The best benefit of digital marketing is the ability to scale and spread your brand message to a large audience.

On today’s episode, Steve introduces Yev Marusenko. Dr. Yevgeniy "Yev" Marusenko received his Ph.D. from Arizona State University as the first ever graduate from the new Environmental Life Sciences program. He is also the director of E-commerce and growth analytics at Heroclip. Here are more awesome things in this episode:

• Different marketing techniques in top platforms such as Facebook, Google and Amazon.

• Branding and marketing strategies for E-commerce businesses

• And the five methods of tracking and placing advertisements that convert into sales and profit.

So put on your headphones and learn how you can too can bring your business to a whole new level using different digital marketing tools and strategies.  

Welcome to the Awesomers.com podcast. If you love to learn and if you're motivated to expand your mind and heck if you desire to break through those traditional paradigms and find your own version of success, you are in the right place. Awesomers around the world are on a journey to improve their lives and the lives of those around them. We believe in paying it forward and we fundamentally try to live up to the great Zig Ziglar quote where he said, "You can have everything in your life you want if you help enough other people get what they want." It doesn't matter where you came from. It only matters where you're going. My name is Steve Simonson and I hope that you will join me on this Awesomer journey.

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Steve: This is episode 17 of the Awesomers podcast we're thrilled to have you with us today remember as always you can find the show notes at Awesomers.com/17. That's Awesomers.com/17.

01:30 (Steve introduces today’s guest, Yev Marusenko)

Steve: Now today my special guest is Yev Marusenko and I hope I got that right, Yev I know I’ll try for perfection, but I'll give it another go here in a minute. Yev went from being a scientist to an entrepreneur which is a unique experience. He left his academic career as an Ecologist and sustainability expert and began trying to crack the Facebook advertising code as well as the Amazon algorithm and all things about marketing. Using his PhD knowledge of experimental testing and data analysis, he is the director of E-commerce and growth analytics at Heroclip. A hyper growth startup company changing the way you carry your stuff. This was featured on the ESPN gear we love spot the Heroclip very cool little products, so kudos to Yev and the team. Yev is frequently invited to present in private mastermind groups including Catalyst88.com mastermind group which is an exclusive 25,000 a year group of brilliant entrepreneurs and he was invited to speak there and show what's working including relevant case studies on how brands can go from spending a hundred dollars a day to over a thousand dollars a day profitably on outside traffic. Now the best of all, Yev has kind of worked together and put together first of its kind E-commerce tracking tool to track Amazon sales outside of Amazon using Facebook ads for example so that the traffic is generated from outside Amazon and it starts on Facebook or you know, and it could go through whatever route necessary and it's all tracked with Yev’s new tool. So we're going to talk all about that today, it's super exciting, glad you're here.

Welcome back customers! Steve Simonson coming back to you again with another podcast episode and today I've got my very special guest, Yev and I'm going to pronounce this my very best, Marusenko.

Yev: That’s perfect! Yes, just how it’s written.

Steve: Alright! Well, I’m one for one everybody so that's pretty good. So Yev, welcome! I know that you are, do I call you doctor? How does that work? I know your PhD, but is it proper for me to call you doctor Yev, or Doctor Marusenko?

Yev: Some people call me that, even doctor Yev but I don't go by that anymore. I just want you to know that you don’t have to.

Steve: Okay, good news. I’m just going to make an audible here and call you Dr. Phil, that will work for everybody's benefit.

Yev: Hahaha.

Steve: So welcome Yev, it really is a pleasure to have you on the show and we're going to talk to the folks today about some of the things that I think make you an “Awesomer” and some of the really unique things that you guys are doing, but I'd love it if you can just summarize kind of where you are today. You know, what you're doing today professionally, as an entrepreneur, etc. Just a broad summary so we can kind of give people frame of reference from your own words

04:14 (Yev talks about digital marketing, Amazon and his business Heroclip.)

Yev: Of course, and today my main focus is on Heroclip. We're growing. I'm leading all of the digital marketing and we're experimenting, always trying new things. So that's really fun and we’re growing, going to all of these events and people are contacting us and wanting different brand partnerships. So that's been great and with the help of all kinds of outside traffic and Facebook and Google from everywhere and Amazon. So that's my primary focus, experimenting there, trying all kinds of new things, listening to other ideas, experimenting. And through that experimentation, I'm in different groups with Amazon and group Ecommerce brands and always sharing feedback, always also getting invited to present in different areas. People are learning from what we're doing and if behind the scenes. But we're public brands so people can kind of look it up and see exactly what we're doing. Follow our finals and our ads, and also that's allowed us to help make one of these tools that's a separate from Heroclip but it's allowed me to really help different Amazon brands that are trying Facebook advertising. So, focusing on that, helping other entrepreneurs and marketers increase their efficiency.

Steve: Well that's a lot of things to do and I certainly understand a busy schedule that's for sure. So, we're going to dive into some of those details and talk about this idea that you know even when you advertise on Facebook using Yev's tool, which came out of kind of his first-hand experience and really him putting the clues together, we'll talk about how he's leveraged some of his education and background and even his superlative efforts at Heroclip to kind of put this whole puzzle together for the benefit of other entrepreneurs. We're doing it right after the break. But first, once we do the break, we're going to come back and talk also a little bit about Yev’s origin story. Because I want to get a little bit more detail from Yev on that as well. So, we'll be right back after this.

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Steve: Okay, here we are back again. And Yev, we're going to take a little bit of a detour here. So usually in Awesomer authority story, we just dive directly into framing the problem. You know, the common problem that entrepreneurs have. But because I kind of know you and know a little bit about your background, I think it's so interesting. So, we're going blend in an Awesomer origin story with this. So, the first question I'd like to ask you, and I don't remember the exact detail, but I have a clue to the answer. Where were you born I was born?

7.10 (Yev talks about his origin story.)

Yev: I was born in Ukraine. But I moved to U.S. when I was 8 years old. So I’m very Americanized by this point

Steve: No doubt you are. I just love the background stories for everybody. You know everybody comes from all over the world and has put together such unique things and then tell me this Yev, when you once move to the U.S., what types of work where your parents doing? It's always interesting to me to see the entrepreneurial influences. Were they in the education space or what did they do?

Yev: That was actually very interesting where it's just kind of like people coming to a different country and doing all kinds of different stuff. So my mom was just helping other people like in their homes. So kind of like maid work and then both of my parents we were doing pizza delivery for a few years. And then both of my parents were doing like, they were doing truck driving. So like across the country and locally.

Steve: Wow!

Yev: So, I was like with my brothers and my two older brothers at home and figuring stuff on our own. I said, those are some of the main ones and then at some point my dad ended up opening a business, but it's like carpet cleaning, water damage restoration. It’s like local service business and that kind of like started getting my mind into like a business world. Again, it's not like a big business but it started thinking about money and you have to like purchase things and provide a service provide value so it's kind of like this the first experience.

Steve: Very interesting! So first of all, I loved that kind of immigrant story. Right? It's like they come over and they do whatever they got do to make things go and I love that. And actually, I share you know, in my high school days and then just beyond. I had a carpet cleaning and restoration kind of background. Including working as a helper. One of the guys just sucking rugs and rolling a pose.

Yev: Hahaha

Steve: All the way up until I bought…

Yev: Oh man! Hahaha.

Steve: You did. Yes! So, we'll share off the air some rug sucking stories but no doubt that I've got some good ones. So that's a fun background. Now, how did you vector into the education space? Because obviously accomplishing the high education standard of getting a PhD, that takes a lot of work, a lot of effort. How did that happen?

Yev: Yes! Early on it was more of like where I knew I liked nature and kind of like the environment, like that's far as I knew. I don't think beyond that and then I had to make a decision on it like what am I going school for, is like business stuff, computer stuff or science stuff. So go into science stuff and then it just led to working on the bachelors and then just meeting all kinds of the cool professor, getting opportunity to do different research and had to make decisions. It was kind of this mix where I didn't research other things and I just like had these opportunities in front of me. So that led to working on the masters and then the PhD right away and they were all in Arizona. So it was like one after the other. So there's this benefit where I was like doing it, I was going through it. Now that I'm done, I have it's all behind me like I have the letters under my name but at the same time when I look back, I'm like I didn't even explore like other things. I was just like in this momentum. So, there's like good and bad with that. I was definitely kind of like in this academic world kind of just like how everyone's been looking down working on your research. So now I kind of see bigger picture how there's other things out there. And even when I was working on the on the program, it was very cross-disciplinary. It was always trying to you know like maybe the, I like your question about the origin story because that maybe the multicultural perspective adds to like what other perspectives out there that definitely went into my research experience. Kind of asking questions in a different way than other colleagues were asking about. Just regular scientific questions.

Steve: Well and again, this is kind of the, one of the things that I love most about Awesomers is we were able to see these breadcrumb trails and they may all lead to Awesomer in the middle but they start from every point in every vector in the universe right? it doesn't matter where in the world, it doesn't matter the parental background, it doesn't matter your background, education or otherwise right? Religion, race, creed, colored, none of it matters. At the end of the day, as long as people are trying to break out of that paradigm of normal and you know, achieve something. And you are certainly achieving great things at Heroclip. Which is a company that I have a great amount of respect for. Meaning who you who is the founder there will be on an Awesomers episode no doubt in the near future. How long have you been over at Heroclip you have Yev?

Yev: Yes, it's been over a year. It's been a great journey. So there's this like this transition from the academic world where I still brought over like my kind of like research experience and data analysis. Again, not like a data scientist, but at least I can look at data and make interpretations. So I brought that over and it's directly related to the marketing world and the business world of making decisions, trying marketing strategies and doing that for over a year at Heroclip. And we're seeing great effects in our digital marketing.

Steve: No doubt about that. There are a number of noteworthy takeaways there that I'm not going to share your scorecard with them. You can share it if you wish but you know, being able to grow an audience very rapidly, being able to scale a company very rapidly, it relies on the top of the marketing funnel, right? You got to have prospects, you got to have leads, you got to have people pouring into that funnel and that's something that the team over there and I think you know, Yev has been a key part of that effort to drive so much growth and really it's an exciting time to feel all that growth as a culture I imagine. Is that true?

Yev: Absolutely! And there's multiple parts of it where there's other team members that have done an awesome job at whether it's the branding and the product itself so there's quality behind it. It's creating value. People are using it in a ways that they're always sending us new pictures like in ways we didn't even think of how use it. So, there's like the quality behind it and that makes my job easier where I'm not just like marketing anything. So there's like that part is taken care of. The community, the branding is there and then on the marketing side that's allowed us not only grow but experiment in ways where that's what I've been able to growth hacking perspective or just kind of like innovative marketing strategies and yes, growing, growing our email list incredibly or it's several hundred subscribers every day and growing our Facebook advertising budget profitably and this is some of the most common questions I get. How do we go from you know, ten dollars per day ad spend to a hundred dollars per day to thousand dollars per day and over? And that's something we'll talk about deeper today. Some of those strategies with what you can do if you're kind of like starting out or if you're already further ahead. How to do that in your digital marketing?

Steve: Well, I really love that that kind of full perspective and I want to just take a moment to remind that the Awesomers out there listening that Yev have touched on a very important point, right? Which is that you know he can be a world-class guy at driving leads and driving those digital marketing funnels, but if the product is no good then who cares, right? Or the product can be great, digital marketing can be great but if the people responsible to ship out the product they're no good, you got a problem, right? And so every party of your functional departments in a company has to be able to execute with excellence. Without that, the weakest link will break the chain. And even though that's trite and maybe people are like oh you know who cares everybody knows that, when you actually see a world-class organization executing in every functional area you can feel it it's electric and people inside the organization can feel it and it's fun and it builds on itself. Have you experienced any of that kind of electric feeling in your office?

Yev: Oh, absolutely! It's this mix of where like we hear some sort of like exciting news, where you know, it's something that we've been working on for months. So I mean like something I can share right it’s like fairly recently we found out. Initially we got into a few stores so it's like the biggest thing out there for outdoor, right? Camping, hiking, all of that and then recently found out that we expanded it to all of the stores.

Steve: Wow!

Yev: Oh, like we're doing good there, but that took a lot of time to build up. You know like the initially getting in there and then while they're in there where people are coming into the store asking about it. And there's like this moment, we’re like, alright we're done! What else do we do? But then that's happening like every week. And in between there's a lot of struggle and figuring things out, things not worrying especially marketing. There's like 80% of the stuff we do is just like not working and we like move on to the next test, next experiment. So it's kind of like this makes stuff like, all right, great news! Like we just had this awesome influence or talked about us so exactly like our efforts are paying off. So it's always like this makes of this,

Steve: Yes! The internal and the external right? Because the internal can build itself and have that internal electricity and momentum but it's fed from those external accomplishments. And I, you know, congratulations to the team over there for you know, not just getting the initial placement and the testing in our area but being able to go wide. And you know that's an important note for people who want to think about you know, how to sell product or develop a product and then sell it E-commerce and then beyond. And there, remember Awesomers out there listen, that you know, still somewhere around 88 to 90 percent of all retail sales are still done in stores. Now that's going to change. E-commerce will continue to take some market share, but the total amount of volume done in stores will always be meaningful and extraordinary. And having the right partners will be a key. And that's something that the Heroclip team is working on and anybody who's got experience in wholesale will tell you there are pluses and minuses to doing business at wholesale but the number one thing I would tell people is don't think you just send an email to somebody and then you have products in the shelve. It takes a long time and a lot of effort, right? Is that something you'd agree with Yev?

Yev: Oh yes! For sure and we have a sales director. He's taking care of all of that so he's nurturing those relationships and working on new ones. And we're using digital marketing to amplify that, so I think that's a lot of your listeners may resonate with us where it is like retail and digital. But lots of times we just we're sending out emails and running ads that we're talking about our retail store. So like, we want people to go in there as well to make our buyers happy. To buy more and sometimes we're running ads and it's not necessarily like profitable because actually, can't even track what's happening in retail. But we want to make them happy, so they put in more bigger orders because we know like and digitally we can recover like if something isn't working, we can like get more traffic. If we need to optimize, so it's complementing the digital marketing with the retail as well.

17:41 (Steve recall the experiment they did on the store of Sherwin Williams.)

Steve: Yes, that's so smart it reminds me of an experiment we did. I don't know how many people have ever heard of Sherwin Williams store. So if you're in America you should have heard of them because they have around 4,400 locations. And we had a test batch that we were doing which was across all geographies of about a hundred eighty stores. So we did a product inside of the Sherwin Williams stores. And part of our idea was to drive a rebate program online through Facebook in those local regions for relevant audiences to try to help drive you know, customers into that store and drive interest into that store because we wanted them to be successful. We wanted to help our wholesale partner. And fundamentally I think anybody who sells wholesale or has this vision of selling wholesale you know, hey I've got this brand that I'm building and this my own unique item I want to sell it. If you expect the retailers to do the job of marketing, you're making a mistake. Ultimately retailers want the brand to drive the business and drive the volume. They don't expect to have to do that work. So, that's a mistake that I think a lot of newbies make when they think about wholesale cash. If I just get it into you know, Home Depot or Walmart then you know, I'm set and you'll get some shelf you know, assuming you do shelf space, physical space, you get some pickups that you wouldn't have gotten. But if you don't have a brand driving that, it would be very tough sledding. So, that's my own advice. So, you have any notes about Hiroclip before we kind of dive into the authority part of this episode? What we're going to talk about common E-commerce problems with Amazon businesses. Any final Heroclip notes now?

Yev: No final notes but all of the data I'm going to talk about, I'm sure like throughout the rest of this meeting is that it's going to include Heroclip data, yes.

Steve: It’s really good. And you know, kudos to you and the team for you know, kind of being able to share with entrepreneurs you know, kind of first-hand data, right? We're not talking about philosophy, we're not talking about theory, we're talking about real things. So let's, actually we're going to take another quick break right here and then when we come back we're going to frame up this problem that especially marketplace sellers, Amazon sellers, in particular advertising on Facebook have this big problem and it's called ROI, return on investment. How do they know if they're spending money wisely on Facebook?  And we're going to come back with some answers right after this.

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Steve: Ok. Back again everybody, Steve Simonson with my special guest Yev Marusenko. Am I still close?

Yev: 2 for 2. Yes, you’re good!

Steve: All right. I’m putting some points on the board today everybody.  For all the other names that I have messed up, this is my reprieve. So Yev, I kind of teased this before we went to break that you know there's a common problem that Amazon sellers have. Can you help frame that problem for me? You know, what is the challenge they face when it comes to selling products using Facebook advertising?

21:30 (Yev discusses the potential challenges selling products using Facebook advertising.)

Yev: Yes, well and actually I'm going to take a little step back because that's it's like the second problem that most don't even know they're going to have. The first problem and all of my colleagues and peers have and a lot of people in your community have where they're selling in Amazon. They're doing really great. Some we're trying to build up their brand. And then there's this point where you know, when do I switch to I'm off of Amazon or helping outside traffic to either amplify your Amazon or just growing of Amazon as well? So there's like this steps. So the first problem is all right well, I'm getting into Facebook advertising. I'm looking at all of these guides and learning how to do it, running Facebook ads. So, there's like this first problem doing that. So there's this couple tips I can share.

Steve: Yes, that's a very good point. It starts with this idea. That's a very good rewind because you know, you're trying to sell something you're on Amazon now what do you do about it? Tell us Yev. What's kind of the first step?

Yev: Yes! you create an ad, hehe.  You link it to your, you point to your Amazon listing and you might use all kinds of URLs you know, whether it's directly to your listing, to the search results so people are going to the Amazon listing and most likely like you know, people aren't buying. It's just like there's this weird journey right from a Facebook ad to an Amazon listing. So you like really have to dial in for that to work, or then you might start, well let me send it to my website or a landing page where you might do like an exchange for a coupon and then doing email follow-ups. You might be testing from an ad to some sort of chat bot, communicating, sending coupon through there, sending to Amazon. So there like all of these different strategies, right? And then people will hurry up. Well then, you want to use video and they use retargeting based on 75% view. That it gets complex, like so much you can do. And some of it is working, some of it is not working and a really bad part and maybe this is good for Amazon, I don't know but there's like no data like Amazon doesn't give us any data or not much data at all to be able to track the effects of your results. So, you're running all of this traffic, you're just like getting excited about. I'm going to grow off Amazon or amplify your Amazon in different ways. And then you spend $10, $100, $200 and you're like alright, I think there was a little bump in sales but I'm not sure which ad did that or there's like no effect. Do I need to create new ads? So, it's a big problem where like you can't track the results. So, you don't know how to optimize, you don't know how to scale and that's the process of digital marketing and marketing in general. You test, you optimize, you scale and we're kind of like left without those parts when we're trying to amplify Amazon.

Steve: So, ladies’ and gentlemen. The concept of attribution is something that has kept me up more nights than probably anything else, right? We're spending money, but we don't know how to attribute the you know, the sales, right? So, as Yev eloquently pointed out that it's like alright, I'm spending some money on Facebook or Google or wherever and I think I saw a bump go up compared to normal but you don't really know if it's directly attributable to the spend that you had. And so, that lack of attribution is really something that gives a lot of people heartache. And you know, a lot of people also don't realize it was recently released by a company called ROI revolution that 85% of product journeys now, according to their estimates cross devices, right? Which only makes attribution that much worse, right? If you're going from your mobile to your computer or vice versa, a tablet, wherever, have office versus you know, home stuff, it could really create a lot of pain. And so, you know, that level of consternation has been something that has existed in marketing forever and is especially problematic when you have Amazon that shares no pixels, no back-end data. Is that fair to say?

Yev: Yes! The multi-channel attribution only gets more complex.

Steve: Yes and of course. Maybe a fella with you know, the nice data science or understanding like yes, if he probably is into this stuff. I have a brother who's heavily into analytics and loves this stuff, but a lot of us just glaze over. It's like oh, geez! There's another thing I got to learn about? It's really overwhelming. So what do you see that people do when they face this challenge, Yev?

25:53 (Yev’s five methods in knowing which ads are working and converting to profit)

Yev: And I'll try to simplify towards them but first I'll give you, there's five methods where I've seen people are using of helping their tracking and you can do this yourself. So this like, let’s say you're starting up, you probably have a lot of time. So like if you don't have, mine has ways where you can like spend to increase your tracking. But like, if you have time, you can like do it yourself, figure it out. So there's like the time where you can spend where two common ways is that you can use unique coupon codes. So you create codes in Amazon and then you give those codes out on your landing pages from your ads or somehow through your ads. But you're going to have to create a lot of different coupons. Not just for each user or if it's like a group code but if you're creating different ads, it's going to have to be a different coupon code that you're going to have to track every single time of which ad is working. You know, if it's different images in your ads, it'd have to be different coupon codes. So that's a lot of tracking. Special if you want to scale it up. And a similar method is using the Amazon Associates affiliate link program. So you can use the affiliate link, Amazon tracks, gives you that data because it's their affiliate program. But then you kind of have to be careful where you're using the affiliate link or not. But again, you need to have a whole bunch of different links and all of your different ads. And then after you get sales, you have to come back and see which ad made the sale and you'd like manually keeping track of all of that. The third method, there's ways you can through like the Amazon, like storefront, they're like sometimes switching the name with the brand or the store where they provide some data on where the traffic is coming from. But you're limited and we're like the URL that you're using. Because it's kind of like the store, it's not like wherever you want to test. So there's some data there. Let me see what else. Oh yes, you can do offline conversions. This is a really good. It's really accurate. It’s like connecting Amazon and Facebook. But the problem was that you manually have to do that exporting all of the data. Get it all in the right columns for Facebook. So you could have you know, a marketing assistant or a VA help you with that. But you know, can they do it daily or doing weekly? So there's that method and then the other really common one is guessing, hehe. You’re on ads and you don’t know. So that's what I see in a lot of sellers where they just going to have ads and they think one is doing better than the others or they're like I'm getting hundreds of clicks but I think their sales coming through.

Steve: Yes, I have to say that guessing is probably a great entrepreneurial, I don't know weakness perhaps. Because so many times we just follow our guts and our guts are pretty good, right? Our instincts are good. We're following, we're following it. But I'll tell you when it comes to marketing and advertising attribution, my guts have been wrong there more often than right. And there are surprises that you will find, little tweaks, little unexpected things, and I've found this to be you know, in very significant scales. You know, where we would spend you know, a hundred thousand dollars on this particular campaign and we expected it to just be extraordinary and it was a you know, produced maybe, you know, a half a million dollars worth of sales. Five times you know, spend the revenue sounds pretty good but it depends on the margin. That particular product had a low margin. It was not profitable at that level whereas we tweaked it and we were able to get that same hundred thousand dollars to produce a million dollars with some of those attribution and tweaks. So my advice to entrepreneurs out there is to avoid guessing and to try to bring data to the equation. Really spending without true data is, well it's a fool's game and it goes back to the very beginning days of marketing where you know guys, I don't know it's old movie or somebody who said you know, they know that 50% of the marketing is working, they just don't know which 50%.

Yev: (laughs)

Steve: And when I started in digital marketing, you know back in the late 90’s, we were excited because we could put tracking links everywhere. But now marketplaces kind of re started this whole idea of we don't know where the money is coming from. So now that we've kind of generally understand the problem, Yev. What do we do next to kind of you know, take steps towards solving the problem?

Yev: Take steps towards solving the problem. Well, they're like doing those methods. I mean you can still do those,  you'll have partial data it will definitely help you but it's some of those that are a lot of work and that led us to creating our own solution. I figured out how to do it, so, kind of using this offline conversion method. Also, the best benefits of some of those other methods where I I had an engineer that's basically going into the Amazon API and then the Facebook API. Sp, things I don't really understand and you don't have to understand, but, it's sending data from Amazon to Facebook and it's doing that attribution. It happens automatically, so, that's the best part I know for some of you you just want something in happen automatically. This is what it does, so, it helps you with attribution and in the slides.

Steve: Yes, I love that.

Yev: So, basically what's happening…

Steve: Well, go ahead…  I love the fact that you guys have kind of solved this problem, because,  the manual part of this puzzle is a nightmare. But, I wonder how many Awesomers know how that manual process works. I know you alluded to it earlier, talking about offline and uploads. But, can you just take us through the step by step if you run an ad on Facebook? How that offline attribution happens now without a cool tool?

Yev: Yes, so the process is that you run your ad, Facebook user sees the ad, then, let's say they click on the ad and it's going directly to Amazon. That is one of the common pathways they're on Amazon. They make the purchase and then Amazon has the data, the customer Information, the order information. Then, you have to export that in some way, so, whether you use some of the other tools… There are various tools out there where you can export the audience, then, send that data from those tools to Amazon or Facebook…

Steve: I am sorry, let me just help on this. What we're talking about here is taking your sales data from Amazon and making an export spreadsheet. However, you do it, what are you using, seller tools and Frankenstein it together, or, some other tool that's off-the-shelf. You have to take this data, a sales report essentially and that's step one and then what do you…

Yev: Yes.

Steve: What is step two?

Yev:  You take data then you have to put it into a way how Facebook likes it. Some of these different tools, they do like, different levels of the job. Like make it into a Facebook format but still, it doesn't accept it. Okay, so you have this spreadsheet and then you make sure the data is in the right format and the column names are all correct. Then, you are going to be choosing that in Facebook to make sure it's pulling in. You know, the name of the address, all of that information into Facebook, so, that data is there in Facebook. So,  some of the other tools, that's as far as they go, where you can create that audience. So, here's your Amazon audience and you have that information now. So again, this is where the tool is really helpful. First of all, it automates that entire step. It's like, all you have to do is run your ads,you know, the ad strategies that's all up to you. You have to test different ads, but, you are going to see that data of which ones are leading to Amazon sales. Then, all of the customer going to Amazon if somebody clicks the ad, or, even if they don't click the ad. If they just look at the ad and they don't click it and they see it and they're like “Oh, let me see what was that.” They go to Google, directly search for it, then, there's an Amazon result there or they go into Amazon directly. They type it in there and they purchased. That order information is automatically sent through the tool, it does all that processing, all of the matching. Once it sends it to Facebook, there is this custom algorithm where it also does certain things, like, it checks for the Amazon account name, Amazon shipping name, because sometimes, there are different names as well, so, it does that matching as well to increase the chances. Then, it matches it to inside of Facebook. So, this part is where some of these tools, you can do it manually and it shows you, here's your audience, you have 60% match rate of your Amazon customers and that are actually Facebook users. But, what the tool doesn't access is this next level of attribution, and this is the best part, because, going through the Facebook API, it sees did that match Facebook user who was an Amazon customer see an ad from your ad account. It's like, it links the user, should your ad account like, are they exposed to it? Whether they clicked it or they view it, Facebook knows that data. So, if you have all kinds of ads going, the exact ad is going to show that sale in there, and then after on, the order is shipped, so smart has shipped. That data is through and you move on to your actual digital marketing practices. You turn off the worst ads, you put more budget into the ones that are working and you take off from there. So, the tool does that. That's all of the steps in between automatically.

Steve: I love that, so I'm going to come back with a couple of questions, but, I just want to reinforce for the people so the concept of running a Facebook ad and running it directly to your Amazon listing, or some variation of your Amazon listing, or even indirect. The idea is that, you can export your Amazon sales and then compare that to your Facebook ad campaigns and do offline matching. So, this functionality exists and you can do it manually, which is you get your sales data from Amazon, you export it, you format it, and then, you have to import it into Facebook and just imagine how often you're willing to do that. Are you going to do it every day? How about once a week? How about once a month? Pretty soon you're like “Yes once a month sounds pretty good.” Then, you go well. Now, how do you know when your ads are working? You have at least a month of lag time,  you don't know if your ads are working or not, so, that's a terrible idea. Then everybody goes, others have a VA do it ,but, you know what does that mean if you don't have a process. There's just so much pain that goes along with this concept of manual offline. You know, sales event tracking, whereas, using Yev’s tool. We are going to have links as always in the show notes and you'll be able to go to the Awesomers page to find all the little details to get access, and probably even a little in incentivize deal to help you get a look at the Yev’s tool, but, imagine taking all that pain away and go, “Hey, what if it's just automated and live?” I mean, for me, my whole body goes, “Oh! That's much better.” Oh geez! I far prefer automated and instant. What would you estimate the match percentage? You know, median or average however you look at it.

Yev:Yes. If I'll say the average, it's around 75 percent across everybody. But, I've seen big diversity and depends on the type of brand it is. The more common regions where the customers are, it ranges between 60 and 85 percent and still, those numbers are higher than some of the other tools that I've seen where they're like between 30 and 60 percent. Sometimes,  they go into like 70 percent so it's on average, it's pretty good.

Steve: It sounds definitely that there's enough data sampling to give you directional support for your decisions about digital marketing and you have talked very clearly about this idea that once you have the data, forget the pain. Whether you choose to do it manual or you choose to use a tool, now that you have the data, you got to take action and you turn down the ads that are not working. You turn up the ads that are working and that's enough. You know, data is critical information to be able to give you good direction to invest your money. I did wonder about the the difference between an impression of the ad versus a click. Is there any sort of tracking that's done or data that is shared? Maybe a click is something that should lead to more customers than just a simple impression or is it just a broad-based?  If they saw something or they click something and that's the data we're getting?

Yev: Well, the best part at least for me, is that there's no external dashboard. It's not like external Software, like this is all happening in the background and then the data is in your Facebook Ad manager. It's basically an extra column, it's like a custom conversion which is Amazon sales. So, to answer your question, all the rest of Facebook data is there, so that's what you have now. How people are engaging with the ad, how they're clicking the add, what kind of quick it is. Because there's all kinds of click data there and then on the Amazon side, we don't have anything if we don't have any data there. Other than the sale that's populated back, but the rest of the data, it's a Facebook Ad manager and it's all the other good stuff there. I like to look at ratio of shares to reactions. I mean, that's a good indicator people are liking the ad, they're actually sharing it. So, I make some decisions based on the data there, which ads I'm turning off and turning on. So all that data, based on Facebook Ad manager.

Steve: Yes, that's very interesting. So that's good, it is native to Facebook so that you preserve all the data there and then. You're adding the up until now, difficult or impossible to get. Facebook probably announced this offline tracking mechanism maybe a year and a half ago, it was a beta before that and we've had similar things with Google by the way. Google has similar types of functionality available and all of this is to try to help actual offline sellers get data. I mean ultimately that's what they're tracking is. They call offline which is to say that if you have a store and you run a bunch of Facebook ads, you can upload your store or sales data into Facebook and then do the matching. That's the original kind of intent behind it, but in our case we're adapting that offline concept to online sales because Amazon is not tracking. And let me just make a plea out to my friends at Amazon. We've talked about this. I know we've had confidential discussions about this but I can't go into, but I'm begging you. Get us some freaking pixels. Get us some data. We will spend money like crazy to drive more customers to Amazon. All sellers out there want to drive as much volume as they can, obviously to their own brand and make their own sales. That's what makes it profitable and sustainable but give us some gosh-darn tracking information. What do you think you have a good idea?

Yev: Absolutely. And I've seen like two types of Amazon sellers where there's some and then they're more like starting out or maybe like they're doing well on Amazon, maybe you have like a million dollars annual sales and they're like just starting to expand into other channels. And the way this helps them, they're like alright I steal these ads and like oh they're not leading to any sales. So for them it's more a decision of saving money, so they're like turning off a bunch of acid they realize they're not working and then putting that money into new experimentation. and then the other group of sellers is were like  they know what they're doing more. They're like been experimenting with Facebook more external traffic so they have more ads going, alright I'm seeing these ones are getting sales so it's like hundreds of dollars per day let's put it into that into those ads. So exactly you're saying like we're going to spend the money. Amazon is going to see more customers going through them from Facebook and definitely help them.

Steve: Yes, so without a doubt both Facebook and even Amazon and Google for that matter and any other online ad platform that everybody understands this fundamental economic truth. If we put money in the top of the funnel and profit falls out of the bottom of the funnel we'll keep doing it, right? But the only way to understand how much money is going in the top and how much profit is coming out of the bottom is by having data. Right? And this is one of my axioms that you don't have a world-class brand or company until you can pour money in the top and get profit out of the bottom. And too often people get confused about this idea that, well I have a business and look how much I'm doing gross volume or gross dollars but they don't remember that the magic pixie dust that existed once at Google on being able to manipulate SEO rankings. That there was just like a avalanche of “free traffic” and that same magic pixie dust exists today on Amazon where people are ranking well in the organic search. But I'll make this prediction again today publicly. In the future you will have to pay for placement. You have to pay to have your stuff prominently displayed on Amazon, Google or anywhere else because that's how these things work. And so you have to build your model to be able to pour money in the top and get profit out on the bottom and it all has to be data-driven. And Yev  what do you think about rent my nuts?

Yev: It's starting to go in that direction, so you're right on points so far. They don't have to advertise and we see that in Facebook  to get more reach have to spend a little bit more so that's still happening.

Steve: Yes. So this is a history lesson. So since I'm an old guy, I'll just share. Back in my day here's how it was, right? So Google started out, we could manipulate it and we could do get really good SEO. And if we were on page one first spot, forget about it we were making money and by the way there's a time where they didn't even run very many ads. Then they increase the ad space and now there's ads all over the place. So they're putting in all kinds of other content pieces and they're really compromising the so called organic search, and I will tell you even that organic search has high correlations to people spending money are going to have better organic search but forget Google for a second. Facebook, when it started out if you've got somebody to like your page every time you published a message, that message went out to everybody who liked your page and then Facebook said hey so much for the magic pixie dust now you can pay for that privilege. We know that you advertise for Facebook and got all those people to go out and like your story or your online store whatever it is, and we all did that right? Where as sellers and as retailers we would say;” Hey, go to Facebook and do this thing” because we thought we could talk to our customers for free, but Facebook pulled out the rug it said “No, now you can pay to talk to those people that you encouraged to join Facebook”. And the same thing ultimately will happen at Amazon even though it hasn't happened today and people are welcome to disagree with me. I've seen the future and it is, you will pay to play. So alright. So that's enough of that rant, let's talk a little bit more you have about this concept of how your software is developed. So you have the data background, you have an engineer who's helped you. How did you guys kind of suss out this solution? What was the the stimuli that pushed you to develop this?

Yev: Well the main way was looking at Heroclip  data and just having this problem where I'm running ads to our website to Amazon and to our website. I see the data because we have a Facebook pixel on there. But we're in this area of trying to optimize their Amazon and getting more traffic there. And like using a whole bunch of coupon codes to do all of the tracking. Oh my god, so much time. Then it's just me researching all right, what are different ways of doing it. So coming across like those five different ways and then figuring out the offline conversions. We're way of doing it and then there was like this way using Zapier to do some integrations and it was like starting to work but not really. And there's like some problems so there's just like going down that path and then enough. That's when I reached I would try to find an engineer. Had a friend that works at Google that was giving me a lot of feedback and working together. And then it was just the engineering not like someone being able to get in there and know that they can build out the process so I was just like me, myself looking at our Heroclip data and having this big need for us and then just pursuing it further.

Steve: Yes so often great ideas are born on the back of “my life would be better if blank happens” right and the oppressive nature of running all those reports, of formatting all those reports and then uploading those reports is a good first hand you know kind of you know stuck in the minds kind of work right. You're just you're hunched over digging all day long for data whereas now that you've been able to suss out the solution you you've made it easier for yourselves number one. And then you said hey what if I can make it easier for other guys? So how does that you know, again will give the links at things like that but what is it well you know when somebody connects with your your new company what do they have to do to start the process? Is it complicated? How does it work?

46.39 (Yev talks about how how to get onboard with Heroclip.)

Yev: Well there's two different ways of doing it. One is the simpler version. You basically give access to the tool so it sends data from Amazon to Facebook. So there's like this easy setup like you sign up and then you submit information and then it's like it's all automatic like it's set up for you. But for that the tool has access to everything so whoever has more like concern of like the tools like seeing some of the data because it's connecting it, then there's a different way where like the user that the seller that Facebook advertising can like go in and we give a bunch of instructions how to do it. But it's complex for some people. If you know the Facebook back-end it'll take you like only like around 20 to 30 minutes to set it up. Again, it's not that fast but for some people it takes them a few hours so that's what we offer the other option like we’ll do it all for you. Set it up and it's just like giving access to the tool and it's a pretty easy on the backend and then it just runs in the background like forever. You don't have to do anything other than running ads and looking at your data.

Steve: I love it so I do think that's very prudent right because there there may be some folks out there who say, “Hey listen we don't want our data to be seen or you know get to get loose or whatever.” and so instead of just giving the keys you know we've got this other solution. Myself, I would probably just recommend you know people just trust that the data will be used, I'm sure you guys have data and privacy policies that are are very user friendly and and pro seller and so you know you're not going to give up that data, nobody's going to see that data and so I would probably just take the easy option and that's what I recommend to most people. The pain of setting it up yourself, just to me that's one more moving piece that could break later. Especially if you know Amazon or Facebook anybody changes their stuff so do you have a recommendation for most people?

Yev:  Yes, the first option and just one other thing to add is that after you give access and it's set up, then you just like take the access away and that's it and that set up is sometimes done like the same day or it's like it just goes into the Q line and a stick within a couple of days and it's done. So definitely easier because the other option like we can’t see into the account so we get all of these questions we're like wait like I don't see this how it is. I'm like well I go get instructions we're not in your account. You are going to have to figure out yourself so some seller there's like having figured out and then finally give us access and then we set it up really quickly.

Steve: I just love the idea that you are able to build the solution so the other folks out there who have this same problem and there's so many of us out there who have the same problem can utilize it. I think that in itself is a great entrepreneurial moment. Was there was there any defining point for you Yev where you said you know I'm going to make this into a business? You know was there some point where you just kind of said wait a minute hang on there's an opportunity here.

Yev: Well there's several masterminds I'm in so kind of with different groups on Facebook with Amazon brands and Facebook advertisers and for the first month it was letting my colleagues use it and I'm like oh my gosh like I need this and that was just a feedback to me letting the peers use it and seeing right away where it's creating value. So then like word-of-mouth started and then it's like spread really fast so it's like all right there's actually a need for this beyond just like me and geeking out about data and attribution like you like other people want this as well. So it was just yes word of mouth with other people.

Steve: I love it. That's a great viral idea for sure. Let me ask you this Yev, so I've talked about this concept of using chatbots and for me I love the Sellerchatbot.com solution because they actually have one-time use coupons that you can automatically populate. Uou don't have to put any zapier connections or any of that kind of stuff which is a giant pain and can be quite expensive for high-volume sellers. It's all baked into the Sellerchatbot.com but will this work for messenger driven interactions on Facebook as well?

Yev: It will as long as it starts off with an ad so when your list subscriber starts off with an ad and whether it's like you're doing it from the business manager or like from your page, there's different ways you can run an app to activate the the jackpot so it'll work in all of those cases as long as it starts off from the list. And then whatever your sequences are, your communication all of that, even if someone is not engaging with your chatbot, they just like go exact directly to Amazon but they started seeing your ad originally I'm like what happens in between doesn't matter and like the chatbot is included in that so definitely compatible.

Steve: And that's really good because if somebody engages the chatbot on their own without seeing an ad we don't really want that to attribute to a future sale right because it would be giving an ad it doesn't have anything to attribute it to but it would be giving the advertising budget influence that it didn't earn. Whereas if it starts from some sort of you know - hey we've got this great coupon or we've got this great offer and then it drives into the bot flow you're agnostic. It doesn't matter what happens between the ad and the sale is what you're saying.

Yev: Right, because that part where it's from an ad that's something you can control and you can scale it up right so that attribution is important for you to know that you're going to take the ad budget, you know add zeros to the ad budget to increase it. If some people are coming across the other way it's ways you can't control. So it's nice to have those additional sales but we can't control it and scale that up.

Steve: Yes for sure. So let me ask you this, I’II get this question from time to time and you’re a Facebook expert as far as I can estimate. A lot of people say, “Hey you know I've been boosting posts on my Facebook page and I'm not seeing any results.” What would you tell them?

Yev: We actually see good results from our boosted post but they're harder to scale so that's the difference where individually a boost post it's a it could be a higher-quality audience because first it's like link to to your page and I see where the reach is better and like the CPMs are lower but that reach better meaning, like per how much you're paying but it maximizes out much quicker than running it from like not a boosted post. So like it's definitely working I think you just have to like styling you're targeting once you're selecting there and just try the couple of different options and there's not that many options. It definitely works but you can't control it and scale it up because you just like hit the boost button. It's not like, well let me create ten different variants and see which one is working better so then that way I know like the next like boost is the one that's working better not however that post was made. So you just have less control.

Steve: Yeas that's for sure. And are you an active user of the new Facebook kind of dynamic split testing or multivariant testing? I know they have a different name for it. It's escaping my mind but it's where you create an ad and you enter all the dynamic fields and so forth. Is that something you use regularly?

Yev: I've used it a few times and I've hear others that are having really great results but for me I just kind of like have my process down a different way I'm like just specifically for Heroclip so I haven't scaled up using that way.

Steve: I definitely would recommend not just yes but the folks out there listening so this new dynamic ad generator essentially creates all the variations and Facebook does all the math for you. So you can upload you know 5 or 10 videos, 5 or 10 images, five or 10 headlines. You know there's there's five or six different variables that you upload and and then Facebook does all the matching as to you know what works best and to me that's really especially for somebody who's not sophisticated as somebody like you Yev right where you already have all these buckets of testing you want to do. And you know how you want to slice and dice it that this can kind of dumb it down for those of us who don't have quite that experience. And if you do happen to use it let's share some some of your experience. I do know guys using it who are having very positive results and again they they're it's always that counterintuitive. You know we put this graphic out there I didn't think it was going to do much and it became the number one graphic used. And this called action which I thought was weak turned out to be the most popular one amongst you know viewers. Do you ever find those surprises in your own data?

Yev: Absolutely and I'm glad you brought that up because this is how we figured out our ads at Heroclip is through that approach. We’re not using that new feature from Facebook but doing it ourselves with different variants and this is actually one of the most common questions I get from like a problem and also when I see solution from certain sellers like they figured this out and it's this. Commonly I just see like it's like one ad in an account there just like testing one thing cuz they just like create it like when I was probably good they run to it and then like well first of all they didn't know if it was working or not but it's just one variant and the ones that have figured it out. This is the way we made it work through Heroclip is that we start off with a whole bunch of variants that's the only way you know how you can reach into like different psychologists of the bio where some are more analytical, they want to see the specs and the prize the details. Some are more emotional they want to see more like the story behind the product. So you kind of like reach out all of those visuals the different copy, the different headlines and the more variants you have you're gonna find those extreme excellent versions that get the highest click-through rates, the lowest cost per clicks and that's how you're telling Facebook where like I'm better than other advertisers so give me even lower costs because the users are enjoying this. They're clicking on it. So there's like curiosity behind it. That's like some of those ads do well so it's starting off with many variants that's how you narrow down and we do it really fast. That's like the other thing we do where we just test a whole bunch of things and really fast narrow down like turn off everything that wasn't working, the most expensive ones. So now we're left with two or five different ads that are like the best of the whole bunch rather than randomly starting off with one and we don't know how it sits into the range of like great to really bad. That's what a lot of sellers do and they're I think they're struggling because they just don't test enough variety initially.

Steve: Well that's because the discipline to test so much variety is something that's hard to cope with. In fact it's the same kind of discipline that is what led you to create your tool right, this automatic matching tool. The fact is all of that work that goes in you're still willing to do it and you have the capacity to do it, more importantly you have the understanding and you have the discipline to execute it. Whereas most of us don't have that quite yet but we've got to get it right. There there really is no way to find the best of the best without going to that optimization and iteration process with ads and copying and all the other things. Yev, any final words of wisdom in terms of the you know kind of concept that you're bringing forth to the world with this new tool?

Yev:  It's a great transition with what you just said where I'm like when I figured it out it was based on shop like Shopify, we're on Shopify our website. So I saw that data there I would do all of these tests and then purchase data was there and I didn't have that on Amazon so like there was this problem. So you have this advantage, the Amazon brand where like before nobody... That data is there automatically so if you don't want to get into like optimizing your website yet you can do that for Amazon. So you just have to test, create variants, the data is in there. You just have to take action and then see how how it works for you because there's the potential for you to scale it up. You just have to like take that potential and and work with it and if it doesn't work then at least you know like you have that opportunity to scale up your ads and amplify your Amazon.

Steve: Yes no doubt and stay tuned because after our next break we're going to come back and we're going to talk about the the way you can connect with Yev’s tool and any special offers that are available. It's going to be exciting and it's something that you just shows his ongoing commitment to entrepreneurs out there. You know he's been a guy who gives very freely and follows that that famous Zig Ziglar saying which I have always followed or tried to follow which is you know “You can have everything you want in your life if you help enough other people get what they want in their life” I'm paraphrasing there but Yev he does that right. He was able to pop into a recent Catalyst88 mastermind event and he happened to be in town where we were having a dinner and where he was talking about his new tool. I caught wind of it I'm like, “Hey you got to come and tell us about that.” And we literally had him come back the very next day and he was generous with his time and his ideas and that's why I know Yev’s an Awesomer. So I really appreciate you joining us in and I appreciate and thank you for all the things you do for entrepreneurs out there.

Yev: Thank you Steve. I really enjoy this. Hope it was helpful.

Steve: No question it was. Well Awesomers this is no doubt another time for you to you know take a minute. We're going to listen to a sponsor break and then we're going to come back and tell you how to take action today. We'll be right back.

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Steve: Well another great episode everybody. It is always such a pleasure to speak with somebody who's so passionate and has so much knowledge in the Ecommerce space. And by you know taking some of the lessons we've learned from Yev and not just his tool but just kind of his approach to marketing and you know always using testing and things like that I think all of us can benefit and our businesses as well can benefit. Now don't forget this is Awesomers.com episode number 17 and you can just go to Awesomers.com/17 to get access to the show notes and some of the relevant links we may have talked about and so on and so forth.

Well we've done it again everybody. We have another episode of the Awesomers podcast ready for the world. Thank you for joining us and we hope that you've enjoyed our program today. Now is a good time to take a moment to subscribe, like and share this podcast. Heck you can even leave a review if you wanted. Awesomers around you will appreciate your help. It's only with your participation and sharing that we'll be able to achieve our goals. Our success is literally in your hands. Thank you again for joining us. We are at your service. Find out more about me, Steve Simonson, our guest, team and all the other Awesomers involved at Awesomers.com. Thank you again.

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