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- [00:00]
A
Hey, before we get into today's show, my marketing manager finally convinced me to run a wild experiment in this episode because he wanted to prove what the conversion engine can do for your brand. So we are giving away three of our $10,000 deep dive audits for free in this audit. And this isn't one of those audits that you get from some AI generated bot. This actually takes us two plus weeks, seven or eight of our team members and it is incredibly in depth. It will give you insights into your media buying, your creative, your actual business metrics and find out exactly where the gaps are and where your growth is stalled and what we can do about it or what you can do about it when you get the audit. Now here's the catch. We only have three spots, so head on over to tier11.com audit right now. Fill out the form and let's see how we can scale your business in the coming year. Creating a brand is part of performance marketing now with Amazon Meadows Update.
- [01:05]
B
Disney didn't sell a product. Disney sold a feeling and it's making memories, that type of thing. How can you Disney your own brand is how you're going to be able to compete against being just a product commoditized.
- [01:17]
A
The brand and the differentiator that makes you different than everything else that's out there is now a part of the advertising. And it's not necessarily the thing that will get the final click, but it will create brand awareness that will. You're listening to Perpetual Traffic. Hey, real quick. If you're looking to get your brand in front of growth minded marketers, CMOs, directors of marketing and agency owners, we're opening up our sponsorship spots for Q1 and Q2. Get in front of a quarter of a million marketers every single month at Perpetual Traffic. All you have to do is head on over to perpetual traffic.com for the details or check out the link in the show notes to apply. Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic podcast. This is your host, Ralph burns, founder and CEO of Tier 11. Today's show is all about the extension of, I think the last show that I don't know. As if we realized we were going to go down that road on the comments side and it ended up being, I think, a really good discussion. So if you've missed that show for whatever reason, go back and listen to it. We'll leave a link over in the show notes and it really is about how comments are sort of your sales funnel. It's like your sales floor, so to speak. And being able to attend to that and we were talking pre record. If you look at where all your comments are actually happening on your socials.
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B
Mm.
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A
Are they on your ads or on the. Are they on your social posts?
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B
The organic content.
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A
The organic content that maybe your social
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B
team or they should be on your Spotify listening record of this episode. Because I love commenting. You can comment on a per episode basis. I actually really like that because of episodes that like I listen to Diary of a CEO and they've now disabled comments. Why but like two bobs and stuff like that. Like I like. I enjoy commenting on a per episode basis and it's not in my Spotify wrapped. I'm hoping it becomes that way. So like the podcast you commented on the most. I love that you get to be provide feedback the way that YouTube lets you socialize on the content. And I think I told you in a previous episode how like TikTok and Disney launched all of High School Musical and made like 257 shorts. And this massive socialization of everyone consuming a 25 year old movie in real time with the masses like that was one of the coolest socializations of content. And I think Spotify gives you that morsel of it.
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A
So the comments themselves, the line between social and advertising used to be very specific lines. Like your social was where you kind of did your branding.
- [03:49]
B
Sure.
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A
And your ads.
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B
Evergreen stuff. The stuff that was.
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A
And then your ads were, hey, here's my thing. Buy. Buy myself 20% this week.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You know, 20% off. Here's my thing. Here's the coupon code. Very bottom of funnel. And that worked for years and years. Like we were just talking about this. I guess I've been running Facebook ads for almost 17 years now.
- [04:10]
B
That's how old I pretend I am.
- [04:12]
A
Yeah. So anyway, getting back to what we were saying, when this advertising thing started, it was just so simple. You could just put your product out there and say all right, click this thing and buy my. Buy my stuff. And so social was more about the branding and sort of altogether sort of evergreen. And now I believe unless you certified as.
- [04:32]
B
I think it's like becoming popular versus becoming profitable.
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A
Well, I think the popular stuff that tells the brand story is now the thing that's actually creating a lot of the profit.
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B
Well that's with Jem because they said like the way you stand out in ads is you have ads that feel organic and the way you make sales in organic is you've organic content that converts like ads.
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A
Mm. Yeah, it's true. It's. I Mean, you wanna stand out by blending in to a certain degree, but you also wanna be able to tell your brand story. And every brand has its own individual story, depending on what it would. You know, nothing is gonna replace a shitty product or a bad product.
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B
There are bad products that people believe in for the potential. And that's why they, like the current Tesla robot, is a bad product, doesn't really do anything worth $20,000, but it's still doing sales like the early adopters and the believers of a shit project. A product that's the only thing like there you can totally cut all of this out. But the Prius car was a bad
- [05:34]
A
product when it first came out, was
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B
mediocre and it was environmental, it was suggestively, environmentally better car. But when you looked into it, the battery that allowed that charging to be more sustainable, the hybrid aspect of it, as I understand, was actually environmentally detrimental when compared to other cars that you got rid of.
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A
Yeah, I mean, I think you could look at something like the Prius and say, okay, that sold. It wasn't necessarily a great product, but it was novel and new and no one else had it. At that point in time, there was no such thing as an electric or a hybrid car. So I think the novelty of it
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B
then, that wasn't the product. That was the prestige that is associated to the product.
- [06:13]
A
But it's also something that no one else had. I mean, if you're in a market and we've had, we've had customers that have come out with a product that no one else in the market has, and then all of a sudden and they're like, wow, marketing is easy. You know, it's 10x ROAS every single day, or it's 10x MER every single day. Because no one else has something like we have great. And all of a sudden you've got competitors that flood the market, that come out that are better. All of a sudden that's not such a great product because it's no longer new and novel and now it's flooding competition. That's half the price price or, you know, performs the, you know, the particular job to be done better than the original. So I think in the case of Prius and hybrid cars, because it wasn't truly electric, remember it was a hybrid, it was gas and electric. Is there really wasn't anything like it. And when it came out, that's one of the reasons why it got a fair amount of. That's why it got a lot of momentum now. I mean, the Prius itself, I rented a Prius about a year. Well about nine months ago in California. It was unbelievably great, amazing. And I drive a Tesla, so. Oh yeah, now there's another one. So when the Model S came out, like that's an electric car. But it was a cool electric car. So what. What I'm saying is that if you have a new and novel product, I don't think you really. Have you ever seen a Tesla ad?
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B
You ever seen one? I think all of Elon's entire X account is just one giant tesl Tesla ad.
- [07:41]
A
Yeah, but have you ever seen a Tesla ad? I never have, no.
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B
But there's a Tesla store at the Florida mall and that store I would argue is just one big ad they have. It's an in person pop up. So wouldn't that count as. Because you can't test drive from there.
- [07:58]
A
The point is this is when that came out, the early adopters for electric cars jumped on it. One of those was my wife actually we got one of the first like within the first six months. So we've had one ever since and we love it. But the point is, is like it was new and novel and it had an appeal to it that no one else had in the market at that particular point in time. So how much marketing do you really have to do for that? That's the question most.
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B
Until you.
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A
Most of the people that are listening to this show probably are a market where there is a lot of competition.
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B
Sure.
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A
And they're not Red Ocean. They're not the only ones. Absolutely.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Whether it's a personal injury lawyer, whether you're runting mental health centers, whether you're selling digital products or anything. Supplements, Supplements. You are in a absolutely competitive market. So the point of this is that you need to be able to differentiate from a brand standpoint and social. The social part of it's your social media that used to be like, oh, this is sort of all about our brand, but it's not selling. And then your ads were let's sell the product. Now the two of them have merged together in my opinion with. And I have great. I have a lot of experience with this with Andromeda especially because the brand in the differentiator that makes you different than everything else that's out there is now a part of the advertising. And it's not necessarily the thing that will get the final click. It's not necessarily the thing that will get the sale but. But it will create brand awareness that will your other ads in combination with all of those top of Funnel. Here's what we stand for. Here's our founder story. You know, great example of this is a client that sells $4,000 hammocks. Yeah, that. Yeah, $4,000 hammocks, but they also sell three to $400 hammocks, which pretty expensive, actually.
- [09:50]
B
I was like, I got a hammock included with my uplift desk, and that was like a free thing added on for buying. Yeah, I'm like a $400, $4,000 hammock.
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A
That's right. So how you can possibly sell a $4,000 hammock? Well, as it turns out, if you try and sell it in the newsfeed with, hey, here's our hammock. It's $4,000. It's really, really nice. You know who buys it? Nobody.
- [10:19]
B
Unless it's like, Mr. Beast and he's making a video of like, I bought the most expensive hammock out there. That type. I'm. I, I'm not in the hammock marketplace.
- [10:30]
A
My example here is that as soon as we stopped trying to sell the $4,000 hammock and we sold the story of the hammock, which is it's. They are hand woven by 250 women in third world countries that otherwise would not have any way to provide for their families.
- [10:54]
B
Okay, so you're selling legacy and, like, feeling good. The prestige again.
- [10:59]
A
Yeah. This is brand. This is differentiation. You're going to feel like products with
- [11:03]
B
purpose and that my dollar is going towards. I feel good for my capitalism. Like, you're like, what is it, like a limousine liberal or like a Lagos caviar where you're like, I love being a consumer, but I'm fighting for social rights so I can use my dollar to consume as the best I can. So I make the world a better place on the back end.
- [11:23]
A
Absolutely. But that's the angle that is now. So the test that John and I did for this particular client. Wait. My marketing manager finally convinced me to run a wild experiment in this episode. Because we want to prove what the conversion engine can do for your brand. We are giving away three of our $10,000 deep dive audits for free. We're going to look at your creative, your media, buying your actual business metrics to find exactly where your growth is stalled. This is two weeks of our best work, but we only have three spots. So go to tier11.com audit right now. Fill out the form, and let's see how we can scale your business. The we stopped running the $4,000 ads. Look at this. $4,000 hammock. We sold the $400 hammock but sent all the traffic to the homepage. Which tells the story of.
- [12:23]
B
Yeah, why some traffic to the homepage.
- [12:25]
A
Yeah. And it's also like a. By the way, here's like halfway down. This is our social story. This is exactly what we do for, you know, this population of women in Central America. This is, these are the, you know, this is, these are the fabrics that we use, that they're all organic. You know, it's eco friendly. It's all this sort of thing. So that story, we brought that into the ad, and those are the ads that are driving all of the Whole Foods is hammocks. Exactly. But what we're finding out is that in those ads, we're mentioning the $3,400 hammock, obviously, as a part of the story. But as soon as we stopped running the $4,000 hammock ads, sales of the $4,000 hammock hammocks doubled.
- [13:13]
B
Okay.
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A
Because we were attracting them with the story of the brand itself. They're clicking on the homepage, learning about the brand, more understanding. Maybe, you know, oh, I can buy maybe two, three, four of these things. And then, oh, by the way, here's the $4,000 version.
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B
Oh, I'm like, 2, 3, 4. Those $4,000.
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A
2, 3, 4, like the three $400 versions.
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B
Or I can get one. That's the Cadillac of hammocks.
- [13:38]
A
In the past, those ads, those ads that are now conversion ads would have been social ads. They would have been. That's what you tell on your social story, not salesy. That's the thing that's different now about Meta Andromeda. You're compressing. You're actually creating your own individual sales funnel in your ads. So much so that by the time they actually click and go to your site or go to Amazon, they're so pre framed with your brand story. Makes you different how, why you should be premium priced. That we're selling a $4,000 hammock without even.
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B
But you're not selling a $4,000 hammouse. You're selling the benefits of owning a $4,000 hammock.
- [14:16]
A
Absolutely. That we're selling $4,000 hammocks as a result of it. It's complete reverse psychology. But if you really do think about it, it's actually human psychology and it makes a whole lot of sense.
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B
Yeah, well, people want to buy the transformation. They don't want to buy the product. And so it's, it's, you know, it's like, not never be feature forward, always be benefit heavy. Because when you're talking about the features of like, oh, this hammock is 4, 48ft long or whatever, unless you've got a giant partner, like, those type of things aren't what people are looking at until the very end of the details.
- [14:47]
A
Yeah. I mean, there's other ads that are, hey, it's portable. You know, you can fold it like, this is the 3, $400 version. You can fold it up and then it actually has a compressible. I forget hanger. I guess it is. It's what they call it, which you can put in a backpack. And they show people setting it up. And then there's all these.
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B
So this is camper friendly. So if you want to have glamping done, you can glamp with a hammock, feel like you're outside and then not. Okay, that makes sense.
- [15:13]
A
So after some of what we're sort of finding is that this mini funnel that's going on inside their Facebook ads, they're attracting because 60, 60% of the spend is going towards the social benefit. The how, the company, the founder story, the company story, what's behind the brand. Those are the ads that are capturing all the attention. And then middle of funnel, the ones that are, hey, it's portable. This. You can take it glamping. You can do this with it. It's, you know, it's great Halloween costume.
- [15:48]
B
If you failed to show up, want to look like Jane Birkin and make your own hammock purse. Like, all these different.
- [15:53]
A
Haven't explored that angle, but that might be the angle. The bottom of funnel ads are the ones that, hey, get it here.
- [15:59]
B
Yeah.
- [16:00]
A
And so what we're seeing is people sort of coming in through this virtual funnel just based upon ad spend.
- [16:05]
B
Yeah.
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A
Top of funnel, middle of funnel, and bottom of funnel. And when they're actually in the bottom of funnel, by the time they actually hit the site, then they're looking at saying, oh, I feel so good about this product. I can afford the $4,000 one now. The $4,000 one is not the one that we're trying to sell. We're trying to sell the brand. But the brand itself was. And that branding play was what used to be considered sort of social media marketing. Now it's all the same. It's all together.
- [16:32]
B
That content is good content.
- [16:34]
A
Absolutely. And so for anyone who's listening or watching, like, what's your brand story? Like, why do you exist? Like, why are you different than.
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B
Yeah. And your usp is your unique selling points that make you like, why would I choose you over my other options?
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A
Right.
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B
And if you're going to be like, sometimes if you are on a race to the bottom for price, if you've got a consumer good that's commoditized and you are on this race to the bottom, especially if you're going after Gen Z, we've said this a lot like they have no loyalty and they're just looking for the best price point. So now in 2026, so many of the factories abroad are competing direct into the American market where they used to be white labeled. It's a shitty race to the bottom. And if you want to be able to have room and margin, you have to sell not on the product, but on the brand. And I'm so glad that you've got this case study that's showcasing it because if you like that race to the bottom. I hate saying this out loud, but I have a friend who had a business. He was in the school supply space. He had a specific product that he was selling 10,000 units a day for on Amazon. When Amazon Basics came out, within three weeks he lost his number one listing that he had held for six years.
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A
Oh, Amazon came out with their own.
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B
Amazon came out their own. He didn't have a brand, Right. So his company went from worth millions of dollars overnight. He had an auto company and he had. Yeah. And a lot like for the Amazon listeners, you know this to be true. You drive external traffic to your Amazon listing and you know that when you want to exit your Amazon store, if you don't have a diversity of revenue channels, if all of your revenue is Amazon, you're one Amazon Basics decision away from not existing.
- [18:19]
A
Hey, one of the reasons why you're probably listening to this show is because you're trying to figure out how to finally scale and grow your business. And if you've been a longtime listener here, you understand that a lot of the things that we talk about are because we've tested them and done these exact strategies, including creative diversification, all the Andromeda changes, all the stuff we talk about with Google, with social, with email, website conversion, CRO, all of that stuff. If you're listening to this show, you're probably wanting some kind of deeper level of understanding of what does this all mean to you. Well, we want to prove that to you by giving away three of our $10,000 deep dive audits. In that audit, we'll look at your creative, your media buying, your campaign structure, your website, your actual Business metrics, including all the MPIs that we talk about on this show all the time to discover where the gaps are and why your growth has stalled. Now this isn't one of those AI audits that's automated. This takes our team about two weeks to put together and it's so comprehensive it blows away customers like this. So here's the catch. We only have three spots to give away here. So head on over to tier11.com audit to claim your spot right now. Fill out the form and let's see how we can scale and grow your business in the coming year.
- [19:47]
B
I had a seven figure Amazon brand. We had a review that we, you know, we were doing $10,000 a day in summers and there was a review that came out that was related to fulfillment and it got so much virality and, and then we also like, we got tombstoned. There was another time where One of our ASINs was listed as like child pornography and then Amazon pulled it for three months. Cause they have to do this type of investigation. Like those things happen and those are real concerns that if you don't, if you're just a product and you're just on Amazon, you won't have a way to survive through those challenging months. And even if you're not on Amazon, whether you're high ticket or whatever, if you don't have a brand, like you said, you're just selling a product and I'm going to buy the product that's cheaper you, in order to convince me to give you more money where you'll have margin to find me as a customer, you have to sell me on your brand.
- [20:38]
A
Yeah, I mean it's the same thing could be said, I mean if you're not selling on Amazon, the same thing could be said is a number of people that, that come to us say hey, I want you guys to run my Google Ads. And like, well what do you actually. Yes, we're good at Google, but that might be the wrong question to ask because if you're competing against everyone else, and this is just a pretty good example of one of our clients in the Brazilian butt lift market, okay, Brazilian butt lift near me. Breast augmentation near me. Botox treatment near me. If you're competing for that, you are competing against everyone else on price and you are creating a brand for yourself. So if I client comes to us and says, hey, I want you to run my Google for all these high value keywords, that's great. I would prefer, I would actually flip the script on that and say if you're spending 80% of your money on Google, like, if you're getting 80% of your business on Amazon, you are at risk of just being a quality or
- [21:39]
B
you're at risk of one update destroying your business. How many, how many info coaches in like 2021, when there was the iOS update, they're like, oh, I could sell a $27 product. And I was selling it for $4 each. I'm just making money. New login, new login. And then that's radically changed with the iOS updates. And every, at least every month, almost every week, I meet another business owner who was like, this was crushing it for me before.
- [22:07]
A
Yeah.
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B
And I was like, you had lazy advertising. You were lucky. I'm glad you rode that wave as long as you can.
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A
Yeah.
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B
But you had no brand. You had one product.
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A
We all did.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And. But it was easier back then. So anyway, so a brand that is relying on single channel in a market where you're not getting any brand, different differentiation, it's a, it's a recipe not only for economics that tend to not work well, but because if you are competing against everyone else in your market. And Brazilian butt lift Boston, for example, is one of the keyword phrases for this client.
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B
Brazilian butt lift Boston. What a mouthful.
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A
That's it.
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B
Say that three times strong.
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A
Absolutely. I don't even know what a Brazilian butt lift is. All I know is a really expensive keyword. It's like a. I think it's from
- [22:49]
B
somewhere else and they put yeah. In your book.
- [22:51]
A
Because it's like a five, it's a 15, it's anywhere between a 10 to $15,000 procedure.
- [22:57]
B
It's a very us.
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A
So if you are competing against everybody else for that keyword, you're not. You are first off spending more than you need to and you're also commoditizing yourself. So the way in which for you to get away from that bloody red ocean of Google Ads or bloody red ocean of everyone else that's competing against you on Amazon is to create a brand for yourself on the interruption platforms.
- [23:21]
B
Yeah.
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A
On Meta is the one that we talk about all the time. Programmatic Native is another one that we use quite a bit. TikTok.
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B
If you're Amazon, it's TikTok. TikTok Shop is the most dominant resource, especially with the influencer space and GMV max.
- [23:35]
A
But. So if you're, if you're relying on any one of these specific channels, now is the time. I hate to say it, but you got to create a brand but creating a brand is part of performance marketing. Now with Amazon Meadows update, I would
- [23:48]
B
say it's not just a brand. Like what's like when you're saying it's part of the performance. Like you need to have a brand. And a brand isn't just like a logo and tone of voice and a guide, it's a story. I also think like where Disney has done it so well. Again, that's my background, why we're in Orlando to begin with. Disney didn't sell a product. Disney sold a feeling. And it's making memories. Right. And it's Apple sells the feeling being superior to everyone else around you. Like I am a technical boss. I mean that's why Android users feel so ashamed for their green bubbles. Apple users like are buying into again the prestige. Like you're selling a feeling that I have the latest technology that like piece of it in a brand. It's not just creating a logo, it's not just creating a color guide, voice guide and a story. It's what is the feeling you want someone to take away every time they see or interact with your brand. And Disney's the easiest one. Like you think about Disney, you think of the memories if you went to the parks and resorts. What was it like when you saw your daughter meet Mickey Mouse for the first time? What was it like when, you know, like that first feeling of rope drop where you, you went on a ride with your teenager who would have ignored you every other day. Like that type of thing. How can you Disney your own brand is how you're going to be able to compete against being just a product or commoditized.
- [25:04]
A
Yeah. What's your thing? What's your thing that's different than everyone else? Like we found, you know, and I'm looking on their website right now with a client that I'm talking about, we discovered this. We're like, well, what's your. We don't want to just be selling. Here's this great hammock, that's 3, 400. This. Here's this great hammock, that's $4,000. It doesn't work that way, unfortunately. They left, went to another agency, came back. We looked at it very differently. There's gotta be a different story here in order to really move the business forward. And it wasn't about. It was almost like it, it had to happen. Because if all you're going to do is compete on price or us versus them and not develop any kind of level of brand awareness for what makes you different, all you're going to be doing is just, it's a race to the bottom.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Because it's whoever has the lowest price and you're a company $hammock is an expensive hammock still. It's like I can buy hammock at, you know, Walmart for I guess under a hundred bucks. Like maybe a hundred bucks. Like the cheapest. So the point is this, it's like all of this 39 on 39 on Walmart.com so all right, so they're selling 10x that and then what is that? A thousand x if I do the math correctly, or the $4,000 hammock. How are you going to sell that? You need a story. You need branding as part of your advertising in order to, to persuade and get people to understand the story behind the story. And that's what this whole thing is about. So if you are a brand that's struggling on Google or Amazon, the best.
- [26:34]
B
But when you're saying Google, are you talking about paid ad, Google organic ad,
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A
paid ad, Google paid ad, high intent based keywords. You want to really flip the script on that, you should make it 80% on the socials and 20% on Google. Hey, stay tuned for part two of this episode by subscribing to the channel so you don't miss the gold nuggets for the metrics that matter and grow your business. I'll see you on the next video.
- [26:59]
B
You've been listening to perpetual traffic.