The "Be Everywhere" Trap: Why Your Brand is Failing to Scale

The "Be Everywhere" Trap: Why Your Brand is Failing to Scale Speaker 1: Emma, thanks so much for coming back on the show. It's always great to have you. Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. I wish that people could have heard all the conversation in the lead up. Speaker 1: We just talked for about 45 minutes about a variety of topics. Speaker 2: We did. Speaker 1: A variety of topics. Thinking about whether we're AI optimists or pessimists currently, which is an interesting topic. And I actually think it relates to what we're going to be talking about today. But before that, I just wanted to highlight some of the amazing episodes that we've done together over the years. So first of all, thank you so much for coming back on the show. It is always a delight. Some of the topics that we've talked about Using data to create better product pages on Amazon. Amazing topic. We did that three years ago. Speaker 2: Wow. Speaker 1: Two years ago, we did how to elevate my copywriting to get better results on Amazon copywriting. So we've covered product pages. We zoomed in on copywriting. One year ago, we talked about product images on Amazon. How to use product images to boost conversion rates. And then eight months ago, we did product page optimization in a Rufus world. So we've covered really great topics over time. And today I was asking you, like, what's on your mind? Like, what are you talking about clients with? Like, what are they concerned about? What are the big mountains that you're trying to climb over? And you said the, which I think is related to like the pace of everything right now. What did you tell me? Speaker 2: I believe I said, first of all, wow, is this our fifth? Speaker 1: This is our fifth episode together. Unknown Speaker: Wow, that's exciting. Speaker 2: Thank you for inviting me back for number five. And I believe I said something along the lines of the pressure of feeling like you have to be everywhere, while at the same time, it feels like everything is consolidating. And there's this Strange series of changes that are happening, mostly propelled by AI. But also just by the way that I think social commerce is also really getting embedded in a way that it hasn't been previously. And then of course, we can't ignore that all of that is happening on the backdrop of profitability shrinking for a lot of businesses and having less and less resources to invest in all of these different growth activities. I think it's just creating this situation for so many brands where you feel like you have to be everywhere. You have to know everything. You have to be up on the latest. You have fewer resources to do it. And it also feels like it's all kind of, you know, there are these few gatekeepers that are pretty much controlling all of the decisions. And so it's enough to cross a lot of Eyeballs and bobble the brains. Speaker 1: This sounds like a I feel like what you just described could be said about so many things in an e-commerce world and an Amazon world. Break that down for us. What does that mean if I'm an Amazon seller? Speaker 2: So first of all, like even just the term Amazon seller, you know, it wasn't all that long ago that you really could build a business, a healthy business that was primarily focused on one channel. Speaker 1: And you can do it on the side. You could do it after your day job. Speaker 2: Yeah. And you could start it with a few thousand dollars. And that wasn't just The Get Rich Quick gurus who were saying that, that was just the reality of what we were seeing so many people achieve and then even go on to really impressive exits with their businesses. And sure, you might still hear some of those breakthrough stories today, but that's just really not what the ecosystem looks like anymore. It's very difficult to be successful. And we're going to talk a little bit about what we're talking about today, which is having that single channel loyalty. And it also is just very risky because it makes you incredibly vulnerable to any number of challenges that can come up from a sudden increase in fees to changes in the algorithm to trends. Be able to weather if you are only. Singularly focused. Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting, you know, you meet someone at an event and you ask them what they do. It's either like Amazon seller or like I run an E-commerce brand or like an E-commerce store. And that means different things, right? Like that means very different things to, I think, to me at least. So when I hear like I run an E-commerce store, That's sort of more than just Amazon. Maybe they sell on Amazon, maybe they don't, but they have an E-commerce brand. You generally think there are more places than just singularly on Amazon. And I think if you were to go in deeper on that, it's like, I'm an Amazon seller, meaning am I doing keyword research to find products and that's how I do my thing? Do I sell like a certain thing that I'm very passionate about? Those kinds of things. I think that, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think like the conclusion What you're saying is there's a need to be more than just thinking narrowly, like I'm an Amazon seller. There's a need to be an E-commerce brand. What does that mean? Which is a mountain more work. Part of the beauty of Amazon is it was all very self-contained. It's got like you, when you work on your SEO, you're inside Amazon. When you work on your PPC, you're inside Amazon. When you look at your analytics, you're inside Amazon. And then as soon as you step out off of Amazon, it's like you have a million things to do. You have like a Shopify store to manage. You have like all these different plugins. Plugins could look completely random. There's all these different social media channels. There's like email marketing now. There's like, it's like, there's all these things that you then begin to think of on top of Logistics on top of like margins on top of all these other things. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: So it gets exponentially more work, which is what you were saying. Like there's an increasing pressure to be everywhere. And I guess the question is, what is the pathway to I guess like, so what? Like, so now what? So I think, you know, like, yeah, do all the things all the time. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's because I mean, in some ways, it's the pressure that businesses have always felt. It's just that it feels, I think, to some degree, like, it's not a pressure that you can ignore in the same way that you can maybe say like, Oh, yeah, I know I need to do that. But. Speaker 1: Like I know I need to be on TikTok. Speaker 2: I'll get to that one day or like, you know, maybe that can be like a good opportunity for whoever buys my business to explore, but I think I'll hold off on that. But before I go there, like as you were talking, one of the things that I was thinking about when you were Explaining the Amazon seller and this idea of like it's all contained within Amazon and how we see actually that like even Amazon is not contained within Amazon anymore. It used to be this closed system where it was itself self-contained. And now not only can you advertise in all of these different places, but it's linking out and making agentic purchases on other sites. And it's, you know, they have these fulfillment partnerships with TikTok and, um, Walmart, you know, like it's almost, it's like, what is going on here? Like even the wires is, um, seeming competitor enemy kind of companies cannot deny the interconnectedness of what is happening. And they don't have these like strong, So, I just like, sometimes I think it's helpful when looking at what's going on to take that macro view to understand if the platform that you're selling on is also changing how they're doing things and the decisions that they're making, then that may be some indications for similar decisions that you need to be taking with your business. If you want to continue to evolve at that same pace. So what do brands actually do? I think, you know, it can be a lot of things depending on what your resources are. So it can be much more I think there's a lot that can be managed internally and more ad hoc if your budget is low. But I think one of the things to do before you even get to what to do is to take a step back and think about where your customers are and what kind of product it is that you're selling. Because I think like the other side of the equation is that some people have brands and Products that are going to be runaway successes on TikTok shop or. Live sell selling kinds of, um, you know, streaming wherever that's taking place on whatever platform, you know, they, they may not be socially driven kind of products. And sometimes those are actually like the most successful kinds of businesses. Speaker 1: Like I would also say easier. Yeah. Easier to market too. Speaker 2: I was on a conversation with somebody at a birthday party who was telling me about a friend of his who they make paper towels. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: And toilet paper. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: And I mean, if you think about it, it's kind of the ultimate business. People have to buy it constantly. It's relatively inexpensive. It's lightweight. And I mean, obviously, To start it now is a different ballgame. I'm not suggesting that people go out and sell those kinds of products. But if that business owner was like, well, I'm hearing all this buzz about I need to be on TikTok shop and I need to be amping up my social efforts and I need to make sure that I'm doing all these AI optimization and I need to be on Reddit and all these places. That's just going to be wasting their time and effort that like probably a better use of energy for them would be, you know, how can I develop more relationships with more retailers and how can I find other businesses and be their preferred supplier for all of their offices across the United States or, you know, get into international markets or whatever? I don't know if that's too much of a tangent, but I just think that it's important when Considering all these things that while I am saying you can't necessarily be in one place, the other places that you choose to go need to be driven by what your business is and where the opportunities truly lie. Speaker 1: I mean, is the takeaway from what you just said almost, there's an increased pressure to be everywhere, but is it a real pressure? Meaning, is it a, would you say you find it to be a necessary We're going to talk a little bit about the need requirement because sometimes people will say like, do I need to go over there? And it's like need is a strange word there. It's like all things being equal, one business that has lots of TikTok traffic versus one that doesn't, all things being equal, I would expect the one that has more TikTok traffic to have more sales. Pretty straightforward. So it's like all things being equal, do the extra thing. Of course, you'll get, you know, further likely than not doing the thing. But there's also like the idea of, I think about this a lot too, like Good to Great talked about it, like the hedgehog technique, like find something that you can do better than anybody else and do that very well. And then the next opportunity to take will reveal itself as you're doing this. You know, you mentioned a couple of things there, like maybe it's a B2B product and you get really good at B2B sales for an E-commerce brand. Maybe it's a heavy social product. So you get really good at social sales. Maybe it's, you know, keyword driven opportunity and you sell the best toilet paper holder in the world and like you can get really well optimized for that because you have the best click-through rate and conversion rate and you buy hyper-optimized for it. There's this concept too of like, hey, I'm going to do like a few things really, really well. And it's better to do fewer things at a 10 out of 10 level versus spreading myself out so thin that everything is sort of like a two out of 10 basis. I will say it's really easy for me to like do shiny object syndrome. I'm like, damn, like I need this strategy and that strategy and that strategy. And then I like turn around and I've got like seven things that I did in the last 90 days that are like We're all in a meh state. And I was like, wait a second, I should have like invested all my time into like one thing and gotten that really good. So I'm trying to be more disciplined myself. But there is this huge pressure, even I feel it, to do everything all the time. So I guess the question for you is what's your take on like doing a few things much, much, much better than spreading yourself out too thin? Speaker 2: So that listening to everything you just said, I agree completely. And I think that that's We're the danger zone becomes of allowing tactics and tricks to be what you're chasing. And I think especially when you spend, like if you spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, for example, you're going to be like a ping pong ball, just left and right. Like this is the one thing. No, this is the one thing. Well, everything that you did with this is complete waste of time. It's actually this. And it is When you are operating from that kind of place where you are chasing what is going to be the almost like golden ticket tactic that's going to change everything, That's where you really want and need to pause because that's how you get yourself embroiled in too many things. But that is also how you just really water down and dilute what makes you special. And ultimately, my conviction is as AI The PPC Den is a platform that permeates everything and makes it so easy for everyone to be doing all of these things. If you wanted to just deploy AI to create a bunch of content on TikTok and create all of your imagery and do all of these things, you don't even really need to have oversight for it if you don't want to. I mean, if you truly just felt like you needed to be everywhere and do everything. But the challenge being that everybody's still going to be kind of on the same Level playing field that in and of itself is not a differentiation. It's not something that's defensible. And it's really not something that long-term is going to give you that brand equity and those customer relationships in a way that is meaningful. And it kind of always ends up going back to the same thing in my eyes, which is. You have to be willing to draw a clear line in the sand of We're going to talk about who you are as a business and what is most meaningful to you and who your customers are. And then that needs to be the thing that drives everything else. And that will give you a lot of answers to where you need to be and help save you from getting lost in this Seeing what everybody else is doing and feeling the pressure of, I have to catch up. Speaker 1: You know, I think you said some really good stuff right there. One thing you sort of said it, which was like, there's no silver bullets. Like there's not just one thing to do. And then like that will completely transform your business. This was a quote I heard recently was like, there's no silver bullets. Everything's a lead bullet and you like just need to do it. And I thought that was really interesting too, where it's just like, oh, you're absolutely right. Like anyone who goes on like LinkedIn or YouTube or social media and like you're in like the digital marketing world, you're going to see every single post will be like the game changer post. Like do this one thing, like this incredible thing. And it's like, if you were to actually do that at the pace at which you're getting the information, you would have like the most chaotic, unorganized business. And like most of the time, like It doesn't look like that. I think one of the coolest things, whatever anyone's opinion is of Mr. Beast, it's content for 10-year-olds, but Mr. Beast gave a talk one time about how he optimized his YouTube channel for success. You actually listen to it and you actually take away really good, principled optimization over time. He talks about We're going to talk about how his team optimized one thing at a time, where it was like, we're going to spend a lot of time developing image click-through rate optimization. We're going to get really good at the first click. And then the next thing they were focused on, I'm going to get really good at hitting retention markers. So how do we optimize for the first 10% of the video? How do we optimize for the first 1% of the video? What can we do to help people reach the end of the video? And just got really good at a thing at a time. And I feel like when you do it that way, the pressure to be everywhere, you have a plan for everything. You know that certain things are going to be important. You're going to prioritize certain things now. You're going to deprioritize things. And it just allows you to prioritize and do something. And then you eventually realize that doing fewer things well compounds over time, making the next thing you do a little bit more digestible. So if I'm an E-commerce brand and maybe I'm heavily invested into Amazon, the need to launch Shopify store, launch seven social channels, connect with influencers, set up an email thing, do all of these things, yes, there's pressure. That's never going to go away. But at the same time, Prioritization is huge. Prioritize what you do, when you do it, pace yourself. Real true, actual business hasn't changed. Yes, you can do anything now and yes, social media is telling you a million and one things to do, but real actual fundamentals hasn't changed. So I think that's an interesting view for anyone who sells something on the internet to not be overwhelmed. And prioritization in and of itself It's really hard to do. So like that's a great skill to get good at before anything else. Speaker 2: You know, I love that you use the example of Mr. Beast. I actually think about this a lot. I have a YouTube channel. And so I spend a good amount of time digesting content about YouTube. And Mr. Beast is always the example that's used. And what's, you know, the other side of the coin is like, yes, you can get so many really helpful And like pieces of information about the way that he built platform. But what a lot of people will do when they're teaching YouTube is they will look at Mr. Beast and the practices that he does now running. I don't know what he's. And we're going to talk a little bit about what his business is valued at, but I know it's... Speaker 1: He said he wanted to be the first billionaire YouTuber. Speaker 2: Yeah. And I don't actually think he's probably like that far off from having a business valued at that. And people are looking at what he is doing with his channel and his business today and drawing lessons for what people who are just starting out should be doing. And that's one issue where you're not at the same level. You don't have a team, you don't have a... Speaker 1: An enterprise he's got more than a team. Speaker 2: With many different types of products and revenue streams. But the other thing that I think is even more dangerous in some ways when looking at that for advice is MrBeast is optimizing for as many eyeballs as possible. For myself, someone who has a business channel, If I prioritize virality, I can actually destroy everything that I'm working on. My content should never actually go viral because the content that I create is for a small group of business owners. And it does not have that wide appeal. And if I get caught up in that game, and if I'm optimizing for the things that he needs to optimize for, then I could actually erode my trust and credibility, destroy the makeup of my channel, and then be forced to create content that wouldn't actually serve me and the business that I'm building. Speaker 1: And funny enough, like Mr. Beast, I said, like he's received criticism for optimizing for views and then trying to do something that like, like, I think there was like some controversy, like anytime he does like any philanthropy, he's often criticized of like, why are you making this like a clickbaity video? Like, this is like a serious subject. So it's like, what are you optimized for is an interesting thing. That's another reason to decrease the pressure where it's like you don't need to optimize all things for all people. Every metric doesn't need to do everything all the time. And I would say the hard part too, with a lot of Brands that I talked to, it's like understanding what the metric is to optimize for is really tricky. I just did an episode about like total ACoS. It's a good episode. I actually really like the topic of like total ACoS should be deprioritized for a lot of brands because, you know. Lower total ACoS doesn't necessarily mean more profit at the end of the day. The hyper summary is like, if you want the lowest total ACoS possible, like turn off 80% of your ads, right? Like then your total ACoS is really low. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: There's a lot of nuance there, but like the point is understanding what to optimize for and how to optimize it. And then like working right backwards from that. So like most companies are optimizing for bottom line profit, but then like understanding like the web that like leads to it. It's really difficult. That takes a lot of trial and error to figure out what are the levers to pull on for any particular company to increase those profit margins and profit totals. And in the E-commerce world, it's tricky as well. You know, I talk to people predominantly in a PPC context, and a lot of them do have this pressure where it's like, I need to get my PPC at a certain spot. And it's either two camps, like one is a silver bullet mindset, meaning like, if I get my PPC in the perfect spot, then, you know, my business will 2x, 3x, 5x, whatever. And there's often a lot more nuance to that. So that's a component of it. Or the other component is I want to optimize my PPC really well so that I almost want to abdicate PPC responsibility. We're just like, I want to just like not think about it. So then I can do like other things and other things and other things and like not think about any of them. And it's like, well, actually there's like, so like the real answer is that it's actually like really hard to do. It's like not a silver bullet. Yes, it's a lot of work. And like after you do it, like there's still management that needs to happen with it. So it's, it's really, it's a lot. So there, so like there is a lot of pressure, but if you like focus on like, and truly understand like what moves the needle, like where to spend your time. That's a great way to relieve some of that pressure to be everywhere. Speaker 2: It makes me think of even something like weight loss or getting in shape. The fact remains that the ways that you get in shape and lose weight are you need to pay attention to what you're eating and you need to move. And then once you get to wherever you want to go, you do not stop doing those things. You have to continue doing them. And you make such a good point because I think that there, especially the areas of business where we don't like them, there is this huge temptation to just be, I want to get to a point where I can just delegate this and then I don't have to think about it. And then what happens is you Completely take it out of your purview. You hand it over to somebody else and then six months or a year later, you need to take stock of everything and you realize, oh my gosh, what a mess has been made. Speaker 1: It's a classic. I mean, delegation versus abdication. We're just like, I don't want to think about this anymore. Goodbye. So, versus like system setup and like, you know, management, like those are, that takes work. Speaker 2: Yeah. And that's, those are a lot of the conversations that we have with clients of people that are sort of like, you know, I handed all of these things off. I, I, I went too far to the extreme and now I'm in cleanup mode of needing to, like, I've taken back control of my PPC and I'm, I'm needing to like, just Go and do some of these things that like I ignored and it never stops being about the fundamentals and that isn't the exciting thing to hear and it's not the sexy thing that you're going to see people talking about a lot. But at the same time, I think it can be a source of reassurance. To know that like that's also where you can outlast a lot of people. Speaker 1: You know, I just did an episode with one of our E-commerce brand clients. And the takeaway was the same like this business is like, you know, growing. And he's just like, you know, the whole world is changing, but like business fundamentals are like remaining. And it was the exact same takeaway, which was like, you know, I know there's a million and one things to do, but like, we're going to do these things really well. And we're going to continue to do them. And like periodically, we're going to like expand our capacity and like do more stuff. But it's like going to be at like a healthy pace. So I would say to summarize, to conclude a takeaway, if I'm a brand and I'm struggling with the immense pressure to be everywhere, I think it's worth sort of acknowledging it And sort of saying like, yes, all things being equal, more things is going to be better than less things. However, it is almost an impossibility to do all things at a 10 out of 10 level, to do everything 10 out of 10. If you do try to do everything and you're ping-ponging around, I think you're going to end up doing many things like a 2 out of 10 quality, which is You know, doing 10 things at a really poor level is worse than doing like two things really well. So I would think of the hedgehog. I would get into my hedgehog mode. I would curl up into a ball and I would gain momentum that way. And then eventually, once I have capacity through proper systems delegation and management, then you could begin to do more stuff over time. So it's just a classic approach. To make it any more specific about channels and platforms and so forth, I think it's like icing on the cake. If there's someone who's just on Amazon and it's like, where's my next $10,000 of Revenue, you know, is it truly like to do 10 up 10 more things, you know, potentially thin approach or is it, you know, potentially right in front of you and like maybe there's some opportunity right in front of you to do what you're currently doing better and more efficiently and more effectively. And that prioritization decision making is is the hard part about business. Speaker 2: Yeah, a great book that I think can be helpful for people in this. I think it's called 10x is better than 2x. Speaker 1: 10x is better than 2x or 10x is easier than 2x. Speaker 2: Something like that. And the whole concept being that it's actually the big picture thinking that can really galvanize the strategy necessary. And if you're just trying to always go after those smaller incremental wins, you're not really ever going to get to that growth. Speaker 1: This is actually a good book. I read this book. It's 10X is Easier Than 2X from Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy. Because if you think about it, That's exactly what we were describing. It's like 10X is easier than 2X. And if I remember correctly, I read it, it came out in 2023. It feels like a decade since I've read it. But basically, one of my big takeaways from it was like, if you ask yourself, what would it take for me to 10X? Instead of going from 100,000 to 150,000, or I guess we'll actually use the 10X and 2X. Instead of going from 100,000 in sales to 200,000 in sales, the claim is to go from 100,000 to a million is actually easier. And then you would ask yourself, like, oh, like, how do I go from 100,000 to a million? And why couldn't we do that? You would then list the reasons why you couldn't do it. And those are the things to focus on. So it's a way to hyper-prioritize, where it's like, what is the real blocker? As opposed to, if you're sitting there, you're like, oh, to go from 100,000 to 200,000, we should do this and this and this and this. And you end up listing a lot more stuff. So it forces your brain to say, what is the one roadblock that would stop me from 10Xing? And then you do that because it becomes crystallized. That was my takeaway. Does that how you remember it? Speaker 2: What I remember as well and just the idea being that you might also sort of undershoot what you're capable of in thinking about how to solve a problem that sometimes there are actually that either resolve completely were never problems to begin with or just change when you consider them on a And we're here to talk about what friction is going to be if you're taking that approach. Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Dan Sullivan, for ending this episode. Key takeaways from the 10x is better than 2x. Stop optimizing everything. Don't try to optimize the 80% of tasks that yield average results. Eliminate them. Go all in on the 20%. Double down on activities that are high impact and uniquely yours. Delegate the other 80% so you can focus on the highest value work. So, a reminder of some basics, fundamentals as we look at all things. I needed this. I started our call about an hour ago with you talking about how I'm doing too many things. I can't stop. But yes, I need this exercise. I needed this episode myself. I started at Badger to help scratch my own itch of PPC optimization. And I did this episode with you perhaps to give me the medicine that I needed. Speaker 2: Yeah. Funny enough, I actually woke up before my alarm clock this morning thinking about how I need to be amping up like every single platform activity and all these things and how I'm so behind. And this was a good reminder for me too. Speaker 1: Amen. Well, I think we can leave it there. Emma, where can people get in touch with you? We'll have links to whatever you tell us to put a link to right now. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Where can people get in touch with you? Speaker 2: You can learn more at my YouTube channel at Marketing by Emma. Also, my website is marketingbyemma.com if you'd like to explore how we can help you with your brand strategy on Amazon and beyond. And I'm on LinkedIn occasionally. As well. So, we're from the same places. Speaker 1: Terrific. So what you're saying, Amazon and beyond, meaning like we need to be everywhere, right? Speaker 2: Exactly. Speaker 1: Yes. Emma, thank you so much for coming on the show. Absolute joy. Absolute pleasure. Hopefully I'll see you back on the show in about a year from now. Speaker 2: Thank you for having me back. It was a pleasure as always. Speaker 1: Bye bye. Have a good one. And everyone else, I'll see you next week here on The PPC Den Podcast. Unknown Speaker: And pick keywords I've got my bits Set placements too Now that we say. I've made a few. I've had my share of rankings. Oh yeah! We are the PPC Den, my friends. Two are the PPC dead, we're talking about Amazon. No time for medicars, cause we'll fix the gambit of the world.