#304 - Proven Marketing Tactics for Selling More on Amazon with Dr. Travis Zigler

#304 - Proven Marketing Tactics for Selling More on Amazon with Dr. Travis Zigler Speaker 1: Welcome to episode 304 of the AM-PM Podcast. Today my guest is Dr. Travis Zigler. That's right, I said doctor. And this doctor has actually won multiple times as best speaker and for the best hack at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. Today he's going to be sharing an amazing strategy that he uses that just crushes it when driving sales to Amazon. So I think you're going to really like this episode. Get ready to take some really good notes. There's some super valuable information coming your way that's going to really help you in your business. Unknown Speaker: Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast. Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast, where we explore opportunities in e-commerce. We dream big and we discover what's working right now. Plus, this is the podcast where money never sleeps. Working around the clock in the AM and the PM. Are you ready for today's episode? I said, are you ready? Let's do this. Here's your host, Kevin King. Speaker 1: Travis Zigler, welcome to the AM-PM Podcast. I'm super stoked to have you on this week's episode. How are you doing? Speaker 2: I'm doing well, Kevin. Thanks for having me on. This is just serendipitous because I remember listening to the AM-PM Podcast on my drive as an optometrist to my office and hearing Manny say, how cool is that? So pretty cool to be on here now. Speaker 1: Yeah, that is pretty cool. It's kind of a, this is the podcast too. If those of you don't know, or maybe you don't know that actually got me my start and everything that I'm doing other than selling. Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, you're known as that growth expert. That's why I went to million dollar seller summit last year and it's worth every penny. It's, it's one of the more expensive conferences out there, but it was worth every single dollar that I spent on that conference. So can't say enough about it. Speaker 1: I appreciate that. You spent a few dollars because you brought a couple team members too, so it wasn't just a chunk. You didn't just sport for one, but you brought a couple people out. So yeah, I appreciate your support on that, but you just spoke at the most recent one as well that just happened as well. We won't let everybody know how you did, but they'll have to check that out online. But you know that you spoke at the last one and you actually walked away with a little prize. I think you got voted the best speaker, is that correct? Speaker 2: Yeah, so in the spring version of it, I won best speaker and then in the fall last year, I won the best ninja hack as well, which is probably why we're here on this podcast because I'm not a cocky person. I'm actually a pretty humble person, but I walked up to you at the beginning of the BDSS and I said, I'm going to win your ninja hack competition and you're going to have to ask me to speak in the spring. It actually happened to work out that way. Speaker 1: It did. And I remember with that Ninja Hack contest, you won like $2,500 that he won. And this is a this is a contest where everybody that's in attendance that is there, they broke up into groups. We do a little bit differently now, but they broke up into into groups and they all got around and submitted a hack amongst themselves. And then the group discussed which one was which one they thought was the best. And then they go up on stage and compete against the other groups and delivering that that hack. And this is not necessarily a black hat type of thing. It's just some sort of really cool trick. or strategy or way to defend yourself or way to get more sales or whatever on Amazon and and then the audience votes and there's a $2,500 cash prize but the cash prize at the one that you won wasn't just let me write you a check or transfer something to your bank account what was that cash prize? Speaker 2: It was $2,500 in half-dollar coins which weighed approximately 200 pounds and we broke a suitcase trying to get it out of the hotel. But luckily I live in Austin and so I could just take it right to my bank so I couldn't even imagine if it was like an international person that ended up winning. Speaker 1: I think I saw a picture where your son was like had it in front of him on a coffee table or something. He was like counting it out or something like that. Speaker 2: He was filling his piggy bank with it. Speaker 1: That's awesome. So what was it that made you actually decide to come to the Billion Dollar Seller Summit in the first place? Speaker 2: It was you. So I've followed you for a long period of time and I followed some of your growth hacks and your strategies and they work. And I was like, so what would happen if I just committed to going to a conference and learned from him directly at a conference? Because it's three to four days long. What's going to happen? And so we took a risk, brought three of our team members there. I wouldn't even say it's a risk, but brought three team members there. And we took a ton away from the conference. So that is why we came. It's just because we've been following you for so long and seeing your success. And we just wanted to kind of see what kind of strategy you use. Speaker 1: I appreciate that. It's an expensive event. So you've got to get some good stuff to actually make that. It's not just the cost of buying a ticket, which is $5,000 or $6,000, but you've got airfare, potentially, depending on where you're at, and hotel, and you've got some other expenses. So it can add up pretty quickly. But I believe it pays off because the speakers that we bring And the content and the networking and everything I think is top-notch. But besides that, you and I knew each other. We were in a little mastermind group together that I think it was Dave Kettner or something that had organized back in, I remember when I first started selling as an FBA, I've been doing this a long time, but it's FBA 2015. Shortly thereafter, I think it was Brian Johnson actually said, hey, I'm in this little group, you should come in. It's invitation only, it's free, there's no charge for it. I think eventually there became like a little charge for it but at first there was no charge and we would get together like once a week. This is back I think when Zoom was like nobody knew who even what Zoom was and Dave had this access to Zoom or something and we would jump on like once a week for a couple hours and just whoever could show up there's I think 10-15 people maybe 20 people in the group and half of them would show up each week or something like that and we just share what's working and I remember meeting you in that group. That was a pretty cool times. Speaker 2: That group was a pretty incredible group because everybody was doing multi-millions, multi-seven figures, if not eight figures, if not nine figures and so you were really learning from a diverse group of sellers and that's kind of key with anything. That's the key with your conference as well is there are people doing nine figures there, there are people doing eight figures and there are people just doing, you know, a single seven figure or even six figures. So getting that diversity in that group had it and that's what made it so effective. Speaker 1: What do you find that's important, like in groups like that, that group that we're in, why is it important for sellers out there to actually get out from behind their desk and either go to a conference or join some sort of online type of mastermind thing like that? Why is that important? Speaker 2: You don't know what you don't know. And so getting in front of other people or getting to network with other people, you're just going to learn different strategies from different people and then What I think a good entrepreneur does then is they kind of morph those strategies to make them their own. My main strategy that I use in my business, I actually morph from learning from Ezra Firestone and how he built Boom mixed with Ryan Daniel Moran and how he built his brand Sheer Strength and I've kind of morphed those two together and then I added something else in there and when I wouldn't have learned that if I didn't go to conferences and network with other people, talk about strategies that are working and also See presenters on stage. And when I go to a conference, specifically, I try to get one hack. That's it. Once I get that one hack, I kind of tune the rest of the conference out just because If that one hack will work for me, then that made that conference worth it. But then I focus more on the networking side now of conferences and meeting other people because I found that networking has actually been a lot better at conferences than actually going to all the talks. But the talks are great. But once I get that one hack, I then focus on networking. And networking, like I said, you kind of morph all those strategies together. And that's how you can really become a great entrepreneur and build a great business as well. Speaker 1: In the relationships you can build at a conference, just that in-person, that human touch, that human interaction, having a beer with somebody, or going to dinner with somebody, or just sitting at lunch, talking with them, is so much different than just watching a YouTube video or watching some online conference. It's just so much more valuable. I think a lot of people, they just look at the cost. They're like, I can't afford a thousand bucks to go to this conference, or in the case of Billion Dollar Sauce, it's a lot more than that. But, you just gotta look at it from the point of view that this is an investment and if you go at it with the right attitude and go at it with the right strategy, like Travis said, of networking and trying to pick up something, and don't try to do everything. A lot of people, it's like, they take just crazy notes and then they come back and they're just overwhelmed and they have, they're paralyzed by information. And you gotta focus on one or two things that are gonna really move the needle for your business. And that's like what I always say with the Billion Dollar Seller Summit is that you come and you spend, you know, six grand to get a VIP ticket and come. What do you got to do to actually recover that investment? Well you just need one, like Travis said, just one key strategy. That if you're doing seven figures, that one strategy might make you an extra $100,000 this year or save you $100,000 this year. You just got all your money back and you got a really good ROI on your investment. So that's what you got to look, you know, sale and scale event is coming up next month in Las Vegas, which is going to be about a thousand plus people out there at that event, which is, you know, Gary Vanderchuck is speaking, Neil Patel is speaking, I'll be speaking, Bradley, there's quite a few people. Are you going to be out at that event, Travis? Speaker 2: I'll be speaking as well, yeah. Speaker 1: That's right, you're on the speaker list as well. So if you're listening to this and that event is less than $1,000, I believe. I think tickets are somewhere in the $700-$900 range, something like that. It's at the Virgin Hotel. Try to make it out to that. Even if you've never been to an event before, it will be worth your time. So Travis, how long have you been selling in e-commerce? Speaker 2: So I had made my first sale on July 5th of 2015. I don't remember it though. I don't remember. Speaker 1: And before that, you and your wife, are you partner or you started out as partners in the company or you work together or can you explain that? Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'll just give my brief backstory. In 2010, I graduated with my doctorate of optometry from Ohio State. My wife graduated in 2011 and we worked for my uncle until about 2014. And we always thought we were going to take over the family practice. I mean, it's been in the family since 1980s. So we're just going to continue on with that. But I felt this itch to do more. And so I did the three things you're not supposed to do. We quit our jobs. We moved from Ohio to South Carolina and we started two practices of our own. And so in 2015, we started two practices in South Carolina, but I went from seeing six patients an hour to seeing one patient an hour. So I was getting bored. And so a thing came up and in my inbox, and so I ended up taking that course in May of 2015. And then in July, we made our first sale. And as they say, the rest is history. We sold our practices in 2017 and 2018. And ever since then, we've been full-time e-commerce. Speaker 1: So how did you actually pick your first product to sell and back in 2015? So you're working as an up, you know helping people with their eyes and stuff So, how did you pick your first product to actually sell? Speaker 2: The funny thing is we did like your typical product research. I don't know. The product research that was in the course, we did that verbatim and all it came up with was baby products for us, which I think everybody did baby products back in 2015. And we just didn't feel right because we didn't have any kids. So we didn't really know babies. We have two now, but we didn't have any kids at that time. So we're like, we don't even know if this product is going to be good or not. And so we're like, what if we just did something that we know, which was sunglasses at the time. And so we're just like, let's just see if sunglasses would be a good product. And there's a lot of sunglasses out there and it's a product that people love to have a lot of. So we're just like, let's throw up some sunglasses and see what happens. We ordered, we did the typical ordering 100 inventory and sold out in approximately Five days and then had to wait another three months for inventory to come back in. So we just did what we knew and what we love to do which was eye care and so sunglasses was our first product that we came out with. Speaker 1: So how did you differentiate or was it not really necessary back then that there wasn't very many sunglasses on there or did you have to really differentiate at all? Speaker 2: So we didn't have to differentiate that much we just had to get a lot of reviews fast and back in 2015 that was something that was pretty easy to do and you know we could push sales using you know two-step URLs and Sending outside traffic and getting reviews very quickly by paying for them because that's what you could do back then and so we did that pretty much over and over again and we built our sunglass brand up to about a two and a half million dollar brand. By the time we ended up, we stopped focusing on it to pivot into something else but it was just a matter of Releasing more and more product. That's how we got to that two and a half million was more and more sunglasses over and over again. I think by the end of it we had close to about 20 pairs and so we launched quite a few. We brought on some investors as well and that's what helped us scale really quickly. Speaker 1: So at the peak it was two and a half million dollars in sales just on Amazon or were you also off Amazon as well? Speaker 2: That was pretty much just Amazon for the sunglass brand, yeah. Speaker 1: So about 20 different SKUs of sunglasses, were there any accessories with that like straps or cleaners or anything like that? Speaker 2: Yeah, we did it all in there. So it came in a package, in a box. The box served as both the shipping box plus it was a hard case for them. So we designed it so it was a little fancier, looked a little better than just a typical wood, like cardboard box. And then we had a soft case inside that also doubled as a cleaner. We had a screwdriver set so you could tighten them whenever you needed to. And then we also had, you know, other things like stickers and everything too. But yeah, we had everything in there and a strap. We did include the strap. Speaker 1: So how is it with returns on sunglasses? Because sunglasses are kind of subjective. I mean, people put them on, you know, in the store or whatever. You see them and then, no, that doesn't look good on me, or that doesn't fit my face very well, or my face is too fat for these. But they look cool in the model, in the photo on your listing. So how was it dealing with that kind of thing? Speaker 2: So sunglasses, I do not recommend for anyone because you're going to have a high return rate, which we did. So our listings got shut down a lot because of that high return rate. And we also had the conversion rates a lot lower. So a good sunglass listing has about a 7% conversion rate. A bad one has about a 4% conversion rate. And so the conversion is a lot lower, which means you have to drive a lot more traffic to get those sales. So Amazon cost per click was a lot higher or PPC costs were a lot higher. And so it was a lot harder to make it as profitable, but our margins were really high and that's why we did it. Most people were positioning into the $10 to $15 range where we charged $30 to $40. And what was your landing cost on that? About $3.50. Speaker 1: So you could spend quite a bit then on the PPC and that's where, we'll talk about that in a little bit, but that's where you got some chops on PPC, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where we learned PPC because it was a very competitive industry with sunglasses and I was going up against the top sellers in China. And so they can compete on price all day long and we didn't want to do that. So we had to get a little more creative with external traffic and, you know, building things outside to send on to Amazon, which I still do today. We just don't focus on the sunglasses as much anymore. But, you know, I promote this all the time. I hear you talk about it all the time. Starting that price higher, coming out with a better quality product than your competitors so you can have that higher price and then you can build in that margin could then go after advertising a little harder as well. Speaker 1: So you're still selling the sunglasses today but you've, is that correct? Unknown Speaker: Yeah, they're there. Speaker 1: They're there but that's not a focus. Speaker 2: Yeah, so in 2016, we actually started to pivot into building an audience and we couldn't really think of an audience to build around sunglasses. Some people have done a great job with it, including Ray-Ban. They've created kind of a pop culture icon. There's a smaller brand called Gooder, G-O-O-D-E-R. They created sunglasses for runners and so they've created a great brand around their sunglasses. We just didn't feel the passion behind it and so we actually pivoted in 2016 and started building an audience around dry eye sufferers and postmenopausal females that are suffering from dry eye. And if you're asking yourself as you're listening to this, what's dry eye? That's good, you don't have it. But dry eye can be this debilitating condition that keeps you from working, keeps you from driving, keeps you from leaving your bed. And so we wanted to start treating people naturally around dry eye by giving them healthier products And building an audience around that. So that's where our business pivoted and that was a result of going to conferences like we talked about earlier. We just, I heard something on stage that just kind of set a light bulb off in my head. I was just kind of like, yes, that's what we need to do. So we pivoted and the sunglasses were there because they cash flowed well. But, you know, as competitors moved in and we just didn't have the passion to keep those going, so they're still there and they still sell. They're not doing two and a half million anymore. They're doing closer to like 700,000 a year, if not maybe 500,000 a year, but we've discontinued a lot of them. We're down to just our top five SKUs that we had back then. Speaker 1: So with the dry eye, is that more of a consumable that people are ordering over and over or is it something more like a kind of like a medication type of thing where you just need it once when you have the problem and then you don't, it sits on the shelf and you don't need it again for five years or is it something that people have to use regularly? Speaker 2: Yeah, so what we taught people is that it's more of a symptom around an overall inflammation of your entire body. And so what we started doing is teaching people how to decrease the inflammation in their body which would then decrease the symptoms of their dry eye. But in the meantime, you're going to need some products to help you out. And so all of our products are around eyelid hygiene. We sell eyelid wipes, eyelid sprays. We have a face wash and eye cream that's non-toxic. And we sell an eye makeup remover for your eyelids. And then we're coming out with our first eye drop here in the next year or so. Eye drops just kind of cover up symptoms. They don't solve the problem. So we try to solve the problems by using safer products and teaching them healthier lifestyle habits. So diet, exercise, water, hydration, things like that. You know, we created this whole movement in the eye care space as a result around dry eye and now what we're seeing is doctors are actually recommending some of the things that we started recommending seven years ago or six years ago. And it's kind of cool to create that movement and to build an audience around people and actually serving somebody and seeing the results firsthand from reviews, from testimonials, from people saying that you changed our life just by teaching me to drink more water. And that's what's really rewarding about this business is you can really make an impact on individual lives by focusing on a person instead of just a product. And so we fell in love with the dry eye space and we've kind of continued the dry eye area ever since. Speaker 1: Now did you have experience with that or do you see that in your practice or is it just you were doing some research on Amazon and you're like look this looks like a good opportunity here or how did you actually choose that to pivot to? Speaker 2: So I was actually in a practice at a dry eye clinic. My uncle had a dry eye clinic from 2010 to 2014 and then when we moved to South Carolina we actually wanted to open up a pediatric practice. Pediatrics meaning for kids. Instead, God had other plans and sent us a geriatric practice. So, we ended up going from wanting to serve the kids to serving 70-year-old plus, a lot of African-Americans, so a lot of diabetes in that population, a lot of high blood pressure, a lot of high cholesterol and with those diseases come dry eye. And so, we started just seeing all this stuff and we had a shelf full at our practice of other people's products that we were selling. And I was at a conference one day, the one I was talking about a little earlier and there's a doctor up on stage and he was getting drilled by a panel and they're like, why are you selling other people's products? You're the expert, make your own products. And a light bulb went off in my head and I was just like, okay, I need to replace everything on that shelf with our own private label branded product. And we didn't know which one to start with but when we were trying to figure it out, a patient came in And one of the products that we were selling went from $30 a month to $300 a month. It was a pharmaceutical company and they 10x their cost. And so the patient came to me and said, I can't afford this $300 a month product anymore. You're the entrepreneur, figure out how to make this stuff. I got on Google, started searching for manufacturers. I contacted three manufacturers, was on the phone the next day with one. We had a private label agreement in place three days later, and they were making our first batch. And the reason I went with them is because they had no toxic ingredients in it, where when you make this product, it produces bleach as a byproduct that stays in the solution, and you don't really want to spray bleach on your eyelids. Theirs did not. And so that's why we went with them. But it went from idea to manufacturing within five days. And so, and that's still our number one selling product to this day. That product put us on the map in the dry ice space. That's how people started hearing about us as well. And it works incredibly well. So we're really proud of that product and it's impacted close to 100,000 lives at this point. And it's just a great product overall. Speaker 1: Are there any regulations around that or is it treated more like a supplement or are there any regulations because it's actually going in the body, I guess it's technically going in the body, it's going in the eye. Speaker 2: Yeah, so there are, if you want to market it a certain way, we market it as a cosmetic. And so we say it's more of a cleanser, so it's an eyelid cleanser, but if you want to say anything around like, if you want to talk about disease at all, you have to have Some certifications, but we just, we 100% market it as a cosmetic and that's how we can, we do have our 510K now, but we didn't at the beginning because we didn't know any better. But since then, we've been working on getting that 510K, which then opens up a whole new opportunity to market. And then if you get studies done that say it actually proves to help with dry eye, then you can actually market it as a dry eye treatment, which we haven't done that yet because it costs millions of dollars even to do it over in India and some other countries. It costs tens of millions here in the United States. Speaker 1: What's a 510k? Speaker 2: 510k is just a certification to use certain terminologies. Usually like there's another person that's gone through similar process with I'm not the expert in 510 case by the way so don't take this as legal advice but somebody else has gone in with a hypochlorous acid that's what the product is and they've got it approved to be able to say these things because it works a certain way and so we can follow their path it's kind of like a and then once we get that certification. Speaker 1: It's like a precedent kind of thing. Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. Speaker 1: You're following in their shoes. Speaker 2: Exactly. And so you submit to the government that you can market this product as what you're marketing it as. And again, I'm not the expert of it. Similar things with eyedrops. And so eyedrops, you need what's called an FDA monograph. And once the FDA monograph is there, you probably deal with that a little bit with your dog treats, maybe. Speaker 1: Some of the hand sanitizer stuff, we dealt with a lot of that. Speaker 2: Yeah. And so same thing there. There's a precedent in place. You need to kind of follow that to a T. And if you do, you can say certain terminology, you can use certain things on your listing, on your label and everything like that. Speaker 1: So were you getting pushback from Amazon, like certain words were flagging you and shutting down your listing until you provided this documentation? Speaker 2: Yeah, everybody out there on Amazon uses the words like dry eye, stye, blepharitis. We don't, we did until we got shut down and then once we realized that there's a whole world of regulation behind this and so that's when we started exploring a little bit more but if you go on Amazon and type in blepharitis treatment or dry eye treatment, you'll see all these listings with dry eye treatment on them and none of them can actually say that so Amazon should shut them all down. And Amazon could get in big trouble with the FDA in regards to that if they don't have their certifications, which most of them don't. And so we don't say any of that on our listings anymore. We used to, but that provides a whole different challenge as far as marketing is when you can't say disease terms, which is an FDA structure function claim if you don't have proof behind it, but it makes you also get more creative with your marketing. And so we've always kind of had to constantly innovate our marketing as a result of We're doing it this way. Amazon shuts us down. Needs all this documentation. We don't have that documentation. So we got to figure out a way around it. So we have to hire attorneys to figure things out. And it just leads to a lot of, like I said, I am not an expert in this, but it makes you realize that going into a regulated territory is harder, of course, and a lot less people will do it as a result. And so that's how you can be more successful in this space is if you go into something that's a little harder to get into. Then it's going to be almost easier to sell because there's not going to be as much competition as a result in there. Speaker 1: So you're talking about building, you pivoted and built an audience and a lot of people talk about building audiences, refining. This one seems like it might be a little bit of a challenge to actually build an audience of people that want to, that's engaged and regularly engaged, that has dry eye. How did you go, I know you have some innovative ways and you've talked about them like at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. Helium 10 Elite and some other places, but you have some innovative ways in actually doing your marketing, not just depending on Amazon, just not like depending on PPC. You've got some interesting SEO stuff that you do and some other really cool tactics with blogs and stuff. So can you, can you share a little bit of that and how you build that audience and how you reach those people? Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd love to. And the biggest problem I see with most Amazon sellers, and I talk to a lot every single week, On sales calls for our agency is they're focused around their product and nobody cares about your product. I'm sorry to say this, it doesn't matter what product you have, nobody cares about it. What they care about is the problem that your product can solve or the heaven, the pleasure that your product can bring. And so when you're thinking about something around your product, think about is it trying to get somebody to heaven or to pleasure or is it trying to get somebody out of hell or out of pain? And when you think about those two things, I'll give you some examples. So we try to get people out of hell. Dry eyes, maybe your child doesn't sleep at night, you're in debt, you're losing money every month on Amazon PPC. These are just some examples. Getting somebody to heaven or pleasure is like that new fancy car, that new dream house, making millions, things like that. So when you focus on those two things, the world opens up, Google opens up to you because everybody is going after product-based keywords when it comes to Google advertising, Amazon advertising. But when you focus on the problem-based keyword, advertising costs go significantly down. And I went over this a little bit at BDS in the fall this year. So when you focus on problem-based keywords, your cost per click can be as low as one cent. And I think my average for last month was around 10 cents. And so when you're focusing on the problem-based keywords around like Google Ads and even Amazon PPC, your cost per click is going to be a lot lower. And I'm talking like 1 cent clicks to 10 cent clicks. So what we're doing is we're building blogs around these problem-based keywords and we're sending Google Ads traffic to these blogs and then the blog talks about the problem and how your product is a solution and then that product then has a link that goes over to Amazon to buy and we use the new Amazon attribution program, the brand referral bonus and you get a 10% referral bonus for that traffic. And with that strategy of Google ad to blog post to Amazon, we're generating like I said 10 cent clicks but we're generating anywhere between a four and a seven ROAS. Overall, our average is about a four ROAS across all the articles. Some articles are getting an eight ROAS, some are getting a one, but you can scale the ones that are getting the eight, and then you just kind of leave the ones that are getting a one to two alone, because they're still sending external traffic, which is huge in Amazon's world. They love when you send external traffic, it's gonna increase your organic rank, which is then gonna increase your sales. And when you do this over and over again, so we try to shoot for one new blog post a week, we've been doing this since 2017, And now it's like once a month because of regulatory issues with corporate because we sold our company, but we still run it. But we usually try to do one a month now. And when you keep doing this, whenever you're, your Amazon listing becomes pretty much immune to the competition because that external traffic just keeps you at the top regardless of what's going on outside. If they're doing a black hat tactic to get above you, don't worry because the black hat tactic will go down. And you'll stay right where you are. And so we've used that to stay pretty much organically ranked in the same spot for years. And it doesn't go up, it doesn't go down. The only time it goes down is when we run out of stock, which is rarely, but it does happen. Unfortunately, in the time and era that we're in right now, it finally hit us this year. But that strategy of problem-based keywords from Google Ads to an article or a landing page around it, Then going over to Amazon to buy has been huge for us. And when they're on that landing page, we then try to get their email address, push notification, text message, whatever you can to get them on your list to then be able to remarket to them further. Speaker 1: How do you incentivize them to give up that personal information? Speaker 2: Yeah, so we have a lot of things. So on my agency side, theprofitablepineapple.com, if you go there, I incentivize you with a free Amazon PPC Masterclass. And I will put this Amazon PPC Masterclass up against any paid course that's out there. I think it's just as good. And you just give them something that's so valuable they can't say no. For our dry eye side, we give them a Rethinking Dry Eye Treatment book. This is a literal 200-page book that you can buy paperback. It's on Audible, it's on Kindle. But we give you the PDF version for free. It doesn't have to be a full book. You can just make a one-page PDF about the key thing there is just create curiosity. And so let's say you're in wealth management. You could say the five money mistakes that you're making today. Click this PDF to learn more and that Peaks my curiosity to put my email address in there. Or if you're in the healthcare space, the five mistakes that are leading to more dry eye. And so really creating that curiosity hook to get them to opt in. And then, like I said, it can be a one-page PDF. It doesn't have to be a full book. You can also do a coupon. And so if you have a coupon running on your listing, it doesn't have to be a promotional code where you actually give them a physical thing to put in at checkout. I do it with coupons that are running on my listing. So if I have a 25% coupon on my listing, the ones that you clip on Amazon, I'll say get your 25% off coupon, put your email address in here and then it will take them to a how-to. So this is how you get your coupon. You clip the coupon on the Amazon listing and then you just check out like normal and it will show up on checkout. Speaker 1: And can you also explain for those that are listening and may not understand, what's a problem-based keyword? What's some examples of that like you're targeting on Google? Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question. So I sell eyelid wipes. Eyelid wipes are great for dry eyes. They're great for blepharitis. They're great for styes. So my problem-based keywords are styes, blepharitis, and dry eyes. My product-based keyword is eyelid wipes. And so very different that you're going after, but it's the same thing. And so what you're doing there is you're warming them up with the blog post to then send them over to your eyelid wipes to buy. Let's do another example real quick. So let's say you sell apple cider vinegar and you focus your apple cider vinegar around acid reflux. Acid reflux is your problem based keyword. And then you talk to them in an article about how good apple cider vinegar is for acid reflux and then go over and buy mine from Amazon. And so that's the example of a problem versus product based. Speaker 1: So on your blog post, is it just featuring your product? It's talking about, if it's a dry eye problem, here's what causes dry eye, here's some examples, here's some natural remedies or things you can do, but if you really want to solve this problem, we recommend this product on Amazon. Is it just your product or do you have, here's the top, some people do like a top 10 list, so here's the top 10 and seven of those 10 are theirs and three of them are somebody else's with an affiliate link, just to make it look kind of legit. How do you do that process? Speaker 2: Yes, so we do two different articles. We do question articles and then we do listicles like you just went over. So question article is What is dry eye? What causes dry eye? What's the best dry eye treatment? A listicle is seven best dry eye treatments, seven best eye drops for dry eye, five best eyelid wipes for dry eye. And so obviously I can't say four dry eye anymore, I have to just say five best eyelid wipes, but that's an example of a listicle. And then what we'll do is we'll have a brief introductory paragraph that says what is dry eye, just talks about a little bit, and then the five best natural remedies. Keep your eyelids clean with eyelid wipes. Number two, use eye drops that don't have preservatives. And so when we first started doing this, we only had one product. And so we had these articles with a bunch of things to do, but what we did is we affiliated to other products and not just our own. And then what we noticed was this one's selling best on this article. Obviously ours would sell best, that's how we positioned it, but this one's selling second best. This is our next product we're coming out with. And then third, so eventually we only had one product on the article, eventually we'd have all the products on the article. And so just start out by providing value and then having your product there to click on to buy and then eventually have all your products on there if it makes sense for that article. Speaker 1: So primarily using this strategy mixed in with a little bit PPC and a good product that actually solves a pain point like you said, you grew this to how much in revenue? Speaker 2: In revenue, the best year we had was about 4.6 million in revenue and then we unfortunately had to shut a lot of it down for FDA structure function issues but we didn't have to completely delete them. We just had to turn them off until the attorney could approve them and so now we're going through One by one, each article and getting it approved by our attorney and so we actually had to shut this whole process down and now we're building it right back up and so you'll see our, if you look at our Shopify sessions, it has this escalating ramp up and then it tanks and then now it's starting to go back up again because we're getting them slowly approved back with our attorney. It just takes some time. Speaker 1: So you grew it to 4.6 but at what point did you, you said you actually sold the business but you're now actually still running the business for the new buyers. Can you walk me through that process and tell me how that worked and what's it like actually going from calling the shots to now you got to report to somebody and do what they say when it's kind of your baby and your creation. It's like you have a new parent. Speaker 2: Okay, so let's unpack this a little bit. So what happened was we actually got on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies and when we got on that list we started getting contacted by venture capital firms saying they wanted to buy us. And so I had this cookie cutter response back to them that said, I want this multiple. This is how much I want in cash. I want to roll over this equity to your parent company because I believe in this company and I want to stay on as a result. And then I want this as well. So I had this cookie cutter explanation of all of our wants and I would just send that back. And it was a lot of wants and it was a belief that our company was more valuable than probably it was if you just looked at the numbers. But everybody said no and laughed at us, so it wasn't a big deal. Finally, two people said yes. And so we kind of had a bidding war between these two brands and we ended up going with the one that we sold to, obviously. And it's been a complete change in pace, but it's just different. Instead of you calling all the shots, everything has to go through a process now and get approval through attorneys and through the CEO and through other things. So if you want to launch a product, I've been trying to launch a product for 14 months. It just takes a lot longer. So you have to plan things, you have to forecast things. The reason I sold it wasn't just for the money, it was also to learn and it was also to impact more people. They already have a business around dry eye and they're in thousands of doctor's offices across the country. And so we're trying to get into those doctor's offices now. So we've kind of switched to more of a wholesale model as a result. But the best part is I don't have to focus on that anymore. I get to focus on my Amazon side still and exactly what we were doing before, except I now have to do financial forecasts, which I've never done in my life. I have to do forecasting inventory and not forecasting inventory, but forecasting sales. And so that's a whole new game that I'm learning right now. And I wanted to learn from this process. And, you know, we contracted to stay on for about two and a half years. I would recommend not doing that long if you're ever going to sell, because it does change everything when you do sell. And it might take the love for it out for you. And it's just a different mindset. It's a mindset shift. For any of you that are listening that are still in that kind of grind stage where you're maybe just getting up to a million dollars in sales, that's the most fun part to me in the business is that grind, is that growing the business. And when you switch to kind of this corporate environment, it's all about money. It's not about the passion. It's all about hitting your numbers. And so it's a completely different strategy altogether. But I don't know. I'm trying to best say this without saying too much. Speaker 1: So why did you sell and take the chips off the table and go sit on the beach for a little while and start your next endeavor after that or why did you decide to actually stay on? Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question. It's because I believed in the product. We weren't for sale when we sold. And we believed in getting this to as many people as possible. And that's the reason we stayed on is because we wanted to see it through. And we know that if a dry ice sufferer can get our product in their hand, that it's going to change their life forever. And our goal was to get it to 1 million people. We're at about 100,000 now. And with the help of our parent company, I think we can get that even to more. And so it was the mission base. So our mission was never money. We always believe in service and service will bring money as a result afterwards. And so we always focused on that service. And so we always did what was best for the customer. And even though we sold our company, people called us sell outs in our audience. We didn't do it for the money. We did it to get into more hands and to get it to more people because it is such an effective product and it works so well. So could you sit on the beach and just relax? Speaker 1: No, I would go maybe for a couple days, but no, I would, I would start jonesing and shaking and convulsing or something. I would have to do something. Yeah, I can't just, I can't just sit around. Speaker 2: My vacations are mission trips. So whenever we go on vacation, we go on a mission trip. So we'll go to, we went to Mexico in May and we did a week of service where we gave close to 3000 eye exams and eye screenings to a local village down there. Speaker 1: That's awesome. Speaker 2: That's what we love to do. We love it because we get to experience these towns from a local level because you're providing so much service to them. The townspeople want to take you out, so you get to go out to all the local restaurants and they take you to all the local places. You barely pay for anything, even though it's cheap to begin with because we're in Mexico and Jamaica and all these third world countries, but they love to give back because of what you're doing for them. You really get to see Real countries you don't get to see like we went to Cancun but we drove two hours west to Valladolid and we got to experience the culture of the Mayans and just really being immersed in that. That's why we do this and that's what we do on vacation so a little different. We're still busy. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the difference between a traveler and a tourist. A lot of people are tourists. They go to Cancun and sit on the beach and eat in the all-you-can-eat buffets and all that kind of stuff, and they don't really venture out and see the real culture and the real people. I don't know if you know this or not, Travis, but I've been to 92 countries and traveled to all seven continents, been all over the world, and one of my favorite things is when I travel is the food and the culture. It's not just go see the sights and see the cool beaches and the cool monuments and museums. He's experienced the culture and a lot of places I would hire like a private guide to take me around. And by the end of the trip, you know, you become almost friends with these people, like you were saying, with the people that you're helping in the villages and stuff. And they want to take you to their house to eat. So you're going into their little huts, you know, and sitting on the floor and a chair. And the wife has been working all day to make the perfect meal. And maybe they borrowed a folding chair from the neighbor so you could sit in because they didn't have an extra chair. Or, you know, I've had guides take me to a restaurant in like Morocco. And like, Kevin, here's the restaurant. I had a guide and driver taking me around Morocco one time. They said, here's the restaurant for you. We'll be back in an hour to pick you up. I'm like, no, I'm not going to eat here. The menu's in seven languages. Any restaurant that has a menu in more than two languages, I'm not eating that. This is a tourist place. Where are you guys going to eat? And they said, oh, we're going around the corner where the drivers and guides go. You know, it's street food. You can't go there, it's not safe to eat there. And I'm like, no, I'm going with you. So we ended up going over to that. I ended up going with them and you know, it's like 25, like you said, it's cheap. It's like 25 or 50 cents for an entire lunch. And it was like really local, authentic experience and sitting around talking with the other drivers. So that's cool that you're getting to do that. You're giving back and doing good for people and actually getting to experience their world as well. Speaker 2: Yeah, and Jenna and I actually get to experience our pediatric clinic that we always wanted to do because we've become the pediatric specialists in this. And so what we do is we form a clinic and usually it's at like a chamber of commerce in that local area. And Jenna and I actually hire a driver and we go out to the villages around the city and we'll screen all the kids in the schools there. And we're so far away from the village that we are from the city that we have to get lunch in the village. And these are villages that have absolutely no restaurants. And so, like what you said, they bring you into your house. And this one village we went to had thatch roof homes. And it was like not even sealed. And we had, you know, chicken stew that was pitted in the ground that morning. And they were smoking it and then they made it and we're sitting around with like a bunch of people. They talk in Spanish. I don't speak Spanish. I didn't know what they were saying, but we had a good time. Speaker 1: That's awesome. I have a question for you, Dr. Travis. What do you get when you cross a pineapple with a pig? Speaker 2: A porky pine. Speaker 1: So what is it about pineapples and you? People that are listening to this can't see, but behind you right now is a picture of a pineapple on a wall. So what is it about pineapples and you have some business that has that in its name, I think, right? Speaker 2: I'm going to start this conversation by saying I am not a swinger. That is what an upside down pineapple means to me. But no, it was funny because I was actually at Traffic and Conversion Summit in 2019. And have you ever been to Traffic and Conversion? Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I've been to a few of them, yeah. Speaker 2: So, thousands of people, like 6,000 people, almost a thousand vendors and so there's people everywhere, there's vendors everywhere and I remember one vendor the whole time I was there and the vendor was called Design Pickle and it had a pickle dancing in a pickle suit and he was handing out pickles and I was like, this is brilliant, we need to come out with a business that's something like this and the first Iteration of the name. This is like we were just starting the agency. This is back in January of 2019, but we didn't really have a name yet. We were using my LLC that I had my practice under and we weren't practicing anymore. But we were just like, what do we want to name this? I Love Cares Clinic just doesn't sound good. That was the name of our practice. And so Design Pickle really stood out. And so the first name was Profitable Pickle Pineapple. And our audience, don't laugh too hard, but our audience literally said, you cannot be this, this is terrible. So then we ended up just shortening it to Profitable Pineapple, and that's how the name hit. Why'd we come up with that? To be honest with you, I went on Canva one day, and I just started typing random fruits and vegetables into Canva, and Pineapple had a million. So there's pineapples with sunglasses, Pineapple's doing this, and there's just a million pineapple photos. And I was like, oh, this will be easy for YouTube videos. And so that's how Profitable Pineapple was born. And then when you come out with a name like that, then you activate your reticular activating system, your RAS system in your brain, and you really realize that there are pineapples everywhere in this world. Everywhere you go, there are pineapples. And so now I see pineapples everywhere and it sticks. So people remember it and they know me as the pineapple guy now, which I'm okay with. And so it sticks in your brain versus other Amazon PPC agencies that are, you know, based on scale or something like that. So that's why we did it. Something to be more fun. Speaker 1: So Profitable Pineapple is a PPC agency so what you guys do only like big high-level sellers? Do you work with anybody? Is there a certain minimum that someone's got to be at to work with you guys? Can you tell me a little bit about what you guys do? Speaker 2: So we recommend that any Amazon seller hire an agency once they hit about $25,000 a month in revenue or more, wait till you hit that much. Because if you do it when you're below that, it's not going to be a good ROI from your standpoint because it's going to cost too much. So it's going to be hard to do that. We work with anybody. With that being said, we've helped brands launch all the way up to we have brands that are doing You know, multi-figures, so it just depends on what you're looking for. We do Amazon PPC, we do Amazon DSP, we do Google Ads to Amazon as well. We have The kind of system that we talked about, the problem-based keywords and doing that over to Amazon. And that's been more effective than using other softwares that are out there for Google Ads. And then we also, for clients, we'll do the Google Ads to the blog strategy and then sending the blog over to Amazon as well. So we kind of help with that influencer side and kind of making you an influencer and helping you build that email list. So we do quite a bit for clients, but we work with pretty much any clients because I like working with the startups because there's just a different type of fire in their eyes versus the guy that's already doing a million dollars. I like working with them too for different reasons but we like working with startups as well. So we work with a wide variety but we focus on scale in the 80-20 and I think that's key when you're doing Amazon PPC is to focus on the 20% of your products that are working and the 20% of search terms that are working for PPC. That's how you really start to scale. Speaker 1: I've heard good things about your agency. I've not personally worked with them, but I've worked with some other agencies and what I'm finding is the agencies, people always ask me, what's a good PPC agency? Who should I go with? I'm like, it depends. It depends a lot on who is your rep there. Who do you get at that agency? It's not so much necessarily the agency itself, it's the person that you get that's working on your account. So how do you address that issue or how do you counter that problem? Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're a small agency, so there's only eight of us right now and I hire entrepreneurs. Sounds crazy, but I hire people that are actually building a brand themselves. Number one, if we end up working with you, we can't, I don't have a non-compete with everybody that's on the agency. So let's say that one of my clients or one of my agency managers is selling a supplement that helps with anxiety. And I'm interviewing somebody on a sales call to bring them in and they sell the same supplement and we won't let them hire us because of that non-compete. We don't want them to compete with each other. And so all the managers that we have in our, in our brand are building a brand On their own, or excuse me, all the managers we have in our agency are building a brand of their own so they understand it. Some of them are at, you know, the six-figure mark, some at seven figures, some are just starting out. But they have that mentality of how to grow a brand plus I'm mentoring them in the process as well on how to grow a multi seven-figure brand. And so we've kind of been very selective with who we hire and I actually say no to more people than I say yes to when I sit, when I Bring people into the agency to manage their ads. So not just managers, but like the people that we actually bring in, the Amazon sellers, we actually say no to more people we say yes to. Because of that, we want to keep it smaller and close-knit, but we are very selective with the hiring process and you have to be somebody that's actually building something other than just your client's accounts because you want to stay up with the latest and greatest because you're doing it for your own brand as well. Speaker 1: That's awesome. I like that, actually hiring people that are doing it, because a lot of these people that are running ads for agencies, some of them have some experience, some of them have no experience, but a lot of them are not actually doing it themselves. So they don't have that same passion or that same connection to it. So I like that approach. That's really interesting. I haven't heard that one before where everybody is doing this almost like as a side job. They have their brand that they're building. They're doing this as a side job to make some extra income. That's awesome. Speaker 2: And selfishly, I built it to be people that I wanted to hang out with. So number one rule is I have to want to get a beer with you. In order to bring you on to the agency and hire you as a manager. And so everybody in the agency I hang out with. And if we go on a trip together, I actually like to be with them. And it's not people that I like, oh, I got to go to a meeting with these guys. I can't stand them. I don't want to go to dinner with them. It's actually a fun agency to be a part of because it's just a bunch of guys hanging out. I mean, the two guys that I started with, you've met them both, Adam and Jordan, they are my best friends from college. So we're having fun. Speaker 1: So you just knocked it out of the park at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit just recently and did it. Did an awesome job there. What are you going to be speaking about at selling scale next month at Helium 10's event? Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm actually on a panel with Janelle Page and Alina, who I think they've both been to BDSS, and we're going to be talking about launching. How to launch your products on Amazon today. Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, Dr. Travis, I really appreciate you taking the time today to come on here and share some of your story and some of your strategies. I think there's a lot that people can unpack from this and get into a little bit different approach that I think can be very, very effective. So hopefully those listening have been taking some good notes and will take some action on what you've heard today from Dr. Travis. If people want to reach out to you or find out more about what you're doing or your companies or reverse engineer your blogs or whatever, how would they do that? Speaker 2: So I actually have a free lead generation course that you can get at profitablepineapple.com forward slash audience. So you can check that out. Profitablepineapple.com is our agency. So if you want to apply to work with us, you're more than welcome to do that there. And yeah, fill it out. Even if you don't think you're selling enough, fill it out. And if we jump on a call and chat and we get along well, then we may bring you on. We also have a Facebook group called Amazon PPC Pros. And Facebook's the easiest way to find me. Just look up Travis Zigler, Z-I-G-L-E-R. And you can add me as a friend, shoot me a message, do whatever you want to do. Speaker 1: Awesome. Travis, I appreciate it. We'll see you again here shortly in Vegas. Speaker 2: Alright Kevin, thanks. Speaker 1: Wow, Travis has been doing this for a while as you can see and he really has got a great system down for driving outside traffic to Amazon using blogs and different websites and from Google and other places. It's an amazing technique that I know he's been using for several years that just works like a charm. So hopefully you got a lot of good information from this episode and you can apply some of what he was talking about to your business and see how it affects your sales. Don't forget, Sale & Scale is coming up in just a few weeks in Las Vegas. That's Helium 10's big event. Hopefully you can make it out there. Gary Vanderchuck is headlining. Neil Patel is there. I'll be speaking Bradley, Jana. There's just a ton of folks that will be actually speaking at that event. So hopefully you can make it out and looking forward to meeting you there if you do. And just before I leave you today, we've got today's wisdom. This is actually from basketball coach John Wooden. You know, he was a really famous basketball coach at UCLA, won a lot of national championships. And he's had a really interesting quote on giving that I want to share with you. He said, there's a wonderful, almost mystical law of nature that says three of the things we want the most in life, happiness, freedom, and peace of mind are always attained when we give them to others. So give it away to get it back. One more time, John Wooten's famous quote. There is a wonderful, almost mystical law of nature that says three of the things we want most in life, happiness, freedom, and peace of mind, are always attained when we give them to others. So give it away to give it back. We'll see you again next week.