Lauren Petrullo talks about Ecom Mastery .ai featuring BDSS

What is one channel that is most underutilized right now? So, we are covering so many topics at this event. It is where e-commerce and AI merge, which with today's environment, we have to be up on both of those topics and we're going to be Hey Lauren, how are you doing? >> Hi Amy, I'm doing good. How are you? I am so excited because I am part of this ecommastery.ai event coming up in Nashville and I know that you're speaking there and I just wanted to reach out to you and ask you a few awesome questions to talk about your topic. >> Deals, come on. Come on. Hit me with your hardest question. >> I love it. I love it. We're going to be talking about how to drive outside paid traffic to your Shopify or Amazon store. Wherever you sell, you probably want to dive into some different forms of traffic besides the plain old PPC. If you're on Shopify, you've got to do something because you're kind of a sitting duck, right? >> So, what about Amazon sellers? Most of them rely 100% on Amazon's traffic. You're saying that's a [clears throat] death sentence. Why? And what should they be doing instead? Well, if they don't want to become genericized and get their stuff stolen and uh, you know, eventually become Amazon basics and wiped off the face of Amazon and have a business in five years. I mean, for me, I'm I'm not your mother. I'm not going to hold their hands and tell them what to do. Amy, but you and I both know major brands that were doing $10,000 plus a day and their brands just disappeared because they actually didn't have brands, they had products. Um, so for those Amazon sellers who are doing that, like don't do that. There's countless like war stories of people who have done that. And there are ways that you can build your brand on and off Amazon that allow you not only to have a sustainable business through various things like COVID or an AI bubble or who knows what's next. Um, but you'll also then be able to exit, which I think is the goal of every Amazon seller to have a stronger multiplier. So, if you're like, I don't like money. I don't like building a moat around my business. Cool. Go away. [laughter] I love that, you know, because it is so sad. I have seen so many sellers come to me over the years and they're like, "Yeah, I'm just going to shut down." Like, "You're not going to exit." And they're like, "Yeah, I'm not. I just I I don't I'm not ready." So, I love that. But you said you're not going to tell people what to do. But at this event, you actually are going to tell people exactly what to do. >> I was like [laughter] I was like, "If you're there, I mean, I'm going to give you the playbook. I'm going to give you what has worked for us." We had one of the first brands they ever worked with. When they exited, it was really funny. Amy, I don't know if I told you this. this brand in the food and beverage space. The owner literally like [clears throat] bruised her tailbone. I like saying I kicked her butt, but virtually. I mean, yeah, she's also in Florida. I'm in Orlando. She's like an hour away. But she had thought that she was reverse robbed because the first time we started doing external traffic, she's never seen so much money in her bank account that she swear she thought she was reverse robbed. So, she fell off her chair, bruised her tailbone, sat on a bubble for a week. I'm like, I feel bad for promoting violence, but that was the most violent success I've ever had. You know, it's so true and I think so many of us if we started on a platform like Amazon, we just we don't really know where to start. So, that being said, let's give people a little bit of value right now. If a seller only has $1,000, $1,000 a month to spend on outside traffic, where should they put it? And what kind of ROI can they realistically expect? >> Okay, Amy, you know me. You know, like the two words I live by, like every marketer should live by is like it depends, right? So, um the first one, it depends. If you're a seller who is using social media, like you're using Tik Tok or you're using Instagram and you have affiliates that are driving traffic and maybe you've like even just sending them to your Amazon listing, you haven't even set up a Shopify store and doing like Instagram meta shops. Um, if you have invested in an Instagram presence or in a Facebook presence, ideally Instagram, because it's the stronger propensity of your buyer, but again, it depends. You might have an older audience. Um, if you're doing the first thousand, um, I [clears throat] have to let you know on a little secret. In Meta's world, if you are spending less than $200,000 a month, you are considered small. In Meta's world, $200,000 a month is small. What? Okay. Anyways, you know, that's fine. Whatever. Meta, you do you, baby boo. um in this like different worlds if you're only spending $1,000 a month um some of the ways that you can do it to take most advantage of that smaller amount of money to send external traffic if you're investing in your Instagram profile like one of my favorite campaigns to do that you can spend $20 a day on or if you're like you know $10 a day is sending people it's a traffic objective where you're optimizing for the Instagram profile visit and then what you're trying to do is convert at least 50% of the people who are watching your reels so assuming you've got quality reels that for getting followers, use that same post. Don't you dare boost inside of Meta or Instagram. We don't do that. THAT'S LIKE THE cardinal sin. Especially if you have an iPhone and you're like, I'm going to boost this. You're like, let me set my money on fire because Meta is going to or have to give an additional 30% tax to Apple because Tim Cook is going to cook your bank account. Anyways, um so like an easy campaign like I like for Amazon sellers to start with to start building your brand to start setting you up for good product market fit to understand who in the social media ecosystem is your buyer. Send people to your existing Instagram profile. Traffic objective optimize for Instagram profile visits. And what you want to get is ideally 50% of people that because your objective is the button takes you not to the Amazon listing. you're actually paying them to the Instagram profile, which is like spinach to Popeye's algorithmic AI. So, if uh Meta's Andromeda updates and the um the ad retrieval engine behind all of their AI programmatic stuff was a cartoon character, it'd be Popeye. And using these smaller, cheaper objectives like Instagram profile visits, it's spinach because you're not taking them off platform. What we're doing is they're saying, "Hey, look at this wonderful Instagram profile." And they check out your highlights, they check out your link in bio, they check out all your reviews, and then they get sucked in. And when they get sucked in, you're building all this consumer trust off platform, developing a brand, bringing awareness, and then you can have your link and bio go directly to your Amazon store. You don't have to have a Shopify store set up or any of that. Not even use WooCommerce. But it's really like this um secret long way around >> to win in because if you're not spending $200,000, that's >> something that all of us want is branded search. We want branded search. So, I love that. That's such a great tip and I can't wait to learn more from you at this event. It's going to be amazing. So, your session in Nashville is going to give sellers a paid traffic playbook. You're giving them the playbook. So, what is one channel that is most underutilized right now? Okay. So, for those that don't have a Shopify store yet, sorry, this one's not for you. But for those Amazon sellers that did set it up, even if you're not doing a lot, like your business, let's say 80% of your business, 90% of your business is from Amazon, but you still set up a Shopify store, there's a channel called Shopay. So, we know Shopay because you can pay with Shop Pay, right? It's they have their own ecosystem. Shopify is trying to be like Disney World, right? They want to own everything. So, Shop Pay campaigns is the most underutilized campaign and the only one I've ever seen a successful guaranteed ROI on. >> I'll tell you more if you're there. If you're not, well, [clears throat] second, [laughter] you're going to miss out. Well, you know, the good thing about this event is we are covering all of the e-commerce channels, including Shopify. So, if Shopify is something that you've wanted to get set up, you can come to ecommastery.ai and learn about all the different channels. We're going to be talking about Tik Tok, about Shopify, about Amazon, all the things, all the places. So, not only that, but we're going to be talking about the latest and greatest in AI. So, we're gonna have multiple stages from beginners tracks all the way to multi-million dollar sellers are going to get what they need at this event. This is really a unique event. Lauren, what are you most excited about with this event? >> Oh, okay. [clears throat] It's in person, Amy. And I love you. I was like, I saw you last in Texas. Before that, we're in like Fiji. I'm like, I'm just ready to like poke people in person. Like, I just want hugs. I want to like see the real person experience because like at events you can always like replay the videos and stuff but you can't replay the connections you build and you can't replay the conversations you have in person. So the the thing I'm most looking forward to besides yet another amazing event with Kevin and Mark and what they put together is like it's not fair to call it work but it is it's still work um is the inperson aspect and being able to like poke and hug all all the friends and and strangers. So if you if your friends like and I poke you, it's like a symbol of hi, I see you. Poke poke poke. >> People are going to be like, oh my gosh, I don't want to go to her talk at all. This is her [laughter] energy. Yes, they are going to love it. I'm going to love it. I can't wait to see you there. So everyone, if you are even thinking about attending this event, you've got to get there. It is ecommastery.ai. And if you use the code mastery, you can save 20% on your ticket. The lowest level ticket is less than 500 bucks. So really, what are you waiting for? Lauren's paid traffic playbook is going to pay for your ticket many times over again and the money that you're going to save and all the money that's going to be, you know, you're going to think you got reverse robbed in your bank account. So [laughter] >> don't think about it. It's in Nashville April 8th. We can't [music] wait. So ecommastery.ai. Get over there. Use the code mastery.