w/ Depesh Mandalia, SM Commerce
“It’s truly magic. That’s the word I use internally to describe what we’re doing here.”
What if you could turn $800K into $26 million in just 18 months—using nothing but Facebook ads? That’s exactly what Depesh Mandalia did. In this episode, he breaks down how he went from figuring out Facebook ads the hard way to running an agency that’s managed over $100 million in client revenue. Depesh doesn’t hold back on the real wins, the messy failures, and the lessons learned from scaling campaigns that most of us can only dream about.
We dig into why creative is king, how to survive the iOS 14 apocalypse, and why scaling ads gets easier once you’ve cracked the code. Plus, there’s a surprising ad campaign involving a 1-star review that somehow… worked.
Kurt Elster
This episode is sponsored in part by Omnisend. Shopify store owners, are you tired of juggling multiple tools to manage your marketing? Well, meet Omnisend, the only platform you'll ever need to skyrocket your e-com sales. With OmniSend, setting up e-com automations is so simple, you'll have them up and running before you finish your morning coffee. Plus, you can segment your customers based on their shopping habits and even dive into SMS or push notifications, all from one seamless dashboard. OmniSend isn't just another marketing tool. It's the secret weapon behind over a hundred thousand successful e-com brands. Whether it's crafting eye-catching emails or sending out timely texts, Omnisend helps you connect with your customers like never before Give your brand the boost it deserves. Don't wait. Your best campaigns are just a click away. Your dot omnisen. com slash unofficial Shopify Podcast. Omniscent. Welcome back to the unofficial Shopify podcast. I'm your host, Kurt Elster. Jack Nasty. And joining me today is Deepesh Mandalia, who is a Facebook ads expert. There are many But this particular ads expert has 20 years of e-commerce experience and has done quite a job scaling. He scaled a company from 800,000 to 26 and a half million in 18 months and started an agency that's handled a hundred million in client revenue and came uh highly recommended from a previous guest, uh Greg from Empire Flippers, who taught us about selling businesses. And so I take those recommendations seriously. and reached out and and talked to DuPesh. And uh I I said, man, I gotta have you on my podcast. What do I gotta do? And luckily for all of us, he said yes. Sir, welcome to the show. How you doing?
Depesh Mandalia
Yeah, I'm very good. Thanks for having me.
Kurt Elster
The okay, let's start off you've been doing this a long time. How did how'd you get into this industry? What are you doing here? How'd you start?
Depesh Mandalia
What am I doing here? How did it happen? So prior to joining online marketing twenty years ago I went into software development. So I built my first website in 1998. So I'm dating myself here. Um and I enjoyed that experience. And then I got into kind of coding and backend and front end and all that kind of stuff. In 2003, uh no 2005, a job came up and it said website project manager. So I applied for it thinking I know a bit of project management, I know a bit about websites, let's see see what happens. And the long and short is The website project manager was managing um content management system, CMS, managing landing pages, managing on-site SEO, search engine optimization, and analytics. So that was my first kind of uh entry point into worldwide online marketing, really kind of getting deep into it. And then everything just, you know, blew up from there.
Kurt Elster
And so I mean good timing. What year was that when you you're 2005.
Depesh Mandalia
So I I had knowledge of internet marketing, but I'd never been involved in it. So back then, and by the way, the company I joined, this is An interesting little story. Um it was a hotel company. So they were trying to sell hotel breaks online, but it was an over fifty five market. And back then it was so difficult to convince this over fifty five market that it's safer to book online than it is to call up the call center and give your credit card details to a human on the other side of of the uh call. From my perspective, that felt riskier. Like someone could just write down the card details, right? So for us, we were going against the tide at the time, and it was an interesting exploration into the world of online marketing.
Kurt Elster
The and how did you get involved with um with clients? Like when did you start consulting on on Facebook ads?
Depesh Mandalia
Yeah, so that started um consulting started around twenty I'm trying to think now, twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, give or take. Um and it was an unfortunate turn of fortunate events that led me there. So 2009, I was made redundant from that role in uh that hotel company.
Kurt Elster
A lot of us were made redundant in 2009.
Depesh Mandalia
Yeah, all all the crazy th stuff was going on in the world, so like half the team were let go. Um And it was through that that I kinda decided I don't like this experience of relying on an employer and, you know, doing really well. We'd grown their ma revenues massively. But then like just like that, your job's gone. And and that felt so uncomfortable. So Um, I started to do some freelancing, some contracting work, and I enjoyed it. And I enjoyed the fact that I could do three months here, six months here, pick up this experience. work with this company, go somewhere else. Um and then eventually as I started to learn about Facebook ads, I started to go deeper into that world as well.
Kurt Elster
And you had a background in in CRO and SEO. Do you think that changed your approach to Facebook ads?
Depesh Mandalia
100%, yeah. Because that was my um starting point. So some people come into it from, hey, I've done Google ads and now I'm learning Facebook. Uh some people are offline advertisers and they go online. For me, my starting point was conversion rate optimization. So that's at the heart of Everything I've done, whether it's been Facebook ads or Google ads, I've run TV ads, I've done print advertising, everything for me has run off of conversion rate optimization. and learning for the from the likes of Claude C. Hopkins. Like I think his book was one of the first I I read on scientific advertising, written like a hundred years ago or whenever it was. But the principles are still sound today. It doesn't matter how you're selling the the principles are still there on split testing, on human behavior and psychology. Even back then he was doing split testing using coupons. So he pushed one print ad with one coupon, another print ad with another coupon, and asked the stores to tally up which coupon work best. So a hundred years ago they were thinking about this kind of concept. For us it's now easier to do split testing, but the principles are still the same.
Kurt Elster
Who was this that did this?
Depesh Mandalia
Or that wrote this book? What was the book? Scientific Advertising.
Kurt Elster
Alright, I'm I'll make sure to add that one to the show notes and check it out.
Depesh Mandalia
Absolutely.
Kurt Elster
And did I hear that you had uh a background in affiliate marketing as well?
Depesh Mandalia
Well, that came in 2009. When I lost my job, I couldn't find one for three months because all of a sudden half of the UK was in redundancy. So every job I'd go for, first of all there's like over a hundred applicants. And secondly, everyone's having to drop their salary expectations because they're just desperate for a job. And that's what led me to how can I make money online? So everyone's got their own story of how they did that first search. And that led me to affiliate marketing. So I knew SEO, I was learning WordPress, and I put the two together and made money through SEO and kind of using the blog format of WordPress to generate traffic. And I actually grew that we hit a million in um sales for our affiliate partners by 2012. And at that point, I was ready to ditch my contracting work and go full-time into affiliate marketing. But also in 2012, Google changed the rules and I didn't realize what's going on. So There's an update called Penguin, another one called Panda. They changed the algorithms and we went from tens of thousands of visits every month to zero. It was like a flat line. So if you imagine, you know, the beats. We were dead and I didn't know what to do because all of a sudden I was relying on all this free traffic because I knew how to work the SEO system and I had nothing So we had generated good money um from affiliate marketing, but now I had no business. And that's what led me into Facebook advertising because I needed another platform. So it's like how can we get traffic? I tried Google ads, but it was too expensive for me to bid on the keywords I needed. So we fell into Facebook. I didn't make any money, but I found a new platform and I went deeper into it as well.
Kurt Elster
Tell me about your first big breakthrough with Facebook ads.
Depesh Mandalia
Yeah, that was twenty fourteen. So twenty twelve to twenty fourteen I wasted a lot of my own money and I didn't make any money on Facebook. Um so twenty fourteen a guy reached out on LinkedIn. He said, Hey I've seen your background, we need some help with CRO, some traffic stuff. Uh we we sell children's book, we can sell it through our affiliates. Affiliates are selling it really well. Um but we'd love to see what you could do for us. And and I remember at the time I was in between contracts and he made an offer of something like I think it was like hundred and fifty d 150 pounds a day or or something really low. And I looked at that and I thought, I can get three to four times that, just based on my experience. But at the same time, there's something about this where I thought There's an opportunity to learn as well. So I said, look, I'll I'll help you out for a few weeks. Um and when I met the team and I got deeper into it, I really, really enjoyed it. So I worked with them for about four to six weeks initially. Um in that time I did get a full-time job offer somewhere else. But in that time I saw that they had something working on Facebook and what that what I mean by that is They'd spend a thousand and maybe make eight hundred back. Maybe they'd spend two thousand and make fifteen hundred back. So they were making sales more than I was doing before. And my start point was actually I didn't touch the ads so much. I did work on conversion rates. So landing page and funnel and cart and things like that. And I started to see an improvement. Then I thought, right, what's actually working on Facebook? So I started to look at campaigns and setups and stuff. It was a bit of a mess. And I think it was May of that year we managed to spend a thousand and make five thousand back. And and that was like a mind-blowing thing for me at the time for them as well, just to prove that you could get five dollars back for or five pounds back for every pound you put in. And and then you know you just took off from there.
Kurt Elster
So is that like the moment where you realize that this strategy works?
Depesh Mandalia
Absolutely. Absolutely. And and very quickly, I think the next month we went to we went and spent ten K and made fifty K back. So it was we'd proven we could make money and then we proved we could actually scale it. And and those two things just, you know, helped us to take it. to those crazy numbers 18 months later. And this product was a children's book? Children's personalized book. Uh it retailed for twenty pounds, so about twenty six dollars at the time. Um and it was it was a very hard proposition to get across because you had to key in your child your child's name, let's say John or Jonathan, whatever it is. then the book would be customized based on the letters of their name. So the story's different for everyone. Um, but at the same time it was an amazing experience for a child. And we had to get that proposition across in a small ad on Facebook and get that whole process across on the landing page. So it wasn't an easy thing to explain. But the breakthrough for us was actually when we managed to increase our age average order values, because we talked more about gifting. Now one of the things I talk to uh e com uh store sellers all the time is speak to your customers and find out what where where that product is placed in their life. So for example, we did some outreach to our customers. We had our customer service uh people go out. and and call up our customers and say, what made you buy this book? What what other things were you considering? What ultimately made you choose this? So th those kind of questions. And more often than not, people were gifting the book to other children. So as parents, we were targeting parents, but they weren't necessarily buying it for their kids. They just saw it as a great gift idea for another kid, for a birthday party, for a Christmas, for whatever it was. And then we realize we were talking to parents about their kids, but we weren't talking to gifters. Now all of a sudden when you talk about the gifting market It's parents, but it's grandparents, it's uncles, it's aunts, it's like all of a sudden there's a whole massive new demographic that we didn't even think about. And that helped us to tap into a whole new level of growth for the business as well.
Kurt Elster
What's interesting is your success with Facebook ads. You're like, hey, we started with uh optimizing the funnel so CRO work. on-site work and hey, we needed to understand why our customers buy. We need to understand who they buy. You wanted to know that that audience and customer psychology. That's very interesting. That's quite a different approach than like I'm gonna make a bunch of ads and see which ones work and just go through that.
Depesh Mandalia
And and the funny thing is when I um started looking at their ads, like the very first and and this is in the book I'm writing on on kind of how I learned how Facebook works. When I looked at their winning ad, it was written in a style that I felt was very amateur. And it was like Uh so the company's name was Lost My Name. So the the text was something like, Hey, we're lost my name, we've created a new book, we think it'd be cool for you to have a look. And it just felt very tame. It wasn't because I I I coming to this as a CRO, conversion rate optimized uh based copywriter. So for me I'm thinking about every word matters and you know structurally, psychologically and all that kind of stuff. So when I tried to compete with that ad, it wouldn't work. And I couldn't figure it out until I realized That ad felt so natural in the newsfeed for Facebook. Because when I was writing ad copy it felt like Sal's copy. Whereas the way um this um customer service person actually wrote this, she wrote it in a style that you'd write to your friend. And and that's how Facebook works. And then I started to flow with that and I realized where I was going wrong and where I needed to act a bit more friendlier, like I'm writing to a friend and things like that. And that made a huge difference.
Kurt Elster
You yeah, your approach to it wasn't wrong, but it read as sales copy versus this other method which felt wrong but wasn't. was based felt natural in its context. It felt native to a Facebook feed and in that way made it disarming where you you went you actually read it and went, Well maybe this is interesting to me as opposed to just skipping over it 'cause you registered it as an ad. Interesting. The so you helped when you helped scale lost my name, where did where'd you peak at Facebook ad spend? Because you what you said, you know, spend a thousand, make five thousand Clear why we're going to sky's the limit. Keep going.
Depesh Mandalia
Absolutely. And and in twenty fourteen we ended at eight million dollars. So for us it was just phenomenal that in twenty thirteen the company made eight hundred thousand and would 10x that in the period of twelve months. And I'd only been working with them since April, May of that year. So that that scaling was phenomenal. Now, at that time, I think we were spending maybe give or take four or five K a day on ad spend. And I thought like I was one of the biggest ad spenders out there. Like it felt a wild number. Now coming into 2015, we then start to translate the books into German, into French, into Spanish. So without tapping into non-English uh speaking markets. And we needed to expand our team. So it was around March, April of 2015 I was hiring for media buyers to join my team. One media buyer, so at that point we're spending 10k a day. So there's me thinking I'm a high flyer. Like I can't imagine you can spend more than 10k a day on Facebook ads. I interviewed a guy from a company called King. King are a gaming company that own games such as Candy Crush, which a lot of people know. And as he was talking about so I you know, I was interviewing him and saying and I said, Look, you know, what's your experience with ad spend? How much ad spend have you managed? He goes, Well, the team we're part of, we spend about half a million a day. on Facebook day uh on Facebook ads. Whoa. And I I had to just stop and ask him five hundred thousand a day on Facebook ads. And he goes, give or take, it's up or down based on performance. I'm like I just couldn't get my head around it. Like, here's me at 10,000 a day thinking I've capped Facebook. Like, I can't imagine it's any more than that. This guy comes into an interview and just blows me out of the water. Um and that really that was on my mind. Like I couldn't get my head around this thing. So from the period of May to uh September or October, because Q4 being our biggest you know, selling period as it is for me, e-commerce stores, it was just stuck in my head. How do I get more than 10k of ad spend a day? We did manage to scale it and and we got it to 20k to 30k to 50k. Um and and it was a scary time because if you imagine spending even fifty dollars a day, spending five hundred dollars a day, whatever it is, every change you make, positive or negative, has an impact. So you might gain an extra $50 of revenue or lose $50. That gets amplified because now you're spending $50,000 a day. A change, good or bad, could cost you five or ten K in revenue a day. And and that's that's a big scary thing for me as you know as as a marketer. That I'm responsible for that for the company. And it was, you know, you you start to maybe think about things differently. And and it occupied my mind 24-7. Now going into October of that year We did continue scaling and I think in November we hit about 250,000 in a day on Facebook ads. And we were running in uh we were running maybe five or six different ad accounts. Uh I had four or five media buyers helping me. Uh we were I think at that time we'd done some analysis and we'd sold to almost every country on the earth. Every country we could deliver to, it was literally a wild experience. Majority was uh our top markets were UK, Canada. Germany and uh US, the four big markets, but we were literally selling everywhere and anywhere. And it was just uh At that point I was working seven days a week because you cannot manage that kind of budget and take week on weekends off. Like it you just you just can't. So it was super stressful. It wasn't a fun experience. Uh I don't think we had the proper systems in place 'cause I'd never done that before. And I I like who do you turn to to go, Hey, I need some advice on how you spend two hundred Even Facebook couldn't help me. And I'd ask them and say, Can you tap into, you know, what what should I be doing? And they're like, Well, here's some advice and here's some things and stuff like that. But yeah, it was looking back, it was a great experience, but it was also really stressful.
Kurt Elster
This episode is sponsored in part by Zippify. Hey there, just checking in. Need a quick break? Grab some water, take a deep breath. And relax. Now, let's talk about something easy. One click upsell. There's no simpler way to boost your revenue this holiday season than by downloading One Click Upsell. It automatically increases your average order value with pre- and post-purchase upsells. And these aren't just generic offers everyone ignores. OneClick Upsells AI creates smart, personalized upsells that customers actually want. Plus, it includes a free cart drawer feature to boost conversions. Most apps charge extra for that. Whether it's holiday bundles, mystery gifts, or free shipping at checkout, one click upsell has you covered. And if you're running on fumes, just use their pre-built AI funnel to add upsells to every product in one click. Simple. So be kind to yourself this holiday season. Download one click upsell and start your free 30-day trial at zipify. com/slash Kurt. That's Z-I-P-I-F-Y. com slash K-U-R T. I'm glad you mentioned just the reality of the stress of that. I have friends, of course, with other Facebook marketers as well, people in the same position where they're marketing managers for clients. And there is no group of of people in our space more stressed out than the Facebook marketers. I mean, there's I don't you're like I was losing sleep and work at 24-7, work that's a lot of them. And it just seems brutal.
Depesh Mandalia
Absolutely. And and and you know when I made that transition into the world of agency, that became amplified because now Where I was contracting, for example, for Lost My Name, it was me working for one client and managing their ads and and scaling and, you know, doing crazy stuff. Then you have two clients, then you have three, then you have ten, then you have fifteen clients. Essentially your responsibility is 80-90% of that comp that business owner's success because For us, we were a Facebook ads well, we are a Facebook ads primarily Facebook ads agency. The companies that come to us are also spending eighty, ninety percent of their budget on Facebook. So therefore Whether we're spending $100 a day or $10,000 a day, we're taking a huge responsibility for growing that company. And I think that's one of the major stresses for when you are in the client services game. that you're taking on your client's burden as well. Because that store owner, for example, is relying on you to not only look after their cash. It's not my money, it's their money. but to also grow it. So you're like an investment manager, you're like a fund manager. You have to make sure you're making the right decisions of where that money goes, all the things that you do. It is. And and by the way, in two thousand seven um I studied um the kind of forex markets because I was doing currency exchange and I was learning how to do trading and a lot of that went into Facebook in in terms of learning how trading works. is very similar to how the auction works. So for example in trading, if there's um you know a major update, let's say in a few weeks' time, uh presidential elections, it has an impact on economies and stuff like that. That plays into the foreign exchange markets. So you have to be able to read the markets and understand what uh investments to make and when to pull back. Same thing happens with Facebook. So let's say we're entering Q four, we all know the costs go up. Competition goes up, but there's more ad inventory because a lot more people are looking to buy. So you have to look at all these signals and decide how do I spend, where do I spend. For example, our Q4 strategy starts in August. We start in August with our planning. We start with promotions, audience building, list building, seeding. into September and October so that we can have the biggest success in November. So all those kind of things play into uh those kind of huge spends and huge revenues as well.
Kurt Elster
Well I should have mentioned it or asked what's the name of your agency? Okay. And you're managing a hundred million in ad spend, knowing what you know now. What's your approach to handling those large ad accounts?
Depesh Mandalia
The only thing I would say is ant management becomes easier the more you spend. So when we were managing clients when we first started off And we were managing clients at $100 a day, $1,000 a day. There's a lot more variance there, because you don't have a prove an offer, your funnels are not stable, there's so much work needing to be done on construction. As you start to spend 10,000 a day and and 20,000 a day, you've got a proven offer, your funnels are working, conversion rates good. At that stage, you're what you're spending more time on creatives and offers. And therefore it's actually easier to manage.
Kurt Elster
In your experience and that coaching and agency work, what are the the common mistakes you keep seeing over and over again?
Depesh Mandalia
I uh I think it's one of the things that you mentioned early on, uh where you said For example, we came in and fixed the conversion rate, the funnel, we worked on AOV, for example. I think people hack Facebook ads too much and they expect too much of Facebook as well. So It's like, should I run three campaigns? Should I run campaign budget? Should I do ad set budget? Should I do manual bid? Uh do I do image versus video? Um and and they're they're so fixated on the Facebook platform. That I would argue eight or nine out of ten prospects that come to us and say we need help with Facebook ads, Facebook is not the problem. It's your offer, it's your funnel, it's your landing page, it's your proposition, your messaging, your avatar. the things that maybe people don't think about and certainly Facebook don't help you to think about are generally the problems. So even talking about Avatar, we had a um a guy come to us. He was selling some kind of keep fits. thing. It was like build your abs and all that kind of stuff. And he was his his um ad was something along the lines of buy this product, uh limited stock, get X percent off. And that was his uh thing and there was just some images and videos. And I said, You're appealing to people that already know what the product is and already know what the solution is. So you think about um Maslow's uh no Eugene Schultz's um stages of awareness. So at the very top you have people who are Not aware of problem or solution or anything like that. They're just in the market. They can be influenced, but it's harder. So for example, if someone's Got it in the back of their mind I'd like a new TV. They're not looking for it. They haven't researched it or anything like that. So it's gonna be you can tap into that market, but it's gonna be harder. Then you've got people who are, my TV's on the blink now, I need to get a new TV. They haven't researched, but they're in that mind frame that I do want to find out more. Then you've got people who have actually actively searched for a TV. But don't really know what one they want. So maybe they have an idea of the size. I I I know I want a 42 HTV. I don't know the difference between L C D and LED and all these kind of things. Then you have the market that are super aware. So they know they want the Sony, they know they want the 42-inch, they want all the digital programming. So they're all the different levels of awareness. And the and the problem is an ad that, you know, talks about a discount and talks about limited stock and doesn't really explain anything else, that's the very bottom of that triangle. So at the very top you've got lots of people, at the very bottom you've got a few people. And if you're playing there, you're competing on cost and and you're competing with everyone because they're the low-hanging fruit. They're the people that are ready to buy. But everyone wants them. So how do you step up? So then when we started to look at who they're targeting and and their uh prospects and stuff, we said, well, okay, we're coming into summer. If people are going on holiday, what do they want? They will look great on the beach for their partner, for someone else, for whatever it is for their own convents. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about Beach Body. Let's talk about how this product's gonna help you get that beach body. And you know, it came with a 90-day trial, for example. Let's talk about you you can do this, get the 90-day trial, get the video series. Give them value, give them a reason to want the product beyond just the price and the fact that there's limited stock. So now all of a sudden you're changing the game and you're playing a different game to what everyone else is trying to do on on Facebook. Which is you're not selling the products and saying, Hey, this this is good to build your abs. Why do you want to build those abs? Let's go a step further. And and we go deeper into finding out their needs and desires and you can actually start to convert more people and increase your margin as well.
Kurt Elster
I think what is again what's so clever here is there are so many levers and knobs to to mess with in Facebook ads and you everything you talked about. goes back to customer psychology. Where are they in that that decision funnel of making a a purchase decision? And that's just so important to understand. And I think that's the thing that it separates um, you know, someone who may have who's read a lot on the topic and like really tried to educate themselves. versus just like I'm gonna dive in and try and figure out Facebook ads and then wonder, okay, why can't I scale these?
Depesh Mandalia
And and that was me in twenty twelve. So when I first started with Facebook ads, we've all been there. Like we've all been there and I'd already dealt with Google Ads for the company I was at before. So I came into Facebook thinking if I can get the lowest cost per click and I can get a low a high click to rate, then I'm gonna be uh you know doing amazing and that's all I focused on. So I was really heavy into the Facebook ads platform, trying to get low costs and doing lots of tests and throwing lots of things at ads manager and and nothing worked. I lost thousands and thousands of dollars trying to figure it out Until a few years later, I realized it's not about me, it's not about the Asplore platform, it's about the prospect. How do I get deeper into their mind and how do I convince them that I've got something worthy? for them. And that's why I went deeper into the psychology. So uh think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's another model I use, which is If you think about the lowest level of Maslow's hierarchy, it's the human basic needs. So sleep, drink, eat, things like that. If you're explaining a product that's related to eating or sleeping or drinking You don't have to explain why you need to sleep, why you need to eat, why you need to drink. That's that's common knowledge for every human on earth. But you do have to explain why your product related to that is different to someone else's. So if I'm dr selling water, for example. Very hard to sell water. However, if you've got a mechanism that you can tap into. Now, the the made-up example I use is imagine there's a water that supports ketosis. So let's say you're on a um uh low carb diet, you want to do keto and all that kind of stuff. Let's say there was a k the a water that enhanced your ketosis, so you could work on your physical conditioning and stuff like that. Now all of a sudden I have an edge. So I'm selling water at the end of the day, but now I've got a different edge. If I'm selling something at the top of Maslow's hierarchy of knees, there are things where people want to be inspired, they want to inspire others, they want to be creative. Think about selling things around um mindfulness. So when someone's selling, let's say, a mindfulness course or um you know the the the rock lamps, I think I've got one of those rock lamps up there. I didn't turn it on, I forgot. They're things that people talk about can help you uh feel better, feel more energetic energetic, feel more positive. You need to explain why that's relevant. Because water you need to survive, but why do I need to be why do I need mindfulness? Now if you talk about entrepreneurs and the stress of running Facebook ads and the stress of running e-commerce. Now all of a sudden you can tap into mindfulness. So it's just finding those edges as you're trying to advertise that makes the biggest difference. Focusing on that, if you did 80% of your time focusing on the psychology the placement of your product, how it solves a problem, and then just 20% on ads, you'll be hugely successful.
Kurt Elster
And you know, the one thing we haven't discussed here is ad creative, right? I don't think it's come up. Creative it feels like that's that's such a crucial element of this. How do you approach creative development or or what's your advice for us on how we should be doing it?
Depesh Mandalia
Absolutely. So I remember I ran a uh survey back in twenty fifteen and we selected a group of um customers that bought through Facebook. We'd we'd been tracking through Google tracking. And we sent them an email and said, um, here's a set of ads that we run on Facebook. You may have clicked through one of them, you may have seen something similar. Can you tell us what made you stop to take note of the ad and then what made you click the ad? Because what I wanted to find out is beyond just split testing and seeing what worked, what was it about the ad creative itself that kind of resonated? Um I think like 93, 94% of people said the visual made them stop and take notice. Then the rest of them said it was the copy below the image. So the headline image or the headline text below the image or the video. And then the rest said they just read the copy and then decide that they will click. Now What we kind of gathered from that was when we come up with our creative testing, number one is how do we get them to stop in the newsfeed? So Facebook called this thumb stopping content.
Kurt Elster
The thumb is all types of techniques.
Depesh Mandalia
You can use different colours, different ways of standing out, you can use humor, you can use um unexpected, creative, things like that. So we spend a lot of time thinking about that, but in context of our avatar. Then we think about the headline, so the headline that appears below. And then we w focus on the first few lines of the main body copy. Now when we do our testing, we test heavily on the creative first and not the copy because if no one clicks the read more to expand down the you know short or long copy you've written, then it might as well not exist So the first step is, and this is our testing process, what creative is going to stand out? How can we do something unexpected? I'll give you an example. Um we launched an ebook for um our business earlier this year. One of the creators we just launched as a test has a picture of the book and a one out of five star review with a big quote that says uh This book is so grammatically poor. Because it's a funny uh refund request we got back, which was um the material looks okay, but the grammar's terrible, so I want a refund. And I'm like, you know, we're teaching Facebook ads and you know that's irrelevant. If you feel like the grammar's so bad that you don't want to go through the Facebook ads training. That's not on us. And and so what I wrote in the ad copy was something and and the copy says something like I didn't really do well at school because I didn't, you know, English wasn't great, but I am a good copywriter. And I put that in there. I said somehow my copies help to make a hundred million dollars for my clients. And that's what I packed into this e bulb. So if you care about grammar, ignore this ad. If grammar's okay, go and you know buy this book or whatever. So like that creative did really well to uh get click-through and get attention because now we're using a negative review in a positive way. So it's just thinking about things like that as well.
Kurt Elster
You know, it's unexpected. Uh and also I sincerely doubt the grammar was that bad. I don't think it was that bad, but I mean some people are Yeah, well, I think they had they had had a bad day. Ever wake up to customers canceling orders? Maybe they said, I shouldn't shop when I'm high. This was a gift we broke up. Those are all real customer quotes. And they're all a real hassle for your customer and you. Why should the customer have to ask you to edit their order for them? What if they could do it themselves? Enter Cleverific! With Cleverific, you can empower your customers to make their own changes through a self-service portal. Cleverific is designed to reduce customer support tickets ship orders faster, and even reduce returns and lost packages. Don't just take our word for it. Menswear retailer Peter Manning New York cut their order support queries by ninety-nine percent with Cleverific, and they're not alone. Exclusively For listeners of the unofficial Shopify podcast, get 50% off Cleverific's Pro Plan, now just $49 a month, giving you full access to everything Cleverific has to offer Just go to clever effict. com slash unofficial and use the promo code KERT50, that's K-R-U-T-50, at checkout to claim your discount. Take control with Cleverific and watch your customer support tickets plummet, shipping speeds increase, and package returns decrease. And all of that means happier customers. Well, you've done this long term. And so I want to know what is the some of the core differences you see between your brands that thrive long term and the ones that don't?
Depesh Mandalia
Um, I I think a big part of it is how they're reinvesting in their growth. So at every stage of business, any business, but especially for e-com, I see this a lot as well. You get to a stage where you're now making some money and you have to make decisions on how are you gonna grow now. So a lot of the e-comm store owners when they're starting off, they're take they're wearing many hats. Some people focus more heavily on products and fulfillment and things like that. Others will focus a lot more on marketing. Whatever it is, at some point you need to let those hats go. And and you need to prioritize those hats as well. So for example, we had a client that joined us uh also in 2018 He was wearing a lot of the hats, but the hat he held on to was the ads hat, the marketing hat, because he'd grown his business. It was a ski wear company and Product fulfillment customer service wasn't his thing. So they're the things that he striked to outsource. Took his company to about two million a year in revenue But he held on to the marketing however he realized he was a bottleneck because he couldn't grow it any further. They were just plateauing at two million a year. For a lot of people that's great. But he wanted to grow. He wanted to actually step out of the day to day running of the business and he wanted to expand his product line and do more. That's when he approached us. We took on the advertising and and you know, we that was another a m amazing scaling story where They were on two million a year. We hit 16 million in revenue in five months. Now, what he brought to us was an amazing product, amazing follow, and things like that. We did some magic in the Facebook ads account. on a on a product an offer that's doing really well, the extra money that came in, he reinvested it into future growth. He actually built his own internal team. uh built translated uh websites, developed a new product portfolio, he kept reinvesting it. So he was a a model example of doing things the right thing at the right time and letting go of things and developing and growing. Whereas I see a lot of other people they're Uh uh some people come into it scared. Like they've never done never done this e-com thing before and now they're making twenty K a month, now they're making thirty K a month. They want to take profits out. They want to go and buy a car now. They want to go and go on that holiday now. Which is fine. Like I'm not here to say how people should run their life. But if you're serious about business growth, and I went through this myself, you really have to think about where your money's going. For the first twelve months of my agency, I didn't take any income from it. Um it's not that I didn't need it, it's just that I felt that my business needed it more than me. I needed help. I needed to invest in the in the growth of the uh business. And therefore me taking a salary out would have meant I can't hire another person or two people or I can't go and do this or do that. They're the decisions I think some business owners struggle with. Um and a lot of them just don't have the support and advice they need as well.
Kurt Elster
No, yeah. Well and it's tough when the the flip side to being your your your own the flip side to being your own boss is yeah you don't have you're making all the decisions. You know, who do you have to talk to? Who do you have to bounce ideas off of? Right. That, especially like as a solo founder, that just compounds it. Um and so subtly it's tough.
Depesh Mandalia
So so on that note, um because of that, in twenty nineteen as my business started to grow, I Um reached out to an old friend of mine who I knew was a business coach and I said, Look, this is where I'm at. I feel I need to be held accountable because the problem is As we started to grow our team in 2019 and 2020, I became the go-to person for every question every major question in the business, but no one would question whatever I came up with. So it's like At the end of the day, I don't know if we're doing the right thing. I it feels like the right thing, but no one's challenging me. So I felt like I needed someone to do that. Um and he he became my uh mentor in the business, business mentor. We'd meet weekly, we'd you know chat on uh WhatsApp and stuff like that. He would challenge me and he'd he'd make sure that I'm thinking about the different angles of my decision. So I'm like, I want to hire this person, it's gonna cost 5k a month. Uh we got the money, we should do it. And he's like, but if you're spending 5k there, don't forget you're gonna have to support them, train them, they're reporting to you now. Do you have the time? All right, yeah, I didn't really think about that. I'm quite stretched for time right now. But they're the things that I'd otherwise just go into because I felt like it was the right thing to do. Um and then actually a friend another friend of mine recommended I read a book called Rocket Fuel. Highly recommend for any business owner that like me is a bit of a maverick in the sense of you get an idea and you just want to do it. and needs accountability. So what Rocket Fuel made me understand was there's the kind of creative uh leader in the business And then there's someone who needs to rein that person in and also make things happen. So the the way they split the role is there's a visionary. Most business owners are visionaries. They know where they want to go. They have ideas for what they want to do, but they need an integrator. An integrator is generally an operations person. That led to me hiring an ops director for my own business. And she came from a much bigger business, business doing 25 million a year. That's where I wanted to get to. So she would come into it and hold me accountable, but also support me in getting things done. 'Cause delivery isn't my s my biggest strength when it comes to big business and stuff. Um, because I'm so caught up in new ideas. I it for me it's fun. Let's launch this new thing, let's go and do this new thing, should hold me accountable and rein me in as well. So for example Same scenario. If I say, hey, we should go and hire this 5k person, or for example, I think there was a project I wanted to run uh to develop our own software tool. And she goes We can do that, the team had the capability, but if they're doing that, they're not doing this. Have you thought about this? Oh, I didn't. So she's now managing and tempering my expectations. Still cares about the growth of the business, but is helping the team by me because the thing is if I say, hey team, we should do this thing, they'll be like, okay, the boss says we should do this thing, so definitely we need to do this thing. not always the right thing. So building that accountability is really important. And that's actually what led me to uh developing my own accountability for agency owners. So now I work with agency owners as their accountability partner in the same way. Because I feel like business owners need this kind of thing as well. So when my agency will come in and do coaching and consulting for e-com businesses, I personally do that for agencies as well. So that I can hold them accountable just as I was, so they don't make the same mistakes as well.
Kurt Elster
Which do you find to be the most rewarding? Right? There's several things you're doing here with different audiences. Essentially I just asked you, who's your favorite child?
Depesh Mandalia
Absolutely. So first of all, throughout this whole journey, the biggest thing I found is I love Coaching, mentoring, and teaching. Uh I never knew I'd go into this, never even thought about it. Um I love working with business owners. Selling online and stuff is fine. We we have our own e-com store. We're not doing so much with it right now. Uh we run you know ads on Facebook and we can acquire customers and do all that kind of stuff. The thing that brings me the most uh fulfillment is working with business owners directly. So whether it's e-comm or agency owners, um, because it's a human-to-human relationship and you're influencing someone's life. you're having an impact on their future goals and where they're heading and I can bring my learnings into it. You know, first twelve months of agency for me were not great. I can do well and terms of my own health, my own mental state, uh profits, it was all over the place. If I can help someone skip that, then great.
Kurt Elster
Isn't that just part? Don't we we just really uh gloss over that part of the entrepreneurial journey? Or absolutely sugarcoat it. We're like, yeah, no, that's you're just living the struggle. It's so great. And it you know it is part of it, but also man, if you could skip it, please do. I ate so much ramen.
Depesh Mandalia
Well that for me it was chocolate. So yeah, I mean whatever you're doing, there's gonna be uh a net negative on on things Like w when you spend so much time on the business and you stop exercising and you eat junk, it's a recipe for disaster.
Kurt Elster
It absolutely. Yeah, you gotta no matter what, you gotta prioritize your health best you can. Absolutely. Easier said than done, of course. But so what's next for DePesh? What's uh what's on your radar?
Depesh Mandalia
So for me, um I'm focusing more on myself and my time right now. So right now um I work three to four days a week. Fridays I'm generally offline. Uh I'm doing work with AI. I'm heavily invested in learning AI. We have our own AI media buying assistant. So what I've done with my agency knowledge, training, SOPs, templates, we've fed all of that into the AI. And my goal is that this AI media buying assistant can take the, you know, the load off people that want to learn Facebook ads and get Facebook ads results. So I I think there's a huge opportunity there and then that's where we're trying to develop the tools for people to get a lower cost of entry into getting great Facebook ad results because for every new client we take on in the agency or coaching or anything like that, there's tens of thousands that need the help that can't afford us. or don't have the means to access that level of um support around the world. And probably hundreds of thousands. And and that's who I want to help.
Kurt Elster
You know, I love it. Anything that democratizes the tools, that makes that lowers the barrier to entry, that makes these things more accessible to more entrepreneurs is a good thing. Uh Depesh, where could we learn more about you?
Depesh Mandalia
Um, so me personally, dpeshmandalia. com, more about the business, bpmmethod. com. So brand driven uh marketing. That's the thing that I developed when I realized that. I was a performance marketer. I was all about the numbers, the metrics, the optimizations, and funnels. It wasn't until I understood brand marketing that I started to make successes with Facebook. And that's where the BPM method idea came about which is how do I take the best of brand marketing, understanding avatars and uh profiles and things, and merge that with the best of performance marketing. And that's been a big part of our development and growth.
Kurt Elster
Depesh Mandalia. Thank you so much. This is really I've enjoyed this.
Depesh Mandalia
Me too. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.
Kurt Elster
Crowdfunding campaigns are great. You can add social proof and urgency to your product pre-orders while reducing risk of failure. But with traditional crowdfunding platforms. You're paying high fees and giving away control all while your campaign is lost in a sea of similar offers. It can be frustrating. That's why we built Crowdfunder, the Shopify app that turns your Shopify product pages into your own independent crowdfunding campaigns. We originally created Crowdfunder for our private clients, and it was so successful we turned it into an app that anyone can use. Today, merchants using Crowdfunder have raised millions collectively. With Crowdfunder, you'll enjoy real-time tracking, full campaign control, and direct customer engagement. And it's part of the Built for Shopify program. so you know it's easy to use. So say goodbye to high fees and hello to successful store-based crowdfunding. Start your free trial and transform your Shopify store Into a pre-order powerhouse today. Search Crowdfunder in the Shopify App Store to get started.