Zero to a Million: Recent Episodes
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Unstack is the CMS built for marketers. Unstack's content marketing platform is designed to help you rapidly build, measure, and scale digital presence without code, developers, or headaches. By subscribing to the Zero to a Million podcast by Unstack, you'll be supplied with strategies from founders, marketers, and advisors that are testing and implementing these strategies in real-time to scale from Zero to a Million. Whether you are just diving into the world of marketing and entrepreneurship or have been here a while, Zero to a Million is designed to take your marketing and entrepreneurship game to the next level. After each episode, you'll be left with takeaways that you can implement for your business today.
HIGHLIGHTS
- Creating an athleisure product category with $1,000
- Building an online brand with micro influencers and ambassadors
- Organic funnels and global shifts to online business grows endūr
- Growing an ambassador program with genuine passion
QUOTES
Rob: "We're talking one sale a day, sometimes zero sales a day. This was a very long slow burn. Over a year in, there were some days where we wouldn't have one Shopify sale. These things take time. We didn't really start paying to acquire customers for at least two years in."
Rob: "I wouldn't say oh, overnight we tripled our spend on Facebook or anything like that. We just continued. So I would say the majority of the growth came from the organic funnels we had built and just the organic referral and people talking about the product."
Rob: "I just wanted to be a voice in the conversation that was like, business is hard. You should make a profit. Raising money is not as cool as you think it is. I was just annoyed with the overwhelming voices of the young startup founders thinking that it's all about status."
You can connect with Rob in the links below:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbfraser/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/robbfraser/
- Website: https://www.endurapparel.com/
HIGHLIGHTS
- Growing 4-5x by developing an excellent online platform
- Embracing the advantages of a small company for genuine connection
- A spice forum became the company's hub for content and engagement
- Website feedback and a fun buying experience for repeat customers
- Collaborations and formulating spice blends
QUOTES
Ori: "If chefs who have access to all the best ingredients in the world are getting this excited about the spices, then maybe there's an opportunity. Also, not just for more chefs and more spices, but also it's at home cooks haven't tried something like this before."
Ori: "The pandemic broke people's regular behavior of going into the grocery store because grocery was out or nobody wants to step foot. People started Googling best spices, best cinnamon, best bay leaves, all that stuff, and we were right there ready for them."
Ori: "When we hit about a thousand members, all of a sudden we had 3 or 4 people that were these more heavy-duty super influencers that they wanted to post, they're posting everyday, they were sharing these incredible meals, they were such talented cooks. It was really impressive to see it all."
You can connect with Ori in the links below:
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/orizohar/
- Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/burlapandbarrel/
- Website - https://www.burlapandbarrel.com/
- Email - ori@burlapandbarrel.com
HIGHLIGHTS
- A different PR strategy based on personalization and trust
- Be prepared and thorough when pitching to journalists
- Choosing the right clients with or without media training
- PR and SEO: A unique offering that anticipates bad links
QUOTES
Tyler: "It all comes down to building relationships and building trust with producers, with journalists, with editors on why we're going to bring value time and time again... Once we bring them one or two quality guests and quality appearances, they trust us and they're more willing to take a chance on a third or fourth."
Tyler: "This is part of our secret sauce, Zach, is taking time to be timely and be thorough and to be comprehensive in our responses and to get those back to the journalist in a timely fashion. Or the producer, whomever. So, that way, we're making their job as easy as possible and we're setting them up for success."
Tyler: "Number one, first and foremost, make sure that you have your house in order. And then, number two, make sure that your entire team is briefed on the strategy and is ready to take advantage of it."
You can connect with Tyler in the links below:
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylersickmeyer/
- Twitter - https://twitter.com/tsickmeyer
- Website - https://fidelitasdevelopment.com/
HIGHLIGHTS
- A passion for pastries ushers in the chocolate business
- Figuring out storage and shipping for chocolates
- Word of mouth and direct marketing with newsletters
QUOTES
Elaine: "That's been a bit challenging in terms of the physical space because we don't have a very large space, so that is one thing that we are now running into is the fact that we're limited, in some ways, by the physical space that we have."
Elaine: "Interspersed with that newsletter will be other things that are kind of happening, so our newsletter list is broken out to a general everybody list and a smaller local list. So the smaller local list might get more newsletter because they're on the general list and the local list."
You can connect with Elaine and EH Chocolatier in the links below:
- Website - https://www.ehchocolatier.com/
- Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ehchocolatier/
HIGHLIGHTS
- Several touch points make return customers more likely
- Robotic handwritten cards as a marketing strategy
- Leverage post-purchase campaigns
QUOTES
Michael: "Customers do buy more when there's a multitouch approach. They're more likely to come back, they're more likely to spend more, when you combine the power of your digital marketing campaigns and offline direct mail campaigns."
Michael: "We have robotic technology that literally holds a pen, holds a pen to paper, writes the card out in completely authentic handwriting... it sends an actual handwritten card with a handwritten envelope and a real stamp on it to that customer. And again, it's just a great way to cut through the clutter."
You can connect with Michael in the links below:
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mepstein1/
- Website - https://www.postpilot.com/
- Email - michael@postpilot.com
HIGHLIGHTS
- Founding Robolink to make technology fun and approachable
- Testing in an after school program and perfecting product market fit
- Marketing with Kickstarter and winning the 2019 CES Innovation Award
- Fostering community, online camps, and robotics clubs
QUOTES
Hansol: "We were testing our product every single day with our students, so that's why when we actually released our janky product prototype, and then when that went to the market, it had a really good product market fit."
Hansol: "We think about the marketing as, okay, how do we actually make the most impact? And then actually create the social responsibility for our company too because we're an educational company."
You can connect with Hansol in the links below:
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hansolhong/
- Website - www.robolink.com
- Kickstarter - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/robolink/buildy-bots-zero-screen-time-coding-and-robots-for-kids-5
HIGHLIGHTS
- Being everything to everyone initially and focusing services after that
- Working with the Chargers move from San Diego to LA
- Red flags in clients to watch out for
- Improvements in UX/UI that increase conversion
- Creating a customer journey and improving the subscription model
QUOTES
Drew: "What I typically recommend is, if you're starting out, maybe having the full service or having like one or two freelancers is a little bit easier so that they scale and grow. But, as you get more mature, I do think having the specialist help a lot, and that's for us too."
Drew: "Especially on mobile, we see this improved conversion by half a percent or a percent, I'm scrolling on my phone, I'm on the product page, just have the add to cart follow me along on that journey. Or have it follow the user on the journey on mobile."
Drew: "How do we think about subscription? How do we think about all the elements of benefits and things like that to be able to offer that community above and beyond just a little discount."
You can connect with Drew in the links below:
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/drew-himel/
- Website (PCR) - https://consultpcr.com/
- Website (personal) - https://drewhimel.com/
This week’s episode of the Zero to a Million Podcast with Zach Rego showcases the season's best moments. We featured founders and organization movers who built their companies from the ground up as they shared their biggest wins, losses, and all the lessons they learned in between.
HIGHLIGHTS
- Aneela Idnani, Co-Founder of HabitAware
- Ryan Smith, Head of Partnerships at Emotive
- Nathan Rothstein, Co-Founder of Project Repat
- Phillip Rivers, Founder and CEO of Tetra Marketing
- Melissa Tavss, Founder of Tipsy Scoop
- Laura and Kelly Moffat, Founders of Kirrin Finch
- Albert Matheny, CEO at Promix
- David Roger, Co-Founder & CEO at Felix Gray
- Gihan Amarasiriwardena, Co-Founder and President of Ministry of Supply
- Chris Meade, CEO and co-founder of CROSSNET
You can connect with Zero to a Million's amazing guests in the links below:
- Aneela Idnani - https://habitaware.com/
- Ryan Smith - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-rsmith/
- Nathan Rothstein - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanrothstein/
- Phillip Rivers - https://www.linkedin.com/in/emailautomation
- Melissa Tavss - https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-tavss-a3a55833/
- Laura and Kelly Moffat - https://www.instagram.com/kirrinfinch/
- Albert Matheny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertmatheny/
- David Roger - https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-roger-2a9b2632/
- Gihan Amarasiriwardena - https://www.linkedin.com/in/gihanamarasiriwardena/
This week’s episode of the Zero to a Million Podcast with Zach Rego features Chris Meade, CEO and co-founder of CROSSNET. He recalls how they came up with the idea of a crossnet as a fun mashup of their favorite games and how they made up the rules as they played it.
Chris shares their go-to-market strategy of just playing the game and their marketing strategies which leaned heavily on Facebook ads. One of their first main obstacles was their messaging as different people with literally different voices would speak to the market on various platforms differently.
LinkedIn has also been massive in connecting Chris with people who he thinks are great fits for Crossnet. He shares the difficulties in finding a trusted and reliable PR agency to get eyeballs, and how they work today with Amazon agencies for PPC and others for Google and Facebook ads and email.
SHOW NOTES
HIGHLIGHTS
- Inventing Crossnet: The cross between four square and volleyball
- Going to market by demoing the game in Miami and word of mouth
- Marketing: Paid ads on Facebook and unifying brand message across platforms
- Finding true partnerships in PR, Amazon, Google ads, Facebook ads and email
- Connecting on LinkedIn
- Retail support and building communication with buyers
QUOTES
Chris: "Everyone talks about proof of concept and all this garbage. That was our proof of concept. We just played and we had fun and we're like, alright, let's get to work."
Chris: "It's all about the messaging, making sure they're playing correctly because nobody wants to buy a product that they're playing terribly. It looks awful. It's all about getting them outside and actually playing and getting them to be a part of our community."
Chris: "We never paid for press a day in our life. It was reaching out and being genuine. The best thing has been LinkedIn for us. I built up a very, very nice LinkedIn following. I love to read, I don't know about you, but I genuinely enjoy reading good entrepreneurial pieces."
You can connect with Chris in the links below:
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAlGNrQBqj1pCKbD1o4lNdalsiF6Arb5rJs/
- Website - https://www.crossnetgame.com/
HIGHLIGHTS
00:40 A passion for materials innovation, comfort, and human performance
04:55 Market research: Figuring out how to make the most versatile products
09:09 Launching on Kickstarter after many product iterations
12:36 Creating a Shopify product page for your brand and ideal customers
20:35 The user experience of Ministry of Supply's website
21:06 The brand's future with video ads
24:57 Connect with Gihan and Ministry of Supply
QUOTES
02:43 Gihan: "What we both did is we were Frankensteining our own products, so I was cutting running shirts and making dress shirts out of them and Amman was making dress socks by cutting the bottoms of Nike dri fit socks and sewing them to Gold Toe dress socks, essentially."
06:08 Gihan: "The antithesis of fast fashion is if you have better products, but you can't just do that by just saying the product is more expensive and thicker and whatnot, but really making sure that it's versatile to be used in a lot of different scenarios."
18:25 Gihan: "Be very judicious on where you want to innovate on your site experience because iterating something like a nav, a Shopify theme for example, like you can kind of swap that out a little bit easier. It's a little bit more dev work."
23:38 Gihan: "Most of the people who land on a Kickstarter video, it was like 60% of it, of the people that came to the page would watch the entire two minute video. And nowhere have we seen a conversion experience like that."
You can connect with Gihan in the links below:
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/gihanamarasiriwardena/
- Website - https://www.ministryofsupply.com/
- Ministry of Sound’s five year plan: https://www.ministryofsupply.com/about/5-year-plan
HIGHLIGHTS
00:48 The genesis of Felix Gray by answering a consumer need
04:41 Product development process: Hard work puts you in a position to get lucky
07:01 Committing to thoughtfully-designed and research-backed designs
10:50 Content collaboration: Podcasts extend ad reads to good effect
15:58 Setting up attribution and collecting data: How did you hear about us survey
19:10 Working closely with an agency for effective podcast ad reads
22:17 More distribution channels and creating a digital wellness suite
27:45 Tips for effective go to market strategies
30:26 Connect with David and Felix Gray
QUOTES
03:46 "If we can call out the problem by name and provide a solution that works and makes people, not only their eyes, feel good, it makes them feel good because they're wearing something that looks great, we can have a real business here."
05:24 "At the end of the day, it's just hard work and being really resourceful and having amazing people that help you along that journey early on when you are really not knowledgeable."
05:37 "I think that hard work puts you in the position to get lucky and being a good person and being good natured and being a good partner puts you in a position to get lucky."
12:48 "Having someone that takes what's supposed to be a 30 second ad read and turns it into two and a half minute ad read because they talk about their own story and they're joking about it, that becomes really big."
18:21 "Especially if you're early, you can't just have brand awareness campaigns. You need to pay for performance. You don't have the cash flows to say, hey, in six months I get the customer, unless like your LTVs or margins or your AOV is insane."
You can connect with David in the links below:
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-roger-2a9b2632/
- Website - https://felixgray.com/
- Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/felixgrays/
- Twitter - https://twitter.com/felixgrays
HIGHLIGHTS
00:46 An awareness of the impact of nutrition as a college athlete
03:47 Promix: Bootstrapping the company and leading on the ground
07:11 Focusing on sustainability and growing the brand with Amazon
13:02 Going to market and providing PR with athletes for brand awareness
16:43 Relationship building to create trust and repeat buyers
22:10 Sharing education and choosing content (blogs vs Tiktok) on social
27:55 Connect with Anthony
QUOTES
07:20 "I'm really good at taking a lot of things 80% of the way. So I know what I want and I can create kind of a rough sketch. Figma is a program I use a lot for just laying things out."
08:33 "I didn't want to make a product for the 1%, you know, like what's the point? The people that can pay a zillion dollars or something, they already have access to everything and all that."
12:05 "If you have a great product, try to find someone that knows how to speak your message to people. Because if you're a great product that you don't know how to get out there, it's not going to go anywhere."
19:54 "You have people that make a good initial contact but like how do they finish the journey? And you just kind of lose people along the way organically, that's just what happens, but you need to address kind of all those things."
27:31 "Social, I think, is important across any type of brand and any type of product, but your purpose on there may not actually be conversion. It may just be awareness, and it may be that they need to deep diver deeper and go to your site and then you're in a whole different experience versus probably that lower price point product."
You can connect with Albert in the links below:
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertmatheny/
- Website - https://promixnutrition.com/
HIGHLIGHTS
04:39 Market and product research: Focus on button-up shirts and producing them really well
07:02 Joining an accelerator program and getting guidance for product iterations:
08:42 Building the brand pre-launch: Creating email lists and building Instagram followers
10:18 Size forecasting is a primary challenge
12:29 SEO groundwork to drive organic search and producing engaging content
17:59 The Dapper Scouts: Brand ambassadors that drive community, empowerment, and acceptance
21:08 Creating Italian-made suits as a banner product
25:49 Launching a brand new website and continuing the digital marketing stack + SMS marketing
33:24 Connect with Laura and Kelly and follow Kirrin Finch
QUOTES
06:36 "Because we didn't come from a fashion background and we sort of decided, let's make one product really, really well and we'll kind of build the business from there. We'll validate the business with one product, we'll do it amazingly well, and we'll go from there."
10:43 "We also did have a landing page, website, initial Instagram, kind of building the brand, building the email list, building the Instagram followers, before we even had any product to sell."
14:23 "Organic search can take 2 to 3 months to begin to build up that SEO value and we didn't see other people doing that. And so we worked on that very early on and that's really paid off. Today, I think the majority of our traffic still comes from organic search."
20:48 "It's about creating community. It's about creating acceptance. And we'll get the parent that's like ah, my kid just came out, I don't know what to do, and we'll say okay well, hey, check out some of these stories."
30:27 "SMS, I think, opens up the way to get back in that customer's front and center. I think SMS will probably go the way of email and we'll end up with SMS promotional folders and all that stuff. But for now, we're getting in, we're getting to the customer."
You can connect with Laura and Kelly in the links below:
- Website - https://kirrinfinch.com/
- Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kirrinfinch/
- Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@kirrinfinch
- LinkedIn (Laura) - https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-moffat-57a1563/
- LinkedIn (Kelly) - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-moffat-she-her-3b699156/
HIGHLIGHTS
00:38 Ice cream as a hobby and falling in love with the bourbon flavor
04:41 Tipsy Scoop revenue streams and growing online
08:37 Driving online traffic with promos
11:11 Social media actually pushed for the creation of brick and mortar
14:00 User-generated content, win-back programs & future offerings
18:45 Shipping as the biggest challenge
QUOTES
01:24 "I started with just a little alcohol and then fell in love with that vanilla bean bourbon flavor where the bourbon really came through and just this idea that this was an alcohol-infused product or food that actually contained an alcohol content at the end."
06:34 "Know how to ship perishables because we were drop shipping through companies like Williams Sonoma and Goldbelly anyway. So that was a great option and something that has continued to grow and really be steady.
08:41 "The different four streams of revenue, they really lean on each other. So we were able to really drive home this message of direct to consumer shipping through our brick and mortar locations... a bunch of different tourist traffic."
15:39 "It's really important for us to kind of win people back by explaining to them the process of no, you can order the ice cream on this date if you want to get it on this date or have it shipped this way, if you need to save on this."
You can connect with Melissa in the links below:
- Website - https://tipsyscoop.com/
- Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tipsyscoop/
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-tavss-a3a55833/
HIGHLIGHTS
00:31 Phillip's success in ecommerce and focus on email marketing
05:30 Capture leads for insights into segmentation and core personas
09:19 Speak differently to leads and customers
10:30 iOS 15 updates: Metrics to look for are click rate and purchases
16:11 First party data for optimization and re-engaging users
24:25 Optimism on the near future of email, SMS, and Tiktok
28:09 Upcoming iOS 15 changes
QUOTES
03:25 "The way that I look at email and SMS is it's a modality for us to communicate with humans that are ultimately we want them to buy something. Insert whatever thing is. It could be in a shopping cart. It could be they buy something over the phone."
06:07 "The smaller stores, I would say like under a mil a year in sales, all the avatar exercises are all well and good, but at the end of the day, fundamentally, it's what they need is very simple; they need to capture leads efficiently from all their paid and organic channels."
17:37 "If we send a campaign every week, at what point after we've sent X amount to someone, do we say that this person probably is not interested in what we have to say or sell anymore?"
21:00 "If we have amassed so many one-time customers that aren't becoming two-time customers, how do we unlock that? How do we unlock that customer journey and extract all of that opportunity that's literally hiding underneath the surface."
29:40 "We just have to adapt to the new playing field. This happened with Facebook before, but again, you're not not going to advertise on Facebook because of Apple."
You can connect with Phillip in the links below:
- Website - https://www.gotetra.co/
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/emailautomation
- Twitter - https://twitter.com/thephilrivers
HIGHLIGHTS
03:04 Upcycling as a solution to t-shirt manufacturing waste
05:25 Groupon as Repat's go to market strategy
07:39 Creating American textile jobs in NC and Texas
10:51 Growing with Klaviyo and Shopify and focusing on lead capture
17:07 Others tools and owned channels for success
19:56 Experimenting and nurturing tried and tested social media channels
23:55 Appreciating the work of selling quilts and transforming local economics
25:10 Connect with Nathan
QUOTES
04:19 "What we found was one of the most eco-friendly things you could do was reformat them or upcycle them into a new product cause that's not adding any new water to the waste stream. You're not making anything new, you're just upcycling."
09:19 "We also work in Austin, Texas with a nonprofit that employs immigrants and refugees and they make the quilts as well. So we've really tried to build in our mission through our supply chain. And it may not be the reason that people buy, but we know that every time there's a purchase, it's creating value in the world."
18:19 "It's a mistake that I see a lot of e-commerce companies making early on is not focusing on email lead capture as soon as possible."
22:42 "I think our story was much more interesting early on when we were just trying all over the place, trying to figure everything out. And now it's a story of spreadsheets and analytics and looking at week over week results, which is not the best podcast story, but it's the reality of an e-commerce business."
You can connect with Nathan in the links below:
- Website - https://www.projectrepat.com/
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanrothstein/
- Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/projectrepatusa/
HIGHLIGHTS
00:37 Ryan's career journey and entry with Emotive
02:36 Target customers at Privy and partnerships at Emotive
05:28 Noticing SMS for a more personalized customer experience
10:58 Merchant strategies to capture email and phone numbers
15:36 The rising priority of owned channels and engaging in human interactions
21:32 Relying on one channel alone is not advisable
25:52 Connect with Ryan
QUOTES
05:50 "How can I learn more about your interests? I want your birthday, your phone number... And what that is all essentially leading to is how can we create a more personalized and humanized experience for the customers at the end of the day?
06:38 "E-commerce is finally starting to be empowered... and any way that we can engage with them in a more human to human interaction is going to result in, well, obviously more sales, but more loyal customers."
08:13 "When you talk about like getting someone to give your phone number, there needs to be like a unique value proposition for that. Make sure that, hey, by opting-in to receive text messages from this specific brand, you're going to be on a VIP list."
11:05 "If you're coming into Emotive or another SMS provider and you're looking to get that list grown really quickly. Again, use that email list that you already have to send out an opt-in for SMS and say, hey, you know, we just rolled out SMS."
16:18 "Where the industry is definitely moving away from is just those typical one-way blast. We get a piece of mail, it started when you get a piece of mail in the mailbox that says, hey, here's a coupon code to go to Bed Bath & Beyond or whatever."
You can connect with Ryan in the links below:
- Website - https://emotive.io/
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-rsmith/
HIGHLIGHTS
00:40 Founding HabitAware as a personal need living with Trichotillomania
04:45 Growing up unaware of Trichotillomania and learning to heal
08:16 HabitAware product development and meeting technical co-founders
13:28 Marketing HabitAware without outing people to their condition
16:08 Scaling: Education, word of mouth, outreach, and 3rd party consultants
22:13 Converting peer coaching to an online course and testing
25:59 Updates to iOS have made tracking numbers difficult
27:50 HabitAware's growth is aimed at supporting the community
QUOTES
03:48 "That's one of my triggers, just sitting and doing nothing. And that boredom, and I was pulling. And he just gently grabbed my hand and that was the aha moment of oh, if I just had something that notified me, could it help me?"
06:27 "I was so focused on hiding it and concealing, on making sure no one found out that it didn't ever really even occur to me could I switch and try to focus on healing."
12:31 "Typically when you say preorder campaign, you think of Indiegogo or Kickstarter, because there was so much shame and there still is so much shame about these conditions, we actually did the preorder campaign on our own website. We just didn't want to out people."
16:41 "They would share it with their psychologist and we started doing outreach to psychologists. So then it was sort of a two-way street of either a patient was telling their psychologist or psychologist was telling their patient. So that word of mouth is really strong for us."
20:31 "Really, email has been our number one method, I think, in terms of that we've been focusing on in terms of nurturing people through, nurturing that relationship. And then Google Ads as well, search ads."
You can connect with Aneela in the links below:
- Website - https://habitaware.com/
- Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/habitaware/
- YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-03SZ_g7VWlyXhp-qzJosw
This week’s episode of the Zero to a Million Podcast with Zach Rego features Antoine Gagné, Founder & CEO at J7 Media. The release of iOS14 brought a massive change to the effectiveness of Facebook ads.
By prompting users to opt out of data tracking, CPM numbers began to reflect inaccuracies which have severely affected companies depending on Facebook ads as their main line of business. This change brought to the forefront the necessity of integrating other channels to ensure profitability.
Companies can also deploy creative ways to warm up audiences to them prior to Black Friday. This is now necessary to keep up with the new algorithm changes within Facebook because of iOS14. Antoine suggests investing in email databases and creating VIP lists.
To fully maximize the effect of video as an advertising medium, merchants can first use a test video shot on an iPhone as a proof of concept before investing huge amounts of money on succeeding iterations.
You can connect with Antoine in the link below.
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoine-gagn%C3%A9-69a94366/
HIGHLIGHTS
01:51 iOS14 opt out and greater mobility post-COVID dropped online shopping rates
05:37 CPM reflected inaccurate numbers, requiring companies to use other channels
11:26 Strategies for companies to ensure profitability outside of Facebook ads
16:24 Preparing for holiday sales with Facebook after iOS14
20:48 Focusing not on the data lost but the data retained within Facebook
23:17 Maximize returns on video advertisements by creating test videos first
28:23 Strategy for urgency: Honest in your message based on historical data
30:29 Connect with Antoine
QUOTES
09:15 "For a lot of companies at that specific moment, you need to explain to them, if you're only relying on Facebook ads to run your company, it's not sustainable. You need to be sure you have a big email list, an organic strategy, making sure that you're able to acquire customers on different channels."
14:40 "If you're not spending enough time and enough money to build a real brand, I do think you could be in trouble in a couple of months, couple of years, because not it will be that easy anymore to just launch a business and then hope that you have a good funnel in Facebook and that's it."
18:49 "Most of the time, 50% of the budget and sometimes even more will be spent between November 1st and November 26. So we warm up our audiences there. And what we do at this specific period of time, we spend on acquiring emails, creating what we call VIP lists."
21:47 "The concept is you need to warm up your audience before the big day and, after that, you need to retarget these people but you're going to lose signals because of iOS14 so make sure that the audiences that you're building are built inside the Facebook platform."
25:37 "The first video is done with an iPhone. As simple as that. Because with an iPhone, the video that will be created, we can test it in 24 hours and see if the concept is good. And if the concept is good, we go to another step and then we improve the quality of the production."
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This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Andrew Bialecki, CEO of Klaviyo about how you can use owned data to successfully scale ecommerce marketing.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Jarod Spiewak, Lead Strategist at Comet Fuel about the use of business and marketing knowledge when scaling agencies.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Jonathon Hensley, Co-Founder & CEO of EMERGE and author of the must-read digital transformation book Alignment about how to successfully launch a digital product.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Steve Wiideman, President of Wiideman Consulting Group, about strategies for marketing and SEO. You can listen on Apple or Spotify now.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Parker Stevenson, Co-Owner of Evolved Finance about managing startups finances while scaling. You can listen on Apple or Spotify now.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Jeff Chastain, Host of the Building to Scale Podcast about the 4 key pillars to scaling your business. You can listen on Apple or Spotify now.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Scott Clary, Host of Success Story Podcast about launching and scaling your startup sales organization. You can listen on Apple or Spotify now.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Rachel Ten Brink of DYPER, TechStars, and Day One about scaling to 500k customers. You can listen on Apple or Spotify now.
This week Zach Rego talks with Allison Byers, Founder & CEO of Scroobious about the best strategies to find and pitch your products to Investors.
You can listen on Apple or Spotify now.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Ramli John, Marketing Director of ProductLed and author of "Eureka" about developing a Product Led Growth Strategy.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Jeff Coyle, CEO and founder of MarketMuse, about how to create and scale your content strategy. You can listen on Apple or Spotify now.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Ryan Deiss, CEO and Founder of Scalable, about how to scale your start-up (even if it feels like it's failing. You can listen on Apple or Spotify now.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Jessica Meher, CEO and Co-Founder of Wonderment, about how to prepare to launch your SAAS Platform effectively. You can listen on Apple or Spotify now.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with George Kassabgi, an Angel Investor and Director, about how to build and manage a board. You can listen on Apple or Spotify now.
Connect with George on LinkedIn and Read his articles on Medium!
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Aram Melkoumov, Co-Founder and CEO of Crowdlinker, about building a proof of concept, MVP, and validating products.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Andrew Goei, co-founder of PitchPages & Ketchup Labs, about his career progression in Entrepreneurship and making a pitch deck.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Eric Bahn, co-founder of Hustle Fund, about his career progression to becoming a founder and partner investor.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Charlie Hipwood, President and CEO of MassVentures about his journey to becoming an early stage venture investor, and how to engage ventures for funding.
In this weeks episode of Zero to a Million, Zach Rego speaks with Stewart Bradley about how he transitioned from NFL Professional, to Co-Founder of El Cap Holdings. Bradley informs us what he looks for when investing in business, and what strategies you can use to make your business more attractive to investors.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Ralph Folz, an experienced entrepreneur, board director, and startup investor based in Boston. Ralph shares his journey, why he's passionate about working with startups, and what he looks for when he's investing in companies.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Nathan Latka, CEO of Founderpath about strategies he uses to help grow his podcast and business.
Connect with Nathan on LinkedIn & Twitter.
Check out the Founderpath website.
Connect with Zach Rego on LinkedIn.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego takes a deep dive into the Unstack startup marketing trends 2021 report, talking strategies and report data.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Collin Mitchell, CRO of Salescast, about strategies to use when starting and scaling a podcast.
After growing his career in sales, Collin started his own business with his wife where they bootstrapped $5M.
Collins true passion is sales, but when he attended as a guest with his co-worker on a podcast, he realized that the answer to all of the social media engagement that he was missing was right in front of him. After asking some questions and receiving guidance, he started and became the host of Sales Hustle podcast.
This week, Collin shares his experiences in starting his podcast, the best lessons he learned along the way, and the strategies he uses to scale.
Listen to the episode for the whole conversation.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Nikhil Aitharaju, Co-Founder of Topic, about strategies needed to scale new startups.
In this episode, Nikhil explains that working closely on a single niche and going above & beyond for your beginning customers really helps you understand customer needs. Nikhil shares terms like "marketing ammo" and how to find and use it to focus particular needs in todays competitive market.
This week, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Jackie Hermes, Founder & CEO of Accelity, about personal brands on LinkedIn and its business impact.
In this episode, Jackie shares more about her growing business and narrows in on how and why creating a personal brand on LinkedIn helps businesses new or existing to scale.
Connect with Jackie on LinkedIn, check out Accelity!
In this episode, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Eric Siu, CEO of Clickflow, about how to build an audience.
Eric Siu is an investor, founder and advisor to companies. He is the Chairman of digital marketing agency Single Grain, which has worked with companies such as Amazon, Uber,
and Salesforce. He also hosts two podcasts: Marketing School with Neil Patel and Leveling Up, an entrepreneurial podcast where he dissects growth levers that help businesses scale.
Connect with Eric: LinkedIn | YouTube | Instagram | Website | Podcast
This episode is brought to you by Unstack.
Episode 15 - Co-founder of Ucentric Brett Mchale - How to use in-app notifications for product-led growth and lower churn
In episode 14 of Unstack's Zero to a Million, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Antoine Gagné, Founder and CEO of J7 Media.
J7 Media is a creative and data-driven Facebook ads agency for DTC online brands and lead generation companies. They manage over $2 million in Facebook advertising per month and are one of the few agencies in Canada to hold the Facebook Marketing Preferred Partner badge.
Antoine also hosts two podcasts: Hypergrowth and Social Selling.
Connect with Antoine on LinkedIn.
This episode is brought to you by Unstack.
In this bonus episode of Zero to a Million, we look back on all of the best books our guest's recommended to help grow your business in 2021 & BEYOND!
This episode is brought to you by Unstack.
Listen to Zero to a Million on Spotify.
In episode 12 of Unstack's Zero to a Million, CEO Grant Deken and VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talk with the CEO of Privy, Ben Jabbawy, about how to scale using marketplace listings.
Privy is the leader in e-commerce marketing for small and growing brands. Used by 500,000+ online stores in 180 countries, entrepreneurs have used Privy to drive $4B in e-commerce sales. Ben has worked directly with leading brands like Leesa Mattress, FIGS, The Ellen Show, and thousands more.
Ben also hosts the Ecommerce Marketing School podcast and is the co-author of The Ecommerce Marketing Handbook.
Connect with Ben on LinkedIn and Twitter.
This episode is brought to you by Unstack.
In episode 11 of Unstack's Zero to a Million, CEO Grant Deken and VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talk with the CEO of Flipside Crypto, Dave Balter, about how to lead a startup.
Dave Balter is the author of The Humility Imperative, and the original article featured in Inc. by the same name.
Currently, dave is CEO of Flipside Crypto, which provides business intelligence to blockchain organizations.
Previously, Dave was co-founder and CEO of Smarterer, a skills assessment company acquired by Pluralsight (NASDAQ: PS) in 2014. Post-acquisition, Dave was Head of Transactions at Pluralsight and served as a Board Observer.
In 2001, Dave founded and was CEO of BzzAgent, a social media marketing company, which was acquired by dunnhumby, a division of Tesco, in 2011. From 2011 to 2014, Dave sat on the Global Executive Team at dunnhumby, where he led all M&A activity and founded and led their investment arm, dunnhumby Ventures.
Dave is Venture Partner Emeritus at Boston Seed Capital; personally, he is an investor or advisor to more than 75 technology organizations. A lifelong fan of the arts, Dave sits on the advisory board at Berklee Music Online, and is Vice Chair for Boston's Boch Center for the Performing Arts.
Connect with Dave on LinkedIn and visit https://flipsidecrypto.com/.
This episode is brought to you by Unstack.
In episode ten of Unstack's Zero to a Million, CEO Grant Deken and VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talk with the co-founders of Breadcrumbs.io, Gary Amaral and Armando Biondi.
Breadcrumbs.io is a Revenue Acceleration Platform based on a co-dynamic lead scoring and routing engine living at the intersection of marketing and sales.
On today's show, the guys discuss how they came up with the idea for Breadcrumbs while focusing mostly on how they chose each other as co-founders, a challenge that many founders have.
Connect with Gary and Armando on LinkedIn, as well as on their website, Breadcrumbs.io.
This episode is brought to you by Unstack.
Welcome to this week's episode of Zero to a Million, brought to you by Unstack. In this episode, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego gives a rundown of everything he has learned in the first eight weeks of recording this podcast. More importantly, he takes you through the strategies they've implemented at Unstack. Some have worked, some have failed miserably, but it's all a part of the journey to getting to a thousand uniques per day.
Connect with Zach on LinkedIn.
In episode eight of Unstack's Zero to a Million, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Brian Handly, CEO of Reveal Mobile.
Reveal Mobile provides location-based marketing, foot traffic attribution, and analytics for agencies, brands, media companies, and app publishers.
Connect with Brian: LinkedIn | Reveal Mobile
This episode is brought to you by Unstack.
In episode seven of Unstack's Zero to a Million, CEO Grant Deken and VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talk with Lee Gladish, a 2x startup founder.
In 2015, Lee started Reply.io, which automates sales and puts outreach on autopilot while still making each communication personal.
In 2019, Lee started Airborneapp, offering the industry's first Sales Engagement application for agencies.
Connect with Lee on LinkedIn.
This episode is brought to you by Unstack.
In episode six of Unstack's Zero to a Million, VP of Sales and Marketing Zach Rego talks with Larry Long Jr., Director of Collegiate Sales at Teamworks.
Teamworks provides an innovative cost- and time-saving software solution to nationally ranked NCAA and professional teams in leagues such as the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, MLS, and MLL.
Connect with Larry on LinkedIn.
This episode is brought to you by Unstack.
In episode five of Unstack's Zero to a Million, CEO Grant Deken and VP of Sales & Marketing Zach Rego talk with Luke Bonner, founder of PWRFWD.
Luke is a former professional basketball player and his company, PWRFWD, is a marketplace that empowers athletes to connect with their fans on a deeper level through their own custom made products. It’s an end-to-end solution for all the tricky parts of e-commerce — development, design, marketing, manufacturing, fulfillment, and customer service.
Ultimately, Luke and his team at PWRFWD enable athletes to create products that speak to their on-court performance and off-court interests, bringing new avenues for fans to engage and support their favorite players — through meaningful, high-quality products.
By eliminating the headaches associated with digital entrepreneurship, they make it easy for athletes to build and grow direct, authentic connections with their fans.
Connect with Luke: LinkedIn | Twitter | PWRFWD.co
This episode is brought to you by Unstack.
In episode four of Unstack's Zero to a Million, VP of Sales & Marketing Zach Rego talks with Alex Glenn.
Alex founded his first agency called Right 2 Revenue in 2006 with the intention of creating full transparency marketing programs to help his clients learn to operate the strategies without him. While this was successful, the unique model of training the clients while executing was too altruistic and not scalable. Eventually, the agency morphed into a directory called Automated.af which helped match marketing automation experts to businesses who needed them. In operating this marketplace, Alex discovered how few of these SaaS platforms actually enabled the agency experts to sell services on top of their solutions. This was the genesis of the research which inevitably became Partnerprograms.io.
Partnerprograms.io is a group of individuals who have come to understand partnerships through experience on both sides and now help agencies align with tech companies to sell services on top of their solutions.
Connect with Alex: LinkedIn | Partnerprograms.io | Twitter
This episode is brought to you by Unstack.
In episode three of Unstack's Zero to a Million, CEO Grant Deken and VP of Sales & Marketing Zach Rego talk with Elizabeth Yin.
Elizabeth is a co-founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund, a pre-seed fund for software entrepreneurs. Previously, she was a partner at 500 Startups where she invested in seed stage companies and ran the Mountain View accelerator. In a prior life, Elizabeth co-founded and ran an adtech company called LaunchBit (acq 2014). Elizabeth has a BSEE from Stanford and an MBA from MIT Sloan.
Elizabeth has reviewed over 20k startup pitches from around the world in the last few years and has helped numerous portfolio founders raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Her work and writing on startup fundraising has been featured in numerous publications including TechCrunch, Forbes, Huffington Post, BetaKit, and more.
Connect with Elizabeth: LinkedIn | Twitter | Blog | Hustle Fund
This episode is brought to you by Unstack.
At Unstack, we're invested in helping businesses scale. That's why on Zero to a Million, we're focusing on early-stage companies and exploring the strategies they use to succeed. We're inviting founders, marketers, and advisors to share their experiences so that you can learn from them. Plus, because we're scaling Unstack, too, we'll share how these strategies work for us—including our successes and our failures.
In the second episode Unstack's Zero to a Million, CEO Grant Deken and VP of Sales & Marketing Zach Rego talk with Luke Thomas, the founder of Friday.app. Friday helps teams create more predictable communication, spend less time in meetings, and still understand everything that is going on even if you work from home.
Zach, Grant, and Luke about identifying customer pain points, the importance of content marketing strategy, focusing on usage and engagement, and so much more.
Connect with Luke on LinkedIn and check out Friday at https://www.friday.app/.
This episode is brought to you by Unstack.
Unstack is the CMS built for marketers. Unstack's content marketing platform is designed to help you rapidly build, measure, and scale digital presence without code, developers, or headaches.
Because we're invested in helping businesses scale, we're focusing on early-stage companies and exploring the strategies they use to succeed. We're inviting founders, marketers, and advisors to share their experiences so that you can learn from them. Plus, because we're scaling Unstack, too, we'll share how these strategies work for us—including our successes and our failures.
In the inaugural episode of Unstack's Zero to a Million, CEO Grant Deken and VP of Sales & Marketing Zach Rego discuss the purpose behind the podcast, why Grant started Unstack, the power of referral programs and influencer marketing, goals for Unstack, and much more.
So whether you are just diving into the world of marketing and entrepreneurship or have been here a while, Zero to a Million is designed to take your marketing and entrepreneurship game to the next level.
This episode is brought to you by Unstack.