Oct 10, 2024
Growth & Marketing
His PROVEN $7.8B Ecommerce Growth Strategy
Summary
Storytelling and Content Strategy
Storytelling is the core foundational skill for digital marketing, serving as the basis for all content creation and the oldest form of communication.
Analyze viral TikTok videos using tools like the Sort Chrome extension to understand effective storytelling techniques, such as narrative changes and frequency.
Founder-led content is crucial for early-stage growth, as evidenced by two recent Shark Tank investments that "blown up" solely on this strategy.
E-commerce Growth Tactics
Successful e-commerce businesses need 70%+ gross margins, an average order value of $70+, and a repeat purchase rate 10% higher than industry benchmarks.
Interruption-based marketing on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok is key to scaling, allowing businesses to grab attention and make compelling offers.
Native ads on TikTok and Facebook that blend in with platform content outperform high-production ads, according to Sabri Suby, founder of King Kong agency.
AI and Market Research
Use ChatGPT to generate 20 variations of winning ad headlines and to act as a forensic detective and McKinsey analyst for market research.
Optimize day one AOV (Average Order Value) and focus on creating a high lifetime value of customers through compelling products with word of mouth to reduce customer acquisition costs.
Timestamps
00:00 Mastering storytelling and building a strong foundation are crucial for e-commerce success, as demonstrated by Sabri Suby's journey from busking to a $7.8B digital marketing career.
06:01 Mastering storytelling and leveraging platforms like TikTok are essential for eCommerce growth and effective advertising strategies.
12:03 Founders should prioritize personal content creation and product-market fit while maintaining strong economics and unique offerings to sustainably scale their eCommerce businesses.
18:05 Maximize e-commerce success by optimizing pricing, offering free shipping, leveraging interruption-based marketing, and focusing on brand building over drop shipping.
27:12 High-quality, authentic content created on smartphones, especially for platforms like TikTok, is crucial for effective advertising in a crowded market.
33:58 Amplifying successful organic posts with paid ads and focusing on high-quality creative inputs are key strategies for scaling e-commerce growth.
39:27 Sabri Suby highlights the power of AI and thorough market research in eCommerce to enhance advertising efficiency and client results while emphasizing the importance of timeless skills like storytelling.
47:49 Focus on video sales letters, AI integration, and maximizing average order value to drive sustainable e-commerce growth while emphasizing passion and persistence in entrepreneurship.
Transcript
00:00 If you can tell great stories that is the absolute core foundational skill. I'm not talking about like Ecom Chads that are doing you know a million 2 million a month. Let's just be real right that stuff means nothing if you don't know how to tell a good story. The founder of Australia's fastest growing digital marketing agency King Kong and his name is Sab subi everything that you master now you're going to be able to use that in the years to come and compound if you're not looking back at your ability to tell story your rate of improvement isn't high enough. The sub of day would beat the living. Out of sub 2 years ago here are the stories learn The Proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship welcome to the founder podcast with Nathan Chan so Sab. The first question I ask everyone that comes on is.How did you get your job AKA how did you find yourself doing the work you're doing today. I got my start because I was uh raised by a single parent mother in a small Beach Town Byron Bay um me and my sister watched my mom hold down three jobs to provide an incredible upbringing for me and my sister. And I knew that I wanted to bring money into the household and I got my first job grinding peanut butter as a kid and I knew I was getting paid $250 an hour at this health food store and I found out very quickly that $250 wasn't going to really be able to do anything to help my mom and that's when I started busking at a Sunday market. So I made 80 bucks my first weekend and brought that home gave it to my mom. It was a very emotional moment. There was tears going down her face and then I knew at that point that that money was going to be meaningful for her and that was the first time that you could say. I probably got bitten by that entrepreneurial bug knowing that I could go work at a Sunday markets for a couple of hours and earn 80 bucks instead of earning $250 an hour um and then fast for for w I got my first kind of real serious job in sales. When I was 16 and I sucked really bad in the beginning.I figured the sales game out and then I was a top sales person um and traveled the world doing sales for every type of product that you can imagine I have sold and I was always the top salesperson there and being on the front lines of business like that being at the very very tip of the spear at actually converting strangers into customers for businesses is what kind of made me fall down the rabbit hole of marketing right because I was on the front lines doing the the like arm-to-arm combat in selling and then you know people were like hey you're really good. At this you should study marketing. I went I came back to Australia.Stud studied marketing realized that that's not what I wanted to do um and in terms of the traditional sense of what I wanted to do and I S started up my first business over a college break over a summer and basically that was selling water filters online and I had to figure out how to do SEO and PID traffic and conversion rate optimization and like that was when I got bitten by digital marketing so to speak and since then since the age of 22 I have run multiple businesses. I've run some businesses into the ground and had some failures. Um. I've sold some businesses and had some wins and some exits as well um and at all of those businesses. I was always tasked with the number one problem that all businesses face which is how do we get more customers um and that was the thing that I always did and then I realized you know. I had some e-commerce businesses.I'd read the 4-Hour Work week and kind of caught the 4-Hour fever and and was like Hey I can just like run these businesses fully automated and just live in my pajamas right and I got very bored and very lonely doing that and it wasn't something that really lit my soul up um and I always felt like there was something missing when I was running those businesses and I was still making good money and I was working minimum amount of hours. But I was like is this it like is this what I meant to do. This doesn't really sound like you know my idea of happiness and fulfillment and that was when you know like realistically like I would say the 4-Hour. Work week for me was a bit of a mind virus because it kind of looked at work as this negative thing um and it's not something that you want to pour everything in when really the work works on you right and doing the work and focusing on something that lights you up doesn't need to be something that you minimize the amount of time that you do in that thing if you really enjoy that that climb and that continual strive for just improving. So.Then I basically started King Kong an agency helping solve that problem for all of these different businesses of how to get more customers um and built a team and that's kind of how I got the gig yeah. I'm incredible so you've worked with a lot of different companies helping them grow and scale. And what have you seen is working right now for and also you've invested like your shark on Shark Tank. You've invested in in e-commerce companies as well on Shark Tank. You've seen some of the companies that are coming through something you said to me offline which I thought was very interesting is the trend that you've noticed the amount of Brands blowing up just from Tik Tok. Organic. Like that made my ears perk up when you said that so you know if somebody's starting an e-commerce business now or their early stage. What do you suggest they start with when it comes to digital marketing yeah. It's a little bit controversial. My take on this. The the thing that I believe that any digital marketer should start with is not digital marketing um.
06:01 It's actually storytelling and you know in. If you have a look at the landscape of where we stand right. Now. Tik Tok has really come in and has kind of changed the game because when I got started you know in in digital marketing. Many many moons ago you had to basically there was two ways to get traffic. One was like organic traffic and writing blogs and doing SEO and manually outbound reaching people. Doing link exchanges all of infographics that was the Free World of ads.Right Slow Burn takes a while very uncontrollable but is very very good as a long-term underpinning B business strategy. Then there was the pay traffic world. You had to go out and buy eyeballs and you need cash to do that right and then you needed to know the whole science of conversion to convert that and make it all profitable. Now we're in a day and age where you can literally be good at storytelling and blow up on Tik Tok. Right is your good at grabbing people's attention with good hooks. You know how to retain that attention and then deliver on a promise. You can literally go from zero to hero in 3 months on Tik Tok and there are countless of businesses that are great examples you know of this right and so that has really leveled the playing field of if you want to get traffic.There's not just like you know the slowburn organic route or the quick paid route right and and if anything you know you really want to focus on that storytelling component because what I have seen is if you can tell great stories you're going to be good at organic right. You're going to be good at getting organic traffic you're going to be good at YouTube videos. All of this whole organic engine and then the organic engine is the best thing to fuel the paid engine because if you find out what's resonating in the algorithms for free on these organic platforms. If it's resonating organically and then you take that and you find out what is the DNA within that why is it working so well organically and then you move that across to the paid side is where things blow up right because it's already tested that ad organically and then you're moving it over to the paid side but none of that means anything right running ads building out funnels. None of that stuff means nothing if you don't know how to tell a good story because that's all it is right all.It is is communicating and the oldest form of communication is storytelling so if you want to have a good ad and a good hook. Then you better know how to communicate and tell a story if you want to write a good vsl. If you want to write good product descriptions if you want to have good upsells postp purchase upsells cross sales you better know how to tell stories if you want to have great ads. You' got to know how to do storytelling so that is the absolute like core foundational skill that will serve you for the rest of your life. It will serve you in your personal life in attracting you know a mate or getting a house or getting an upgrade in a hotel room. It will give you all of those things and it's the it's the basically The Leverage point that all of the stuff that you do e on e-commerce sits upon right who's the biggest e-commerce Giant on planet Earth. It's apple right Steve Jobs the best Storyteller when it comes to marketing that there is if you really study his presentations.He is a master an absolute Master at it and I'm not talking about like Ecom Chads that are doing you know a million two million a month like we're talking about Titans like billion dollar companies like apple that dwarf all these companies through Ecom look at what they focus on look at when they launch a product look at the stories that they tell okay I love. This man really interesting didn't think you were going to say that I thought you were going to say something around paid ads turning a dollar into three so okay so let's let's. I'd love to explore this further. So how do you get better at storytelling like what do you what do you look for what is it just looking at creating content. Seeing what works just use these organic platforms to start with and try and drive traffic to your site. Yeah.I I'd say that the easiest way to to learn it and to get quick feedback would be these organic platforms. Instagram reals Tik Tok YouTube shorts because you have to get a lot of reps in in order to to get good and those platforms are easy to get a lot of reps in and to get a lot of feedback in and no matter what that those first 100 pieces of content that you put out are going to suck right for me like the feedback mechanism that I used was cold calling right I used to make 300 to 600 cold calls a day in my first sales jobs and that was like immediately like the hook is the opening line that you say on the telephone right and it's like that's the thing that you're testing okay everyone's hanging up on me that is not interesting right. So then you change up the hook and you keep changing the hook and the hook and then you get it okay. This is what people like right and then you like you you lose them in the lead in like you see that they don't hang up on you. Immediately. They'll let you talk for 30 to 15 seconds and then they said they're too busy and they got to run all right that lead wasn't strong and then you changed that so I would say that the best thing to do is to like look at you know creators on on Tik Tok because that's just the number one organic channel in the world right now um and have a look at like what are you know. The the Tik toks that are going viral. On those things you can get a Google Chrome extension called sort and you can go to any Tik Tok page click it and it will sort the most watched videos on that Tik Tok Channel and then start to have a look at those and start to say okay what are they doing like how how often are they changing the narrative like what's going on in these things um and then just looking at even YouTube creators you know obviously.
12:03 Mr Beast is very popular um having a look at like some of the things that that he does and other storytellers are doing um in in that space to really understand through views right that's the that's the marketplace telling you. They're rewarding people with views for their ability to be able to grab and retain attention and so you're selling a physical product. You think you. The founder should face to camera on an iPhone creating content or using ambassadors or like like like what yeah. I like if I just take like for instance like two of my recent Shark Tank. Investments and both of those businesses have blown up purely as founder. Le content creators as the start of that business so like everyone's like oh it's not scalable. It has no like you know brand equity and all like man bro. You know have any thing that you're going to sell in the beginning. Let's just be real right yeah once you as the founder can like get that content popping and then institutionalize it and then bring in then bring in other faces further down the track like why are you thinking about selling because you're not even doing a 100 Grand like who cares like I see these people talking about scale and sitting around oh. It's like you want to have other people. It's like man you don't have anything right.Now like you need to do any and all things that you need to do to get this party popping right so don't talk about. It's not willing to scale. You don't even need a scale yet you're not even at 100K you're not even at a million. A month or whatever those things might be for that business um but yeah those two businesses are all all founder faced um and then the best thing to do after you've gotten that is then phase in other characters. Other people from your business to come in and build it out so it's not just you um. But yeah I I I don't I I think that you know the easiest and quickest way to get more reps in and feedback is not to be ring on anybody other than yourself to do it and when when do you start to add in the paid engine right like so by the time clients. By the time you guys are signing clients at King Kong they've got product. Market fit somewhat they've you know they've got sales coming in otherwise they wouldn't even be able to afford you guys and they're coming to you guys really around paid or funnels and and that piece of the puzzle I know one thing that you said to me. A long time ago was it's all about the a average order value and you guys won't take on an average a client unless they x amount of average order. Value is it about 80 bucks or above 70 70 okay so when they come to you on the paid side.What do you find is working now in in this market because it is it is fiercely competitive yeah. It really really is and most e-commerce businesses. They try to compete in the ads manager right and if they do that they're going to have a very stressful life because that is just like you know the ads manager is not the thing that is going to be the the thing that your business lives and dies on. But that's what everybody thinks right. They need to you know get another Facebook ads course just to keep their heart beating right like they're just obsessed with like the latest ad strategy and what you realistically want to do is be competing on economics right and then if you compete on economics and you have sound economics in your business. Then it makes all the ad strategy and all of that stuff so much easier right so. I'm going to give you those golden economics that you need in your e-commerce business like in order to basically be able to scale aggressively okay right um.You need to basically have gross margins of at least 70%. If you do not have gross margins of 70% you're never going to be able to scale hard because you just the margins are too low to cover the customer acquisition cost right. Then. The next thing is you got to have an average order value. An aov of 70 bucks or more yep right um so that your net dollar amount right your 70% gross margins on the 70 bucks is enough to cover the CAC yep right otherwise again. It's going to be a hard life um and you need to have a healthy repeat purchase rate yep on on on the actual product. If it's a consumable or the caveat is you've got to be selling something that has an aov of $400 or more. If you don't have a healthy repeat purchase order. Right yep wow okay yeah um you need to have you know a unique mechanism or a good brand story that you can leverage across your ads and across your funnel and everything that you have on offer if you don't have those things and you've just got a gadget or a gizmo.It's over you're never ever going to be able to scale hard either y cuz. You're scaling something that people are is that is old and boring. There is not something that I call that is new e right. There's new unique easy exciting predictable and huge and unless someone looks at that and goes yes that is new that is unique. That is exciting then you're never going to be able to get their attention to be able to sell them in in the first place yeah man. This is awesome and then the last part of it is that. You got it's got you got to be selling something that's good and so that the reviews and the M the word of mouth grows over time and then fuels in that conversion engine on the back end right because like in e-commerce the two biggest variables that are going to move the needle. The most is price and social proof right.
18:05 They're the two levers that you really want that that like if you're split testing you know an e-commerce product or a site you're doing conversion rate optimization. There's nothing that you can do like simplifying the checkout all of that stuff. That's going to move the needle more than price. That is the number that is the the most leverage that you can get. However we we obviously want to have the the price as high as we possibly can right and the aov and the row as as high as possible as well. So. The other part of that is like you know you look at how many people add products to cart and don't check out right um and a big part of that is that they get unsure they get cold feed or if you're charging shipping which you shouldn't be doing um that are all. They're all things that hold back. It's like the invisible hand that kills conversions um and the way that you you get around a lot of that as well is having lots of reviews and lots of social proof that you can use across the whole funnel and ads as well yeah.Wow all right. This is gold man thank you for sharing few things I got to unpack. The first thing was if you're charging for shipping. You shouldn't be doing what do you mean by that well yeah like it's like. We're living in a day and age where like you know. I think it's like 51% of Americans have a Amazon Prime account. They don't. They don't pay for shipping right so our homeboy. Jeff basos has set like the the standard of like you don't pay shipping right and it's like they have so much brand trust and equity in the marketplace and they don't charge shipping if you're a Prime member right so how can you charge shipping when you don't have nowhere near as much trust like it's like you know. People don't want to pay for shipping like if anything just burden that cost and absorb it in the cost of the product but don't have a hidden surprise. The checkout of like yeah. We're going to charge you or put your post code in and we're going to charge you like just work out what the Blended cost of it is and Factor it into your shipping.Factor it into the actual price of your product. So you can slam free shipping everywhere and you've seen from numerous split tests that that you get a better outcome from your experience. Yes okay you talked about healthy repeat purchase rate can we put some numbers on that no no because it varies dependent on like the category of business that they're operating operating in right. It's like if you're having a protein powder you're going to have an insanely High repeat purchase rate versus somebody that might be doing like Teeth. Whitening or maybe skin care products or you know some kind of lotion or its suncreen or whatnot or its clothing. So it does vary but what I would suggest that you know the viewer does do is have a look at the category that they operate in and have a look at what is the bench mark for a repeat purchase rate in that industry that they operate in because there's lots of e-commerce that'ss publicly available around this and just to make sure that you're 10% higher than the standard yep okay and when it comes to pay to ads across you know all your clients where do you see most of the spend going is it still Facebook I know Google search has made a big Resurgence. A lot of people spend there now as well. Um Tik Tok is you know. I don't really hear that many stories of people doing really well with Tik Tok. Paid ads where where do you find what's working now yeah. It's still for all the flak that they get. It's still meta.It's still Facebook. It's still that Suite they are the 800B in the gorilla in the room um Google shopping and all of those things are great um. You want to have a look at the landscape that you operate in on Google and have a look at like who are the people that are running SHO ads who are the people that are running text ads does. My PRI is my price able to compete with these people um and how do you kind of what's that little entry point into the market on that right and let's just say that you do have a good entry point and your product is good and it sells and the conversion rate is there wonderful get to a 90% like a 90 um% impression share on your ads meaning that N9 out of 10 times when see people search for those keywords that you appear on Google right. But then the reality of it is is in any given Market. That is just you're limited by the volume of people that are searching for that right and the real opportunity to scale and blow up for most businesses is being able to master Interruption based marketing right where they're pushing a message in front of a market like Facebook ads like YouTube like Tik Tok where they're not necessarily looking for it. But you're so good at storytelling that you can grab their attention agitate a problem. They didn't even know that they had and then basically make a compelling offer to them to get them to buy right because you're not limited then by the number of people that are jumping onto Google and searching for those things because the average CTR on a Google ad is around 5 a half% in today's day and age meaning you know if there's 100,000 people searching for what it is that you've got um and for a lot of products. There isn't 100,000 Searchers. Then you only get 5,000 of those 100,000 right and that becomes like a challenge and it's also your competing in a place where everybody's prices are visible in the get-go um and they're already pre-framed that traffic is pre-framed right and because Google ads has the most amount of dumb money on it because it was the first ad platform and what people do is. They're very stupid unfortunately and they basically the lever that they pull because they don't know how to do marketing and conversion and optimization properly.They they they pull the easiest lever which is price right and then they just basically it becomes the race to the bottom and so they kind of wreck that little Marketplace of traffic by dirtying it by is pulling down their price or they do. The other thing which is they're so unsophisticated that they just spend more money to get more traffic and to just outbid people right. So then they end up selling like shittier products to be able to afford to be able to pay that much to get the click and then because they keep bringing the price down they keep on needing to make the product right um so there are marketplaces for those things. But it's typically not in the brand building space of like building D Toc Brands. Hey guys. I really hope you're feeling inspired from today's interview.The truth is there's never been a better time to build an e-commerce business and the best part is you don't need to do it alone. That's where found a plus comes in which I'm really really really excited to share with you. If you are feeling stuck in your e-commerce business lacking the confidence to really move forward or you're worrying about making costly mistakes or how to drive your sales founder. Plus is here to support you you get access to a customized learning pathway with proven Frameworks from successful e-commerce. Founders for fast results a supportive Community. We have weekly live mentorship and workshops. An exclusive savings on Startup tools and 24/7 real human support. You can try founder Plus today for just $1 for 7 days. So you can accelerate your business goals just visit founder. Comom slstart dollar trial or click the link in the description to claim your trial all right now let's jump back into the sh yeah and building a Brand's where it's at right like I know Drop. Shipping can work as a lifestyle business and stuff like that. But the the real if you're going to build a business you want to an eCommerce business you want to build a brand 100% Okay so I have to ask you like you know you've done incredible with your ads right. A lot of people have seen your ads and and you keep upping the game upping the game upping the game. What advice would you have to anybody in the earli stages that can't effectively afford the high production value. Like like what like do you have a formula when it comes to your ads uh that that you could share or anything that people should be thinking about when it comes to having ad ads that that really just can scale and convert yeah. I think that like the some of the best performing and like disproportionately the highest converting ads are low production ads right.
27:12 They are shot on the iPhone and edited ads right so like don't let that be a barer I just got the new iPhone right. The camera on this thing is just ridiculous like it's. It's so insane um. You know I one of my the the other sharks on Shark Tank Jane Lou. Who runs chopo like I went over to her office um recently to be on her podcast and even when we were Shooting Shark Tank she had her like her media crew come and they don't have any cameras they all shoot on the iPhone. They shoot the whole I they shoot the whole podcast on the iPhone and they just put stands like their whole thing is pure iPhone and very native right and they're crushing it. So.It's like that that is the world now like even a lot of the brands like a lot of huge. Brands out of the states like it's like they shoot all on the iPhone because that's the native platform it was I I I I read some stat some crazy stat the other day. It's like 90% of all content that people consume is shot on the iPhone or on a smartphone because if you think about it like you look at Instagram photos. Most of those are taken on on on on a phone right Tik Tok. Most of those are taken on a phone like most of the actual overall consumption of like you take the O total number of media that they consume is is really from a phone right so the first rule of like native advertising and Facebook ads is a native advertising platform. Tik Tok is even more native than Facebook because its ad platform is not been around for as long um is to not make your ad look like an ad right um so a lot of the times. If it is high production. Then it does look like an ad right but then you know you could say oh well.That's like you know a little bit hypocritical because your ad sub are pretty high production right and and they look pretty good. I the first thing that I do you know the first rule of marketing is to Zig while everybody zags and because the space that I am is proliferated through with gurus who basically don't have money and need to pretend like they have. Money is that they usually shoot on like lowbudget webcams or dirty vsls or they shoot on their iPhone and it just looks ghetto right and that's the market that's where I'm competing with. So if I went native for my ads. I would just blend in like these guys right and I don't want to blend in right so I go through the laborous time consuming Capital intensive side of making high production ads because I want to be doing. I want a different outcome. I have to do what other people aren't doing right where it's like if you are in a skin care business.Most of the people don't do Native Native right. It's like if you look at the big picture you're going up against like the L'Oreal and these big high production outfits right and that's where it's like a more real rustic video from an iPhone is going to feel a lot more authentic to that market for an acne cream than you know a a massive company in that space like proactive with like a full-on high production ad with celebrities and Kendall Jenner and stuff in it right so and that's why like Kylie cosmetics and and and whatnot has done so well. It's like all of those launches are pretty done. Pretty much in the early days were done through her iPhone right so the thing to come back to your initial question. That's the landscape and that's the kind of My overall mental model around it and then in terms of like the the specifics I think the best place to go again. Right now is Tik Tok because the amount of organic content that is spreading that you can analyze is just so much. It's infinite like it's crazy. There's like 1.6 billion users on it now and it's not like Facebook where you log in there and it's friends from high school. It's some news article or some trash right.It's like the algorithm is much more sophisticated on Tik Tok that's why everyone's trying to copy it with reels and shorts and all of these things. It's like an arms race um and you can go in there and find things that are working very very well right and you want to have a look at the hooks that are doing really really well on this platform um and then you want to model the the highest performing organic hooks for your ads. Right so basically like to share a few of what that those are right is like you. If you spend any time on Tik Tok. These will look familiar right you all need to try this. This product is going crazy on Tik Tok right um and then it would be like you know. I've just discovered this right or I saw the I've if you've been seeing this all over Tik Tok right or I'm going to blow your mind. You won't believe what about to tell you right or like like there's just so many list of organic hooks.In that place. Why are like why am I the only PE person that's talking about X right and you just basically insert your brand and your story into those and you start to see the DNA of like okay. You know you you start mid sentence in cuz. It's just like immediately get into the heat of the action. That's how Tik Tok is. It's not like you know they call it like the millennial pause have you seen this thing no so all of these genen ear are making fun of our age group being Millennials by saying that we do this stupid thing called the millennial pause which is we get the iPhone out yes and before we start recording. There is a one second pause. They hit the record. Hi guys right that's called the millennial pause right and they find it absolutely hilarious that we would waste the first one second of the hook with nothing in it where if you look at how they do it. It's it's soon as they start recording. They do this. They're like all right today guys and then they just literally press. They already are talking before it's recording right ah and so there's this thing called like the Gen C Shuffle where it's like they're recording as they're putting the phone down to start recording so there's already movement and dynamic happening in the shot to retain your attention um.
33:58 So I think think that if you study a lot of all that stuff that's doing really really well organically um the stuff that I have seen work best for our clients is taking their best organic post and then amplifying it with pay. Ads. Nothing beats that yep yep love it okay. Awesome well man this has been incredible uh. We have to talk about AI right. I I know that you're always looking ahead you're planner. You're very focused though. So I know you won't be too distracted but you. I'm sure like must be using it in some way shape or form. So what tools are you using now in your business and then also as a Founder to to to to be a better founder like when it comes to AI yeah.So there's I got a couple of hacks um that that I use so like I look at it in like two different points. I look at it as consumption and I look at it as production right so on the consumption standpoint. Uh there are a bunch of great tools that are out there for basically consuming the best of content very quickly I.E like if you're everyone's been in this scenario. You're trying to find the answer to something on YouTube and you open up the video and it's like yeah good day. It's Ken and I'm here to show you this and then it's like and I want to thank our sponsor and blah blah blah. And it's just like bro just get to it man and you're like on the scrubber trying to find where the ction starts and. And it's this like long. It's like an 8 minute video for 30 seconds of knowledge right. So there are tools out there. But none of them are perfect. The best thing that I found is that you you're for instance wanting to find the answer to something or you're wanting to consume something. Is you go to YouTube. You go to captions you click toggle without timestamps. You copy that whole transcript of the YouTube video and then you put it into chat GPT and you say give me me the five bullet point summaries of what's cons discussed in this video and you can consume 30 minutes of content in 30 seconds right and then you immediately just get the answer that it is that you need right so. That's a great way to get information quickly um. You know obviously like YouTube is like a SE I mean. Sorry Google is like a.Seage swamp right when it comes to getting information now because there's all these affiliate links and people plug in Amazon products. It's just like it's you just can't get the information that you want anymore because everyone's just gone completely Ham on SEO um and you don't get the best information right. It's so it's like if you're looking for noise cancelling headphones and you jump on a Google and you type in noise best noise cancelling headphones. It's like some SEO geek. That's just optimize the page up to wazu every Link's an affiliate link to an Amazon product and you don't even really know what's good like you leave that and you don't you're just more confused. You don't even really know and it's like going to places like Tik Tok and typing in best noise cancelling headphones is going to get you better information right or asking chat. GPT will typically give you better information now than Google would so. I look at it from the consumption side of how do I get answers to my questions quicker than I can other way but then when it comes to production which is what your audience will probably be interested in um. It's really is a game. Cher I was definitely skeptical at first and I was like there's no way that right right. Now. It's going to be able to outperform like an a class copywriter and I have spent several months really deep in it.Like I I've been in. It really really deep I'd say for the last nine months like spending hours on it every single day and it's like anything the inputs get you the outputs so like if you want like great outputs for chat GPT. You have to give it great inputs right most people so let's talk about the ways to use AI to basically be a better marketer and to get more customers and to scale your e-commerce business everybody that runs a significant amount of paid. Ads knows knows that the game is one in the creative. It's not done in the media buying right that's not where the game is won. So then the constraint of most paid ad platforms or teams becomes the creative right. It becomes being able to get enough creative out so what we've found works. Best is you find like you know winning headlines that you write that a human being writes and then you basically give that to chat GPT or to an AI platform because there's multiple of them and none of them are all perfect.It's a hybrid of them all and then you'd say like write me. 20 different variations of this write. Me write me 20 variations of of this headlines that is directed specifically at 25y old women write one that's written for 45y old women give me a leadin copy of this do. This do that here are my five highest performing. Facebook ads right and I want you to change. These I want this to be a story lead. I want you to agitate the problem and make it more visceral. I want you to tell me the problems that this person would tell their counselor.
39:27 But they wouldn't even tell their partner about right and you start to really unearth some data right or giving it exporting a whole bunch of Google reviews and or Amazon reviews and saying tell me the three most um. You know biggest benefits that people experienced from this. What are the three drawbacks that people have and then you take them and then you feed them into your ads because basically like whenever you run an ad you're creating a hypothesis of what you believe that Market is going to resonate with and the quicker that you can shorten the feedback loop between that hypothesis and what reality of it is the quicker that you get to what I call Bullseye Market hit where you're hitting the bullseye of that market with a hammer right and it takes time if you're just a oneman army or just one copywriter to get there right and everyone oh people you know AI is going to replace all these human beings. No AI is not going to be replacing human beings. The humans that use AI are the people that are going to be replacing human beings right and so you don't complain and say oh that shovel is like you know taking a person's job when they were digging with a stick in the ground or that tractor or heavy earthy. Machinery is replacing people that used to be coal mines digging by hands or with pitchforks right. It's the person now that's in there it's getting a 100 times leverage on their time but there's still a human being that is driving that thing to unearth all of that stuff right. So it's the same thing with with ads. It says AI gives you the ability just to test so many different hypothesises and just really navigate to what that Bullseye of the market is that you physically couldn't do with just human beings alone unless you raised huge amounts of venture debt.So you're using chat GPT not bad correct and you're basically using it for Creative brainstorming just just to get stuff going right yeah. So I I approach it in a in a number of different ways. Um I start with the basis of what every good ad begins with um which is the part of the iceberg that sits below the surface that no one sees. But it's it's so solely responsibly by why any AD does well and it's in the research right.The game is one on the research so I use it to do what I call 4D market research where I literally get it to act as like a for like a a forensic detective and a McKenzie analyst that I have hired or Bane and Company analyst that I have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to um and then I tell it that its life is dependent on getting me the most accurate information and it only has a certain amount of time to get that information otherwise. Both its life and my life will be in um and I go and I get incredible amounts of. Data and Analysis of EX exactly what this Market is going through um and you can use things like bad where B is better than you know Chad GPT in a lot of instances where it indexes web pages and it has access to the internet so that's where like doing audits on on reviews and product reviews um and forums and Reddit and everything is really great. It's like having an army of just you know McKenzie analysts going out there and doing all this leg work for you um and then I get all of that leg work and then I start to feed that into the machine and most people. This is how most people use AI. I want you to act as a worldclass.Copywriter write me a high converting Facebook ad for this skin care product. These are the selling benefits. This is the call to action add emojis and a strong call to action dog. And then they look at the copy and then they're like yeah. This isn't very good copy yeah. This isn't as very. This is in no way near as good as an a level or a b-level copywriter and for a lot of the times they're true right. But that's not the ai's fault that's your fault cuz you gave it. Right and you expected it to produce diamonds for you right where it's like you want to give it diamonds right and it just goes out there and just grows more and more and more of those diamonds and you know. A lot of my prompts are like a thousand words. Thousand words a thousand words just for the prompt alone right and it just gives you the most ridiculous outputs ever that can even beat a lot of a level stuff not all of it. But there's a 10 10 to 20% of the copy that it produces could beat the best copywriters in the world yeah wow and so you're using these internally for your own ads.These practices but also for your clients now too yeah so yeah. We we we do we leverage a lot of it um because like my whole ethos is like. I'm trying to put myself out of business. I don't want anybody else putting me out of business I am trying to put myself out of business right and if I can get my clients 10 times the output of what I would be able to do if I was just using human beings and 100 XY output to any other agencies in the space. Then my clients are going to be getting disproportionate results to anybody and I like to arm them to the teeth with the sharpest machinery and weaponry that there is out there and I use myself as the guinea pig to do that yep love it. So you've been playing around this and you've now you believe got it to a point where it it outcon converts some of your best stuff but not always yes okay interesting any other hacks you got for us.That's a best stuff. You got look I I predominantly like to look at the fundamentals that are going to change right. We can talk about ad strategies and like campaign structures and all of that stuff. But that is like a red herring that is not the thing that is going to serve the audience forever right where it's like is you the stuff that I spoke about like today research understanding storytelling. This stuff is going to work in 10 years from now right so instead of spending all your time and energy on something that has a very small half life right like Facebook ads a year ago two years ago is entirely different to what it it is. Now. Google ads is 100% different so that means all the hours that you invested two years ago on Facebook ads all of those skills that you acquired not all of them the bulk of them. The half life is over you've had to retool everything right so you don't get compound interest on it because the halflife is is low where it's like persuasion storytelling communication market research all of these things they're not going away so it's like if you really understand those things and you're going to be in this business building game for many many years. If you master that now everything that you master now you're going to be able to use that in the years to come and compound right and if you're not looking back at your ability to tell stories and communicate and put out content and write ads from two years ago. It doesn't embarrass you then your of improvement isn't high enough right like the sub of today would beat the living out of sub 2 years ago that guy would have no chance I would submit him in 30 seconds right. He's done so that is the attitude that you need to have and you need to be focusing on those long games of like what isn't going to change so you can just keep on getting compounding.
47:49 You know we spoke at the start of this about vsls. It's like this is probably like the 30th vssl. That I've made right and it's the fundamentals. It's the basics because things like that like a vsl is not a shiny object syndrome. It's something that's not going to be changed like video consumption is here to stay. It's only getting better. It's only getting more. It's only getting easier to consume so if you just keep on banging on that thing and get better at it. Then what you're putting out in two years is going to be a lot better than what you're doing now and you're going to get a disproportionate output yeah. I love it man so what so when it comes to I guess Ai and and Founders anyone watching this where do they kind of I guess start because it's it can be quite overwhelming it can. I think the first thing to understand is do not be in denial to think that this is like a fad. It is not a fat I can confirm that right now from the owner results that I'm seeing within my business.This is not a fad like this is here for the long term right um so that is the first thing and then the best thing to do is to just jump in head first and start playing around and mocking around with things right and creating your own lattice work of prompts that you keep in a Google doc that you try and you refine and you try and you refined. There's a lot of people on Tik Tok YouTube and whatnot that are putting out oh. Here are my best proms or this is what you need for this. It's good to look at right and it's good but you need to understand how to engineer prompts yourself to get the best output moving forward. It's not just about the Band-Aid solution of all. This is the best prompt for a Facebook ad you need to understand and it's only by like really going back and forth and playing around back and forth playing around back and forth right and that conversation might be several hours with chat gbt and then you finally arrive at something that works and then you just ask it. You say take this whole conversation and write me one prompt to arrive here with one prompt and then you go you get that prompt you stick it in your little bank and then the next time you need to come in. You got leverage on all that time that you spent most people spend way too much time trying to find the perfect proms rather than spending the time on just developing and understanding how they work so just take the most man.Manial tasks that you do right now pasting an email in there and saying respond to this email right and then it might be like respond to this email in the tone of Oprah Winfrey right and then it might be like in in clude. A story put a joke in the PS right and then you start to like oh. I'm getting different inputs on this and that's the only way that you can do it like you're not going to not feel overwhelmed by looking around sitting at and just thinking about it. Right Waring is like a rocking chair. It keeps you occupied but takes you nowhere you just need to get into the thing start playing around with it so then you're not scared of it and you're not dubious of it and you start to see how powerful it is yeah. Awesome man look this has been incredible. We have to work towards wrapping up conscious of time anything that you wanted to share that I haven't asked you any questions just to our community on any value or anything at all that uh we can wrap with spend 80% of your time on how do you increase your average order value and 20% of your time on how you can reduce your customer ACC cost. Most people have that inverted they spend 80% of their time trying to get the cheapest CPA in Facebook's ad manager and getting the cheapest cost to acquire a customer.They can when your average order value in and your LTV are the thing that dictate how much you can spend to acquire a customer. The game isn't to spend the least to acquire a customer. It's to make the most of each customer and never ever get that Twisted don't let any of these gurus take you down. Some deserted path into No Man's Land right think about that and just think about I first of all need to have an incredible product that spreads that gets word of mouth. So people buy it more and they tell their friends about it and that increases my LTV my lifetime value of a customer right that is the long-term game right then once. Once you have a very high LTV you still need to have a good day one aov right because that is the thing that gives you the ability to go out there and buy traffic without digging yourself into a financial trough to then recoup that money back through the LTV.So the game is to have the highest aov possible so you have the highest day one row ad that you can get right so you want to focus on that then because that's the constraint the constraint isn't oh we're spending too much to acquire a customer. You wouldn't be SP because that's all relative to how much you make off a customer so spend a lot of time on thinking about that and that again comes down to storytelling do you have a shitty basic ball. Shopify product description with 150 characters in it or do you have a very compelling benefit driven headline good story based copy lots of social proof lots of content on there that answers all of the objections FAQs cross cells down cells upsells reviews so that you have a very high conversion rate higher aov higher day one row as and then you're going out there with people that have with drop shippers that have zero like the way for thin margins and that can have their maximum allowable CPA is like 20 bucks but you can afford 80 bucks you just Crush. These people right and they're obsessed of the new ad strategies but you're obsessed with the real long-term game that puts you in a place where you can afford to spend that kind of money yeah.Awesome man well look thank you so much. This has been just an absolute worldwind of gold that you've unpacked across unit. Economics how to think about running ads how to create content how to do storytelling and then also AI chat gbt prompts so thank thank you so much brother um last question where's the best place people can find out more about yourself and your work check me out on YouTube at subbi all right done awesome thank you so much no problems thanks for having me on if you love. This episode make sure to check out my interview with Emma greed on how solving a problem. She was so passionate about led to the creation of skims and good American and so I do think it's so much of it starts with like addressing things that bother you that you find you know you've got to create solution for because you know at the end of the day. You've got to be passionate enough and sometimes crazy enough to go round and round and round to actually solve a problem.