The Unofficial Shopify Podcast: Entrepreneur Tales

Listener Q&A: Marketing & Retention Edition

Episode Summary

We answer nine merchants' pressing questions regarding marketing & customer retention.

Episode Notes

In this listener Q&A episode, we answer nine merchant's pressing questions regarding marketing their Shopify stores. We even try something new and call a few experts on the phone to get their answers.

Plus Paul reveals the terrible secret his refrigerator has been hiding, and Kurt wears makeup.

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Episode Transcription

Kurt Elster: I am wearing makeup. I don’t like to look shiny. I made my wife put powder on me, on my T-Zone. Do I look beautiful and pretty?

Paul Reda: I was just wondering if you’re gonna have to stop and go powder your nose at some point.

Kurt Elster: I powdered my nose just now, so we should be good for an hour. I don’t know how frequently one powders the nose.

Paul Reda: I don’t know. It’s whenever you need to go to the bathroom, I guess. That’s what we call that.

Kurt Elster: So, what’ll be really disappointing is if I’m still shiny and I’m wearing makeup. Yeah. That will disappoint me.

Today on The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, we’re answering your questions. We’re gonna talk, we got a whole bunch of merchant questions, some good ones. We’re gonna call some experts, bring them in to get their answers on this one. Try something a little different. And not one question is about the bad thing. None is about COVID-19 or the pandemic. So, if you’re sick of listening hearing about that, we’ll save it to just the intro.

Mr. Reda?

Paul Reda: I’m mad.

Kurt Elster: Why are you mad?

Paul Reda: I’m very mad. I’m so mad. Because what Shopify hobby horse have I been obsessed with for the last… say two to three years. What’s my moonshot Shopify thing I was obsessed with?

Kurt Elster: You desperately wanted to get the MLB, Minor League Baseball. Not Major League. Minor League. Off of whatever legacy janky platform they were using to sell before and on to Shopify.

Paul Reda: They were on Cold Fusion. Yes.

Kurt Elster: Cold Fusion. Oh my gosh. So, definite legacy stuff.

Paul Reda: And as people may know who have seen the video, I have a lot of shirts. I like buying things from minor league teams, because they’re silly and weird and fun. And their stores are so bad. They were so terrible. Truly, some of the worst stores I’ve ever seen. And I’ve always wanted this to happen. I don’t know how it was gonna happen. I was… At Unite last year, I was literally corralling Shopify people to be like, “Listen, here’s my idea. We gotta do this. I’m not a big enough fish, but you work at Shopify, so you can help make this happen. Just wet my beak a little bit.”

And they kind of slowly backed away from me, and then I never heard from them ever again. But lo and behold, I went on Minor League Baseball’s website last week, and Minor League Baseball is now on Shopify.

Kurt Elster: So, you should be thrilled.

Paul Reda: I don’t know what had happened.

Kurt Elster: The thing you wanted to happen, happened.

Paul Reda: I know. I should be thrilled, and I realize this is stupid, but I’m mad, because I’m mad because a company that doesn’t know I exist did the thing I wanted them to do, but they didn’t involve me in it. Why couldn’t I have been involved in it?

Kurt Elster: Maybe all your yelling about the MLB needing to be on Shopify got through to someone and it happened. You should take full credit for this.

Paul Reda: Well, I don’t want to, because their current setup also still pretty bad. On Shopify, but fixable, but nowhere near the level it should be at.

Kurt Elster: Yeah. That’s a lot of brands and product, and they just moved from Cold Fusion. I’m sure it’s an improvement.

Paul Reda: No, it’s an improvement.

Kurt Elster: The version one is never amazing of any project, so if they need some consulting…

Paul Reda: They should call us. All right, but the other problem is as an extra bonus, “Fuck you.” I looked at the company that did it for them, and I was looking at the other jobs that that company did, and one of the other jobs they did is the official Star Trek store that is also on Shopify. That’s like a thing I didn’t even know I wanted, and they stole it from me.

Kurt Elster: I believe we’ve encountered the official Star Trek store before, because I think they used one of our apps. We didn’t interact with them at all, just I see who installs it.

Paul Reda: No, that was the official Gene Roddenberry store.

Kurt Elster: Oh, okay. My mistake.

Paul Reda: It was like things that Gene Roddenberry owns the rights to, but it’s like not official Star Trek things that Viacom owns the rights to. There was a whole thing.

Kurt Elster: There’s a lot of weird licensing with Star Trek.

Paul Reda: Yeah. Yeah. Well, he did a whole thing where he started his own licensing company in the ‘70s, because he decided he needed more money, and it’s like… He was a very shady man.

Kurt Elster: Oh, don’t tell me that.

Paul Reda: He was. No, he was not a good dude. So, but I have a new brand that I want that I discovered yesterday. Marconi Foods, makers of Giardiniera and other great Chicago foods, they’re on Shopify. So, if you work for Marconi Foods, hire us.

Kurt Elster: So, you feel their site could be improved?

Paul Reda: Kurt, get them.

Kurt Elster: I still think I need to re-platform Dot’s Pretzels to Shopify.

Paul Reda: Oh. Well, yeah, we want to. Yeah, re-platforming Dot’s is a higher priority than optimizing Marconi Foods. Marconi Foods is already on Shopify.

Kurt Elster: And I’d imagine a lot of people who are now going direct to consumer, like brands that you would typically only think of buying in a grocery store now selling online are probably doing pretty well right now. I mean, like my one true panic buy when I was wondering how the heck am I gonna get groceries was six pounds of Dot’s Pretzels online, because I was like, “That’s a lot of calories that I could just get shipped to my house.”

So, I would imagine that space is probably doing pretty well at the moment. On that topic, a lot of people trapped at home seem to be doing retail therapy. I’ve seen memes about it. I’ve seen data about it. Have you bought any… And you were talking about kitschy t-shirts. Have you bought any stupid shit while you’re staying home?

Paul Reda: No, I have not bought any stupid shit, because as we may recall, I just bought a house, and I’m repainting that house and redoing the floors in this house, and getting a new window in the house, and all the other house-related, and getting carpeting in the basement, so all of my money is being thrown into this house project, leaving no money for fun things.

Kurt Elster: That’s always fun. I enjoyed that stage of home ownership.

Paul Reda: I am not.

Kurt Elster: You know, come back to me in six months. You’ll be proud. You’ll like it. On the last episode, you had said, “Hey, do you do the floors first or paint the walls first?” And that turned out to be like the most engaging thing we said on that show based on the number of comments and emails I got about it. So, what was the answer? What are you doing?

Paul Reda: Well, everyone declared that you gotta do the floors first.

Kurt Elster: And they made a good argument for it.

Paul Reda: Yeah, they made a good argument for it, and you know I bow to the wisdom of the crowd.

Kurt Elster: Okay.

Paul Reda: By the guys in there painting right now and we don’t have a floors person yet. So, we’re painting first. That’s just my wife needed something to get done, and the painting thing was the easiest. She really needed to check a box off of something. A box needed to be checked very desperately. So, the painting was the easiest box to get checked, so it is currently getting checked right now.

Kurt Elster: But the painting… Fresh paint always makes a room look better, and fresh paint where you pick the colors, okay, that’s an important first step in that it’s making the house yours.

Paul Reda: Yeah. Well, and I mean the worst-case scenario from what I read from everyone is that they’re like, “Oh, the baseboard’s gonna look jacked up if they do the floors.” Because you know, the baseboard gets hit, or stained, or whatever. It’s like, “All right, well I’ll just have the guy come out and repaint the baseboards.” Fine. Just please, God, something get done in this house, because I’ll be honest with you, that house was a brown hellhole when I bought it. Everything was brown. It was terrible. And the brown needed to get out of there.

Kurt Elster: It was Tuscan themed?

Paul Reda: In order for me to be happy in my house. It was. You know what? I’m not even kidding. Now that you mentioned that, and the colorings, and the way the wallpaper works, and the furniture in this one bathroom, I think it is Tuscan themed.

Kurt Elster: It’s very, very Tuscan themed.

Paul Reda: It’s horrible.

Kurt Elster: It smells of rosemary.

Paul Reda: It’s so bad. You know…

Kurt Elster: This is how it goes.

Paul Reda: I’m talking about the house I bought.

Kurt Elster: Yes. No, this is how it goes.

Paul Reda: I bought it and I’m like, “This place sucks. What idiot bought this place?”

Kurt Elster: Oh no! So, where have you been getting your news?

Paul Reda: I just sit on Twitter all day.

Kurt Elster: Okay.

Paul Reda: And then I check that University of Washington projection thing every day, which is… I think everyone agrees is bad now, like all the stats nerds on the internet. All the stats nerds on the internet were like, “These guys are idiots, actually. Here’s why it’s bad.” And I was like, “Okay, great. Well, fuck.” And then the University of Texas also started publishing a projection that no one has said is bad yet, so I’m just gonna choose to believe that that’s good now. But I don’t know, and so yeah, I follow a lot of reporters and actual news sources on Twitter, so that’s… Because Google killed Google Reader, so I can’t have RSS feeds anymore, so-

Kurt Elster: Yeah. RSS is still a perfectly cromulent standard that powers podcasts today.

Paul Reda: I know, but they killed Reader.

Kurt Elster: That was like Google killing Google Reader, this is off topic, but I guess it matters in terms of internet content syndication. Google killing Google Reader effectively killed blogging. It’s very bizarre that the number one RSS reader goes away, creates a vacuum in that space, and then at the same time, we have the rise of social media and essentially everyone just gives up on blogging? It was very weird.

Paul Reda: Well, what it really is is if you were a small fry, like a blogger, you would have people subscribe to your Google Reader feed and you can put advertising in your feed, or like it would… It was a traffic driver, and even being a small fry, you could drive enough traffic via your RSS feed to survive. Google kills Google Reader. What becomes the default feed of things that every person has access to now?

Kurt Elster: I don’t know, Facebook?

Paul Reda: Yeah. The Facebook news feed.

Kurt Elster: But why would you drive people to that if you’re Google? I assume maybe this was to get people on Google Plus, which went nowhere?

Paul Reda: Yeah. Well, it was a thing we were like, “Are we monetizing Google Reader? No. Why are we working on it? It’s not making any money.” And then, so then they essentially, by abandoning it, they conceded this space to Facebook, and then Facebook took it over, and now everyone is learning that vaccines are terrible, because obviously Facebook doesn’t give a shit about anything.

Kurt Elster: I don’t even want that in the transcript. Vaccines are terrible, Paul Reda.

Paul Reda: And then like all, the only people that could push things into the feed are like everyone’s now chasing the Facebook feed, and Facebook’s taking all the ad dollars, and if Facebook changes the algorithm… Google Reader is content neutral. If Facebook changes the algorithm, your site implodes, and you don’t get traffic anymore. I’ve read very persuasive essays that like the reason that internet journalism and writing is a horrifying clickbait fake news shitshow is Google killing Google Reader.

Kurt Elster: I believe it. Especially… Yeah, it creates that vacuum, it forces everyone into Facebook, in which you are not seeing a subscription. You are seeing what the algorithm decides you see, and it is based on engagement and who pays, and the end result of that was listicles and insane headlines for the sake of gaming click-through rates.

Paul Reda: Yeah, exactly. Which pushes everyone, so everyone’s using Facebook now, which means, “Well, we gotta buy ads on Facebook. Why bother…” Buying the ad on Facebook is better than buying ad on the news website after people click through from Facebook. Just cut out the middleman. So, let’s just stop buying ads on news sites, so news sites don’t make any money.

Kurt Elster: I don’t know what the solution is.

Paul Reda: There is no solution. I went over my solution a couple weeks-

Kurt Elster: I was hoping that you would have some brilliant-

Paul Reda: No. My brilliant solution I talked about a couple weeks ago when we were talking about Libra, was that I was like there needs to be a universal cryptocurrency wallet in everyone’s browser, so that they can get charged like five cents for every article they read. But-

Kurt Elster: Oh, okay.

Paul Reda: You need like-

Kurt Elster: Oh, people would just be up in arms about that.

Paul Reda: We need to invent a cryptocurrency. We need to have every browser adhere to that standard. We need to have people put money into it. We need all the news websites to write their part on the back end. We need to write an entirely new financial transaction system, so that transaction can go through without Visa swooping in and being like, “By the way, moving five cents costs us four cents, sorry.” So yeah, that’ll never happen. It’ll happen, and then I’ll take my flying car to George Jetson’s house, and everything will be fine.

Kurt Elster: My source for news has become… You know, news that doesn’t make me want to scream, has become Klaviyo’s business daily insights. So, they’re running… They’ve got their data, and we talked about this with Jake Cohen on a bonus episode of the podcast a couple weeks ago. They’ve got their data from all their stores and their customers and subscribers. They also are doing their own research and surveys, where they do a consumer survey, and they do a business survey, and the thing’s really fascinating. Every day, you get… You have to take the survey, ideally, and then they send you the insights the next day for the previous day.

And Jake is now doing videos where he interprets it that are very interesting, or if you want to just be lazy, they send you just like, “All right, here’s three bullet points for each day,” with trends, or observations, and I find it really interesting. And it’s purely eCommerce and consumer sentiment, but they say… Here, I’m looking at the most recent one. “Many brands have seen soft sales in March,” which was the beginning of the pandemic in the US, “but are now seeing their sales increase, and paid social media continues to be a helpful revenue-driving tool for apparel and accessories brands.” Cool. That’s been keeping me sane. And then they dive deeper into it, but I’ll include the link to that in the show notes, or if you just go to Klaviyo.com, it’s always in the announcement bar.

But that’s been my eCommerce business daily news source. Keep my finger on the pulse of eCom.

Paul Reda: Because it’s good news, because everyone’s doing good. I said the only thing keeping me sane right now is the fact that our business is pretty much unchanged.

Kurt Elster: Yes. And March… March was scary, and I thought we’ll lean on our recurring revenue sources, which is the podcast and our app revenue, but we saw in the beginning of March we had a bunch of uninstalls, but then the installs started coming back, and the podcast listenership was largely unchanged, and then we… No client fired us. No client paused a project. And they kept paying their invoices. And now in April, it’s like business as usual again it’s starting to feel like.

Paul Reda: Yeah.

Kurt Elster: And part of it’s getting back into a routine, and I say this with total gratitude, of course. Absolutely. I’m thrilled and grateful and happy that we’re in this position that we’re in. We’re lucky to be in eCommerce and in a position where business continues roughly as usual, it’s starting to feel like. But I realize… I mean, that’s certainly not the case for everyone, especially like a lot of other B2B businesses struggled.

But I’m also seeing a lot of people who got hit pivoting, and that’s very encouraging. We’ve also seen people do unbelievably successful product launches. You know, I’d asked you like, “Hey, did you buy any stupid crap for your house?” Well, I bought a bunch of home goods, but I’ve also… I’ve seen people, several of our clients do new product launches and do really well, like as well or better than what they would have normally done, or what you would have normally expected pre-pandemic. So, I think there’s… A lot of people are suffering right now, there’s no doubt about it, but there’s also a group of people who essentially, their income was unchanged. Now they’re at home shopping online, and they’re not going out, so they have more disposable income.

Okay, overall, let’s assume that spending’s gonna go down. Safe bet. But eCommerce was only 8% of total retail. It’s gonna go way up, because people can’t go to a physical store. So, if you’re one of those eCom merchants, this is an incredible position. And then of course, like in this Klaviyo observation, paid social media, the costs are down 15 to 20%. So, suddenly it’s like ads are easier, they’re cheaper, they’re easier, there’s more eyeballs on social media, and people are buying because they don’t have another outlet. So, I don’t think it’s all bad.

Paul Reda: No, I totally agree. Yeah. I mean, if you’re in the lucky position to be selling something that people can use in their house, like it’s not like luggage for the vacations you’re going on, and then you can also buy Facebook ads for it, and the main thing holding you back from Facebook ads was like, “Oh, Facebook ads are so expensive right now.” You are in… You’re just killing it. You’re doing it great, because Facebook ad rates have cratered, people are sitting around the house doing puzzles and whatever, and you’re just making bank.

Kurt Elster: You know, and I had said like all right, March, our professional services, we were not seeing new work. And in April, said it started to pick back up. And by that third week in April, it feels like normal again.

Paul Reda: Yeah, from what I’ve been seeing, we’re totally normal in terms of new applications and all that sort of stuff.

Kurt Elster: And I think what’s going on there is in March, everyone said, “All right, hold up. Let’s wait and see what happens here. And maybe we have to adjust, maybe we have to figure some things out.” And certainly, we did. But by April, you’re starting to get used to new normal, and so I think people are getting more comfortable making business decisions and investing again in their businesses.

So, I want to do these listener Q&A questions.

Paul Reda: All right. Yeah, let’s get to it. We’ve killed more than enough time.

Kurt Elster: I know. That intro was too long. I apologize. All right, here’s an easy one. Rachel Reid ask, “TikTok: Is it time?” I see what you did there, Rachel. I like it.

Paul Reda: I’m 39, and thus cannot give an opinion on this. I am too old.

Kurt Elster: I’m 37, and I also feel like I don’t know what I would do with TikTok. However, again, the social media right now, everybody’s at home, engagement’s super high, so if you were going to attempt a new social media platform and it was something you wanted to experiment with, it was something you said, “All right, I just want to experiment with this one.” Okay, why… I wouldn’t pick any other than TikTok at the moment, because that’s the hottest thing going.

Paul Reda: Instagram.

Kurt Elster: And I would try to make that work.

Paul Reda: All right, so let’s think it through. Is it something that you can make a fun, quick video out of? Yes. I mean, it’s like say you’re selling cooking implements or whatever. If you can make a weird, funny video about your cool, weird cooking implement, I think you could put that on TikTok, and I guess build awareness? I don’t know. How do you directly buy off of TikTok? Do you have to put in a link? Can they click on it? Is there some way to purchase through it? Or are you just like-

Kurt Elster: I have no idea.

Paul Reda: Yeah, is it like awareness building? But I think… I mean, it’s video. That’s what it is.

Kurt Elster: I think it’s more brand awareness.

Paul Reda: Yeah. It’s video, so if you can make cool, quick, fun videos, like Vines or whatever, then I think your… That’s an opportunity for you to look at.

Kurt Elster: If you’re already comfortable, especially with a medium like Instagram or Facebook Stories, or Snapchat, you already know. You already have the skills. You already know what to do with TikTok.

Paul Reda: Yeah. Exactly.

Kurt Elster: You have enough to get going and starting to get posting regularly and then see what sticks. See what kind of things get engagement on that platform.

Paul Reda: Yeah. I feel like if you’re already posting stuff on Instagram, especially Instagram Stories, you just repurpose that for TikTok. I mean, that seems possible in my head. That seems like that should be something you can do.

Kurt Elster: I would hope so. Yeah. And then Rachel’s got a second question. Unrelated, though. She says, “Let’s hear everything loyalty programs. Experience with adding a loyalty program, best approach, which incentives work, other stores doing this well, et cetera.” I only got… We gotta get your favorite Italian plumber to use as a loyalty program, Smile.io, or as you pronounce it?

Paul Reda: It’s smileyo.

Kurt Elster: Smileyo!

Paul Reda: Yeah, they should contact Nintendo and have him go, “It’s me, Smileyo!” Every time you go on their website.

Kurt Elster: This will go well. Oh, that’ll be great. No, so there’s a few loyalty programs on Shopify, like there’s Swell Rewards that got bought by Yotpo, LoyaltyLion, and Smile.io. I don’t… There’s probably not a wrong choice. The one I’m comfortable with personally is Smile.io. I have the most experience with it. I’ve never had a bad experience with it. The support is good. And it’s insanely easy to set up, because it’s just a widget launcher that you easily customize, so if you want a no-code solution to this that works well, Smile.io.

If you want a cool example of it, Hoonigan is pretty all-in on Smile for their loyalty program, and the only thing they add that’s not specifically part of Smile is they have a really nice explainer page that’s like, “Okay, this is what you get out of our loyalty program.” And when people talk about loyalty programs, they’re always like, “Well, all right,” and they just focus on the explainer page. Most people don’t even have an explainer page. They just… You look the stuff up in the loyalty program after you’ve joined.

But that has nothing to do with the app. You’re just… That’s where you’d want like a page builder, like a Shogun or something. But yeah, I would say there’s probably not a wrong choice, but experience and personal preference and bias, I like Smile. The one catch with these things, you do have to promote it. You can’t just put it up there and expect it will just work for you. Certainly, you want it as part of your welcome sequence. You want it as part of your post-purchase sequence to try and get people in it. And it’ll integrate with Klaviyo, so that you can make sure you’re not sending people things inviting them to the loyalty program if they’re already a member.

Paul Reda: Well, and I mean yeah, can you do a thing where it’s like you can email your list and where like, “Hey, we’re starting a loyalty program. If you sign up for it, we’ll give you 200 free points,” or whatever? To get people started on it? Of previous buyers?

Kurt Elster: I believe so.

Paul Reda: Yeah.

Kurt Elster: Smile’s pretty flexible in the way it dishes out points. Because like on Hoonigan, we did it… They named… Smile’s very into branding, so like we named the different programs, so instead of like bronze, silver, gold, we went with like car upgrade terms, where it’s like stage one, stage two, stage three. And you get different… I think it issues you a coupon code at each time you hit each stage, and it’s based on your total lifetime spend. I think that’s how they did it. They have an explainer page. It’ll tell you how they did it and that’s all in Smile. There’s nothing like weird or custom about it.

All right, so short answer, Smile, and just make Smile reward your best customers, and make sure you do a decent job of promoting it and explaining it.

Let’s see what we got here. Ooh! Let’s do Mick Irving. Mick Irving asks, “What about SEO apps vs DIY SEO, vs using a consultant for SEO?” For this one I’m sure we both have opinions, but why don’t we ask the expert? I want to call and loop in Rhian Beutler, who was just on to talk SEO recently.

Paul Reda: I’m very excited to see this not work.

Kurt Elster: Yeah. Well, we’ll see how this goes.

Paul Reda: It’s gonna be like the NFL draft tonight. We’re recording this on Thursday, by the way.

Rhian Beutler: Hello?

Kurt Elster: Hey, Rhian. How you doing?

Rhian Beutler: Doing well. How are you?

Kurt Elster: I’m good. So, you can hear me. This is actually working.

Rhian Beutler: This is working.

Kurt Elster: Paul, can you hear her?

Paul Reda: I can hear her. Yes.

Rhian Beutler: I can hear Paul.

Kurt Elster: Wow! Technology. This is amazing. All right, we have an SEO question for you that we could fumble through.

Rhian Beutler: Okay.

Kurt Elster: But you’re the expert, so Mick Irving asks, “What about SEO apps, versus DIY SEO, versuss using a consultant for SEO?” It sounds like he’s looking for the silver bullet in his SEO strategy. What do you say to this?

Rhian Beutler: Okay, so what I say to this is twofold, and it depends on your financial position as a entrepreneur and as a company. In a perfect world, you can find a phenomenal SEO consultant who frankly will probably use some SEO apps in order to best implement their SEO strategy, right? But a good SEO consultant costs a lot of money, and if they don’t cost a lot of money, they’re not that good. And that’s where I think it’s important to realize a lot of SEO can be learned, and then you can implement your DIY strategy through use of a good app.

Or, you know what? You can use a DIY strategy on your own, and you’re gonna have limited functionality unless you can code, but ultimately I believe that a lot of SEO can be self-taught.

Kurt Elster: Okay.

Rhian Beutler: However, if you’re like a major brand, like if you’re a Plus store and you’re selling, I don’t know, 10, 20, $30 million, and you’re trying to rank up against Nike, et cetera, that’s a different story.

Kurt Elster: So, whether or not I do it myself or hire a consultant, an app is still going to be involved. An app is just the tool here, it’s not doing the work for me.

Rhian Beutler: Absolutely. The app is the tool. It doesn’t do the work for you.

Kurt Elster: And then at that point, you either have to decide I need to hire a consultant to tell me what to do, or a consultant to tell me what to do and then do it, and then either you do the entire thing DIY, or use the consultant’s advice to DIY it.

Rhian Beutler: Absolutely. And a good thing to do if you’re on a budget is to hire a consultant to do a kind of a strategy plan for you, and then you implement the plan yourself. So, that way you’re not hiring the consultant and paying for every hour that they’re working on your store, and you’re just hiring for that initial action plan.

Kurt Elster: Gotcha. Okay, perfect. I think that answers the question.

Rhian Beutler: Awesome. Sounds good.

Kurt Elster: What’s your Twitter? Plug your Twitter.

Rhian Beutler: @rhiankatie. R-H-I-A-N-K-A-T-I-E.

Kurt Elster: Perfect. Thank you, Rhian.

Rhian Beutler: Thank you guys, have a good day.

Paul Reda: Thanks, Rhian.

Kurt Elster: Cool. I can’t believe that worked.

Paul Reda: Yeah. Okay, I’m honestly shocked. I thought this was gonna be a shit show.

Kurt Elster: We’ve got-

Paul Reda: Check your audio feed. Did it record her?

Kurt Elster: Yes. It has-

Paul Reda: Okay, good.

Kurt Elster: … her in my audio channel. Yeah. So, tell me, fine sir, which question do you want to do next?

Paul Reda: Well, Dillon Glenn wants to know, “What gear setup and software you use to do remote podcast with video.” So, what I have going on, Kurt and I video chat with each other. We did Skype two weeks ago. I think we did Skype twice. Today, we’re trying Slack, because we’re trying to get the dropouts, so we can at least get a little better rapport with each other going. And while we’re both video chatting with each other, we both have our iPhones set up and are recording our own video in our house, and we each are running Audacity locally on our machines and are speaking into our podcast mics and recording locally.

And then we mail those, we throw that all into a big pot on Dropbox, and everyone edits them all together.

Kurt Elster: So, I think there’s-

Paul Reda: Am I right, or am I wrong?

Kurt Elster: I’ve got this question. No, that’s exactly right. We’ve gotten this question before, “Hey, what’s the setup? How are you doing this remote system?” So, for the audio gear itself, you can find that at kurtelster.com/gear. I listed, “Here’s the setup we’re using.” And I walk through why we chose those, that microphone, et cetera, et cetera.

Paul Reda: Yeah. We just ripped it out of the office and brought it here.

Kurt Elster: So, like Paul and I are doing a video call, so we can see each other, but you never actually… You’re not getting the audio or the video from the video call, and what you’re seeing is the local stuff. So, we just independently separately have a camera set up, and then we’re also recording the audio locally. The advantage there is you’re not dealing with the internet and compression, and then all of that just goes in a Dropbox folder, and a fine gentleman named Matt Brody edits it for us, and then he really, he does the YouTube episode, which does not get a ton of views, but more importantly he makes a trailer for it, and he makes… Which, that helps us increase click-through rate on social media. And he does a series of cutdowns, where it’s like it’s just individual portions of the show, and those I can post to social media.

So, the full YouTube episode is actually not the valuable part. The valuable part is the individual chunks for social media.

Paul Reda: Yeah, and then the audio is just I grab Kurt’s audio, and I already have my local audio, and I just do our standard editing in Audacity, and I pop the ads in and do all that setup. But instead of doing it at the office, I’m doing it at home.

Kurt Elster: Similar to the Smile offer, John Carlson, AKA Forester John… I wish everyone had a cool nickname. Forester John! Forester John says, “I had a website approach me and ask if they could promote my product and have an affiliate link in their site. So far, I’ve been denying all offers for others to sell my product in stores. This is my first affiliate offer. Am I missing out if I say no to these offers? What are the pros and cons of affiliates? How do I get started? What would I pay them per transaction? What app would I install?”

Well, so similar to the loyalty question, you want to use one of several apps. My personal preference is Refersion. I’ve used it, I like it, I met the guys who made it. They’re super cool. They’re very genuine. And I’ve set this thing up for several stores, big and small. I’ve also been a affiliate on the receiving end, getting payouts from Refersion. So, I have total faith in the product. I know it does exactly what it says it’ll do. And so, Refersion’s really easy to set up, and it gives you a couple options, like people can use a coupon code to promote your site.

So, let’s say some site’s like, “All right, we review tree-cutting gear.” I’m guessing Forester John sells tree-cutting supplies? Right? That’s what I’m going with.

Paul Reda: Of course!

Kurt Elster: Yes. And so, there’s a website that reviews chainsaws, and they’re gonna say, “All right. Well, here’s our preference for chainsaw, and here’s where you should buy it from.” And then that’s a referral link. Sort of like how the Wirecutter works. I would say if you have… Like normally, I think the con to a referral program is most people get the app, set it up, and then just expect affiliates to show up and sign up. You actually are in a very unusual position if you have people just approaching you going, “Hey, please let us promote your stuff with an affiliate link on our website.”

I don’t see the risk. I don’t see the con. The hard part just got done for you, so set up Refersion and let these people sell for you. As for the cut they get, that’s really… That’s gonna depend on the product, the niche, the industry, there’s a lot there. A mattress company, where it’s hyper competitive, they’re going to be willing to pay a lot more for a mattress sale. Someone buys an $800 mattress, the payout on that might be up to $200 for the affiliate. It could get very high.

Whereas like Amazon, my affiliate links, depending on the category I’m in, they’re gonna be 2% to 8%. 8% was pretty good for the… They used to do it for a lot more was 8%. So, that’s probably the number I would look at right now, but if you’re manufacturing versus drop shipping, obviously your margins are very different. So, try to use common sense. I would say like 8% would be a perfectly good starting point where both sides are gonna be happy.

Paul Reda: Is that 8% of revenue or 8% of profit?

Kurt Elster: Well, Refersion can’t calculate profit, so it’s 8%.

Paul Reda: It’s 8% of the sale price.

Kurt Elster: The total sale.

Paul Reda: All right.

Kurt Elster: Which if you’re drop shipping, I mean that might eat up most of the profit.

Paul Reda: Yeah. That might kill you.

Kurt Elster: Yeah, so it depends. You could do 5%. You gotta figure it out. At the same time, on those particular purchases, you’re probably not advertising to a new, cold customer, so you’ve got a lower cost of goods sold there. It’s an advertising channel. But yeah, 100%, Refersion all day long. I like it.

What else we got, Mr. Reda?

Paul Reda: Okay. Jesse Tutt asks, “I’m getting 15,000 visitors a month.”

Kurt Elster: Congrats.

Paul Reda: “Yet barely any sales.” Yeah. “It’s a tight market, but I feel something obvious is wrong.” And is website is gottasleep.com. He sells mattresses.

Kurt Elster: Oh, the problem is that he’s selling mattresses.

Paul Reda: The problem is he’s selling mattresses. It’s just like you could see, go to any local strip mall, you could see how many mattress stores there are.

Kurt Elster: So, not only-

Paul Reda: It’s so competitive.

Kurt Elster: Not only is mattresses brutally competitive, and I could buy from a place in a strip mall, where there could be four in the out lot at one strip mall kind of thing. There’s a mattress firm like every 20 feet where I live. I swear. And so, you’ve got that problem. Then you also have all these direct-to-consumer brands that sell online and don’t make any money doing it. That’s very hard to compete with, someone who’s like actively shooting themselves in the foot every time they make a sale like Casper. When you go through that Casper IPO, it’s complete insanity.

So, you gotta compete with that, and those, on the topic of affiliates, those are the guys that are spending a ton on affiliates. So, when you Google the best mattress, the best mattress online, you’re gonna find a bunch of review sites that are really just affiliate marketing schemes. So, like-

Paul Reda: Sorry. Wasn’t there like a big expose of the online mattress industry and the web of deceit and affiliate links and all that stuff?

Kurt Elster: Yes, and it’s fascinating.

Paul Reda: It’s crazy.

Kurt Elster: And anytime someone says, “I want to start a mattress store.” I send it to them.

Paul Reda: Yeah, it’s nuts.

Kurt Elster: Just fundamentally, you’re really… You’re in a very competitive space. I mean, it would be… If you said, “Hey, Kurt. Do you want to try and start and succeed with a mattress store or a porn site?” It would be a tough choice. I would generally have to think hard about that.

Paul Reda: Because at least in a porn site we can find an underserved niche in pornography, and then-

Kurt Elster: This was supposed to be a throwaway comment!

Paul Reda: And then work in that niche. But mattresses, a mattress is a mattress. I mean, different kinds of porn, it’s very different audiences.

Kurt Elster: Oh, for God’s sake. This was a family show!

Paul Reda: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, his store just… First off, he’s in a terrible hard industry, like he’s really gotta… I don’t know where he’s getting this traffic from, so I’m like, “Okay, well, is the traffic bad?” Because his store-

Kurt Elster: Yeah, because he’s getting 500 people a day. It’s nothing to sneeze at.

Paul Reda: His store itself doesn’t look that bad. I see some problems with it in that his store is very, very Canadian focused, so if I’m in America and I end up on this store, I’m probably not gonna buy from here, because all the money’s in Canadian, they talk about how the free shipping is everywhere in Canada, they’re Canadian-made mattresses and all this other stuff. It’s like, “Okay, I shouldn’t buy here because I gotta pay…” It’s still like semi-international, I guess, is the way I would think about it.

Kurt Elster: Yeah. For sure that’s a concern. Yeah. I caught that too, that it had that currency issue. So, if they’re driving a lot of US traffic to a store that’s predominantly serving Canada, okay, that… You may have identified the problem right there. When questions like this come up, though, I always go straight to we have to ask the people who aren’t buying. So, I want live chat on that site. 100%. I need a live chat widget that’s manned by someone, so that we could bust objections in real time, and then we can go back when we have 30 days of data and go, “Okay, what was the number one question? What was the number one thing stopping people from buying?”

And then at the same time, you could do that as an exit intent popup, and I love Hotjar for this. But I swear, every episode I make this suggestion. Get Hotjar. Get the free plan, so this will cost you zero dollars. Use it to run an exit intent popup on desktop. They either call it a poll or a survey. It’s one of the two. One is like for people coming to the site, one’s for people leaving. Just play with it, and on desktop when they go to exit, so when the mouse goes up out of the browser viewport, a window pops open and you ask them one question. You just say, “If you didn’t make a purchase today, why not?” Because right now, you’re only hearing from the people who buy. We need to talk to the people who don’t buy, right? And those are the two good ways to do it is that live chat and that Hotjar exit intent popup. And they are not mutually exclusive, you could do both.

And once you know there are these consistent complaints or consistent objections coming in, great. You can start addressing those on the website. At the same time, DTCs, we talked about this before. DTC sites are really, really nice on design and content, so that’s what your competition is. I mean, you have to… More than ever with a mattress site, you gotta really polish it to be at the level that a Casper is. Even though they’re burning money, it’s still a beautiful website.

Paul Reda: I mean, yeah. This site is fine. It’s not killing you, but it’s not doing anything special. I really think it’s too much Canadian branding, because if you drove an American to this store, it’s like, “Okay, I’m gonna go over the…” If you go over the navigation. Pillows. Pillows Canada. Pillow Protector Canada. Cooling Pillow Protector Canada. Bedding. Mattress Protector Canada. Weighted Blanket Canada. Weighted Blanket Canada. Duvet Canada. He’s Canada is in the name of every single thing in the navigation. Like, did he-

Kurt Elster: See, that’s an SEO play.

Paul Reda: Do these come stuffed with hockey pucks and maple leafs? What is… Why is t his like this?

Kurt Elster: All the Canadian listeners are like, “I’m leaving a one-star review now.”

Paul Reda: Yeah, but the pricing, you know, it’s 850 Canadian, which is a very… It’s very competitive. $600 for a good queen size mattress, that’s competitive and normal. But 850 Canadian is $600. But if I didn’t know that, and I just saw the mattress was 850, I would be like, “Oh my God. I’m not paying that much.”

Kurt Elster: Yeah. No, I mean that currency thing is such an easy objection to fix. However, we don’t know that they’re necessarily sending US people to the site. But yeah, that… When the SEO keyword stuffing becomes readily apparent like that, that’s a bad look. Certainly, you want… Ideally, if I land on a site, I want it to match my native currency. Bold Multi-Currency can do that. It uses geolocation to figure it out. I’m sure there’s other apps, but that’s the one I’m familiar with.

Paul Reda: It looks-

Kurt Elster: And then there’s-

Paul Reda: It looks like in the header of this theme, it has a currency converter, and it’s set to USD, but-

Kurt Elster: Oh, so it’s not working.

Paul Reda: Yeah, it’s not working, like the price itself-

Kurt Elster: Whoops! Okay.

Paul Reda: I don’t know.

Kurt Elster: And then overall, it would behoove you to hire a designer, just to polish up the graphics and maybe establish some brand guidelines for the website that just make it look a little cleaner. You don’t necessarily need an eCommerce CRO UX design expert. A graphic designer still understands basic design and can polish up, because you’ve got the bare bones. The foundation is good. We just need someone to come in and pick the paint colors kind of thing.

Paul Reda: Yes.

Kurt Elster: Similar to Paul’s brown Tuscan house. Actually, like he’s dumping on this house, but I’ve seen the photos of it. It’s extremely nice. They remodeled everything before they moved out.

Paul Reda: Oh, no. I mean, I don’t-

Kurt Elster: Oh, a very nice house.

Paul Reda: Well, I shouldn’t speak out of turn, but no, they did a trash job. It’s terrible. They hired some weird guy. The house was like the… He put some weird-

Kurt Elster: Okay, I said it looked good. I didn’t say like the shower had to work.

Paul Reda: No, the shower actually doesn’t work. Funny you should mention that.

Kurt Elster: I know, but it looks really amazing.

Paul Reda: My favorite thing is, is that the refrigerator is a Viking, so-

Kurt Elster: Oh. See, that’s a very nice brand. This is top shelf.

Paul Reda: Yeah. You know what? It is. A Viking refrigerator is a really nice brand. Problem is, it’s not a Viking refrigerator, it’s actually a KitchenAid. She bought a Viking label off of eBay and glued it onto the refrigerator.

Kurt Elster: No!

Paul Reda: Yes.

Kurt Elster: I thought that… I was gonna make that joke and I decided not to.

Paul Reda: Even better-

Kurt Elster: I did not realize that’s where you were going with this.

Paul Reda: That’s literally what happened. Even better, if you go in the fridge and look at the label in the refrigerator, she took a Sharpie and scratched out KitchenAid.

Kurt Elster: You know, really she could used a heat gun to remove the sticker.

Paul Reda: And so, like the neighbors are coming and the neighbors are like, “Oh, we’re your new neighbors.” And we’re like, “Hi.” And they’re like, “Oh, you guys got a great house. They put so much work into that house. They remodeled it. They really loved it and put in so much effort.” And I’m biting my tongue not to be like, “No, they didn’t. It’s all surface-level bullshit. The house is falling apart.”

Kurt Elster: She replaced the badge on a KitchenAid fridge. That’s amazing. That was so good, I just typed it to my wife. I was like, “I have an idea.”

Paul Reda: Oh yeah, like the furnace was leaking carbon monoxide. It was covered in duct tape.

Kurt Elster: All right. Let me… I got another call-in question. I want to get Kurt Bullock to answer a Facebook ads question for us, and Kara Doglio says, “If I haven’t run many paid ads on Facebook, and those I have done have been one-offs with no strategy, what’s the bare minimum you would start with?”

Well, I think my short answer is when in doubt, remarketing. Focus on the warm traffic that’s already visited the site but hasn’t bought, because it is dramatically easier than trying to get cold traffic to convert. And for content, the dynamic ads make life a lot easier. You get to be less creative with it, so I think it’s a good place to start. But why don’t we call Mr. Kurt Bullock and see what he has to say on the topic? First I have to find him in my phone.

Paul Reda: Oh, you have a… Are you searching your email for Kurt? Isn’t that… Can’t you just do that?

Kurt Elster: It’s problematic. All emails say Kurt.

Kurt Bullock: Hello?

Kurt Elster: Mr. Kurt Bullock.

Kurt Bullock: Mr. Elster.

Kurt Elster: All right. You can hear us. Good. So, I’ve got a Facebook question for you that I would love for you to give me your thoughts on. Kara asks, she says, “If I haven’t run many paid ads on Facebook, and those I have done have been one-offs with no strategy, what’s the bare minimum you would start with?”

Kurt Bullock: Good question. Okay, so bare minimum, she’s probably talking about like the number of ads and maybe the budget, would you assume? Yeah, so I agree with you, if you’re just going for the lowest-hanging fruit, I would just start with like a 30-day website visitor retargeting audience and run with that, just like you outlined. If, let’s say that we’re going to prospecting, I find there’s a lot of questions with prospecting. I would make a conversion campaign optimized for purchase, and if it’s a new ad account, which it sounds like it hasn’t got much history behind it, then I would probably start by targeting interests.

And so, I would take… You can track which interests are working well and which ones aren’t. I’d take one interest per ad set. So, if you want to test three different interests against each other, then you would have three ad sets. Is that making sense so far?

Kurt Elster: Yes.

Kurt Bullock: And then I would put, just to keep it simple, two ads, the same two ads in each of those ad sets, right? And then I would really, with those two ads, I would keep the copy the same in both ads and just change the image in each of them, so that you’re kind of limiting the number of variables. So, just pick two images. I would start with square images. Square shows across Facebook and Instagram really well and fits in pretty much all placements. And then I would make… I’d run those ads for five days and choose the winning ad.

As far as budget-

Kurt Elster: So, you essentially just gave us like, “Here’s the beginner’s crash course in A/B testing your ads.” Just test your way to success. Because you’re saying run two ads, keep everything the same except for the image, make sure they’re even the same ratio, just use square images to make your life easy. And then whichever one performs better, okay, use that one. And then do like wash, rinse, repeat?

Kurt Bullock: Exactly.

Kurt Elster: Okay.

Kurt Bullock: As far as the budget, that’s a question that I hear all the time. There is Facebook, what they’re recommending, which I would say that’s the optimal end of the spectrum, and then there’s the reality of when you’re starting, you don’t want to blow a whole bunch of money. Facebook says, “Hey, you should be trying to aim for 50 purchases a week.” Well, that can be a really big budget, and so when I’m testing, the way I usually think about it is in a multiple of your average order value. So, let’s say that you’ve got a $30 average order value.

Kurt Elster: Okay.

Kurt Bullock: Then I would just set each of those three ad sets at the minimum, make it so you’re spending at least your average order value as your daily budget. And the goal there is to be getting at least one purchase every day. And then as you start to see success, you increase your budget closer and closer to that 50 a week, which if you break that down by seven days is roughly seven purchases a week, so seven times your average order value is what you would be aiming for. But just start with one times your average order value as your budget, and that will get you started.

Kurt Elster: Okay. That’s great! I love anytime we can take something that feels squishy, and subjective, and scary, like what budget should I pick, and have like, “All right, here is a rule of thumb. A good starting point.” And is 1.5X your average order value for… What time period is that?

Kurt Bullock: I would run it for five days if you’re going to be doing it for 1X your average order value or 1.5 your average order value. If you increase your spend, you can run it for shorter amount of time. But if you’re just gonna be doing 1X your AOV, then I would run that for five to seven days.

Kurt Elster: Okay. Any other last-minute beginner tips?

Kurt Bullock: Let’s see. When you’re picking your images, I would try and pick two pretty different concepts with your images, so that you can test, so that you can get some learnings going. As opposed to just taking your product and switching the color, color blue and color red background, I would shift it entirely to something that’s a different concept, so that you can start to figure out… Clarity comes from the distinctions that you make between those, right? And you see which one works better and you can kind of learn, “Okay, this is the direction I should be headed.” So, that would be my next step.

Kurt Elster: Okay. That makes sense. All right, that’s perfect. Thank you, Mr. Bullock. I’ll let you go.

Kurt Bullock: Good. All right. Nice talking to you guys.

Kurt Elster: Stay safe. We got two more and then we’re gonna call it a day, all right? We got Braedon Stefanyshyn asks, “I recently installed the JSON-LD app and want to add a product reviews app next that will help with SEO rich snippets, but there sees to be so many options! I was initially gonna go with Shopify Reviews app, but it seems to have terrible reviews. HELP!”

Okay, so some background, JSON-LD app is from Little Stream Software, Eric Davis, he was a guest on this show. It’s a one-time cost app. I think it’s $300. But what it does is fix the rich snippet structured data in your theme, and make sure it stays fixed, and that’s it. It does one thing really well. And the advantage to doing that, you go, “Well, why would I care?” The advantage to doing that is when you Google something, and the item in the search ranking has like extra elements in it, say review stars, or the phrase, “In stock,” that’s rich snippet data. That’s what JSON-LD is doing.

It’s really cool when you can have those review stars in the search ranking because it really, it radically increases click-through rate when I search for something, I find something that sounds like what I want, and there’s a five-star indicator on there. So, that’s what he’s trying to get, and to do it, obviously you have to have a reviews app.

Well, JSON-LD works with… There’s a series of apps it will work with. It auto detects it, and then figures it out from there. Shopify Product Reviews is free, and the free Shopify apps are often… They’re basic. They just get the job done and you’re good to go. The reason that Product Reviews app has negative reviews is because it doesn’t send emails requesting reviews, so I think that’s what people are pushing back on. I asked Eric Davis, who makes the app in question. I said, “What’s your preference?” He goes, “Oh, I like Shopify Product Reviews. It’s simple, it’s free, and it works.”

So, you could give that a shot as long as you are sending out some kind of email requesting reviews. You just have to make sure you’re doing that. If you don’t want to mess with that or you want something fancier, I really like Stamped. I don’t know why, I’ve just… Of all the apps I’ve used, it’s the one that I feel the most comfortable with. Paul, from an installation management standpoint in themes, which of these reviews app makes your skin crawl the least?

Paul Reda: Well, no, Stamped and the Shopify Reviews app are both fine. In fact, most themes now have the Shopify Reviews app code sort of pre-installed, like it’s ready to go. It’s just, it’s ready for it. And I think Stamped either can work off of that, or it’s literally you put… Stamped is very similar. It’s just one div. You put it in the same spot and it’s fine. Yotpo is kind of a pain in the ass, but we also don’t like Yotpo anyway, because they jacked their prices through the roof and it’s not worth it.

Kurt Elster: You know, they’re all good, and Yotpo has some exclusive features. It’s also the most expensive reviews app, by far. And for that reason, it used to be the go-to. If you’d ask in like a Facebook group, “Hey, which reviews app should I do?” People loved Yotpo. And then they raised prices, which is entirely their right to do, but that… Now that’s when people started looking at Stamped and Judge.me. I’d say those are… Shopify Product Reviews is free and easy, and that’s great. The biggest downside is it doesn’t send emails on its own. Stamped I think is very good. Judge.me is very good. Yotpo’s very good, but it’s got some enterprise features that really push the price up.

Final question. Christian Baldy Garcia asks, “What are the top three things you would do to grow your following or list if starting a new store from scratch on a low budget of say around $200 a month? Thank you in advance.”

Hmm. A thought provoker.

Paul Reda: How about this? Create a killer piece of content that helps people somehow with whatever your product is or what it does or something. A helpful piece of content. You give it away. The only cost is they gotta give their email. Or you just give it away and then when they go on your site to read it, you cookie them and then you could remarket to them later.

Kurt Elster: Well, so he’s got a… Let’s say, I’m gonna say this $200 a month budget is a firm budget that also includes the software. So, because you’re gonna spend probably $79 a month on Shopify. Maybe you’re on a lower tier, a plan. All right, we got that cost. If there’s any app costs for Shopify, those are like $5 to $20 a pop. So, rapidly you are gonna burn through this $200 a month budget, and so that’s… I don’t want to do anything with paid advertising, and I don’t know that we could do anything with paying influencers.

But maybe what we could do here, so I think the focus is gonna be on content, and I like your idea. Depending on the space, ideally, maybe you… This is built around some hobby, niche, or passion that you love, some interest you have. I hope so. Maybe it’s around RC cars. I think that’s a great example for this is a hobby, and then the hobbyists get into very high dollar purchases. You can… I have a $70 RC car. You could easily spend $1,000 building an RC car. So, let’s say we start Kurt’s RC Car Store, but I’m not gonna spend a lot of money on advertising the thing.

What I would do is I would use my passion and interest and share that. I’d work in public on social media, try and get an audience there. But ideally, I’d try to write ultimate guide content. So, it’d be like, “Here’s how to upgrade X. Here’s how to get your one eighth scale car to 70 miles an hour. Here are options for that.” And then those articles I could have a piece of YouTube video in there that, in which I walk through it, and then the text that goes with it, that’s like a step-by-step that walks through it. So, now I’ve got two pieces of content out of this.

And then in there, I can link to my products. I could then also do, to Paul’s point, a content upgrade. This is where, “All right, if you want to download. Hey, here’s the video. Hey, here’s how to do it, and here’s the step-by-step guide. But if you want the step-by-step guide with pictures, ah, that’s a PDF download, and then we have an opt-in form.” And then you enter your email, and then it sends it to them, or it redirects them to the PDF that they could download. Okay, cool. Now we’ve got social media content. We’ve got organic content for our SEO play to try and get Google results. And later, down the road, we can retarget people who visit that article with relevant products that we mentioned in the article. And we can… Ideally, we’re building that email list using this content upgrade. Maybe that’s a form embedded in the page. That’d be really cool. Maybe you don’t want to mess with that. It could be a popup on like welcome, or on scroll, like they get halfway through, “Hey, you want the whole article with photos as a PDF? Enter your email.” I think that would be very clever.

And once we got that far, that’s a pretty good strategy. This is gonna be time consuming to do, but hopefully your passion is what allows you to do this, and like the first one isn’t gonna… You’re not gonna publish it and get a ton of traffic. This is gonna be a thing you do weekly for 60 days or six months before we start to get traction and see things moving.

What you could also do is maybe, like if you established yourself as having a general interest and influence in this space, and you start building a social media audience, maybe you could reach out to other influencers in the space, ideally micro influencers. Someone with like under 20,000 followers, like 5 to 15 would be great. And say, “Hey,” see if you could build a natural relationship with them and get them to share the content, and maybe even like instead of… You can’t necessarily pay them in cash. Maybe you could pay them with product. That’s extremely common in that influencer space. So, I think that would be the strategy I’d take.

Anything else, Mr. Reda?

Paul Reda: I’m good.

Kurt Elster: We covered a lot on this episode.

Paul Reda: Yeah, there’s a lot.

Kurt Elster: I like the guest call-in. I thought that was cool.

Paul Reda: Oh yeah, that’s a game changer now. We’re doing that every week. We’re gonna put in even-

Kurt Elster: Yeah, that’s like super pro.

Paul Reda: We’re gonna put in even less effort.

Kurt Elster: Maybe we have people… We call people, people ask questions, because there is a good discussion question from John Murphy, where he bought as second store in addition to his first store, and he gave me a full explanation on it, but I still didn’t quite get it, and it would have been us making a lot of guess work. Or same with this Christian Baldy Garcia question I just did. To make the answer work, I had to make up an example. But this could be like wildly different from what he’s actually doing.

If I could call people on the show and we talk through it with them for 10 minutes and then move on, that might be a really cool format.

Paul Reda: Well, first of all, we all know you just want to turn this show into Car Talk. Second of all-

Kurt Elster: Click and Clack? The Tappet Brothers?

Paul Reda: Second of all, I think that’s good, though, because these people are asking very specific questions about themselves, but when we kind of just have to go off on it, we then generalize it more, which makes it better for our general audience is the way I see it. But-

Kurt Elster: Okay, but when was the last time you watched Frasier?

Paul Reda: A lot.

Kurt Elster: ‘90s NBC sitcom Frasier.

Paul Reda: A lot. Oh, all right. You want something else I’m mad about? Can I tell you something else I’m mad about?

Kurt Elster: That’s what I’m going for.

Paul Reda: All right, so I pay for CBS All Access, because I gotta watch my Star Treks. And so, CBS All Access has Cheers, Frasier, like Caroline in the City, all these NBC shows, because they were produced by like Paramount Television, which is now owned by CBS. So, it’s like even though all those shows famously aired on NBC, they’re on the CBS streaming app, which I think is bull, and there should be a federal law stating that shows can only stream on the network that aired them, because it’s too confusing.

Kurt Elster: I know, I’m always… Well, I use the Apple TV and I just go, “Watch,” and I name a show, and then it says, “I can’t help you with that.” And then I ask a second time, and it’s like, “All right. Well, here’s a convoluted interface, but I think there’s some places you could stream this.” Yes, you’re right. It is very bizarre.

Paul Reda: Yeah, like-

Kurt Elster: My camera battery is about to die, so that’s the red light telling me to wrap it up.

Paul Reda: That means we’re done. But yes, callers.

Kurt Elster: All right-

Paul Reda: I think callers could be good. Let’s give it a shot.

Kurt Elster: Yeah, let’s try it. Let’s keep doing it. And as always, if you want your question on the show, if you want to be a call-in person in a future episode, you gotta join the Facebook group. That’s where the action happens. Search Unofficial Shopify Podcast on Facebook. Join The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Insiders, and we will discuss with you what ails you. And of course, leave a review! Oh my gosh, I notice we have an excellent 4.8 rating. Can we get it to 4.9?

Paul Reda: Or will it-

Kurt Elster: That’s what I’m going for.

Paul Reda: Will it drop to 4.7?

Kurt Elster: All right, and my camera officially died, so we’re going out on a shot of you. All right-

Paul Reda: Okay, goodbye.

Kurt Elster: Thank you, Mr. Reda. Talk soon.

Paul Reda: Bye, everybody!