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- [00:00]
Chris Ottle
I helped 142 companies in E Comm. So I've seen a lot. And I'm not kidding you, half of them send their traffic to the wrong page. I don't want ads to scream like, hi, hi, I'm an ad. You know, like all these formulas that everyone has. If you follow only all the formulas, then you also look like a very generic thing, which also, like, you know, it's going to happen more and more with AI, but everything is going to be more uniform. This ad, I think, is the most copied ad that I've ever made. It's been ignored by the whole industry how important the comments are. And I've been preaching it since four or five years. But check, check the comments and work on the comments. Black Friday is coming up. I can give you one, one big tip.
- [00:49]
Eric Dick
It's the D2C podcast, and today I am having a reunion with my friend Chris Erthel. Chris and I Met Was It 2018 in Barcelona, Spain. It was actually the final event I ever did with Istack training in my event life, the affiliate world crew. And I don't remember how we got connected, but what I do remember is you being my favorite speaker at this event. You brought. Not to hype you up too much, but you came with a ton of dynamism. You came with a lot of really practical ad advice for people. You were doing really cool things all the way back then with AR and being able to sort of simulate cool animations in your ads. I remember. So we kept in touch loosely throughout the years and. And really glad to have you on the DC Podcast, man.
- [01:34]
Chris Ottle
I'm very glad to be here and. Yes, exactly. So you can actually jump into this right away. So, everyone, hello, audience. I'm a German from Munich. But the important thing is when you said it was your last event, it was actually one of my first events. So this is why, like, in this speech, I wanted to pack so much things. Because I remember Eric announced me to the stage and I was like, okay, this is one of my first big speeches. The first one out of the European market. They're like global. I was preparing for this like crazy. And I was wearing exactly this outfit, this shirt, this one. So I was like, to honor Eric and to honor this. This thing. Let's go back to it. Just that day, I had my hair short and colored fully white, if you remember. Like, I remember your bleach. The guy with a crazy white hair, he really. He had nothing to sell. He really gave a lot of nuggets and yeah, and that's. I tried to keep my speeches like this. I've always like, you know, giving the speech that I wanted to hear when I was learning, you know, like full on knowledge. A couple of things I brought for today of like, you know, no bull, like tips that really work for especially E Com right now.
- [02:41]
Eric Dick
Nice. Well, I want to get into that, but for our audience who didn't hear you in Barcelona, give us a little bit of your hero's journey in this e commerce world.
- [02:49]
Chris Ottle
Hero's journey would be like, during my uni, I did my exchange semester in South Carolina and was partying every day and like going crazy. And I can really recommend that because in the. A lot of things I learned in uni is connections and, you know, social things. So, like, I really was like, I would do it again like this. But after uni, all my friends were like, we're going to be founders. We're going to, you know, start this, start that. And I was like, I didn't really think about it. I would just take something and I was looking for. I was studying in Vienna and living from Munich. I got a couple of good job offers there, but then my heart was always in Spain. So I was like, no, I got to come to Barcelona. And then from there I looked and I didn't find the same job opportunities for the big car brands or all those things I would find in Germany and Austria. And I was like, all right, so then, guess I'm going to become a founder and started things and failed things with my best friend. We tried an app called Selfie Hunter where both cameras activate. Like, we always tried things for sometimes for a month. No, like, we tried selling shoes to California with another friend. Sold two pairs after a month. Okay, not a market. Kept on trying, kept on trying and then eventually found more and more things. And now I have like 14 projects where I started in my life recently in couple of ones. Yeah, still alive and very good. But again, recently started one SaaS company that I thought was a genius idea where you can see the ad spend of every ad. Because I was in Japan in Uniqlo. So Uniqlo booked me to help them. And they told me like, hey, look at the ads of H and M because they are crushing it in Poland and we are not. So I went through the ad library, all the ads, and step by step with EU ad transparency, you can see the ad spend. But it took forever. And I was like, there's gotta be someone writing a code for that. No one did it. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna find a coder, do it. And that company failed. A lot of people are like, this is a good idea. But, you know, it also failed, and that's an important thing. And like, I've been failing a lot and winning a lot. And so in general, like, you know, if you do this, you win. Like, in general, now is a very good moment. But a lot of things went well and went bad. One thing I'm very proud of is helping the United Nations. Like, I always wanted to be working there, but they never took me. And then I could be there as a consultant with the World Food Program and share the meal, the app. And there we even got. There was one call even with the director of the World Health Food Organization World Food Program in Mark Zuckerberg. And Zuckerberg even gave him 1 million repeating budget every year, which they can spend an ad without having to pay it, which is very beautiful. That was a cool project I'm very proud of. And that now has like 200, I think 30 or even more like minimum. It could be more by now, but I can there minimum, minimum 230 million meals shared in this one. So that's really cool. And there was one. As I'm German, I also do. I have a lot of Swiss and German companies, especially going to US and these things. And there was one German skincare company, and they reached out when we were small, small, I mean like 30 million. And then we. And they only did influencer marketing, no Facebook ads. And then we made it together to 107 million and then they sold for 330 million. So that was also a cool case to be, to be a part with. And then I learned, like, I got very good compensation there, very good bonus. But then that's how I learned of like, you know, you want to take equity in companies. So now I also either help very big companies now or I do startups, but then I also take equity because, you know, like, that would have been a smart, smart thing there on that exit.
- [06:23]
Eric Dick
And then what is your specific area of expertise? Is it in the creative side of things like it was back in Barcelona, or is it sort of whole business processes?
- [06:32]
Chris Ottle
Yeah, it's still creative side, but obviously, like after so long whole processes and a lot of the things, it's like, look, when we make very good creatives, we focus on the first second. But also then nowadays I'm very expert and I want to be among the two or three best in the world when it comes to the first second of a meta ad. Especially Facebook news feed, to be honest, and all the audiences. But we'll go into this. But obviously after doing this for so many years, like 10, 10 plus years now I know a lot, a lot about the landing pages, about the. So a lot of times when I help projects and companies, I'm like, okay, we need to do this, but you need to change this. And also offers like another thing. So the thing that I really want to be world class is exactly which offers to test, how to test them. AB testing and creatives and things I'm good at is global strategy, internationalization and the page, like which page to send the traffic to. This I love testing, but also to what elements on my website to test. And here if you want, I can actually share the first big knowledge bomb with audience because it's been pissing me off. But this has been done, this error has been done by so many people and I want to just help people to not do it. So half, like Now I helped 142 companies in E Comm. So I've seen a lot. And I'm not kidding you, half of them send their traffic to the wrong landing page. Like to the wrong page. And for me, I want to quickly help people to just like, you know, you don't have to work with me to just do it. And you will very likely win. So over 99%. There has been one case that has been equally good. In every other case it's been a clear winner. Sending the Facebook traffic to the collection page. Let's say one example, you have a belt company, okay, you have like 400 different belts. Obviously one is a clear bestseller. What everyone does makes the ad of a bestseller. That's right. What everyone does then is like sending the traffic to a bestseller to this one product to be like, hey, it's one less Chris. They will help me. Like, Chris, it's one less click. It makes sense they're going to go through easier. And I'm like, no, can we please run AB tests on this? They have to first trust you that you're a big company. If they see, okay, we have like one product, it doesn't seem big Love trust is gone. If they see 400 products, very good. Another one I'm helping has 14,000 products in the sleep area. Like amazing, you know, like the trust. But this and also your average order value will be much, much bigger. And people will still buy the bestseller that they saw in the ad. But they will add more. They will have more trust. The numbers couldn't be more clear. That's why I'm telling like everyone. Like every time I start working with someone, I look at this first because I've been seeing it the last three years of like it's done by half people is done wrong. So I can just like this with any taste, taste. 10 seconds, you go change the landing page on the ad, which you can even do a mass change and it's such a quick hack and it can bring up to 20% higher average order values and return on ad spend which you know you really want to have.
- [09:39]
Eric Dick
It's such a direct marketer's mindset, I think to go from the ad directly to the page to reduce all friction. But it's more of that brand marketers mindset where you're like, you want to introduce them to your world of products as well because that could influence them down the line.
- [09:52]
Chris Ottle
Right, exactly. So like that's something like I love, you know, sharing things of like, you know, they just do this. Like if you're currently sending it to your bestseller and you have, you have more than seven products, if you really have like only best seller and one more maybe, okay, but if you have more than seven products and you're doing this, then please try it. And then if you want, send me a thank you message to my Instagram or my, my LinkedIn or whatever. But yeah, you will see, you will, you will have a more profitable company.
- [10:18]
Eric Dick
I've often thought about the amount of intelligence that's available in the ad library and I've thought about a way to sort of like score a brand or something about how many different kinds of ads they're running, what their velocity of ads are. So I'm interested. This sort of SaaS product that you said that maybe didn't reach the heights that you wanted it to, but I bet you've gleaned a lot about the kinds of ads that work best in accounts by looking so deeply into the meta ad library.
- [10:43]
Chris Ottle
Exactly. Like for, for me. And also that's why we still like internally we are still using it and but we just, you know, we tried to, I think what price did we have? We tried to pull to market at 29 or €39 and it was growing. So it's like, don't get me wrong, it was not like people did, did get it, but it was just growing slow. And none of us, we were free co founders, none of us wanted a slow growing company because we all have other companies that are fast growing. That was one of the things. But I have to tell you, we Were also. We were really sure that at one point the banks, everyone will be interested in this because you can see the ad spend of everything. You can see which one they should. They should invest in. Like there was so much data in it. But we, yeah, either, I guess, you know, I could say the market was wrong, but I guess we were wrong. But yeah, it's. I'm really happy we did it, honestly. Like, it was really a fun, fun project. Like a side project, but it was a fun, fun side project.
- [11:37]
Eric Dick
And so you mentioned your. Your expertise within that one second of videos. Talk to me a little bit more about that. What should our audience be about in terms of max about all the different ways you can maybe maximize the effectiveness of that first second.
- [11:52]
Chris Ottle
Yeah. Nowadays where it's different, like obviously what I can always tell you is like try very, very different different ad areas in this way. You know, like, so currently, like I help currently a lot of fashion brands. Fashion is currently the hottest industry. Like, you know how it was 10 years ago, sunglasses was the hottest. Then eight years ago it was jewelry, then it was skincare. Now it's fashion, there's always cycles. So currently it's a lot of fashion. And so here there's different things now. Like imagine now an ad that starts with three things. Three things that people say about X brand and then there's different people very quickly, like very quick burst and they say three words about it. Which in this case we thought about it as a branding ad and it's getting a crazy roas. So now we're doing it for this and for other brands because it's a branding effect because you have like three things. Like, no, like in this skincare industry, no microplastic and so on. But like, but in this case we have like it's a very profitable ad and it gets into hooks right away, you know, like then obviously bold statements is something that is an evergreen. Like you want question audience questions. If someone, if there's a comment, a comment on Facebook and then you put it there and you answer a question that nearly everyone has before buying this. When you go into this, like that's. That gets the attention. Another thing that I love is always a bit more harder and not all the founders want to do it, but every time we can. We want humor, like an ad that the first second makes you laugh. Like something goes wrong or something happens, you know, Like I think there was this one ad that I showed. Then this car drives over this guy, but in a funny way of like, you know, like he is like it's a comedy ad. It's a clear, like it sounds bad, but it's a clear comedy ad. And you know he's driving over people because milk's running out and man versus milkshaker. So these ads that like get people to laugh at something but then also in the first second because now it's been shifting a bit. So we also, in the fashion industry, we're seeing a lot of like these clean close up shots which actually don't have a first second that hooks you in a way of like, like an ad. But just the product is so beautiful. Like you see like this very beautiful one company I'm helping and making this 7,8000 Euro earrings. But they are crazy cool. So they will have like a woman's ear close up and this really cool like earring, but it's like filling the whole ear. It's like a crazy thing. And you see, and this is the first second would get your attention but then the ad is just slowly moving around it. It doesn't look like an ad. And this is something that obviously I don't want ads to scream like, hi, hi, I'm an ad. You know, like all these formulas that everyone has, like put the bold statement there, put this here, put three usps. Like if you follow too much only all the formulas then you also look like a very generic thing which also like, you know, it's going to happen more and more with AI, but everything is going to be more uniform. So sometimes also we think out of like how can we do something that really fits to the audience? Like a snowboard company. We would start with double backflip where I would get the attention, you know, like I think you also do a mountain sports, so you know, like you would get attention if you get like a crazy double backflip. And then you see the snowboarding clothes when we're just putting the clothes. But also in fashion a lot of times now, another first second and I can talk about this forever. As you see, another first second is like a model spinning around clothes change. Spinning around, clothes change and she's always spinning. And obviously you see different clothes from all the angles. So that's another thing. And this again, plain, no text. So it doesn't look like an ad too much. So nowadays we have some ads that are really screaming I'm an ad. But then they are really optimized with a cool question and cool boat statement. But then also we have clean things and we let them run because every brand is slightly different and you want to have both. It's so easy to make. To make both. And that's it. But you really want to want to check and have these toolbox of different, different areas but in the first second also like camera motions where you have a fast film in. Or a friend of mine made an ad standing under a lamp and then he went out of it and he was like, this is a pattern interrupt. And. And then he started talking about what he want to talk about. You know, so there's a million things, but you want to get a way to get. You know, I always say on Facebook it's easier because on Facebook there's a lot of still. Facebook is still especially what I love to target is Facebook for the audience. 55 plus. And their content is still their friend posting what they had today for lunch. So you have to just make something that's more engaging than what they just saw on TikTok. That's why always I tell my brands, go to TikTok. We're gonna also do on TikTok, not even to make money there, but we want to compete there. Because if you can get good enough ads to win on TikTok because it has to be better than organic content, then we can really win it big on Instagram.
- [16:50]
Eric Dick
And the newsfeed, that hallowed newsfeed where you have those 55 plus people, I think that's performance marketers holy grail. Is that audience for sure. I saw some notes about your creative ad formulas that you talk about. What is a corner kick?
- [17:05]
Chris Ottle
Yes.
- [17:06]
Eric Dick
Is that old? Is that old news? It was Chachi dug this up. It said heartbeat editing, surprise hooks and corner kicks for our, our North American audience.
- [17:14]
Chris Ottle
Soccer, football, it's the corner. We call it the corner trick. Right. So now you would say, you would have an ad now. So let's say now you would have a woman wearing a sunglass. Okay. For a sunglass company. And then all of a sudden it folds like a page of a book. You know, like, let me see here. I have this one here. It falls like this. No, over. And what's behind is the website. And you see already all the different products and everything. So you get already very familiar of like, oh, this is how the website would look like. That's how other.
- [17:46]
Eric Dick
Oh, interesting.
- [17:47]
Chris Ottle
And then you click on it and you see exactly what was there when you clipped it. Exactly. This is what happened.
- [17:53]
Eric Dick
It's just pre framing. Just sort of pre framing the situation.
- [17:56]
Chris Ottle
Yeah. And you already put them into a mind. Oh, I could click on this, by the way. That's Very important. Where does for your all audience, let's everyone think about it. Where does the first click go to? Many times the first click when they like an ad. Where do I click first? Think about it for a second. The first click goes on. See more to see all the comments, especially on Facebook, especially on Facebook and a lot of the brands, they don't take it serious enough how important it is to first of all answer all the questions, hide the bad comments. And even a lot of times we like to gently shift the discussion in the way we want. So by this we mean, like, I have one ad and all of a sudden I see, okay, this ad has seven roas. Okay? On high ad spend. Like, no comments yet. Okay, this ad could either be ruined now by a comment or it could get even better with some good comments. So what we then do we click on share the link. You know, like, you click on the ad and you can go like, share this ad. You can share it in a WhatsApp group with colleagues or friends. And you'd be like, hey, if everyone, four or five people could make a nice comment here of like, I really thought about getting it and then this. But then I bought it and arrived after 24 hours. And it's really even better than I expected. Something like this. That's what you want to hear. Or I was skeptical, like, but like, in a way, good comments that are real and good comments where the audience be like, oh, yes, that's good to hear. Good to hear. It comes fast. Good to hear. It has this quality. Good to hear if it's close. And they're marketed as very soft. For example, for one of my clients, we're like, oh, this is really incredibly soft. The softest top I've ever had. You know, like, this is something that you should take much more serious. We take it so serious with ad. The other day I saw someone talking about it. I was like, finally someone else is talking about it. Because it's been ignored by the whole industry how important the comments are. And I've been preaching it since four or five years. But check, check the comments and work on the comments.
- [20:03]
Eric Dick
I remember Michael Brenner came to our. Another German, I believe came to our event previously that we did in Berlin. And he did a mastermind talk about increasing the revenue from his products something like 20 or 30% just by being really diligent by curating those comments in the way you've described.
- [20:24]
Chris Ottle
Yeah, he's very great. Exactly. He knows what he's talking about.
- [20:27]
Eric Dick
One of the things that Came up in my research, my ChatGPT research was your use of AR. And I've been seeing some. I don't know if that's accurate. I've been seeing. I remember you gave a presentation about ads and it's similar to the Corner Kick, essentially, ads that would kind of reframe the ad unit so that it would be doing something, you know, where you. Where you'd think you'd be looking at an ad image, but it would be shifted just suddenly. And it actually was a video that kind of broke the frame. And you saw, I think. I think it was like a hand reaching in and grabbing some sunglasses out of a carousel or something like that, putting some AR in ads. I saw a really interesting website the other day that had all of their product images on their landing pages interacting. So someone in the top. In the top frame is wearing a sweater and they have an ice cream cone and they dump it and the ice cream falls into someone's bowl and, you know, into the image below or whatever. And I was wondering what.
- [21:18]
Chris Ottle
Actually, that's really cool, the website idea. I never had. That's actually. I might. Might copy that if you see that. Some. Some brands now. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, like, we love to do that. You know, like having. Having effects that so surprise people. This ad, I think, is the most copied ad that I've ever made. Like, I've seen it and I'm really happy because I've been showing it and I've seen it, like, I would really say more than 80 variations of it by brands who, like, you know, just didn't ask, but just took it. But this is, you know, the best compliment ever. So, like, you know, it's beautiful.
- [21:54]
Eric Dick
Are there other examples of ways that you've done sort of innovative animations in ads that have worked well?
- [21:59]
Chris Ottle
This. A shout out to a colleague, Bosco. He came up with a following thing of like, for Mela, for the Sunglass brand. No, he came up with the effect of like, we made an Instagram effect. A friend who lives in Bali, he made an Instagram effect, an Instagram filter. And then you click on the ad, it doesn't open the landing page, but it opens with filter. And then you can try all the Mela sunglasses on. So that was a really beautiful thing and working well. But the truth is Meta doesn't care about your business and they don't care about sometimes crushing your hopes on certain things is a thing we have to all learn at some point. You know, been going through it and everyone will. So they just Decided, I think two years ago you just stopped with the filters and they just crushed that part of that fully. And they just do it from one day to the other and you know, like, and then it's just gone. So that was a really beautiful idea and it worked really well, but they don't, you know, Zuckerberg crushed it.
- [23:00]
Eric Dick
Classic Mark Zuckerberg. One of my other notes here is just the idea that like you've mentioned a little bit about AB testing and the importance of sort of a B testing all aspects of your funnel. Is it true that you try to build a culture of testing where you're running over 40 A B tests per day? Or is that hallucination on ChatGPT's part per week?
- [23:19]
Chris Ottle
Per week?
- [23:20]
Eric Dick
Per week. Okay, that makes more sense.
- [23:21]
Chris Ottle
Exactly.
- [23:22]
Eric Dick
And then give me some examples maybe of like a B tests that like that you. That are in your go to that you like that you will always test the most.
- [23:30]
Chris Ottle
Go to. Go to AB test in the past was like, you know what, in the past it was like you would optimize and you could optimize towards telling Facebook we want purchases, but you also tell them we want add to cards or we want view content. And so there was a time, but there was a while ago where view content was outperforming so much to getting purchases. Like you would get just so much more data points. But then I think Facebook at one point saw this and corrected this in a way of like very few people figured this out and they then had a higher roas. But Facebook was like most people click on purchase, so I think they just tweaked the algorithm so that it purchases it took it more into account and so. And we lost this advantage. But that was like a, for a long time there was a go to that in nearly all the cases was a winning one. Now I would say the most typical AB test we make is now we have one content piece working and now we still work with a lot of real creators. And now we, let's say for a big brand now a very well working ad, a typical big brand wants like 3.8 ROAS. So with one ad gets a 4.4 ROAS. It's good, you know, like we all happy with it. It's not like magic, but it's like very high budgets behind it, you know, and it's very, very nice performance. So what we do now we paid like let's say €2,000 for each content creator. This big brand has a lot of budget. So we're like, okay, now let's get 10 other women in a similar price range and let her perform the same things, the same ad. Be like, you know, it works really good because she was in this fancy living room. Let's put them there, have the same thing. And then a lot of times and then we will see that six of them perform way worse, four of them perform way better and one of them performs really good. And we just earned a lot and learned a lot. So there, a lot of the tests would really make a difference is how the audience reacts to different content creators and who, who can really talk to the audience. And that's something that might shock you. Again, question to the audience, one big brand that guess how much money they spent for her content. To one content creator, everyone guess. And then the next question is guess what revenue that they made with her. Like tracked revenue thanks to her. So the Facebook ads with her and her post. Post. And so guess the amount that she earned in a single year.
- [25:58]
Eric Dick
100K.
- [25:59]
Chris Ottle
6 million.
- [26:01]
Eric Dick
6 million. How did that work?
- [26:04]
Chris Ottle
She was just right. She made her custom skincare collection with them, posted strongly about them. Had over I think 2 million, 3 million. Germany, but very, you know, loyal followers in Germany. She was very talented in sales. You know, that's something that normally they are not. And now guess the tracked revenue that we. 6 million that we put into her.
- [26:28]
Eric Dick
How much we brought, let's say 10 million.
- [26:31]
Chris Ottle
31. 31. So that was ridiculous. 107 million, you know, and. But 31 million were out of her. So we always said, I know he's not so known in Canada and the U.S. but like she would earn more that year than Thomas Muller. Thomas Muller is like the football player. He now actually went to Vancouver. Yeah, I'm aware, I've heard of him.
- [26:51]
Eric Dick
Yeah, the White Caps.
- [26:52]
Chris Ottle
Exactly.
- [26:53]
Eric Dick
So that was a paid, that was a performance deal. Then she got paid more because the ad did so well. What was the act? What does that deal look like?
- [27:00]
Chris Ottle
No, it was actually, it wasn't a performance deal because the manager was not so, so smart. It was really. They just kept rising prices for the posts for when we use her for this. But she was not, it was not a performance deal. Like she could have gotten more if she had it been performance deal.
- [27:14]
Eric Dick
Yeah, I guess so. But she just kept. It just kept working because it had such great audience fit with her, with her and her sales ability.
- [27:21]
Chris Ottle
Exactly.
- [27:22]
Eric Dick
You mentioned when we were talking in the pre interview, a company that you recently helped exit for solid nine figures. Can you talk about that situation a.
- [27:30]
Chris Ottle
Little bit Yeah, I can talk because a lot of now is currently a lot of things happening in the market and good things. But this one we can go into detail.
- [27:38]
Eric Dick
Yeah, tell me about it. What was what, what was the brand and what, what was your role with it?
- [27:42]
Chris Ottle
Yeah, so for this one and this has happened quite a lot now. So now the current cases, a lot of like mid sized companies and they are around 50 million and they come to me like, hey Chris, now we've been there for a while and like we need the next push now because I've been doing this a lot and then for me it's quite easy to help companies to internationalize. A lot of them are Germans. We're like hey we want to get out of there and do more. And also what's limiting us? Like why, why can we not spend more profitable like whatever limiting factors. And that's, that's quite easy in their case I can go quite easy into the details. And so now for example, now these days I'm talking to a brand like a 200 year old brand with 14,000 products and they are like they have been the last six years stuck at 50 million and the last, you know like they are super old, 200 years old, like so many generations family owned business, they're always at 50 and now a new person got in the brand like you know, like took it over from his dad and he is like my age and he's like okay, now it's time to make this way bigger. And his goal is 500 million. Now he's like Chris, can we talk about how we can do this together? And also we're currently structuring a deal similar to the deal I had with this hello buddy with his skincare company but with them. So I was quite, they really told me like Chris, I know you're doing other things but we really need you quite hands on, we really need you like in this case now I can do it with less. But they're like we really need you for 20 hours a week where you really help us hire the right people and train the right people. You know, like being interim cmo. And then I was there for quite a while because it was going really good. But it was like hire right people, train the right people and then help us. They had an agency help us move away from an agency and have it in house because they already thought okay, we want to sell one day and it's much easier to sell to a big brand. They sold to Henkel. Maybe you know about them.
- [29:40]
Eric Dick
Yeah, I know Henkel.
- [29:40]
Chris Ottle
Yeah, they sold to Henkel and obviously Henkel wanted to have the in house skill of like Facebook marketing also, you know, and so like if they had an agency, they would have gotten a way, way worse deal. And here the biggest thing I can share with you is I convinced the two founders and we talked a lot about. All right, so now they were doing a lot of like 30% discount on the big, big events, you know, and I was telling them 30% it just doesn't hook. It's like, it's not quite like, of course we get sales and we are growing with this, but I'm telling you at this point we were, I think the numbers, if I have them correctly because it was been a while ago, but I'm pretty sure it was around. They got an average order value of nearly 100. So it was good. But also €29 cost per action, like per cost per purchase, you know, and it was quite high with 30% then. And then we were like, I was testing, like, can we please, can I please have budget to test? And I want to prove you with numbers that 40% would make the whole thing explode. Like this extra thing with then is when it's really a high discount. And then of course in every brand they were like the voice of like, no, but the brand is not good for the brand image and their voices, you know. But then I was like, let's see and then we'll see it with the data. Let's see with the data. And we did it. And so let's say for simplicity of this, there's €10 more we have to give to the customers. Okay, so these €10 more are gone. We lose them because we give a higher discount. And I have €100. But what we found out is we saved 18 and a half euros on, on meta ads. So the big loser was Mark Zuckerberg because all of a sudden the friction was over. Like we sold so much, so we gave €10 more to a customer. But again we made even way more profit. Like we made more profit than this because our Facebook ad cost went down. So like we had phases of selling every six euro, but like on a million million euro budget. So that was. And then afterwards there was no more discussion. Like it was like the founders were like, I proved it with data and Germans love data, you know, like we were German founder, it was very easy. We had the data clear, it was very proven. And then it was like good. And then we actually found that the brand didn't suffer from it. Like it Was like a very consistent offer. And also now then your audience will hear this and Black Friday is coming up. I can give you one, one big tip. So start on 1st, 1st of November. If you can make a Black month that's, you know, people know that it's not a big tip. What we really found is making image ads there. And then on the ads it says, we promise you no bigger deal on Black Friday. And obviously ethical marketing, keeping that promise, very important. Like you can never promise anything, like you're out. But for them it was like people knew, okay, this is a high offer, but they are not going to go higher. This is, this is the thing. And people were like, okay, now it's the best moment ever. And like we also, the ads also said we promise highest offer of the year. What then happened? For their birthday sale, the event again went to this size. No, but it was not a higher offer. Like it was the highest offer. So it was kept at that. So it's true. You know, so, and this keeping these promises, like people shouldn't wait until Black Friday because on this day competition is just through the roof. So that's something that makes a lot of sense.
- [33:11]
Eric Dick
I actually never heard that before. But be explicit about the fact that they're not going to get a better deal in the ad.
- [33:16]
Chris Ottle
Yeah, that's really important. Again, we saw the number. It's like we have now 3400 AB tests, whereas for a reason, this is one of them with very clear data of this small sentence. And for deal events, more image ads, no more picture ads. But then having this phrase in it clearly, no, no higher discount, we promise that. That's really important.
- [33:41]
Eric Dick
You mentioned internationalization and I feel like in the current trade environment there's, there's drawbacks and benefits to that. But ultimately I think a lot of US brands are looking for markets that they can expand to in Europe and other places. Where do you see as, as someone who's internationalized a lot of brands, where do you see some of the biggest gains? Because I understand a lot of, a lot of places, but ads are going to be cheaper. Like cost per clicks are going to be cheaper in maybe places like Poland. I don't know exactly where are you seeing some of the internationalization wins?
- [34:12]
Chris Ottle
Yes. So just before this, I want to quickly say Mercedes won the pre, the pre tariff marketing award. In my opinion then Trump was like speculating with terrorists. And so Mercedes made this marketing campaign of like get the last Mercedes at pre tariff prices. And they sold so much it was free marketing it was perfect for them. Like that was like I even I put this in the slides in the last AW speech because I celebrated it so much. And now the next one I will be at AW Bangkok and also talk in a similar way. But now to answer your question, if I were in a US brand and for this, really reach out to me and I can easily help you or give you guidance if I would be a US brand. Poland, like you said, amazing market, one of the strongest eco markets because people are really used to buying online and it's a very fast growing economy, quite big. If I'm around, right, should be around 40 million. But then Poland you can do English, which is great, but also Polish could be good. But nowadays anyway it's easier with ChatGPT and so on. But English works. But now if I would be a US company, I would right away start and do the Nordics. So the Nordics, I say Denmark, Finland, Sweden, even Ireland can be in it. And Holland and Belgium. So these markets combined are crazy strong markets. We are quite big together. You put them all into one campaign, you know, you don't do different one campaign for all. And then it's very important in English. All these countries have TV in English, all have a euro, so you have no problem with all European Union, all have the euro, all have TV in English. So you don't have to change anything, just change from dollars to euros. And even that if you don't do it, it will still work. But if you just change the euros, but everything else, keeping the English website, it works because these people, they can easily like in every brand I've ever helped, we never made ads in their language or the website, always in English. And it works perfectly. So I love these markets. So normally if I help a German brand, I tell them, step one, go to Nordics, step two, go to Poland, step three, go to France and Italy. And then sometimes in between, if you want to go out of the European Union, which for you is easy as a US brand, go to the uk. UK is competitive, but also a great market. So England. England is great.
- [36:37]
Eric Dick
You mentioned some of the tools that you're using with your team. What are some indispensable tools that you're finding in this creative advertising process?
- [36:46]
Chris Ottle
Yeah, I'm sorry, I found one more answer that I really want to share with the audience. Probably think before one AB test we'll be making. So for example, now I helping one Swiss company and they are now crushing it in the us. But then we launched, I told them you have to a B test. A B test of, like, we're gonna go there and seem like we are a US Brand. Okay. And we, like, we're not even gonna go with we are European. Like, we just gonna be like that. People assume if we are an American brand or where we really go in all the ads everywhere. Swiss, Swiss, Swiss, Swiss quality. And we actually. I actually thought that the Swiss will have a chance of winning. We were surprised it didn't win, but it's perfect. So, like, we had our way clear. Like, a lot of times, for example, in Germany, if you say Swiss brand, it was better, but in the US it was worse. So that's again, something we couldn't know if you wouldn't have tested it. So, like, always check in which way? Like, do you want to go into Nordics and be, like, very proactive about this American brand and with a big old brand, or you want to be more like, you know, like just highlighting the product again, test it? No, but you will get very clear, clear and fast data on it.
- [37:57]
Eric Dick
I wonder what the sentiment is in Europe with US Brands.
- [38:00]
Chris Ottle
So I can answer for you. I would say if you're a California brand, and you would say, we're a California brand, that would work pretty well. Like, people love California, for example.
- [38:10]
Eric Dick
But if you're like, I'm Texas, maybe there's some.
- [38:13]
Chris Ottle
But maybe not exactly so. Exactly. So then you want to say, and you will get clearer, clear and fast data. All right. To your questions about tools. So there's a couple of tools that are really helping me right now. One that I would love for you to try also right away is wevee. So Vivi. For me, we always, you know, doing ads and then making edits and ads. And a lot of ads can be still real, but then we do edits in AI or we need certain scenes in AI. And for me, it's been a pain. Like, every conference I go to, I get 10 new AI tools recommended. And then there's Vis Editor and Vis Editor and Runway and Topaz Labs and Google VO3. And for me, I was like, I'm a marketer firsthand, and I don't want to sign into 1000 accounts. Edit it here, download it, edit to the next one. The whole process wasn't fun for me. So I was really happy when I saw that there's this tool which is like, you have this blank space, like a figma a little bit. And on the side, you have 140 AI tools. And when you drag these tools in, and then you can prompt from There. So I would like write a prompt and then I Drag in Google VO3 and then I click on Run and then it will make me a Google VO3 video. So then I'll be like, okay, now in this video I want to add a voice with 11 labs. So I drag it there, put it again, it does it and then I'm like, okay, now this is a finished thing but I want higher quality. So I connect it with a line and it's really intuitive. Like it's like there's nothing I have to explain more because that's how it is. Another line and then Topaz Labs I run and I have the quality increase with Topaz Labs. And then I want to add some motion with Runway and I do that too, like everything. So with image and video ads, it's fun. I honestly don't know why they're not more famous yet. Because they are really the most useful tool ever. I love it.
- [40:12]
Eric Dick
Because everyone has some insecurity about whether they're using the best tool in a way. Right. And so when you've got them all in one place, you can experiment and you can kind of try see what every one of them is best at.
- [40:23]
Chris Ottle
Exactly. And then the other thing is like where do your brands and your ecom brands make the most roi? What paid marketing tool makes the highest ROI or return on ad spend?
- [40:34]
Eric Dick
Is that Google? Because it's all intent based.
- [40:37]
Chris Ottle
Google would be maybe second. Yes, but I would, so I would argue in nearly every E com brand but the highest ROI is actually email marketing.
- [40:46]
Eric Dick
Makes sense. It's an owned audience. Yeah, exactly.
- [40:48]
Chris Ottle
So like here you have the costs and like in the past, you know, like 10 years ago when I started my first E commerce brands and so we used mailchimp then very quickly we saw that now there's brands who focus on e comm marketing only. So of course everyone switched to both. But now we are like checking of like okay now it was a monopoly in a way and people kept rising prices and I don't know about your ecom brands but a lot of them we're paying in couples of thousands or ten thousands of euros a month. So now there's this one company that we've been seeing recently and they make, I didn't know about them but they make 60 million already in revenue. So they're no longer that that small. But it's Omnisend and Omnisend for us. We checked that they are much more cost efficient, efficient. So like a lot of times we actually our Roasman doubled Because they are slightly easier to use to get better emails out. So it's like, it's very intuitive and easy. So like you can send out faster emails at sms. But also important thing is you're in costs, you're around 40% of Klaviyo for example. So obviously you have two tools doing exactly the same and you can migrate everything. Like you can. Like most brands we did it like in two hours and a small brand half an hour, bigger brand, six hours. But you can migrate all your pre written emails, all your segments, all your funnels, you migrate it all. But then I like always, you know, seeing a tool that does the same but you can save a lot. Like on another time I was consulting a brand and they told me they need a tracking tool and they found the solution in Dubai. With Dubai I was already like okay, probably someone's overcharging them and they're like yeah, you know, it's just three and a half thousand euros a month and we can do the tracking. And I was like I have this company from Munich and I can tell you they do the same but better minimum the same but better in €350. And they were like you just saved us €100,000 over the next three years. Like oh it's so worth to work with you. And I'm like yeah, thank you. But you know, be careful with what tools you work with, you know like so Omnisend for VE is like a very, very cool one because every Ecom brand can with one track save so much money just by using a tool which is faster, actually is more prepared for Ecom but also is very cost effective because I think Klaviyo was a good tool but I think they have just been abusing their market. They have been not so ethical and abusing the market situation of like how much can we squeeze out possibly, you know, for a tool which is like for them was a one time coding thing.
- [43:29]
Eric Dick
I just did a podcast with Sean Frank and Taylor Holiday and Tomer Taggrin from Yotpo about the state of SaaS. It's a really interesting one. I'll send you a link to it actually.
- [43:40]
Chris Ottle
What happened to them? Did they close a company recently? Because I heard something or what happened there?
- [43:43]
Eric Dick
No they didn't. They closed down their email and SMS divisions because. But they were on the original podcast I did with them a year ago was basically reading all of Sean Frank's mean tweets about yacht po and basically saying how what? You know, how they weren't maybe ethical in their pricing models. And then, then last year they made all these big adjustments, going after a lot more of the retention ecosystem, so including email and sms. And then this year they've had to retreat. And I think the theme of the podcast was that it's not fun to pick on SaaS companies anymore because they're under the gun so much. Whether it. Whether it's pressure from people who are vibe coding cheaper solutions or whether, you know, whether it's just the commodification of all of these services.
- [44:28]
Chris Ottle
I can, yeah, now I can really have my C say because now I had one SaaS company and it's a pain to get all the. All the code right. Like, I was, I. Now I value every company that doesn't have errors because I saw how many bugs we had and I was like, it's actually so hard to think of all these bugs. And obviously now I'm seeing code much differently. I'm not a coder, but like, we had like seven coders, I think, in total who were doing things and I was like, wow, like, now I see how many bugs can happen if it's your own company. And so, like, now I value, I value. And things go smooth even more. Like, yes. And I just wanted to ask because I recently had a case of a company and they had the email marketing there and they had to migrate. That's why I was like, what happened? We only closed for email marketing. Okay, that makes sense because I had like one case where they told me, like, oh, we had this. What should we use now, Chris? Like, where should we go from that.
- [45:22]
Eric Dick
To wrap things up here? I'm just curious with you. You're working with lots of different brands. It's medium size, 50 million plus. What are your goals with your enterprise? Do you want to get back in the brand space? Own your own brand? Do you want to keep consulting where you want to take it?
- [45:36]
Chris Ottle
Yeah. So one of my goals here is for me, really, I want to be. When it comes to creative in ads, I really, my goal is to be among the two or three best when it comes to getting the first, second, and the creative part of ab testing of ads, you know, like just on meta, don't ask me about Google anything, but in this small area, I want to be among the two or three best and I want to measure it that Apple reaches out to me. Like, that's one of my measurements that like brands, like big brands when they need to find someone. I never reach out to brands. I wait for them to come to me, like, for Example, Red Bull already reached out to me, Uniqlo and so on Visa card. But now I'm waiting for also players like Apple or similar that reach out. I always say, like, if Apple reaches out and I help them for 22 years, then I can retire. Like, I can already now retire and having a good career, but then I can really, like, you know, do it well.
- [46:27]
Eric Dick
This is a manifestation platform. So Tim Cook, if you're listening, get at, get at him here. What was your next goal then?
- [46:34]
Chris Ottle
I have also a podcast, but this is my passion project. It's the happiness podcast. Because I had a burnout in projects and I really believe of like, if I had learned these things earlier of like breath, work and meditation, you know, like cultivating inner peace. So the podcast is about that. Also we talk about marketing as well, because it's my big passion as well. But it's a happiness podcast by Chris Ottle. And here I want eight and a half million plays. That's also a big, big goal. Not easy, but it's a big goal. And then as a side thing, I have a couple of side, side events, you know, like not all marketing. Also other, other things. I want to play a World cup in one, one, one sport. And so as a German, I always wanted to play the soccer World Cup. Now it's coming up in the US it's not going to happen anymore. And I'm 37 now, you know, like, but there's another sport, of course, you know, golf, right, Is a big thing in the US So now I'm quite a good soccer player. And there's a sport, futgolf and there is a footgolf World Cup. And today actually I talked again with one guy who played already two World Cups for Spain, and he told me today, hey, Chris, I see you totally. But you can make it a German team or that you can make it to a World cup with Germany. And yeah, it's getting closer. So that could happen the next one or two years of playing World cup in football. Niche, niche sport, but I'm loving it.
- [47:58]
Eric Dick
There is riches in the niches, I think that is really. I'm actually going on my very first golf trip in a couple of weeks. So I'm very excited. I'm going to Northern Alberta to a bunch of different courses with friends. I'm very. I just actually shot an 87. I've only, I've broken 100 only a few times. And then I went home and golfed with my dad and all his friends and golfed an 87. Which was my best ever in front of my dad's friends, which. Which made his day, man.
- [48:23]
Chris Ottle
So. Yeah. So I also. I love golfing, too. You're a better golfer than me then, I guess. But we can. Next time we see each other in person, I'll take you golfing or you take me golfing. We'll do it. But just for you to understand. No. So in golf, I would normally, you know, make bogeys, double bogeys, you know, like, defend myself. I'm getting better, but it's still like, you know, it's like, not. Not where I would consistently do pars in footgolf, where also you have par fives, par fours. I would normally end around at minus three, which.
- [48:53]
Eric Dick
Pretty good.
- [48:54]
Chris Ottle
I'm very, very far, far away from that, you know.
- [48:56]
Eric Dick
Okay, well, you're not making the PGA anytime soon, but the F pga, the.
- [49:00]
Chris Ottle
Foot golf, that might. That might happen. And then I have.
- [49:04]
Eric Dick
I love that you don't give up on dreams. You just maybe tweak them slightly.
- [49:07]
Chris Ottle
Yeah. Yeah. They're more attainable just tweaking. Then obviously a dream, a big dream is with my partner to have. To have kids. She wants to have four. I want to have three. So let's. Let's aim for three and a half, and we'll see. No, better get going. Yeah, we're going to. Going to get going. It's a. That's a big thing. Let's also. Why the move away from Barcelona to more of a countryside, to the island, you know, Tenerife. That makes a lot of sense for. For that, you know, like, it's perfect place to raise a family.
- [49:37]
Eric Dick
It's a windsurfing capital of Europe, isn't it?
- [49:39]
Chris Ottle
And she. My. My girlfriend is a surfer. She really want to be somewhere, like, we can. We can surf. There's a ton of golf here. It's the capital also of footgolf, the capital of football. So it's. Yeah, Windsurf is huge there. So, yeah, it's perfect.
- [49:53]
Eric Dick
I'm gonna make an excuse to come visit you because that sounds amazing.
- [49:56]
Chris Ottle
Yeah, it's nice. It's a great place. It's like, you're really close to equator, but you're still in Europe. So it's the best. Best of both worlds. And then the last goal is I really have a big passion at Burning Man. I did my first breath work, like, seven years ago, and I left my body, looked out of my body. I was like, what the just happened? I was like, this is like, I've done ayahuasca and all these things. But that was more. And so I was like, okay, I need to, you know, I have time after marketing. I can after work still and do this and travel and do a breathwork teacher thing. But just for myself, like, I was like, my marketing is my breadwinner and I love it, but I want to just know for myself and educate myself. So I went, found the best teacher in Argentina, went there three weeks, you know, always one week and got the diploma. And then I was like, you know, now sometimes I give lessons to people who I like. And also I give, I want to always give people lessons, breathwork sessions to politicians and to billionaires, because I think these people have an direct impact of like, they could make tweaks in the world of, you know, making things, things more fair and better for us, more ethical. And so, like, that's something that I do. And then they always shocked of like, ah, you want to do this, but how much would you charge? I was like, no, for you, it's for free. And everyone with Richard Branson, all these billionaires, they always use people charging them and richer than them, they really value. It was like, ah, you're really like, you genuinely just want to help and be there. And they really see that and they're really surprised and shocked with that. And that's a very good entry point of like, hey, I'll just do it, you know.
- [51:39]
Eric Dick
Do you have any simple breath work exercises you could leave our audience with?
- [51:43]
Chris Ottle
Of course, of course. So it's called. One of my favorite one is called 20 connected breaths. So the breath work that I'm, I'm teaching is only through the nose. It will be like one and a half hours lying down and breathing through the nose and especially checking that the exhale is a lot of love and acceptance in it and you're not pushing it out. You know, not the stressful thing, but that's the long session. But now what we can do together is we do 20 kilogram breaths. So we do like four fast ones and one extremely slow and very deep. And we repeat this four times, ergo, 20. Right. Maybe I can just do one and we can do it together if you want, and you can tell me how you feel afterwards. And everyone from the audience can do this as well. So I connect to my body and now I go like. And you want to put like all your consciousness into the breath and have the first four very, very connected and the last one then very deep. So now let's do the full 20 together. Now you get the concept, you can use your hands to count if you feel like, but also you can just follow my guidance. All right.
- [53:18]
Eric Dick
It.
- [53:46]
Chris Ottle
And then I would like to invite everyone to, like, fully scan through the body and feel the differences. Like, for me, I now I feel my voice is much more calm. There's much more calmness. I, you know, I have a lot of energy when I wake up and very energetic in a good way. I like to do sports and so and think about things fast. But this gives me, like, this very grounded feeling. And it's something that I can do before the important call. I can do after a call. But it stressed me. It's like the connective breaths. Like, Fanny Van Leer, my breath work teacher, she's from France, but living in Argentina and doing this since 28 years. She always said, like, you can do this a lot of times as a tool during the day, but she would recommend doing this first thing in the morning and last thing in the day. But also, I use it a lot. Like, let's say I have a call with investors and they were stressing me and I was like, I hang up afterwards and I'm like, okay, I'll do it now. And like, I'm not gonna go there. Like, you know, animals shake after stress, but you can do this also or before something. And for me, like, I can really see, I feel much different now in something that takes 30 seconds, you know, and every day we take 40,000 breaths. And if we can do them slightly better, there's a lot of benefit in that. And don't breathe through the mouth if you can. Most breath works are through the mouth because it's faster and you can do group sessions, but that's not how it's supposed to be. Like, the mouth is not made to be a breathing organ. I would recommend the book. I actually have it here. Wait, I have it just lying here. Was not planned. Breast. Oh, cool.
- [55:21]
Eric Dick
James Nestor. I'll check that out.
- [55:24]
Chris Ottle
And here he says the worst breather in the animal kingdom is with human. Like, every animal breathes connected. And humans also breathe connected if they don't have trauma. But everyone has some kind of trauma. That's why we all have stops if of inhale or exhale. And you can learn to breathe more connected. And that's something in this technique. It's called bioflow rebirthing breath work. In this technique, you learn to be more connected in the breath. And that that really helps.
- [55:54]
Eric Dick
I've heard that first nations people have this built into their culture, where any breath taken through the mouth is considered like a mal is a bad situation that every breath should be taken through the nose. And I think I've been like congested my whole life from different things. So I think that was part of maybe trauma as well. But I think there was aspects that kind of led me in it. I've looked into a lot of stuff about mouth breathing is terrible for your sleep, it's terrible for your facial structure. It's. There's so much that it leads to because breath is more important than water or food or anything. Right?
- [56:23]
Chris Ottle
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So that was in the list. And also that's why you also want to live on places where the air is good. And also like Barcelona was not so good quality wise. I mean I didn't move because of that, but that was always bothering me. I was like, oof. As I'm knowing too much about breath, I shouldn't live in an area that has more pollution because there's the mountain and the sea around it and the cruise ships park there. So. But yeah, like the breath has a bigger impact on your health, air quality and the breath, how you breathe than the food you eat. And we are checking so much on the food is crazy. And yeah, like I can tell you since I'm. Since we seven years my life has changed in such a positive way. A lot of good things have happened to me and I definitely thank Van I, Van Leer and my teachers were.
- [57:13]
Eric Dick
We don't normally get into these topics but I'm feeling like we should more. I hope everyone in the audience got a chance to try that breathwork feel. I had a stressful meeting before this and it really helped center me so I'm going to continue with it. Thanks for coming on the DTC podcast, Chris. This is great to reconnect. I'm going to put all your links in the show notes below. Any kind of closing words for the thousands of DTC entrepreneurs that are listening to this.
- [57:38]
Chris Ottle
I honestly think we're living in super interesting times. I would always choose to be born in these times again with now the emergence of AI and people complain. Oh my God, is this. No, it's actually very cool. And also the last months have been a very good phase for a Facebook Instagram ad. So it now is a very cool. If anyone would start a brand right now, I would recommend you going a bit into the fashion industry or like moving into something, you know, like in that way like belt belt companies. Something I always had in my mind and I never did because I gave example before a bit it's like, if I wouldn't have so many projects already, I would start a belt company. That would be something. But yeah, we are living in very cool times. And the last maybe a bit more breathwork advice also, if you're finding yourself in a different difficult situation. Something that helped me a lot is the Spanish saying, todo es perfecto in necessario, which means everything is perfect and necessary. Like something bad happened to you and be like, no, but this is also perfect and also necessary, like where this happened. And it's very hard to apply when something really bad happens. But it's true, like everything is perfect and necessary. Another saying is lamente miente. The mind lies. The mind always tells us certain things and we as humans make a mistake. We always believe everything the mind tells us. But the mind we think we are.
- [59:01]
Eric Dick
The mind we think we are the thoughts in our heads when we're probably not.
- [59:04]
Chris Ottle
We have a consciousness and the mind can really trick us. The mind is motivated by love or by fear. A lot of times motivated by fear and it lies to us. So that's a problem. So always be careful and don't trust everything and be like re question things because the mind is very good at lying to us.
- [59:24]
Eric Dick
Beautiful, Chris. Thanks again brother. We will reconnect again soon. I love your ad insights here. And the breath work is even more important for all of us. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now at directtoconsumeralloneword. Co. I'm Eric Dick and this has been the DTC podcast. We'll see you next time.