SEO Podcast The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing

Mastering In-Store Marketing: From Shopper Psychology to Ecommerce Growth with Kelley Thornton Ep. 618

• bestseopodcast.com • Episode 618

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Unlock the secrets behind disruptive in-store marketing with Kelley Thornton, a DTC entrepreneur and founder of Purchase Point, a global retail strategy powerhouse. Kelley shares his journey from corporate packaging to mastering shopper psychology, offering insights for anyone curious about retail strategies or transitioning from digital to in-store marketing.

We explore the diverse types of consumers—deal seekers, brand lovers, and value-driven shoppers—and how they navigate retailers like Costco, Target, and Walmart. Learn about current market dynamics, including dollar stores' challenges and Target's mid-market success, and debate discounting versus value-adding tactics to maintain price integrity during economic pressures.

Finally, discover the power of YouTube in building a men's lifestyle brand, starting with Aaron Marino's influencer journey. Uncover how content diversification across platforms like TikTok, Amazon, and paid social helps drive e-commerce success. Gain practical insights into customer acquisition, data-driven marketing, and aligning efforts with finance and sales for sustained growth. Don't miss this episode packed with expert advice to boost your retail and e-commerce strategies.

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Guest Contact Information:

Website: https://www.tiege.com

Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelleythornton-ceo-tiege-hanley/

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The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing podcast is a podcast hosted by Internet marketing expert Matthew Bertram. The show provides insights and advice on digital marketing, SEO, and online business. 

Topics covered include keyword research, content optimization, link building, local SEO, and more. The show also features interviews with industry leaders and experts who share their experiences and tips. 

Additionally, Matt shares his own experiences and strategies, as well as his own successes and failures, to help listeners learn from his experiences and apply the same principles to their businesses. The show is designed to help entrepreneurs and business owners become successful online and get the most out of their digital marketing efforts.

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Speaker 2:

Howdy, welcome to the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. I am your host, Matt Bertram. Today I have a special guest for you. A lot of what we've been doing with the podcast as you've been listening to the different interviews we've been really expanding into growth marketing and I thought it would be a great idea to bring someone on that's done it, someone that's taken knowledge from a service-based business, found a product that they liked, moved forward, pushed that product forward and is now selling DTC millions upon millions of dollars, has built an in-house team, has done it, and so I want to introduce Kelly.

Speaker 2:

Kelly, thanks for coming on. I think your story is fascinating. I think the audience will very much be interested in kind of what your origin story was, what you learned along the way, and then what you're doing now. And then teaser for everyone and I'm going to let Kelly introduce himself. He has a men's brand line and I know that a large portion of our audience is men, so there's a bonus here that you might get something out of it that you didn't know. You're coming here for digital marketing. You might walk away with some skincare products. So, Kelly, thanks for coming on.

Speaker 1:

Thanks, Matt. Not my purpose. Not my purpose to sell skincare. My purpose is to help people as they think about their, their brands and their businesses and their careers, and share any morsels of what I learned along the way. So thanks for having me on your show.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Well, I would love to start with what you did for about 10 years with Purchase Point, and if you could just kind of share that story of how you got into it and what you were doing. I would love to just start there. Yeah, I graduated from the university in there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I, you know, I graduated from university in 1990. I worked, I started working with my father who worked for, you know, a packaging and in-store display company in New York city and you know he the first week of driving to work together, right, basically in North New Jersey. I remember telling him that I wanted to own my own business and he said to me hey, get some time in corporate, learn, make some money, figure out what business is all about and then maybe do your own thing. It took me 18 years. I eventually ended up continuing to work with my father, but then the next year, starting with a division of international paper selling in-store displays so in-store displays and signage did that for 18 years and really, really, really loved the psychology of the shopper.

Speaker 1:

So what? What gets, you know, a consumer, what encourages a consumer at retail when they go to buy something, to actually make that decision, to buy it? Most of you that are in business understand the concept of shopper marketing. It's basically a shopper market which, truthfully, I don't think matters that different fundamentally from a strategic perspective as what we do as digital marketers. You know, I think it's conceptually very similar, but the canvas is different. The canvas is bricks and mortar, and understanding what a consumer is thinking as they're going into a retail store to make a purchase, and how can we, as marketers and as brand people, how can we encourage them to try another flavor of Coke or Pepsi, or a new beverage, or a new variant of chips, or shampoo or deodorant, et cetera, et cetera. So I spent a better part of 10 years taking what I learned with international paper, what I love, which is the design and the psychology of the shopper, and I created Purchase Point, a global retail strategy company Awesome. So, as you, were doing that.

Speaker 2:

Give me some examples I guess of of as you were doing that. Give me some examples, I guess of of what you were doing for clients and also really the some of the I guess best practices or takeaways of of what was working. Because I think there's a lot of people listening that either have their own products or are working for a company and, um, usually they have different channels right and and I'm starting to see some of our clients move to in-store and they branched out or they've found like radio or something works really well for them and and it's a hard time to to move away from that and I think, um, you know, really, in store there's so much psychology of like product placement Do you have the ends of the ais? There's so much psychology of like product placement Do you have the ends of the aisles? Like maybe kind of talk through some of that stuff to just provide some basic framework of education for people if they're moving to in store.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean I would say like, even though I said there's a lot of similarities, you know, marketing to your products online in a digital age that we're in, right, Matt, and marketing to a consumer at a retail environment or a physical bricks and mortar it's very kind of a different situation. Ultimately, you want to be disruptive, right? You want to be seen at a store level being disruptive. Most of the time, a consumer is going to a retail store and they subconsciously make a decision from a channel perspective of where they're going, based on what their needs are.

Speaker 2:

So if you're just going to get a gallon of milk.

Speaker 1:

You know you're thinking about convenience store, you're thinking about maybe stopping at a 7-Eleven or a local grocery store. You know, or you know a very quick kind of in and out decision.

Speaker 2:

You're not.

Speaker 1:

You're not thinking about, you know, exploration at all. You're not thinking about, you know. Is there a new, you know, a new iPhone ear pod or a new cosmetic or?

Speaker 1:

new color of some sort of you know beauty product. If you're you know. If you have more time to browse, you know you may be going to a drugstore. If you're you know, if you're in a much more exploratory basis, you may be going to a Costco or a hyperstore. You may be going to Target and spend time in the beauty area within Target. So, all these things first, a consumer will kind of deselect what they're trying to do in the store based on what the original intent of going to that store is.

Speaker 1:

If you're, a branded company like a Unilever, a Procter Gamble, et cetera, et cetera. You're kind of thinking about these different needs that the consumer has based on the channels that you're selling your product in and you're positioning your product with colors, the physical layout of the store, where you are on the shelf, what colors your packaging looks like, how your packaging actually looks on the shelf compared to other packaging, and then all the other visual clues that a consumer has to try to help identify. I mean, there's tens of thousands of points of stimulus at a retail environment and the consumers, by nature, is blocking out the majority of those stimulus, so I mean they'll walk right past something and not even see it. So you're applying a bunch of basically psychological principles to help understand your consumer's need state and help them focus in on what it is that you're offering that's unique in the retail environment.

Speaker 2:

So, like disruption, you're trying to disrupt whatever their pattern is of, whatever their intent was to catch their eye. I mean, that's why checkout is so critical and important. I mean, what are some tactics that people use to do that that you've seen work, or what are some commonly known things that tend to work?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so the majority of the money and we're talking billions and billions of dollars globally, probably, you know, six, seven billion dollars is spent on in-store display and merchandising and signage.

Speaker 1:

So there's navigational signage all over the store to help someone kind of hone in to where they want to go. We're in the men's space, so personal care space. Where is the personal care space in the store? And then there's you know, end aisle displays and you know people are paying secondary placement to get a perfect position on the end aisle. Again, they've got a brand new flavor variant of you know a deodorant and they want to be in a prominent position. So they're actually being paying for a you know some off shelf location where they're being prominently displayed.

Speaker 1:

And then you're applying a bunch of a bunch of uh, you know, well-known psychological principles, um, like, for instance, 10 foot, five foot, one foot principles. So you want to be able to capture, you know the, you want to capture the attention of the consumer at 10 feet with certain colors and certain you know key verbal, visual communications. At five feet you want to draw them in so that they're actually touching the product and they're they're exploring what it is that's there. And then you know really trying to close a deal at a one foot deal when they have the product in their hand, creating interest and excitement, being very clear about the benefits, functional benefits, of the product that they're looking at. So those are all types of things that that retailers and brands are thinking about and trying to do to encourage consumers to stop along the way and try something new.

Speaker 2:

So, kelly, you made me start to think. My sister works for Ferrara as a candy rep. Sure, she got purchased from Nestle.

Speaker 2:

She was with Nestle before that, in, uh, in, like water and stuff like that, and and she does all this stuff all the time. I wonder if they'll let her come on. I know there's big red tape at bigger companies, um, but uh, you know one of the things I also was thinking about that I see a lot right. So if people are deselecting all the noise and they go find the item I think it's called like showroom buying, I guess where they I don't know if that's the right term, but like they go into like Best Buy or whatever and then they look at the price and then they go to Amazon and a couple other places to try to find the best price. So they're going to try the product out right, and then they're going to go, try to get the best price online.

Speaker 2:

How is that combat? How do you combat that if you're the physical store or the brand or what? What is your, what is your view on on just that?

Speaker 1:

uh, in general, you know um, I'll actually answer that question from the perspective of of being an online brand, which my company, t-chley, is, you know. I mean ultimately as a brand. I want my consumer, I want my customer, you know, to buy my product.

Speaker 2:

It doesn't matter where they buy it right when they're happy, as long as they buy it right, right where they're happy buying it.

Speaker 1:

So you know consumers are all. You know there's all types of consumers with all different types of the psychology of why people buy stuff. And you know there are certain people that are deal buyers and that you know have to feel like they're getting the best price. That's also very much retail driven, like if you're in Costco and you're a consumer and you're looking at you know a TV that's there. You know Costco does a very good job of convincing the consumer, even before they they walk into the store, that they're getting the best price out there.

Speaker 1:

It's really hard to say that I'm not going to get a really good price on something at Costco, because that's the mentality of the shopper before they even walk in there. It's a damn good deal. I'm buying a four pack of razors, which would cost me, you know, $10 each at CVS and I'm and I'm getting them for $30. I mean, so I think, like you know, and but then there's consumers that are just going to be by nature, are going to always want to know that they're getting the best deal. Those are going to be, you know, people that are shopping and they're not going to be in Costco and they're not going to probably be in target. You know they're going to be more in in like a Walmart or a dollar store and they want to make sure that they're getting the best deal. So there's a lot of predisposed notion about what the price is in a certain retailer just before they walk into the store.

Speaker 2:

A couple of things to add on. That is what I'm seeing happening in the trend. Okay, I'll clip that out if that was an issue, um, but essentially um, what I'm seeing in the trends is like the macy's is going out of business and then a lot of the department stores are moving to target targets, carrying some higher-end brands and then even, uh, so, so, so, so targets doing great, okay, um, because they're kind of catching the middle of the market, and then the people that are dropping down to the dollar tree or five and below, or whatever, those businesses are really struggling, right.

Speaker 2:

So it's, it's everything's kind of moved down is what I've seen.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's very accurate, matt. I was just reading about the dollar stores. They actually have been struggling a lot lately and the reason why is, you know, I think, that the economy is a lot tougher than people like to talk about. Maybe it's because it's an election year, I don't really know. You know, consumers are extremely tired, financially exhausted, and they, you know a lot of consumers that were shopping in these stores, especially like the dollar stores.

Speaker 1:

Um, there's a lot of consumers that go into those stores to shop for like events, like birthday parties, you know, fourth of july, parties within their own families I'm describing so, um, what happens is is that a lot of these people, a lot of people that typically shop in those stores, they are really scaled back. You know the price of inflation, price of gas, food prices, they really scale back. So they're not having as many parties. They're not, you know, they're not inviting all their relatives over for the fourth of July, but they just can't afford it. And so these that are catering, you know, the dollar stores and stuff have really, really been hit hard over the last eight months and, as a matter of fact, stuff I've read it answers exactly the point that you just made A lot of these stores are actually trying to upside upscale in the products that are trying to put some more expensive products to trawl in customers that normally wouldn't go there.

Speaker 2:

Um, you know, to track more of a target customer who's typically not going to that these stores to shop yeah, I mean, if you look at the basket prices, I mean targets always kind of have that strategy as far as like total basket price when people are checking out a walmart, versus is target, and so I think the Target strategy is certainly working. I just think, with online too, the high, low pricing, and I think it's important to understand if you're selling a product, pricing and marketplaces is a big part of it, or geography, right. So globally we do a number of campaigns and we see kind of certain things that like maybe the price point is too high or maybe it's the economy or seasonally Like these are things to consider. One of the things as we move into kind of more of the marketing discussion and away from kind of consumer thought or intent, is I really like and tell me what you're seeing? I'm not a huge fan of discounting Okay. I'm a huge fan of okay, if we need more value, add something to the mix to get the value up, but keep the price fixed.

Speaker 2:

Because I had a client and I'm not going to mention who it was but they essentially were training the consumer to buy only when they had a sale, and they had a sale every quarter, and so they were trying to uptick their brand in a way that all the demand wasn't pent up and used in this discount kind of model and the kind of people they were attracting were all people that wanted um a deal right and that wasn't who their target consumer was, and every time they ran a special, that's when they would get all their sales, and so it was lopsided when we were doing projections of we knew where the sales were going to come, you know, um, and so I don't know.

Speaker 2:

I I have kind of an opinion as far as discounting Now, certainly online, like getting people in the door cracking the wallet. There's different strategies when you're building funnels, but I'm just curious to your perspective because you've seen DTC all the way to in-store and I'm just curious how you I personally don't like discounting at all.

Speaker 1:

I think it's a very slippery slope. You're training your consumer to purchase on sales right and we know all the brands out there. Like you know, for my personal consumption, you know there's some fashion brands that I like you know I like how the shirts fit me so I buy my shirts there, et cetera, et cetera, and those brands that are having sales every three weeks. You're just waiting. You've just trained your consumer to wait for the sale. I've seen that.

Speaker 2:

I've seen that in a lot of men, like the men's shirts. I get advertised on all this kind of stuff and yeah, there's a sale. Like I'm, I get advertised on all this kind of stuff and yeah, there's a sale like every three weeks and it's like I know that the price point. But if you want to say, okay, you know coming up um, like labor day or you know whatever, that you're having a sale or 4th of July or what have you, fine. If you want to like throw in something else or add an item with the sale, great, yeah. But when they say, oh, 20% off, it's like, okay, if I know it's 20% off, why would I buy it when it's full price?

Speaker 2:

I'm seeing a lot of brands do this and I feel like it might be a huge mistake.

Speaker 1:

As a consumer, we don't really fully understand the economics of the brands. We don't really know how brands manage their P&L. We, you know we're a premium product, right, we are. You know we are a skincare product. There are functional benefits to our product. Your skin will look better if you use our product, you'll protect your skin against skin cancer, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1:

But we're a premium price product, and you don't. You know we're premium price product and you don't. You know, um, we're luxury product. You don't have to buy our product, right? Um, we do discount for trial, but, um, and and the reason why we do that is because it's very hard, uh, to convince a guy where, as you mentioned, we're men's brand. It's very hard to convince a guy to have to, you know, put something on his face every day and the importance of taking care of your skin. So, and it's a very personal thing, like you know, smell, feel, you know, is it with how your face feels with product on it is a very personal thing. So it takes a lot of effort to try to encourage a guy to try our product, the way our company works. We're primarily a subscription-focused company, although we have many men that buy our product when they want it, whenever they want it.

Speaker 1:

But the economics of our business works really well to discount for trial to have people come in and be steady customers with us. So for our business you know I don't like it at all. We're a prestige business but you know discounting for trial is an important aspect of our business and it works. The economics of it works for us.

Speaker 2:

Well, it reduces the risk, right? If you're not sure if the value is there or not, it gets in the door. That's why free samples are a thing as well. So you were telling me in the pre-interview that you're managing in-house a pretty large team. You're spending a lot of money online. I'm curious what are the channels that you're seeing working? How is your overall approach? Like, maybe even kind of take us along the journey a little bit from when you were starting out and then lead up to how you got to this point of like? When did you start adding different channels? Like, were you AB testing If your subscription? You got a lot of email, follow-ups and and and opportunities to upsell and and test a lot of different things as you build that, that consumer base.

Speaker 2:

So I'm just kind of curious how you you know if there's people out there that want to grow their business, like what are some of the tried and true paths or the things that you saw work, that that are probably still working today?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Well, to answer your question, we, you know, we compete on a broad set of channels and and I'll I'll describe those a little bit to be specific, and we do today. But when we started out we were really and by and large we're very much of a long-form content digital YouTube influencer, youtube led company, so we create a lot of content that is long form content, usually, you know, north of 10 minutes. It could be 10 to you know 10 minutes to three hours.

Speaker 2:

Are we talking like QVC style kind of education or like how, actually not?

Speaker 1:

It's more. I mean there are. There is some of that, but it's actually content that we know that men are seeking out, right. So there's a lot of content that men are Lifestyle, sure, lifestyle. I mean it could be anything. It could be related to what you're eating or what you're wearing, or fitness dating. It could be related to current event topics. It could be related sports and what's happening in the cycling world.

Speaker 1:

It could be around finance and there's long form digital content being produced by great content producers, and we find content producers that believe in our mission, which is helping men look and feel amazing, and we do it by providing simplified skin care systems. And you know, and we have and we sponsor content on those content producers channels. So, and it is actually very much of a top of funnel play for us the way that we started that is started in that channel is one of my two business partners. His name is Aaron Marino and he is a YouTube content producer and he produces content around those things that I just described. So we partnered with him very early on in 2016 and created content around what it means to be a dude today and why it's important for a guy to take care of himself.

Speaker 2:

That's where it all started.

Speaker 1:

We became experts in that channel, an influencer channel, and then we started continuing to grow into many, many other channels, such as paid search and paid social and organic affiliate uh, um kind of short form, um influencer content, tiktok, and then you know um amazon, you know multiple other marketplace channels yeah, I mean we were talking previously the um tiktok store is really, um, really hot yeah, yeah, and and they've just done a deal with Amazon.

Speaker 2:

I think that there's there's a huge amount of opportunity there.

Speaker 2:

I you know we've certainly with the number of clients, because the saturation point on, like Google ads and even Facebook to a to an extent, you just can't get the same ROIs as you were previously when things were a couple cents right, depending on the demographics of what you're looking at, and many, many people don't advertise on YouTube or influencers on YouTube.

Speaker 2:

I think it's a really big opportunity that people are missing because maybe it's more difficult or it's hard or it's easier to run some static ad difficult or it's hard or it's easier to run like some static ad. But really I don't know what I've seen. When you look at the ROAS on, if you're doing e-commerce or what is, it's worth it. It's actually cheaper to do the hard work and create the strong messages on the front end because it costs you less to acquire new customers over time. And you know, I like the strategy of what you're saying is build a story, build a brand, build a message on YouTube in long form and then splinter that content to to different channels and have it kind of percolate around. I mean, what? What other channels have you seen work well or what other strategies, after you have put in place the YouTube or influencer marketing channel? What other channels have you seen success in?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, let's talk more about what you just said, because I think I couldn't agree with you more. You just said, because I think I couldn't couldn't agree with you more um, youtube is by far, by significant metrics, above and beyond, really, any other platform you have. If you look at every age group, um, you have super high penetration of eyeballs on YouTube. I mean, we're talking, you know, they're all in the 90s. I was just out at a Google YouTube conference in LA last month and the numbers are staggering. It used to be like, you know, know, guys, my age, we would only go on YouTube because, you know, our wife said our dishwasher wasn't working so we'd go into YouTube to kind of like, you know, figure out how to replace some part. And you know it was just like the young guys were the young, young kids were on YouTube. But now, straight across the board, from you know, the sub 20s, the mid 20s and millennials, generation x and y and z, and even the baby boomers are all, they're all. The penetration is all in the 90s 90 percentile. So so people are on YouTube and you know, and now YouTube TV etc. Etc. So the people's experiences we're talking about, like channel diversification and need state of the consumer in bricks. The same thing exists. I mean, people are in a very different headspace when they're on YouTube versus lower funnel acquisition strategies like paid strategies or other types of performance marketing. So you have to understand what type of content works on what channels Long-form content, reels in shorter form, pre-roll ads and things of that nature.

Speaker 1:

Really, and YouTube in general really is more of a top of funnel play. So it. You know it's not. It's not the type of place that really, and they want to keep people on the platform, they don't want to send people off the platform. That's not the type of place you're sending people to. You know landing pages and PDP pages to try to get an acquisition.

Speaker 1:

It's really much more of a branded top of the funnel strategy in my opinion. But it's the gift that keeps on giving because the content lives out there. So we make about three to 400 pieces of content a month. I mean, we have thousands of pieces of content, sponsored content that's living on YouTube and drive sales videos that were up we posted three, four years ago. We're still driving sales today and they're driving awareness and so we have a huge amount of branded traffic coming to our website from all the money that we spent on YouTube. So then, to answer your question, you know right, or as people say in the company, we're hoovering them up at the mid and lower funnel on more traditional channels, such as the meta channels and Google, you know, and paid search and Google properties off of the YouTube network. So we're really spending a lot of money mid and low funnel there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and getting the media marketing mix correct is really challenging too. We work on that every day.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'd love to talk about that a little bit more to add to what you're saying. I mean, youtube's targeting is so robust. I mean they've been around one of the longest platforms I mean some of these newer platforms some of the targeting is not as accurate as you would like to see it. Really, with YouTube, it's brand building and that's where a lot of your customers are living. You want to be where your customers are living and they're spending more time on YouTube than they're spending anywhere else. And really, youtube Shorts, tiktok, instagram all that those are to get their interest, catch their attention, but then get them to the long-form content, get them where they can hear your message.

Speaker 2:

It's very, um, I think, an educational play to, to to a big extent, of why maybe you have to put stuff on your face and as you get older, you're going to age and you probably should be doing it sooner. I mean, that's not something you can tell somebody in 30 seconds and it might not be a value that someone has if you say it in a static ad and it's more of you know, letting them learn on their own basis and creating all that content to find what they're looking for from a top of the funnel. I mean even what. What I'm seeing is like direct to consumer OTT ads, sorry, like connected TV is what I meant. Like connected TV, like I'm seeing like QR codes not driving them to a landing page, driving them to a YouTube channel, right.

Speaker 2:

And to try to get get them because YouTube, if you can get them to subscribe or you can get them to YouTube channel, right, and to try to get get them because YouTube, if you can get them to subscribe or you can get them to to like some of these videos, the algorithm will continue to show them this stuff and and and it just builds into um that, that reoccurring marketing, or the permission marketing that you're talking about with. Hey, I want to continuously see this stuff to reinforce my beliefs, and then I need my beliefs reinforced, so I keep buying the products, right, and so we keep shipping it to him. So it's just this machine, right? Yeah, plywood, yeah, I mean, I know we're kind to to a point where we have a hard stop here.

Speaker 2:

Um, would love to continue this discussion, maybe at a later time, but what are some of the things? If you think back and and maybe put yourself in the shoes of someone that has a Shopify store or WooCommerce, um, and, and they're generating maybe a couple million dollars, Now, certainly what I've also seen, with a lot of clients come into us, is they might be generating a lot of money, but do they have the profit margin right, or is all their advertising at that point just kind of breaking even, or their P&L just doesn't look very good, even though it looks like top line very good.

Speaker 2:

Um, even though it looks like top, like top line, they've sold a lot, right, um, but, but, but it but it's about, I think, getting the, the, the, the, the, the customer acquisition costs right and and the lifetime value of the customer, and understanding the marketing mix of how it all plays together, and then know what your numbers are, because there's things that might be driving sales but it's not driving revenue. Now, if it's a loss leader, you know, so be it, and you can upsell them into other things. But to get a funnel working properly it takes a lot of optimization and I'm just kind of curious your approach to that, as well as maybe any best practices. And then, um, and then definitely, uh, how to best get a hold of you or, uh, find out more about your product.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, well, look we, we, we are a self-funded, organically grown company, um, and we've been very fortunate that we've. You know, even though it's been a very tough few years, we've been able to continue to grow our business and grow it profitably. So, you know it takes a tremendous amount of discipline to be cash efficient, efficient, and you know we don't do anything where we're not or we don't have enough data to really understand the ramifications of what happens if we spend a dollar here. Are we, you know, are we going to recover that you know, that revenue? And the only way, the only way to really know that is to have a significant amount of data. And so, leaning into understanding your data, understanding your customers, you know what we want to do is get to the point where we're looking at contribution dollars, you know, right down to on the channel level, to the creative level, and understanding the contribution dollars of every penny that we spend. And so, for us, the economics of our business looks like understanding what we call a future 12-month earning, which is what a predictive earning would be when Matt comes in to purchase product from us. What is our expectations? That we're going to sell another box, another box, another box to Matt.

Speaker 1:

We're making estimates of that, of that, based on what we know about him as a customer, what he purchased from us originally, what price he paid originally, what channel he came in from from us originally, what price he paid originally, what channel he came in from.

Speaker 1:

And then we're spending against that.

Speaker 1:

What we believe is that future 12-month earning, knowing that we need to make a certain amount of money on that transaction over those future 12 months.

Speaker 1:

And then every single day we're pressure that those assumptions to see if we're correct or not. So the cohort of people that purchased from us yesterday, um, we will look at those cohorts by channel. Um, you know, 30 days, 35 days, 45 days, 60 days, 90 days, and we're we're able to predict down to a couple of percentage points whether or not those customers behaved in the way that we expected them to be. And once you've got a model like that, you can spend against it, meaning that you can decide today if we want to spend $50 to acquire a guy like Matt, or do we want to only spend $38 or $42 or so forth and so on, and then we adjust our media marketing mix and how much money we're spending in each channel and in each position in the channel the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel, the lower of the funnel to bring more guys like Matt in so that was more of an answer than you wanted, but that's well, well, no, actually what it?

Speaker 2:

what it made me think about is I just did a podcast yesterday on a on another show, and it was really focused on B2B, okay, and it was really about how marketers or CMOs can have the conversation with the executive team and talk from a growth standpoint with the, with with with the, with finance, right with sales, with with all the different channels, and speak in a language of numbers versus narratives, right and um, people on the consumer side that sell consumer products already have this dialed in. I think that it's starting to catch up. On the consumer side that sell consumer products already have this dialed in. I think that it's starting to catch up on the B2B side. And, kelly, you're a perfect example of a CEO that absolutely knows his numbers and how marketing drives every component of that business and you're projecting out where the sales are coming from, what that expectation is coming for the customers, where the sales are coming from, what that expectation is coming for the customers, and you put it all together. I think that that's fantastic.

Speaker 2:

I know we're running close on time here. I'm launching at MatthewBertramcom a small business coaching program to help businesses grow and I would love to maybe dig into some specific case studies or campaigns that you've run, to kind of unpack those for people to see how you're doing this right, because we've talked about it and people know they need to be doing it. But I think that there's a disconnect on okay, how do I actually make that impact in my business? And I would love to explore that a little bit more.

Speaker 1:

Sounds great Love to help out.

Speaker 2:

So but, kelly, yeah, tell everybody a little bit more about how to get in touch with you as well as if they want to go check out your product, and then I can tell people how to go look at your marketing with listening tools to see how you're doing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you. I'm on LinkedIn, so please find me on LinkedIn. Kelly Thornton, k-e-l-l-e-y-t-h-o-r-n-t-o-n dot com. I try to provide some helpful content there, and so please follow me there, reach out to me there, give me any constructive criticism you have. Try our products. Let me know what you think of our products. You know we have a great offer for your listeners at teachcom. That's T-I-E-G-Ecom backslash the unknown secrets of internet marketing. So go check us out.

Speaker 2:

Let us know what you think of our product?

Speaker 1:

And thanks very much for having me on your show.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, kelly. Thanks again everybody. Bye-bye for now.

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Matt Bertram

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