227 | Paid Advertising for E-Commerce Brands with Alexander Rossman | Rossman Media

Feeling confident with your organic digital marketing and ready to scale even further? Why not dip your toe into the world of paid advertising? Paid digital marketing might sound intimidating, but with a solid strategy and clear goals, it can truly help you increase exposure and leads for your e-commerce business.

In this episode, I’m talking to Alex Rossman, founder of Rossman Media, an award-winning social media agency, about the ways small e-commerce brands can leverage paid advertising in their businesses. He’s sharing his tips for getting started with paid ads, which platforms are the most beneficial right now, and how much money you need to invest in your ads to see results

You'll learn:

How to leverage TikTok for your e-commerce business
Three steps to getting started with paid advertising
The common mistakes small e-commerce brands make in their digital marketing
When to DIY your paid advertising and when to outsource it

ON TODAY’S EPISODE:

The common mistakes small e-commerce brands make in their digital marketing [3:17]
Where to invest your time and energy in social media marketing [4:28]
How to leverage TikTok for your e-commerce business [6:33]
Digital marketing strategies from larger brands that you can use in your own business [7:59]
Why small businesses should use paid advertising on social media [10:23]
Three steps to getting started with paid advertising [12:23]
How often you should check analytics and update your digital strategy [14:23]
Determining how much money to invest in paid social media advertising [17:47]
Different calls to action you can try in your social media ads [23:36]
When to DIY your paid advertising and when to outsource it [26:14]

Download These Quotables to Save and Share

KEY TAKE AWAYS

“I always advocate for e-commerce store owners to really invest a lot of their time, money and energy into a social media strategy.” [03:41] Alex Rossman

“People still buy from people, right? And they want to know your process from start to finish, how you came up with the product, why you came up with the product, what need does that product serve?” [05:12] Alex Rossman

“It's really important to focus on content that tells your story.” [07:53] Alex Rossman

“A brand that does do paid [advertising] is certainly going to accelerate much faster than one that doesn't.” [12:17] Alex Rossman:

“Social media platforms are all about visuals. Focus on bite-size video content. Anywhere from five to 30 seconds is a great medium.” [12:59] Alex Rossman

“I'm a believer in starting with a bunch of different ads to begin with. And then, start pulling back the ones that are not doing well and reintroducing new creative and new ads.” [15:26] Alex Rossman

“You've got to be willing to invest at least $100 a day.” [18:25] Alex Rossman

“In a month you'll be able to tell which ads are working.” [19:49] Alex Rossman

“I would allocate an entire effort to building up that [email] list because that is something you can always rely on. Despite iOS updates, despite anything that's external that's out of your control, an email list you can always control.” [24:39] Alex Rossman

“You also won't get to that next level without that [external] support because as a business owner, there's only so much time in a day and you should be putting that type of work into people that have that expertize.” [27:40] Alex Rossman

RESOURCES

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MEET ALEX:

Alex Rossman is the founder of Rossman Media, an award-winning social media agency with offices in Portland, Los Angeles and San Diego. He started Rossman Media with the genuine mission (and curiosity) to help consumer and B2B brands effectively connect with their target audience on social media. With 53% of the world's population on channels like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and more, he believes strongly that every company no matter the industry or niche can find and grow their audience at scale on social media.

CONNECT WITH ALEX

Website: Rossmanmedia.com | Facebook: @rossmanmedia | Instagram: @rossmanmedia | LinkedIn: @alexrossman

Connect with Katie Hunt

Katie Hunt is a business strategist, podcaster, mentor and mama to four. She helps product based businesses build profitable, sustainable companies through her conferences, courses and coaching programs.

Website: prooftoproduct.com | Instagram: @prooftoproduct

Transcript for Proof to Product Episode 227

DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPT

227 | Paid Advertising for E-Commerce Brands with Alexander Rossman | Rossman Media

Katie Hunt [00:00:03] We're taking you behind the scenes with entrepreneurs that run product based businesses. There is so much information out there tailored towards service providers, so we have carved out a space just for you, the creative entrepreneur, making and selling all goods, whether you are just starting out or a seasoned business owner. This podcast will shed light on new strategies, inspiration and action steps to help you grow your product based business. Hey, friends, I'm Katie Hunt, and welcome back to Proof to Product. Today's guest is Alex Rossman, the founder of Rossman Media, an Award-Winning social media agency with offices in Portland. Say Angeles and San Diego, Alex and the team at Rossman Media help e-commerce brands effectively communicate with their audience on social media. With 53 percent of the world's population on channels like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, Alex believes strongly that every company, no matter the industry or the niche, can find and grow their audience at scale on social media. On today's episode, Alex shares mistakes that smaller brands are making when it comes to digital marketing. We talk about how big brands are learning a lot from smaller e-commerce brands when it comes to social media content and strategies, and we do a deep dove into paid advertising like a really deep dove. I ask Alex about creative strategies, budgeting for paid ads, how to know if your ads are working and what metrics you need to be tracking. And also, we talk about how to know when or if it's time to outsource the ads, creative process or the management of your ads. Alex offers strategies for both e-commerce brands that are new to paid ads, as well as those that are already running ads. So this is a really rich resource here, and I hope that you guys will enjoy this episode and also for those that want more after you listen in today. Alex and I hit record on a separate interview all about influencer marketing that will be available exclusively in our LABS community. He shared strategies for finding influencers' typical deal structures. Sample costs of working with influencers, which I know is a real enigma for all of us, as well as how to make sure that you can repurpose or leverage that content that the influencer is creating for you in other aspects of your marketing. So to listen into that bonus interview, head to ProoftoProduct.com/LABS to learn more about my 12 month group coaching program. I do a lot of these exclusive interviews that will be adding to the community as we go. These are based on questions and comments people in our community have had, and they've been asking for a long time about paid advertising and influencer marketing. So we're tackling both of those topics in today's episode and then this exclusive interview. All right. Well, let's jump into this paid advertising episode with Alex Rossman of Rossman Media. Hey, Alex, welcome to Proof to Product.

Alex Rossman [00:03:00] Thanks for having me.

Katie Hunt [00:03:02] It's my pleasure. All right. Let's kick this off with something that I am dying to hear from you. What mistakes do you see smaller brands, specifically ecommerce brands making when it comes to their digital marketing?

Alex Rossman [00:03:14] Great question. I mean, we deal with this on a day to day basis. You know, the reality is things are always changing in the digital marketing space. So what we actually see is that ecommerce store owners are not staying up with trends, right? Seeing what is really going to benefit their business right and stay ahead of what is going on with digital marketing, specifically social media, social media right now. You know, I always advocate for ecommerce store owners to really invest a lot of their time, money and energy into a social media strategy. So I think, you know, one of the biggest mistakes is not jumping on to platforms like TikTok, where there's tremendous organic reach, right? I mean, every time you post, you're now expanding your brand's reach to a whole new level. I mean, where else can you go online, where you post something and then you're able to reach thousands of people within minutes? I mean, it's really the Wild West, so I highly encourage it. And again, I think the biggest mistakes that we're seeing is that e-commerce store owners aren't staying ahead of that curve, and aren't looking into different avenues to get their brand out there.

Katie Hunt [00:04:27] I agree with you. I also think from their point of view, it can feel really overwhelming trying to keep up with the trends. When you know many of the people listening to this show, they have small but mighty teams or they're running it themselves and they kind of grapple with like, where do I put that time and energy or even dollars if I'm going to invest in other people to help with that? So if you know, if they only have an hour or two a week to dedicate to social media, what would you suggest that they do with that time?

Alex Rossman [00:04:55] Yeah. You know, I think the best thing to do is create content that shows your audience really, you know what your product is about and not just your product, but the actual process, right? I always talk about in other podcasts is people still buy from people, right? And they want to know your process from start to finish, how you came up with the product, why you came up with the product, what need does that product serve? So spend time just creating content, right? Like bring out your camera. Like, I mean, the reality is, everybody thinks you have to have some big DSLR. 4K camera, you can just use your iPhone or smartphone and accomplish the same thing, so I would say dedicate that time to content posting on platforms that are actually going to get you that reach, which again, I recommend TikTok and Instagram Reels by far right now. Yeah. And I think that's really the best way to delegate your time is with content.

Katie Hunt [00:05:55] I think that's also a little bit of a foreign concept to our audience because they spend so much time thinking of the products they want to make and the things the creative outlet in that respect, but turning it into, oh wait, this is something that other people do want to know about my brand, the behind the scenes, the why we created this. All of that is equally as important. You know, you've mentioned TikTok, TikTok a couple of times. It has been blowing up for business owners, and we actually had one of our students come back and do a podcast with us about it. Her monthly sales increased by 40 percent using that platform. Awesome. I know it was amazing, and she shared a lot of great tips to include that link to that episode in the show notes. But what are you know, as someone that works with a lot of big brands, and I'll come back to this in a minute and share with some of those brands that are speaking specifically about TikTok. What kind of content should they be creating there?

Alex Rossman [00:06:46] Yeah, good. Good point. And you know, it's so great to hear that one of your students has seen that success because we're seeing the same thing. The content that does best is really going back to what I had just mentioned. We're showing the process right. You know, one of my dear friends who came through my wife, she created her own ecommerce store and all of her success has been on TikTok. One of the biggest viral videos that she posted was showing her prototype that she made from a folder into an actual bag, right? So it went from start to finish. And, you know, she got millions of views within 24 hours. She has absolutely blown out of her product. So I still believe showing the process showing really where it started. People do buy from people, so always keep that in your mind when you're creating content. People want to show you packing orders or your team packing orders. People want to see the development of new products. People want to showcase your team and the people behind the brand. So again, I think it's really important to focus on content that tells your story.

Katie Hunt [00:07:58] Mm-Hmm. I love that. You know, you work with a lot of big brands. You've worked with Airbnb, Orange Theory and more on their social media strategy. I always find it interesting to look at what some of these larger companies are doing that we can then extrapolate and kind of recreate on our own, not not stealing ideas or anything like that, but just, you know, what can we leverage? And so what's working on social media for those larger brands now that our audience might be able to leverage and specifically on the conversion side of it? What's working to convert that audience into customers?

Alex Rossman [00:08:31] Yeah, great question. Really good question. So, you know, what's so funny is I think that the misconception is that these big brands have it all together and it's like, we should know what they're doing. It's actually the reverse right now. They're looking at what our smaller content creators, small brands are doing, and they're actually piggybacking off of that because what we're finding is that some of these smaller ecommerce brands are getting it right. They're selling out a product that in many cases, they're beating out some of these bigger brands. And again, that doesn't go to put the bigger brands down. They have got a lot of capital to make it happen and they do it well. I would say, you know, some of the things you can kind of take from some of the bigger brands that I would say they do absolutely well. Now you have kind of put it into two different pillars. You have organic content and then you have paid content. I think what bigger brands do really well is paid media, right, taking the content that's doing well organically and putting some money behind it that will really drive incremental sales. And I'm sure people that follow you. You know, they have thought about or are currently implementing advertising on social media. But it's a great way to drive sales. It's a great way to get your brand out there and accelerate much faster. So I would just say leveraging paid ads through social media platforms is a really good way to do that, for sure.

Katie Hunt [00:09:57] I think a lot of smaller brands are intimidated by paid advertising. I think especially with, you know, there's been recent iOS update changes that are impacting some of the paid advertising space, which I would love to hear your thoughts on. Yeah, I guess let's start there. What are your thoughts on the recent changes? And then I would love to kind of segue into what are some things that people could do to kind of dip their toe in paid ads? And then maybe what we can do from there?

Alex Rossman [00:10:23] Yeah, no. It's yeah, oh man. The iOS conversation could really unfold here. You know, it's a big topic of conversation, right? I mean. The reality is now there's restrictions around the data that is shared with these bigger social media platforms, and with that, basically you're restricting the amount of people that you can reach, you're restricting audience behaviors and consumer behavior. So a lot of those things where I'm sure everybody was on an Amazon product or a product they saw on Facebook in that product just kept following them everywhere. Those days are starting to diminish. Not to say that it's not happening because it certainly still is, and there's workarounds around it, but I think it's about identifying the platforms and finding manual workarounds. So. So here's kind of my thought process. Facebook is if you're a new brand or you're looking at just kind of dipping your toe into the paid media space. Facebook's going to take some time to really develop TikTok, on the other hand, and other platforms are actually very competitive, right? They've created kind of workarounds with iOS, where there's different placements, there's different ways that you can advertise TikTok, for example. I'm sure a lot of your listeners are on Shopify. They created a direct integration with Shopify that's going to absolutely streamline the whole consumer experience, so you can basically click a button on a video on TikTok and purchase within the app. That's the direction that they're going. So again, I think just identifying it kind of goes back to the first conversation is identifying these trends in different ways to position your brand. But I would say you've got to get started, right? I think there's always a hesitancy because it is very daunting, but you do have to just get started. And I can tell you a brand that does do paid is is certainly going to accelerate much faster than one that doesn't.

Katie Hunt [00:12:24] Absolutely. I agree with that. So if someone were new to paid advertising, let's say they've got their organic, you know, marketing strategies kind of dialed and they've got their emails going, their social media, you know, they're engaging with customers that way. What's the first step or first three steps that they should take when getting into paid advertising?

Alex Rossman [00:12:45] Great question. So three pillars again, I always like to just kind of break things down step by step. So first thing is content, make sure you have video content particularly that's really dialed in. Social media platforms are all about visuals. The static images graphics are kind of starting to fall to the wayside in terms of performance, so focusing on bite size video content anywhere from five to 30 seconds is a great, great medium. And once you've got the content dialed in, then you really want to look at your audience, right? Just to kind of give you some real more technical advice, download your customer list. If you have an existing customer list, upload that into your ad platform to start, because what that's going to do is allow you to retarget to that audience. So if you're trying to get recurring customers, it's a great way to retarget that list. In addition, you can build out a lookalike audience off of that customer list. And so what platforms like Facebook will do is go out and find other people that fit that similar demographic, and that's similar buying behavior. So again, getting your audience really dialed in is really kind of the second piece. And then third is just tracking, right? Just making sure that you've got a really good idea of who's engaging with your content, what type of creative is doing well versus others. So just doing a lot of testing and tracking is kind of the first thing after you get launched. So I would say those three things: content audience and then tracking and testing. Those three are going to be related. Great, a great way to get started.

Katie Hunt [00:14:23] Those are great tips for everyone listening. Let's flip this a little bit to people that have already been doing ads. Maybe we're digging into that like tracking pieces a little bit more. How often do you want people looking at their ad statistics and making changes? Is that something you want them being agile with, or do you want to let it simmer for a little bit and and play out to see what kind of data points you get?

Alex Rossman [00:14:45] You've got great questions. I love this. Yeah, so you're speaking my language. So I think the biggest thing is you don't want to make changes too abruptly, right? You've got to let you know. For example, Facebook goes through a learning phase, right? So you have to have a certain amount of purchases or conversions or certain objectives that are met before you should be making any changes, right? So Facebook will even tell you when you've kind of gotten to that next level when you have. I do think it's very important to be a bit more micro with it and go into Facebook ads manager going to tick tock business manager and start making tweaks where you need to write. I'm a believer in starting with a bunch of different ads to begin with. And then. Start pulling back the ones that are not doing well and reintroducing new creative and new ads are really going to be the best way to go. But again, I think you bring up a great point. If you're already running ads and you've got some, you know, go back in there and really identify which ones are doing well, which ones aren't. A few of the metrics to look at to identify if they are doing well, of course, is going to be Rowe as a return on ad spend. Second is going to be really how relevant is that ad to your audience. So it usually gives you from a one to 10 scale. If that is falling close to that one to two, that's not good if you have something closer to eight to 10. That means that you're hitting the right audience they're clicking through and they're actually taking some sort of action. I would say the third, obviously, if you're looking at what does that cost per acquisition? So how much are you spending to actually acquire a customer? So those three things I always really keep my finger on the pulse with our clients just to make sure that that's not falling too high or falling too far where it should be. And again, you'll know based on your margins, you'll know, kind of, you know, you should get a really good clear understanding of what that benchmark should be. And if it's not working, just continue to reintroduce and test.

Katie Hunt [00:16:50] So ROI and then the cost per acquisition, that's not knowing your own numbers and competing against yourself. There's no industry averages that you should be aiming for. It's mostly knowing that you're improving your own data points. Is that right?

Alex Rossman [00:17:03] Yeah. And that's yeah, exactly right. I mean, you should definitely know what you're comfortable with to acquire a customer, right? Because we have some clients that say, Hey, you know what? We need to hit at least a 4x return on ad spend to get to that next level. Some are saying, Hey, you know what? I'm OK with a one to one knowing that that purchase is going to have a much larger upside, right? Whether it's recurring revenue, whether it's up sells, whether it's getting them just into your email funnel. So again, you've got to you're exactly right. It's really competing with yourself, understanding what is that? No, what is that benchmark that's really going to move the needle for you and allow you to scale?

Katie Hunt [00:17:46] That's great info. Also, I know a lot of people struggle with how much should I invest in ads on this paid advertising side, you know, and obviously, everyone's budget is going to vary depending on how large their business is or how much money they want to dedicate to this. Do you have any rule of thumb like a percent of your monthly revenue or anything like that?

Alex Rossman [00:18:05] Yeah, good question. So, you know, I always like to benchmark. I say $100 a day is like just a great way to do two things to get to where you need to quicker. So some people like, Hey, let's start with just like twenty five a day, that's just going to take too long to see if it works right. Like, I think you've got to be willing to invest at least one hundred bucks a day to say, Hey, I'm going to let this run for a few weeks. And if I'm seeing the type of results that I should be, I'm going to keep it going and keep pumping into it. But sometimes starting too small is almost just like, why did I do it anyway? We run into a lot of e-commerce store owners, which I'm sure you do as well, where it's like I tried it and I gave up. I just pulled the plug after a few days, and I advise you if you are going to go into advertising, take the leap of faith and let it run. I am actually held responsible because I've done this before too. When I was just starting my company to generate leads, I started running ads. I think I let it run for like three hundred dollars. I'm like, Oh, it's not working, you know? And I pulled the plug. Now, you know, we're at a position where it's constantly running, and we know that that is a reliable revenue stream for us. And so I think once you get to that point, if you can let it run and let it resonate, you'll start to see that you can scale it and it will be a reliable revenue stream for you.

Katie Hunt [00:19:29] So if they're doing $100 a day, what kind of overarching budget would you say is like a healthy budget for somebody to truly test that hundred dollar a day theory and get the data points they need to make educated decisions and see if it's really working? How like, how much time and how much of a runway there?

Alex Rossman [00:19:46] Yeah. You know, I think a month. So not not too crazy. I think in a month, 30 day period, you'll be able to tell which ads are working. And honestly, sometimes much sooner. I mean, we have some new product launches where within the first few days of that $100 spend, they're really scaling and it can happen much quicker. And that's the beauty of paid ads. However, I always recommend, even if you don't see results in that first week, let it run for 30 days, and that'll put you right around about three grand for that first month. And it will be worth it because at the end of the day, if you if that first month you lose a little bit, you're not going to lose time. Let's just put it that way if you're doing everything right in terms of setting up the good. I've got your audience set up. You should be in a good position to at least break even.

Katie Hunt [00:20:36] Yeah. OK, this is fascinating. Also one question of clarification. I really enjoyed how you said to go wide and start with lots of different ad creatives set up. Would you do one hundred for each of those or are you talking a 100 hundred dollar budget across that whole span and then pulling back things, but keeping the budget the same?

Alex Rossman [00:20:54] Yeah. So one hundred dollars for that, the entirety of campaigns, all of that creative. So basically what Facebook will do as an example, you can create what's called conversion based optimization, right? Where all of these creatives kind of fall under one umbrella. And then what Facebook is going to do is it's going to allocate that budget to whatever campaign or ad, for example, is doing best. So what you'll find is Facebook does a lot of the machine learning for you, so you don't have to. So the way you structure a campaign again is really important because it'll trickle that one hundred dollars out through all the creative and really identify what's working and what's not.

Katie Hunt [00:21:34] OK? I did a call yesterday with my membership, and one of the questions that came up was OK, I just got my new e-commerce shop going this week, and how do I get people to my site quickly? And they're particularly recording this at the end of October, so they're particularly interested in the holiday season and Q4 sales. And my reservation with this question was, you know, there's three options, right? Quick, cheap and good, and you have to kind of choose two. And so is it reasonable for someone to start ads in November and see the results of that in this queue for November, December holiday sales season? Or is that unrealistic?

Alex Rossman [00:22:15] Yeah, man. Yeah, that's true. It is certainly a topic of conversation among our team right now when we're talking with prospective clients or even our existing clients. I always say, you know, in terms of our planning and again, we're usually looking at three to six months ahead of November. In terms of our planning, we'd like to get a lot of data before then before we really scale. I look at November and December as the opportunity to put fuel on the fire, not necessarily just get started, right? Yeah, getting started is going to be one of those things. Like you mentioned, you're going to start it. You're going to probably have expectations that are probably too rich for what you're actually going to get out of it if you haven't run ads prior. So again, I would again right now, certainly run ads, start running them, getting them going, but don't anticipate that you're going to blow it out of the water. Just know that that's going to be a nice little revenue stream for you, potentially. But I advocate that you use the time three to six months prior to Q4 to really build up that data, continue to run ads, see what's working and what's not. So once November hits, you can just crank up that ad spend and you know that, hey, I can rely on this for a big holiday season.

Katie Hunt [00:23:35] This is helpful. You know, I know a little bit about ads from the service based side of the world because my business is, you know, an education service business. And I know that on that side, a lot of people will have that longer runway. Of course, you know, the six months or so and in those first early months, they're trying to warm up their audience. They're sending people to more free options and things like that to grow their email list. Are ecommerce businesses using that same kind of strategy and tactic or are people calling to action from the ad strictly "go purchase this from my store."

Alex Rossman [00:24:08] No, you hit it right on the head. Absolutely. Email is key. I mean, if you can build up that list, I mean, Katie, we have a rule of thumb for our clients that 30 percent of your monthly revenue should come from email, period. Wow. And that's a benchmark that is minimum. So if you're not hitting that and if you're a product based company listening, go to your Klaviyo account, go to whatever email tool you have and look at your metrics and say, Hey, am I? 30 percent of my revenue coming from email? If it's not, I would allocate an entire effort to building up that list because that is something you can always rely on despite iOS updates. Despite anything that's external that's out of your control and email list you can always control.

Katie Hunt [00:24:53] Absolutely. You're speaking my language, and this is so serendipitous because yesterday I put out a real one that was about email marketing and how it had a bunch of statistics that I had pulled for a recent program I had done. And so many ecommerce businesses are afraid to email their lists and, you know, they don't want to sound salesy. They don't want to come off as pushy, they don't want to bother people. And at the same time, these people are signing up for our email list because they want to hear from us. They want to purchase our products. And so I'm glad to hear you say that. Thank you.

Alex Rossman [00:25:22] Getting creative with the content is key to right because I mean, if you are just doing sales emails, you're not going to move the needle. And you're right, you probably. We will start to see quite a bit of unsubscribes like people want to hear from you, but to a point. But again, you know, we have clients two times a week minimum that are sending out content. So planning that editorial calendar to where you can say, Hey, you know what? Let's identify certain trends, maybe that we can send over to our email lists, like give them resourceful information versus, hey, here's another sale, right? Like using sales strategically because again, you also don't want to cheapen your brand.

Katie Hunt [00:26:01] 100 percent, and that's actually something I coach my clients on. Like, make it easy for your customers to buy, but show the show, the features, the benefits, the reasons why you're the one they need to purchase from. And thank you for echoing that. I love what you're saying here, and I think that paid advertising, at least for a big chunk of my world, my people that follow and listen, I think they're really intimidated by it. Do you think that they can do it themselves or do you think it's better for them to hire help? And I know that hiring help comes with an ad budget and a management budget. Yeah, but like, which do you think is better for them? And is there maybe a revenue threshold where you think it makes more sense to hire it out versus do it yourself?

Alex Rossman [00:26:43] Yeah, absolutely. So I do think there is a revenue threshold. I really do. I mean, doing this now for, gosh, seven, eight years, I can tell you that revenue is key. I mean, if you're just getting started or you don't feel like you can really commit to outside help and that partnership for the long term, I would just try to do as much as you can yourself. I mean, Google is a great resource. You can really be scrappy when you need to, and I am an advocate for that. I mean, I can come here and try to sell you my services, but I do believe it's only right for certain businesses and at the stage of where they're at. You know, I think if you are able to commit a minimum of a thousand dollars a month to marketing in general, I just kind of lump everything together. I think it's worthwhile to have a conversation with an outside vendor or hiring internally. I do think it's important again. You know, one thing to look at is you also won't get to that next level without that support because as a business owner, there's only so much time in a day and you should be putting that type of work into people that have that expertize honestly, because one key hire or one agency away from potentially scaling to a whole new level. So just also keep that in mind. But I think, you know, Katie, I think ten thousand a month, if you're kind of dedicated to saying, Hey, this is what we can put into it, it's worthwhile to have some additional support.

Katie Hunt [00:28:13] I'm very much an advocate for hiring experts and in key areas that will lead to additional revenue and return on our investment. And this is an area that I think there's just such a huge learning curve around paid advertising. And so if one were to want to do it themselves and because it shifts so much, right, like there's lots of nuances to it, you think it's worth exploring either hiring it out or taking a programmer, of course, or something to help you kind of acclimate if you are going to try to DIY it?

Alex Rossman [00:28:44] Absolutely. And you're a great resource, too, from what I can tell, I mean, it's people like yourself and other resources that are available to ecommerce store owners where I think it's absolutely the right decision just to have somebody to lean on, you know, to make sure that the decisions you're making are the right ones or even just to get some additional feedback, right? Because again, you know, I've learned this, I think you probably have anybody listening. You go through this phase of like, OK, I can do everything myself, but to a point, right? And then at some point you hit kind of this, this ceiling where you're saying, You know what? I want to get to the next level. I want to scale, but you do have to make the leap of faith to invest in the resources, to get your business to that next level. So yeah, I think you're exactly right. There are certain things you can do by yourself, but then you're going to certainly need that support.

Katie Hunt [00:29:38] Yeah. And I feel like the path I see is the people being scrappy, trying to do it on their own, testing, learning how difficult that can be in terms of how much time and energy they're putting into it, then they may be like invest in a course or some sort of self study program where they can learn a lot and they're able to grow again. But they do hit that ceiling and because they're not immersed in, in this example paid advertising, they're only able to take themselves so far. And then that's where they move into hiring somebody I would love for you to share. You know, how can people work with you on what types of services do you guys offer since we are talking about this now?

Alex Rossman [00:30:15] For sure, and to your point, you know, it can also be discouraging, right? If you are the business owner, you're worrying about inventory, you're worried about marketing, creating content, all the things that we're talking about now and then it doesn't work. You're just kind of like, Oh man, I mean, we're going to go next. Right. And so I do think it's important to rely on a team that you can trust. I think that's a big thing just to, you know, for your listeners. I mean, we work with, you know, we're selective with who we work with because we want to make sure that both sides are committed to the process, right? I think that a big thing that is often not talked about is that the people that you hire have to be equally committed to the direction that you want to take the business right. And so getting very clear with a partner that you hire is very important and it's very important to us. So, you know, typically how we work as we come in, we work with pretty much at this point only eCommerce store owners. So we know this space very, very well. And we look at your business not just like, where are you going to be the next 30 days? We're going to look at it for the next 90, you know, 180 days of the full year and really break down. What are your goals? How are we going to get there and then create an actionable roadmap that we can say, OK, by this time, we should be here, right? By this time, we should be here. And I would say probably 90 percent of the time, if not more, we hit those cadences because we know exactly what needs to be done to get there. But again, you know, it's you've got to be at that position in your company to be able to, you know, feel comfortable doing that, right? Yeah. But that's yeah, that we become long term partners for our clients. I mean, I can tell you, we have probably 70 percent of our clients that have been with us since we opened our doors years ago. So we are all about long term partnerships. We want to, you know, our successes, our clients' success 100 percent. So that's a little bit about us.

Katie Hunt [00:32:10] I feel that Alex, hey, I was over here smiling as I was listening to you because we were just talking in our LABS program about when you know what you're working towards, when you know what those goals are, when you know what that number is, you're trying to hit, it's much easier to make the plan and then work the plan. When you're working towards some arbitrary goal of I want to double my revenue or I want to get a million dollars or I want or whatever like it, a million is concrete, but it's also not necessarily within the reasonable realm for some people at the beginning stages. Yeah.

Alex Rossman [00:32:43] And I mean, we even help clients build out their financial model, you know, where we're like, OK, let's really, you know, we're not accountants, but we certainly know what to look for. Right? I mean, if we're hitting a specific return on ad spend, if we're leveraging influencers and we can track the ROI there, I mean, all of these things we look at as actionable items that we can say almost concretely that, hey, this is going to happen if we follow this roadmap. And so we are always, you know, looking at talking with E! Commerce store owners. So again, we offer 30 minute consultations with myself included in our VP, a lease where we can actually just really break down over 30 minutes, what's working, what's not and then really create an actual plan complementary for free. Also, in addition to that, we'll build out an audit if you'd like us to. So if you're saying, Hey, I want to see, am I doing ads, right? Am I doing social media right? You give us access and we'll put that together for free as well for you. I mean, we just delivered yesterday a twenty five page audit to another prospective client, which now whether they work with us, great. If not, they at least have something that they can turn back to their marketing team and start implementing right away.

Katie Hunt [00:34:02] That's incredible, Alex. That's the kind of customer service that I like. I mean, that's that's above and beyond. That's amazing.

Alex Rossman [00:34:09] Hey, we just know it's a tough world out there. I mean, it's getting more and more competitive. So again, we just want to help out any way we can. And like I said, there's no strings attached, just just here to help as well.

Katie Hunt [00:34:21] Where can people find you online if they want to check out your services and maybe send you an email about inquiring? Well, actually, let's not send them the email and send them to your website and maybe social media.

Alex Rossman [00:34:31] No worries. Yeah, so Rossman.com is our website. You can visit also our social media channels @RossmanMedia. We do a lot of little tidbits and resourceful information just putting out video content that might be helpful to you. So whether we work together or not, definitely follow there and you'll get some, some good resource information.

Katie Hunt [00:34:53] Awesome. Well, thank you, Alex. This was a delight and so informative. We really appreciate your time.

Alex Rossman [00:34:58] Hey, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Katie Hunt [00:35:00] All right, friends. A couple of things stood out to me from this episode, Alex said. People buy from people, and that is so true. This is truly what all of our marketing should focus on building connections with our customers, creating that relationship, whether it's a wholesale customer or a direct consumer customer. People buy from people. Also, the statistic that he shared that 30 percent of our revenue should come from email that really struck a chord with me because you all know that I strongly believe in. Email marketing, and I want to kind of dispel some of those fears that many of you have around sending emails to your email list, so hopefully that resonated with you too. Two quick things before I go LABS members, don't forget to listen to the bonus episode that I recorded with Alex about influencer marketing. We covered how to find influencers and what you can expect to pay for influencer content. Typical deal structures and Alex lays out a simple but effective strategy for reusing repurposing influencer content in other parts of your marketing plan. So that's available to you now in our community, and it's really worth the listen. So I hope you guys enjoy that. And if you're not in our LABS community, I encourage you to join our waitlist. LABS is my 12 month group coaching program built specifically for product based business owners that want to streamline their business operations. You'll not only get access to Alex's bonus interview, but also our rich archive of trainings, live coaching calls with me each month and our diverse and supportive community of members that are also making products too. So we'll open the doors to that again soon. So hop on that waitlist for first access. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'll be back next week with a new episode.