates, that you expect a brand to have before they should start running Google Ads.
 
Andy Janaitis: [10:23]
I’d say it’s probably a little bit less about an exact number. We can definitely look industry by industry, look at different benchmarks. Typically, if we’re in the two to three to 5% conversion rate, depending on what type of products you’re selling, what your average order values are, that’s great. We can always look at where you need to be in there.
 
But I think probably more important is just looking at some of the lower hanging fruits. We’re not necessarily the agency that’s going to come in and do a full conversion rate optimization. We’re going to redesign your whole site and figure out all the nuanced places where you could be dropping a half a percent or a quarter of a percent here or there. But there are some basic things that we know, and we always talk about them, in terms of low-hanging fruits.
 
So things like, make it very easy for somebody to make a purchase. It’d be great if nobody has to create an account before they have to go through your checkout process. That’s something we see a lot of time. Something as simple as that could be a very simple way to increase your conversion rate. Same thing with, if you have, especially in some of the purpose-driven products that we like to work with, there’s some education involved. Why is this snack food going to cost me probably double what I could get at the grocery store, because it’s organic and it’s better for you and there’s a million different reasons why, but that doesn’t necessarily shine just in the picture of the product.
 
So making sure that your website has all of that information. And the same way that you would help a customer who comes into your store. If you were trying to sell them in person, think of your website as the same thing. How are we getting somebody from walking in the front door, pulling up your website for the first time, to take all the education that they need, and ultimately getting all the way down to the bottom and being comfortable making a purchase and being able to do that without a whole lot of friction.
 
Karin Samelson: [12:20]
Yeah. I mean, we try and make it as simple as possible saying, “Hey, until you’re making X number of dollars a month in eCommerce revenue, then you can’t start paid social with us.” But I like how you are saying, “Hey, if you have consistent sales, organic sales, if you are set up for success for your customers to go through the customer journey, your email automations, all of that’s up and running, you have these goals set out, then you could absolutely start.” So what is your opinion on a good starting budget for these smaller brands?
 
Andy Janaitis: [12:56]
Definitely. It’s like one of the first questions we always get, and of course the very probably not great to hear answer is going to be, it depends. But the real factors that we look for, you got to make sure … Because we’re really going to pitch automated techniques and everything is really leaning into Google Ads, automation and machine learning algorithms, so we need to make sure that we’re feeding enough data back into that. And what that means is making sure that we’re getting enough purchases.
 
Typically, we’re looking for at least 30 to 50 … A big enough budget that our Google Ads can drive 30 to 50 purchases per month. That can be a good starting point to bring back. And you can go through some calculations, it can get a little bit more complex if you’re going to run multiple campaigns and different things.
 
But ultimately, and depending on what your goals are in terms of ROAS, but the way we really like to think about that is, hey, if we’re going to look for 30 to 50 purchases, just for ease of calculation, say your average order value is $100. So if you want 50 purchases at $100, you’re looking at a revenue of, what’s that, come out to $5,000. So if we’re looking for a starting ROAS, oftentimes that’s maybe a 2X to a 2X ROAS, so that can bring you back to your starting budget. So you’re looking for, we want to generate about $5,000 in revenue, maybe we have a 2X ROAS as our initial starting target. That’s going to say that, hey, your initial investment there should be about $2500 in that first month.
 
I would say, depending on where people are coming from and where their targets are, that’s how I would calculate it if I’m working with somebody and understand all the different nuances. If somebody’s listening to this podcast and they say, “Hey, what is the minimum? Where can I start?” Typically, I’ll just throw out, if you start around 1,500 to 2,00 a month in ad spend, that’ll be enough to start to get an idea if things are going to work or not and whether or not you’re going to be able to pull some purchases out. I wouldn’t start much lower than that. And certainly, for larger brands that are really looking to get into it and really make a push, you’re probably going to be starting a little bit higher than that, but that’s about where I would start.
 
Alison Smith: [15:12]
That budget is probably, I mean, like you said, it’s the biggest question you get asked. It’s the same for us as well. But I love how you just broke it down, goal, AOV, that’s how you figure it out.
 
My question is, so people who are brands who maybe are DIY-ing and have 1,500 to $2,000 a month to spend on their own, what are some top tips? What should they start with first in terms of keyword, shopping, all of that?
 
Andy Janaitis: [15:47]
Definitely. The beauty of Google Ads today, with a lot of the different automated approaches, is it’s gotten a lot simpler to run certain things. Now it’s important to understand the strategy and understand what you’re doing. So I do caution people, if you’re very familiar with, say, Facebook ads and you’ve been doing different types of marketing approaches and you want to dip your toes into Google Ads, then go for it. That might be an option. But if you’ve never run any ads and you don’t understand what the basics of the ad platform are, you probably want to get some help or at least read through some good trainings and figure out what you need to be doing before you jump in and spend a lot of money because that can be a big portion of your spend.
 
But as far as, for simplicity, so once you’ve gone through those phases and you kind of understand what’s happening and you know what your goals are, you’re all set up, I think the first thing is making sure that you are getting a good measurement signal. So making sure that your website is set up. Shopify luckily makes this really easy, there’s a couple of apps. The Google channel app is a super simple way just to get your Shopify site to report conversions over to your Google Ads campaign.
 
We’re going to want to focus on shopping campaigns, so when you search for something on Google, that top little carousel there with the individual product images you can click through to, in order to do that, you need to feed your product data, your images, your headlines, descriptions, all that, from your website into the Google ecosystem. That goes over to Merchant Center. So getting some of those basic piping things set up is definitely the first step. Make sure that you’re tracking conversions and you have all your product data fed to Merchant Center.
 
And then from there it’s always, start simple. What we like to do is run Performance Max, which is Google Ads’ main campaign type, that’s going to run both those shopping carousel ads as well as search ads. So that’s just in the standard headlines and descriptions that you see in your search feed. And then we typically will also run what’s called branded search.
 
And that can be great for a lot of brands where, especially once you start to reach some level of popularity where somebody may be bidding against your search terms, that will help. It’s a defensive play where we’re making sure that when a customer is coming, they’re searching for your particular product, they’re going to find their way right to your website. They’re not going to end up on one of your competitor’s sites who’s selling either a similar product. Or oftentimes we even see resellers sometimes will be undercutting the prices that you have on your own website and showing up in those search terms. In that way it can turn back what you could be doing on Google Ads.
 
Alison Smith: [18:39]
Yeah, I will say the most frustrating thing is when … And we don’t do Google Ads, that’s where Andy comes in if you’re ever needing them, but when you know go to Google and you type in your client’s name and another brand is bidding on their brand name, it’s like, ugh.
 
Andy Janaitis: [19:00]
Definitely.
 
Alison Smith: [19:01]
It’s so dirty, but it’s so good.
 
Andy Janaitis: [19:02]
Yeah. Well, it’s funny. And then people will come and say, “Oh, well, perfect. So should I be doing the same thing against my competitor? Should I run search ads on my competitor’s terms?” And typically we don’t even suggest to do that because it can get really expensive. The nice thing is-
 
Alison Smith: [19:17]
It’s like a bid war.
 
Andy Janaitis: [19:18]
Yeah. And the nice thing is, Google, if you’re running for your actual campaign or your actual brand name, Google is going to give you that search for a lot cheaper than your competitors are going to have to pay for the same search, because the quality of your match to the search query is actually taken into account. So we always say, “That’s a great reason why you should always run your own brand search campaigns, because you’re going to be able to defend your competitors and you’re going to be able to do it pretty cheaply.” It’s only a couple cents a click because they’re coming through to what’s ultimately a really good match for the search intent that the customer was displaying.
 
But on the opposite side of it, we always say, “Don’t go out there and think that you’re going to go ahead and bid on all your competitor terms, because oftentimes you’re going to be paying a lot more than your competitors are going to be paying for those same terms.” And typically, it’s not very easy to find profitability, especially as you’re starting out and you have a smaller budget, that’s not the best spend of your budget.
 
Alison Smith: [20:17]
That is a great tip. I did not know that. So just to break it down for anyone who’s not super familiar with what we’re talking about or PPC. If your brand name is, we’ll say UMAI Marketing, you can bid on the keyword “UMAI,” “UMAI Marketing,” you can extend it as well. That’s what Andy is talking about. So bidding for when someone Googles “UMAI Marketing,” that you show up first. It’s going to be an ad, a sponsored ad, but you show up first before anyone else. Is that right, Andy?
 
Andy Janaitis: [20:50]
Exactly, yep. And it’s a simple test to take. If you want to go to Google right now, type in your exact brand name and see if any competitors are bidding against it. Oftentimes you’ll find that they may be, especially locally, if you have the type of product where it’s a local chocolate company or something like that and you start saying your brand name, you might find some competitors that are bidding right against it.
 
Karin Samelson: [21:15]
So once you have your ads running for a little while and you’re getting some results in and you’re ready to optimize, what would be some top tips on optimization? Where would you start?
 
Andy Janaitis: [21:28]
Definitely. I always look to simplify and really understand what it is we’re trying to get done. The first thing to do is to look at the campaigns you’re running, look at the assets that you’re running. The nice thing in Google, you can go in and say, hey, rather than say, “This is exactly what I want my ad to say, this is the exact headline and this is the exact text that I want under that headline,” you can say, “Hey, here’s up to 15 headlines and here’s up to four descriptions that go under those.” And then Google will mix and match those. That’s what we would call assets. Same way as you can provide a bunch of different images, a bunch of different videos, and all of those assets get mixed and matched together.
 
This is where you’re going to want understand, “Okay, well what are my goals? What is my target ROAS?” ROAS being return on ad spend or essentially the revenue that you’re getting from your Google Ads, divided by the spend that you put in to get it. You want to look at your account and say, “Okay, starting at the campaign level or getting down to the ad group level or getting all the way down to the individual asset level, let me first look at areas where I’m not hitting my target.” This is why it’s important to know your target. But if I look at my account and I’m running three campaigns and two of them are above my target and one of them is below my target, then perfect. Your easy optimization is to either fix whatever’s going on with that bad campaign or to turn it off and really focus your budget into the two campaigns that are working.
 
Or you may find that, “Hey, that brand search campaign is really driving a ton of traffic and we’re getting a bunch of purchases out of that, but when I remove that from my results, I’m not really seeing good results elsewhere in the account.” And that’s where you may say, “Hey, if I just look at the account level, perfect, I’m hitting the goal that I set out for. But 90% of that traffic is people who are searching for my brand name to begin with so I don’t want to be spending that money on that.”
 
But again, that’s where you really just need to understand, before you can get to that level, you need to understand what your goal is, what you’re looking for. And then just start looking at the account, start at the campaign level and drill down level by level until you start to see what’s performing well, what isn’t performing well. Turn off what’s not performing well, and roll some additional budget into what is performing well. I’d say, obviously that’s broad and probably a little bit general.
 
Another big technical point is to really lean into the automated strategies, so make sure that you’re utilizing … In Google Ads it’s called Max Conversion value or Target ROAS bidding strategy. And what that’s going to do is basically allow, rather than say, “Hey, I want to bid exactly $3 per click,” you’re going to be telling Google, “Hey, Google, you can go out there and spend as much or as little per click as you want, but here’s my daily budget and here’s what my target is. So go ahead and optimize, based on what you know about the customer, what you know about my assets, and figure that out.”
 
Karin Samelson: [24:25]
Nice. Making it kind of easy for us. We love when that happens.
 
Andy Janaitis: [24:30]
Yeah.
 
Karin Samelson: [24:31]
Cool. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for these awesome tips. We also did want to share that Andy is a part of our Consumer Goods Growth Course, primarily to really dive into the social advertising aspect of it. So we’d love to just get your feedback on how you’re enjoying the course and anything else you’d like to share there.
 
Andy Janaitis: [24:56]
Definitely. Yeah, so we’ve been in the Growth Course for a while now, and I found it really, really valuable. As Alison mentioned, we’re really focused on Google Ads, and that’s our bailiwick. We look at digital marketing much more broadly from a strategic standpoint, but as far as implementation goes, we don’t do a ton of Facebook ads. So what we used this as a course to make sure that we understood, from a company-wide perspective, as much as we needed to know about Facebook ads to really be able to guide our customers. Was that the right decision for them, is that not the right decision? To the extent that we implement it. We typically would probably work with some great partners like UMAI to get that work done.
 
But yeah, it’s been great to … As a training tool that we use internally to make sure that everyone on the team is up to speed and understands the basics. I think what’s been great about it is it goes really from this super high strategic direction, what’s your goal? What are you going to be doing? What are you trying to get done? And gets all the way down deep into the tactics of, hey, this is exactly how you set up your Facebook account and make sure that you’re running your Facebook and Instagram ads properly. So that’s what we’ve really enjoyed getting out of it.
 
Alison Smith: [26:14]
That is great to hear. And speaking of training, if you’re a brand wanting to learn more about DIY-ing or training your marketing team on Google Ads, Andy is actually going to be hosting our next upcoming Grad Chat, which is our video series. It’s a training video series so that you can expand your marketing knowledge, continue to train your team on all marketing levers, all business levers. It’s for members who are inside of the Growth Course, so we’re super excited about that. And if you guys are interested in learning more or training your team on Google PPC, feel free to DM us and we’ll share with you how to get in.
 
But yeah, excited about that, Andy, and thank you so much for the time and all the value here. This is super awesome. Let’s close this out, and if you would like to leave the audience with how they can reach out to you, where they can find you, all that good stuff.
 
Andy Janaitis: [27:17]
Yeah, thank you for giving me the opportunity there. You can always find me on LinkedIn. I’m always there, posting content on a daily basis. Usually tips and tricks around digital marketing, broadly for eCommerce companies and specifically for Google Ads.
 
Or come on over to ppcpitbulls.com. You can book a free strategy session, that’s a 30-minute session with myself. We’ll get to know you, get to know your unique business goals, and ultimately see if there’s a good fit for us to work together. And even if there isn’t, you’ll definitely leave with some good insights as to the best next step for you to take in your digital marketing journey.
 
Karin Samelson: [27:56]
Awesome, Andy, that’s so generous. A 30-minute strategy session. If you all don’t take him up on that, you’re crazy. Awesome.
 
Andy Janaitis: [28:04]
Come on out.
 
Karin Samelson: [28:06]
Awesome, Andy. Well, thanks for your time. We can’t wait to chat soon.
 
Andy Janaitis: [28:10]
Definitely. Thank you so much for having me.
 
Karin Samelson: [28:13]
Thanks for listening to the UMAI Social Circle, you all. We’re here to support you in your CPG journey, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any new podcast episodes. And while you’re at it, please leave us a review on your listening platform of choice. Shoot us a DM @umaimarketing on Instagram if you have any topics you want us to cover on new podcast episodes.
 
Alison Smith: [28:32]
And don’t forget to access our free masterclass, where we’re showing you how to create a solid marketing strategy. You can access that at umaimarketing.com/masterclass. And we’ll meet you back here for the next episode.
 
 
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Umai Social Circle Homepage

UMAI social circle cpg podcast
UMAI social circle cpg podcast

A Podcast for Food, Bev, and Wellness Biz Owners and Foodies Alike

UMAI Marketing Co-Founders Alison and Karin just launched a podcast!

Every other Thursday, they’ll share irresistibly inspiring food, bev, and wellness brands as well as interviews with CPG industry leaders.

You better believe these two are gonna peel back some layers to reveal the why behind work – what makes this modern world of social media marketing + advertising so special? Let’s find out together.

Pick an episode, any episode – 

#1: Our Founder Story, How Karin & Alison Met

#2: Creating a product that’s *actually* different with Natural Stacks

#3: Siete Foods Mukbang, How They Nurture a +300k Community of Engaged Followers

#4: Shaking up the Market with Vital Farms Pasture-Raised Eggs and Exo Cricket Protein

#5: Kettle & Fire Mukbang, Their Unique Approach to Increasing Average Order Value

#6: How the 1st Ever Coconut Milk Ice Cream, NadaMoo!, Earned Its Way Into the Freezer Aisle

#7: Pabst Brewing Brand Director on Climbing The CPG Ladder

#8: Culina Yogurt Mukbang, the Blueprint for Founder-Forward + Eco-Minded Content

#9: Behind an Accelerator Program, Mentorship, & 2020 Trends with Alyssa Padron of The Ronin Society

#10: Uplifting Female Founders, Pitch Deck Pitfalls, and Getting Funded With Springdale Ventures Principal Caroline Fabacher

#11: The Best Biz Owners Stay Humble & Scrappy, Words of Wisdom From SKU’s Chief Operating Officer

#12: Marc Nathan on Mindfully Scaling Your Biz & Building Community

#13: The 360° CPG Experience With Notley’s VP of Marketing, Emily Kealey

#14: Poppi Mukbang, This Insta-Worthy Rebrand & Influencer Network Is Poppin’ Off

#15: Should You Clap Back?? Responding to Negative Comments on Social

#16: Surviving to Thriving on Grocery Shelves with Alli Ball, Creator of Retail Ready®

#17: Amplify Snack Brands’ Sr. Supply Chain Planner Explains Big-Picture Inventory Strategy

#18: Food Styling and Product Photography Tips with Ashleigh Amoroso

#19: Andy Kurtts Unwraps the Mysteries of Branding and Packaging Design

#20: Financial Planning Success with the Good Food CFO

#21: Joi Chevalier on Thoughtful, Repeatable Management Systems

#22: Formulating Authentic Better-For-You Products With Marissa Epstein

#23: Navigating In-Person Brand Activations with Dragon Spirits Marketing

#24: Get to Know the Ins and Outs of Food and Beverage CPG with Consultant Trish W.

#25: Early Stage Essentials for CPG Brands with Sari Kimbell 

#26: The Good Audit Episode 1: Willow Street Snacks with The Rind PR

#27: The Good Audit Episode 2: Lost River Apothecary with The Rind PR

#28: The Good Audit Episode 3: Sippin Snax with The Rind PR

#29: The Good Audit Episode 4: The Cumin Club with The Rind PR

#30: Define, Align and Activate a Killer Brand Strategy with Katie Mleziva

#31: Creatively Marketing your Herbal Brand while adhering to Regulations with Zoë and Summer

#32: Going “All-In” on your CPG Business with Morgan from Granarly

#33: Developing Relationships for Strategic Sales Growth with Amy Zitelman of Soom Foods

#34: CPG Pandemic Pivot with Diana Beshara, Co-founder & CEO of Cantina Royal

#35: How Steady Growth Created a Better CPG Business with April King

#36: Growing a Women’s Wellness Brand with Kate Morton of Funk It Wellness

#37: Lessons Learned from 7-Figure CPG Brands: Operations (Part 1 of 3)

#38: Lessons Learned from 7-Figure CPG Brands: Retail (Part 2 of 3)

#39: Lessons Learned from 7-Figure CPG Brands: Digital Marketing (Part 3 of 3)

#40: Top Google PPC Tips from Andy Janaitis of PPC Pitbulls

#41: 4 Easy Ways to Increase Email Clicks & Opens

#42: How to Utilize User Generated Content to Drive Sales

#43: 6 Tips for Using Canva to Create Quality Content Faster

#44: BFCM Case Study: How to Plan an 80% Revenue Increase Promotion!

#45: How to decide on your promo offer (ft. Carley)

#46: Mary Ruth’s Promo Email Deep Dive

#47: 3 Tips to Training your Marketing Team

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