Felix: Austin Maxwell and Kyle Sell from Kanga, Kanga invented a patent, the world's ice-less cooler, designed to fit around an entire case of 12 ounce beverages, and were started in 2017, based out of Clemson, South Carolina. Welcome, guys.

Austin: Hey, thanks for having us.

Kyle: Thanks, Felix, looking forward to it, man.

Felix: Awesome, so, this all started as part of a class project. So tell us more about this class project. What was it about?

Kyle: Yeah man, so we were all in an entrepreneurship class in the spring of 2017 at Clemson University down in South Carolina, and our class was tasked with a project to develop a solution to a problem that we faced on a regular basis. And being down in the South, being a large ACC football school, something that we regularly faced when we were tailgating was warm beer.

Kyle: And the reason we were walking around with warm beer is because you really only have two options on game day when you've got multiple miles to walk from tailgate to tailgate, or to the bars, or to the stadium, wherever you're going. So what we would do is, we would go to a convenience store, grab a cold 12 pack of beer, and just walk around with it, something that we like to call a "naked case."

Austin: Public brewdity.

Kyle: Public brewdity is a campaign that we started. So we'd walk around with that case of beer, and the handle would get soggy and rip on us, and the beers would get warm within an hour or two. But the alternative was for us to bring our three, four hundred dollar massive Yeti coolers which we all have, and we all love, but it wasn't the most practical option for walking around four, five, six, seven hours tailgating on game day.

Kyle: So what we actually thought about and invented was the world's first koozie for an entire case of beer or soda. So we took that same concept that you'll see on any other can insulator, it's just a high quality neoprene that wraps around the can itself, and the idea is to just keep the beverage cold for the length that you're going to be consuming it.

Kyle: So we thought, why isn't there something that exists that will keep the entire case of beer cold for the entire length that you're going to be consuming that case of beer? And that's how the idea was founded, and the class project was a great way to put things together although we did end up with a B on the project, it's not something that we were too bitter about.

Austin: Yeah, B for beer.

Felix: I love that this is the epitome of a problem that you would face at a big football school, and you guys took advantage of recognizing that problem. So this was a class project, and I'm assuming that there was no requirement to actually turn this into a business, so what made you guys decide to pursue this even further outside of the classroom?

Kyle: Yeah man, so we didn't really know one, if it was going to work or not, and two, if there was really anything with legs here, but everyone who was part of the group at that point was really passionate about entrepreneurship and creating something out of nothing, and doing something a little bit bigger than just the class project. And from that point we ended up taking a roll of scuba foam to a local seamstress and a 12 pack of beer, and we asked the seamstress if she was able to wrap something around the case of beer, and create a sleeve.

Kyle: And we said, "If you're able to develop this for us, this prototype, we'll let you keep the 12 pack of beer." And she said, "Absolutely." And that's how the first prototype was made. And the team just had that mentality that, hey, if this works, if this is actually able to keep the beverages cold, then why would we not want to pursue this, why would we not want to take the risk? There's really no better time than to pursue a company than when you're in college.

Kyle: You have honestly the most amount of time, and a lot of people don't realize that, but it's the best time for you to pursue a company, and you have so many resources with the university that no one really thinks about. And that's just where everyone's mentality was at, and led us to kind of move forward onto a Kickstarter campaign and grow from there.

Felix: Got it. So you found that this was a problem certainly for you and your team, your prototype got a solution, were there any other steps that you took to determine if there were other people that would pay for a product like this, as a desperate need for a solution like yours?

Austin: Sure yeah, I mean, the most important thing when you start a company, especially a consumer good, is you've got to test the market. So we were able to find a local manufacturer in Greenville, South Carolina, about 45 minutes up the road, and we made 150 "prototypes" and we just leaned on our local network and people in the area. We sold all 150 in about three weeks, which was a good success, but we wanted to get their feedback before we actually moved onto the next sides.

Austin: So we learned a lot from that. Our original product was very thin, and that was a big red flag for us, and the original product didn't even have a handle. So the same issue that we were running into when we were just walking around with the naked cases and the handle breaking, was happening even after we made our first prototype. So testing in market was huge.

Felix: Got it. So you mentioned that you made 150 of these prototypes, these very first versions. Where did you guys end up selling?

Austin: What or where?

Felix: Yeah, where did you go sell it?

Kyle: So we tapped into the local community, we reached out to some local manufacturers as well as doing events. So Austin had a great connect to a local social account for, what was it-

Austin: Yeah, we did some events locally, and we were able to deplete those 150 units pretty quickly, just face to face, handshake. We were starting to get a website built at that time, but it was really just leaning on the local community.

Austin: And then the first time that we really engaged some e-commerce opportunity is when we launched a Kickstarter campaign, because you've got to think about it, when there's four or five college students starting a company, we really had no access to capital whatsoever. So to initiate a large scale production run and take that risk of holding on to inventory was just not something that was really in our scope.

Austin: So we actually found out that Kickstarter was going to be a really easy way for us to have that low-risk opportunity and collect the cash up front before we went into the production side of things, and that's really what helped us get the company off the ground and launch a real first production run.

Felix: Got it, so that first 150 were all done by the seamstress that you guys had met?

Kyle: Yeah, the seamstress made the prototype and then we found a local manufacturer who makes scarves and stuff like that in the Greenville area, and they were able to ramp it up a little bit for us, but we knew that that wasn't going to be the solution after the feedback we got, and so we were able to actually win a pitch smack down competition, which is kind of a mini Shark Tank-style that our university hosts, and we got first place and about $8000, and that helped us file for patents at an early stage, and what that really led us to was our first investor/mentor, who had a lot of experience in sourcing products, especially consumer goods overseas.

Kyle: And that's what led us to a connection with a factory in China, and that's who we engaged when we were planning out our Kickstarter campaign. So it was about three different factories, prototype, then a slightly larger company to make the 150 units, and then we were able to source a really quality manufacturer overseas in order to ramp up our first production run.

Felix: Got it. So in that first 150 that you sold, you mentioned that one of the important things for you was to get that feedback early on. What kind of feedback were you getting, what kind of questions were you asking to pull out the feedback that you needed to know how to improve the product?

Kyle: Yeah so, the most important thing is just to let people use it in whatever environment they think it's going to be best fit for them. So we came up with the idea honestly to solve our tailgating problems, but that didn't necessarily mean that that was the only problem that it was going to solve, so we just got these into the customer's hands and we were able to send out forms after and just ask them 100 questions.

Kyle: "Where did you use this? How long did it work for you? What type of beverage did you put inside? What would you improve about the product? What did you actually like about the product? Did you think the price point was fair?" Just kind of unload everything that you possibly could, and for the people that took the time to sit down and actually criticize us, that was the feedback that was the most important for us.

Kyle: Of course, you're going to have the friends who are just going to say, "Man, this is perfect the way it is!" But that's not helpful. It was really the people who broke it down and kind of ripped us apart that helped out the most.

Austin: Especially the people who didn't like it.

Felix: Right, so I want to break this down tactically a bit because I think this is super important, steps that you took that I think anyone can take when they are unsure yet if their product is proven or not. So you sold all 150 at first, would you collect the emails or something at the time you were selling it so you could follow with them later, and how soon after they got the product in their hands were you following up with them?

Kyle: Yeah, email is how we got in touch with everyone, and then we sent out a Google form, it was just the easiest way for us to get the information all consolidated into one place. So we let them run, I'd say, about two to three weeks, we were very considerate about the time and very intentional with how quickly we wanted to move to the next phase, but what we were very fortunate was how quickly we were able to deplete the 150 units.

Kyle: I mean obviously it was a lot of friends and family and people in our local networks, but it was awesome how quickly we were able to get them to use it out in the market. This was springtime, so it was not necessarily tailgate season, which was good feedback for us, because people were out using it on the boats, they were taking it to the pool, they were taking it on the golf course.

Kyle: So we had a wide variety of age ranges that bought from us, and a wide variety of basically results that people had with it, and I'd recommend that to any entrepreneur who is looking to get into consumer goods or really start any company is, test at a micro-level, and I know 150 people might seem like a lot, but it's really not that tough to get your product, whether you're giving it away for free or whether you're trying to sell it, we had to sell it at the time because we really didn't have any money, but if you're able to get it into some influential people of all different age ranges and age demographics, it can be very very powerful. And you need to collect as much information from them as possible.

Felix: Yes, as you're speaking of the sample size, 150 people, now that the business is much bigger, now you have many, many more customers, has the feedback that the initial 150 given you, has that changed as you've scaled up, or has it pretty much stayed the same from that initial 150?

Austin: Yeah, no, it's changed a lot. So since getting that feedback, we've improved the product drastically, when we started it was essentially, we said it was koozie for a case and it was exactly that when we started, it was just a thin neoprene liner that you put on top of a case. Since that, we've bulked up the insulation, added a handle, and just tried to make it more of a premium product. Less knick-knacky and more something that when you get it, you want to hold on to, and keep close to the heart.

Austin: And it's actually interesting because what we figured out in doing that was, ultimately where we thought people were going to use it isn't necessarily where they are using it. We may have done too good of a job at making something that people want to hold on to, so tailgating isn't necessarily the best place to be when you're running around drinking all day, you don't want to carry something out with you that you're scared to use.

Austin: So we found that people love using it around the house, it's great for dinner parties like barbecues. We found a need in the casual use cooler, being that ultimately it saves you a trip to the store, it's easy to use, and it's just, you grab it from the fridge, slide it in and you've got cold drinks.

Felix: Yeah, I think that's important about how you recognize, you saw that people weren't using it the way that you thought they would or weren't using it where you thought they would.

Kyle: Yeah, the original use case where we had thought, we realized it was much broader than it actually was. It wasn't just the tailgate product, it was perfect for multiple occasions, and with the new round of feedback, because we're really big on that, we're always innovating, we're on iteration number four of the cooler right now, already working on iteration five and six, and obviously you don't want to get too caught up in always improving, but it's important to keep that on the horizon and we're really satisfied with the current version of the product.

Kyle: But there is always room for more improvement, so that's why we're continuously collecting more and more feedback, and what the consumers are telling us now is much different than what they were telling us a year and a half ago. Now they're just pointing out small details that can make very large improvements versus way back then, we had some huge pointers that were going to make small improvements. So we're constantly trying to collect feedback and data and we send out email blasts all the time and we'll incentivize people with free koozies or free gifts in order to have them fill out a short survey and let us know what their experience was with the product, because as a young company, we're still learning who exactly our customer is.

Kyle: We have a really good idea of who we think it is, and we've had success targeting that person, but then you'll have someone come in the next day and purchase eight of these, and it was not our core demographic or someone you would have never expected, so always be willing to learn.

Felix: Right, so was that the best way to get people to be super responsive, I guess nowadays is to offer these freebies, what are some ways to get people to start giving you feedback once you have a little bit of a customer base?

Austin: Yeah, one hundred percent. Ultimately we try to not discount our product, so we try to find creative solutions to offers. So whether it's a free koozie, free shipping, anything of that nature, we'll offer it to them. We also kind of use that feedback loop as an incentive to play up the next purchase. So one thing that we started doing which we've seen pretty good success with is offering a gift card for if you complete a survey, so when someone goes on and completes the survey, we'll give them a five dollar gift card that they can then apply to their next purchase. So it's half getting that feedback but also retaining that customer on the backend.

Felix: Right, I like that. Do you find that the unsolicited feedback that you get, maybe from a customer email, they reach out to you unsolicited, is different from the feedback that you would get through these more solicited approach, where you are offering them some kind of free gift or some kind of promotion to get them to provide that feedback?

Austin: Yeah, one hundred percent. So one thing that we've noticed is it's more... I'd say that the feedback that we get from the email list, the surveys, is more past, or reactive, saying what's good about the product, what do you like, so on and so forth. But then people reaching out to us is just great ideas, that's where we get a lot of our ideas from. Ultimately in the Kickstarter, actually one of the biggest things that happened out of that was Anheuser-Busch reached out to us, because they saw the potential for the custom aspect of it, which we had never thought, that had never even crossed our minds leading up to that, but who was it that reached out, from Anheuser-Busch? Do you remember?

Kyle: Bud-Lite.

Austin: Yeah, so one of the buyers from Bud-Lite reached out and was like, "Hey have you thought of doing B to B custom?" And then we constantly having people asking for, "Hey, do you have this school or this professional sports team?" And that was, "Hey, what about licensing?" So on and so forth. So I'd say it's very different just from the types of feedback we're trying to get.

Austin: When they're replying to a survey, it's more internal stuff, what can we do better, versus when they reach out to us, it's more, "Hey, this is an opportunity for you guys that you can capture."

Kyle: Yeah, Felix, I'd say both definitely have merit and people's opinions are going to vary, and when we incentivize people to fill out a survey, because we recently launched a six pack, and something that we did to allow early bird access to our six pack cooler was to have them fill out a survey.

Kyle: And we realized that a lot of the feedback from that specific survey was skewed very positively, and we weren't sure if that was because the people just wanted to unlock that early bird special, versus if someone is just going to randomly send us an email and be more honest and more critical. Both have merit to it, and it's just kind of how you want to analyze and absorb the information that you have in front of you.

Felix: Gotcha, it makes sense. So it sounds like solicited feedback is often about the existing product or past customer experience, unsolicited feedback is more forward thinking of products and features that your most avid customers are looking for.

Felix: All right, cool. So you mentioned that you ask a lot of questions when you put out these surveys. What would you say, looking back on it, maybe even more particularly early on, what kind of questions do you think gave you the most critical information that you were able to act on?

Kyle: Yeah, I think just asking people when they were going to use the product, what their experience was when they used it out in the open, depending on was it brought to a barbecue, was it brought to a golf course, did they go to a pool party, was it used for tailgating, and then asking how the price point felt to them. Did they use it as a gift? What we're really trying to determine from our surveys is, what is the use case? And where is our customer base taking such a wide product?

Kyle: We do feel that after four iterations now, that the level of quality of the product is there, so we don't ask as many questions about, "Hey, what do you think about the material? What do you think about the handle and the koozie pocket," and stuff like that. It's moreso, "Where do you picture yourself using this? Where have you used it in the past? What was your experience with that?" It's really important to get that scale.

Kyle: We like to do the zero to 10 scale a lot because you can really get a more specified answer. If someone has a seven experience versus a 10, that in our eyes, is a significant difference. So people to answer honestly, and just asking broad questions. Stuff that they can fill in themselves, because some people give you two words and some people give you four sentences. The two words might be the most powerful thing you've ever read, but just having that availability to answer whichever method they prefer.

Austin: Yeah, and ultimately from that, getting those use cases, you're able to learn a lot about your customer and ultimately figure out who that customer is, which is, from an e-commerce standpoint, from more importantly an advertising standpoint, is huge, because knowing your audience and figuring out where they are is one of the most important things you can do just to grow your business.

Felix: Right, I definitely want to talk about how knowing where they take your product and how they use it, the use case, how does that affect your messaging and marketing in one second, but I think one other important thing is about the price point. I think that's something a lot of people struggle with, are they maximizing a profit on a product that they're selling, or are they losing a lot of customers because they're selling it for too high of a price point.

Felix: Now, can you tell us about how much you sold those initial 150 at first, and what were the responses to the question about the price point?

Austin: Yeah, so we initially got the 12 and the 24 pack out at a $30 to $35 price point. The initial version of that product, we definitely were overpriced. We knew it was overpriced, but that was the price point that we wanted to get the brand to, and so we were comfortable getting it out, those first 150 units at that price.

Austin: Collecting the feedback that we knew we were going to get, "Hey guys, this is overpriced, but if you did this, it would be worth that price point." Because we really want to sit in that sweet spot of $30 to $40. It's a very giftable price point, it's affordable for young people even if you're still in college or if you're right out of college.

Austin: Even for adults, it's not the $400 coolers that you're seeing out in the market. We're trying to fit in that lower cost but premium value prop to the consumer at the same time, and so when we tested 150 units, yeah, we were right in that $35 and we knew it was on the high end, but that was the price that we wanted to get to, so we kept collecting the feedback, making improvements to the product, and now our product sits at that $30 to $40 price point comfortably. And we rarely have anyone push back on the actual price of the product, which is something that I think we're all pretty excited about.

Felix: Yeah, I think that's super forward thinking and an important point to make, which is that you guys set an initial price that you're selling this beta product at, at the price that you wanted the brand, you wanted the product to eventually get to, that way you can pull out of your initial customers the information about what is the gap that's making this not work yet.

Felix: So then you can go in and fill in that gap and create the features that make it worth more, versus I think the process that maybe a lot more people gravitate towards, which was that they want to undersell it or sell it for what it's currently worth because they don't want to feel like they are trying to run a scam or whatever. But you guys took a much more forward thinking approach, which again, got you more information that you needed.

Felix: So now, when you put out a product that you feel is probably not worth this, yeah, but I do want to know what's missing to make it worth it, how do you ask the question to your customers to get that information out of them?

Austin: Yeah, well something that's been pretty unique with our situation is, like I said, we're about four iterations through the product, so the initial prototype with the local seamstress, a slightly better but still not good version which we did with 150 units locally, and then we did the Kickstart campaign, we went overseas, made some slight improvements to the product, that was the same version of the product that we took onto Shark Tank with us, and so after Shark Tank aired and we were just submerged with traffic and a lot of customers purchased, we had our biggest spike from an e-commerce perspective, the biggest brand awareness hit that our company has had to date, but that was still that medium version of the product. We still knew that it had room to improve.

Austin: So at that point, we did have a lot of feedback from customers. They loved it, they really liked the direction that it was going, but they even provided more feedback. And we collect a lot of feedback through Instagram, through Facebook Messenger, through all of our social media platforms as well as on email. We have a form on our website which it'll send directly to everyone's email in the company, and we took that feedback, and that's when we made iteration four which is where we sit today, which is a much higher, much better version of the product that we had even just had four months ago when we were on Shark Tank.

Austin: And it's just been a unique challenge educating people on the improvements and on the difference and keeping our price point consistent, but that was something that definitely helped us out, was that we didn't increase the price even though we improved the product quality, so we brought more value to our customer without increasing the price.

Felix: Makes sense. So now as you go through rounds of these surveys and asking questions, do your questions change as your product evolves, as the business grows? How do you decide what new questions to ask?

Kyle: Yeah, so the important thing when you're asking questions, is you want to find out, what's the information that we want to know the most at that given time? So for iteration one, we just wanted to know, "Hey guys, does this product work, do you guys see yourself paying the $30 to $40 for the product?" And now the type of questions that we're going to be asking and that we are asking with this version of the product is, "Where can we go from here? What else can be done to the product to improve it?" Or, "What experience did you have with this that is now scalable for us, that you could see other people using it?"

Kyle: And the questions are definitely changing, but still to the core for us, we just want to know, did someone find value in this product, and did they have a positive experience when they used it, if they used it correctly. That's another challenge that we run into a lot, is that a lot of people think that it's either a lunchbox or just an insulated bag, and they don't take the entire cardboard base and put it inside the product.

Kyle: So understanding, if a customer had a bad experience and we reach out to them, "Well hey, how did you use it?" "Oh, we just threw 12 loose cans into your product and it only stayed cold for two hours." Well then we have to educate them that to have the best experience and the way the product was created was to insulate the entire case itself. And when they do that, they come back and they're like, "Oh my god, I didn't know that, that's amazing, it worked out for me." So just having those questions ready has been the most important thing for us.

Felix: Yeah, I think it's critical that you ask the questions that you need to know at that given time, like what is actually the obstacle in front of you that's stopping you from moving forward. I think that a lot of times people are like, "Oh, this is an opportunity for me to get all the information out of my customers," and ask them a question that you might not need to know the answer for for like 10 steps ahead, but you're specifically focused on what is the problem in front of you guys and the company right now, and what is the question I need to ask to get past this obstacle. So I think that's important.

Felix: So we were talking about earlier about how knowing where your customers are using your product, knowing the use cases not only would change the features, the improvements you make on a product, but also, more importantly, especially from a e-commerce perspective, how to change advertising and messaging and the marketing to reflect that information.

Felix: So tell us about that. How do you use information from the use cases that your customers are telling you about, how does that change the way that you do your advertising and marketing?

Austin: Yeah, one hundred percent. So one big thing that we try to do is just figure out where our customers are in terms of the digital standpoint. So we've got a group of interns that come in, and I just have them scour through social, figuring out, finding customer re-posts, anyone who has done anything with our product, used our hashtag, where are they posting pictures with it, as well as using our analytics to figure out what categories people fall into that are buying our products.

Austin: So one thing that we definitely use is Facebook's interest targeting for prospecting, and a lot of that is pulled from our afinity categories within Google Analytics. So just kind of figuring out what group that customer falls into, and ultimately where they're at digitally.

Felix: I got it. So you are qualitatively looking at, I guess two approaches here. You're qualitatively looking at what your customers are using it, where they're posting photos of them using it, you're also looking on Google Analytics, looking at where your visitors, what kind of categories they belong to, what affinities they have. And collectively you use that for your Facebook prospecting at a high level, the very first time anyone is ever exposed to your brand, you are a targeting interest so that you are seeing the use cases that people are, of your current customers, are using your product.

Austin: One hundred percent. And then a big thing that we try to do is cross reference those two to group them into cohorts, kind of break it down into, who is this person, who is this person, or who is this group, who is this group, to be able to show them relevant messaging and relevant media.

Felix: Yeah, speak about that. So now that you have the targeting for someone that's using it around the house, for example, which is different than your initial hypothesis that they were only going to be using it for tailgating, what do you change in the photo or the video and the actual copy that shows up on the Facebook ads?

Austin: One hundred percent. So yeah, one thing we definitely do is, the actual activity of what we're showing. So ultimately you have different age groups and we found that the majority of people that are using it around the house range within the 35 to 50 age range, so that group, we're able to then mature our copy and our media to resonate with them. But then also using people within our demographic to show that to give them that nostalgic feel like, this is what I do, these are the people in their glory years using the aspect of nostalgia as well as the relevant use case to target that person and ultimately try and get them to the site.

Kyle: Yeah, I feel like the audience and the content are definitely the two things that we interchange a lot of, right, because a six pack of high end craft beer, it's costing them $15 for that six pack, but some of our consumers are buying a 12 pack of White Claws, and might be female, male, 21 years old versus 45 years old. So the content that we put out there, and we collect content on a weekly basis in all sorts of different settings, just so that we have a library of assets that when we do want to tailgate that 22 year old female girl who is going to a party and bringing a 12 pack of White Claw, we can pinpoint that exact moment and make her feel, when she sees the ad, that she's understanding and picturing herself in that scenario.

Kyle: And when we want to target the 42 year old male who's got a jersey on and they're watching football on a Sunday and they bought that expensive pack of craft beer, we have the content and the audience is built out to be able to pinpoint that exact person as well.

Felix: I love it. So let's talk about the content creation. It sounds like lots of different interest and demographic targets that you could hit for the same exact product. So how do you guys create, or you mention almost collect content, to change up the content based on the targeting that you're doing?

Kyle: Yeah, what we're super fortunate about is, we have a great network and one of our co-founders, Teddy, he is one of the most talented people we've ever seen with a video camera in his hands, and we've built out a small team of media ambassadors who will help us execute content if and when it's needed.

Kyle: And then what's really unique about our team of five or six people is that all of us are extremely different. We're each customers of our product, but in much different ways. We do very different activities on the weekend, and we all have different personalities, so we're actually able to bring a piece of each team member to the forefront when developing content, and basically say, "Hey Austin, whatever you're going to go do this weekend, let's film what you're doing this weekend with the Kase Mate, with our product, and collect content around that."

Kyle: Which is going to be very different from what Kyle is doing, so let's go get content from what Kyle is doing that weekend, and then we all come together and we're going to have five different opportunities to pinpoint five different audiences of people, and be able to get them to picture themselves in that exact environment.

Felix: I got it. So I think that's important, where you're constantly creating content. I think the approach for a long time was that a lot of people would just create ads once, or create one type of creative and then try and find different tweaks on the way to target, the way they write their copy and everything, but you're constantly creating different actual creative, different video, different images that you're putting into these adds.

Austin: You have to, and you have to test everything. That's the most important thing that we've learned from the e-commerce side of the business over the last 12 months is that certain things that you think are going to work really well are going to fail right in front of your face, and certain things that you thought were going to fail end up being the most traffic-driving and conversion-high piece of content that you really didn't even picture.

Austin: So you need to be open to testing, and set a budget aside to just go ahead and throw what, $50, $100 at these different types of ads, analyze the return, and then if it works for you, then maybe you need to go back and get more high quality content around that same subject, and then double down on that. Triple down on that, and just always be monitoring and testing.

Felix: Got it, so let's talk tactically again. So what is the testing process like for you guys? So let's say you identify there's an interest target or demographic, how large an audience do you usually try to break down these tests?

Kyle: Yeah, so we try and break it down relatively small. We try to keep it within the 100,000 to 200,000 range in terms of people that we're able to get access to. Ultimately we're not spending enough money to get access to all of them, but then we try and load up the creatives that we're showing as well as, pick two or three different messages to test across those creatives and then testing different messages with different creatives and different messages with the same creatives.

Kyle: Just figuring out what's going to work and what pairings are most effective, I think that's what we really try to hone in on, just to get the right people to the site at the right time.

Felix: Got it. So when you talk about load up on the creatives and ads, we already talked about how it's important to constantly create new ones. For any given test, how many creatives are you looking to work with?

Kyle: Yeah so for an audience, I would say that we start with around five to six creatives and then from there we try and hone it down to one or two that we let run for as long as they're performing, and then we restart. So ultimately we try to get them up to at least a three to one ROAS, return on ad spend, and then from there we filter them into a higher category of, these are the ones that are performing, we let those run, try to optimize those. We try to optimize, try to mess around with them less, just minute tweaks, and then ultimately we run those until they're no longer relevant, and then we repeat.

Felix: Makes sense, yeah, that's the name of the game right, just constantly testing things out. So you're talking about five, six creatives, two different messages, so almost 20 different ads for each one of these tests.

Austin: Essentially, yep.

Felix: Got it, okay, makes sense. Now what is your approach then when you want to scale up? Let's say you find a particular ad where it combines the creative and the messaging and it's just killing it and you're getting at least a three times return on ad spend that you're looking for, what is your process to try and blow this thing up?

Austin: It really depends on the type of ad. So with prospecting, you can throw more money behind it and get more people to the site, but then from that you really have to focus on your re-targeting. So pairing those two together and figuring out what's working on both the prospecting and re-targeting side, that's extremely important.

Austin: So ultimately we have a similar testing structure for re-targeting, but in terms of targeting, for those ads, we try and do it as relevant as possible to the user, so we create custom audiences based on what their actions are on the site. So if they go to a specific product page or a media page or something of that nature, we target them with ads that show either that product or something that's in line with that media page being a branded video, lifestyle content, so on and so forth.

Austin: So really having a good system on both prospecting and re-targeting side, that will allow you to get up to that point where, hey, I'm able to throw more money to this, get more people to the site, and then convert on the back end, rather than just throwing money behind an ad and seeing that money go to waste once you reach a certain point.

Kyle: Yeah, Felix, what we've learned is that it's a constant balance between driving traffic and then converting customers on the site, and re-targeting falls in the middle there, but there will be times where we can drive an absolute crazy amount of traffic to the site, but it's not going to convert it to what our standards are, and there will times when the site is converting really well, but our ads were not generating the traffic that we really were hoping or wanted to.

Kyle: So with us being such a small team, and we have five full time guys, we have three different distribution channels of the business, so e-commerce is just one piece of the puzzle, it's really important for us to balance our resources and our budgets so that we optimize the best return on the traffic and the conversion, and that's something that we've really been focusing on the last couple of weeks.

Felix: Right, makes sense. So I think the re-targeting part makes sense where you're showing them a product they looked at. What's the messaging there? How do you change up the way that you talk about the product once they are actually already familiar with it, once they've already come to your site, and probably browsed a few products, maybe read your about us page. How do you change up how you talk to them once they are already aware of you and your product?

Kyle: You know, that's something that's really cool that we just learned, was that there's a lot of success in the re-targeting space when you have a photo of a customer submitted product that they were using out in the market. So if you re-target someone with a photo of just a customer and maybe their comment on the picture, and they're out on the boat using it, and it's a high quality image but maybe it's not professionally taken, like some of the content that we'll post on our feed, it can actually have a really good re-targeting opportunity.

Austin: One hundred percent. Ultimately from a re-targeting side, we want to do as little of the talking as possible, and we want to let either our customers or a press outlet, use what they say about us to make that sale, because you don't want to get too sales-y about it at that point because ultimately digital is an interesting space where you're constantly disrupting people where they're not expected to buy, or not necessarily looking to buy.

Felix: So I think at this point, once they have already seen your product and you're re-targeting them, what you like to go after then is more of the social proof, get the unbiased reviews from your customers or from some media outlet. So I want to talk about the media pages that you mention you re-target off of. So what are these media pages that you are driving customers to, to begin with?

Kyle: So we're not necessarily driving people to our media page. We get a lot of traffic to our media page, we try to create good long form content that can be used in other forms, both from a branding standpoint and a marketing standpoint, kind of using that as a catchall. So like we said, we have Teddy who is just a wizard with the camera, and he is really passionate about creating movies, telling stories, so we try to pair those two together to get a balance of, hey, here's a little bit of branded content with marketing content, and use those together to ultimately help sell our product but also build our brand.

Austin: Yeah I feel like something really interesting that we've been doing and has been working for us, is when Kyle just mentioned the long form content, I'll dive into that real quick. We started a reality TV series called The Fun Factory. The warehouse that we just moved into, we were previously in my partner's parents' basement, we were able to scrap together a couple hundred bucks a month to afford a very large warehouse out in the middle of nowhere, but we have this 15 to 20 minute monthly reality TV series on YouTube called The Fun Factory, which is really just documenting the team's monthly lives and day to day lives, and whenever we do a fun event or go somewhere, however we're using the product and really just doing crazy, funny, stupid stuff.

Austin: But what's unique about that is if you can capture someone's attention for that full 15 minutes, that's amazing, but what we're able to do is grab 15, 30, 60 second snippets from within that long form content and run ads specifically on those smaller portions. We're able to grab a swipe up story, a 15 second swipe up story or a 30 second Instagram recap, and just find a way to distribute one piece of content in 10 or 20 different ways has been a really effective use of time.

Felix: I like the strategy where you are now spending 20 minutes to create this long form content that you're cutting up into this micro-content out of those 20 minutes, into like 10 or maybe even more pieces. Now once you are pushing those onto Instagram stories or setting up those ads in Facebook, where is the next step that you want your viewers to take? Is it to go back and look at a product, or go back and look at the 20 minute long form content?

Austin: Ultimately we want to get them to the site and get them to sign up for our mailing list. We utilize email as it drives about 20% of our revenue on site, so ultimately if we can get them to go from social media to our site and we capture their email, that's a win for us. It's not necessarily getting them to purchase right off the bat, goal number one is to get their email.

Felix: I got you. So you create this long form content and then you chop it up into micro-content which then you are trying to drive them to sign up for your email list from there, and that's where more of the more direct response marketing happens.

Austin: Exactly.

Kyle: Highest conversions is definitely on the email.

Felix: Got it. So are you saying anything in the micro-content to get them into the email? What is that handholding or that process that gets them from watching a 15 second, 30 second clip of this long form content into wanting to sign up for the email list?

Kyle: There isn't necessarily a call to action within the video itself, but we will put it in the caption sometimes, and then if we're just doing unique and funny and different stuff, and maybe someone had watched the full 20 minute video and then a day later when they see that 15 second snippet, it brings them back to that long video, and then we always make our website accessible. No matter what form of content it's distributed in, the website has to be accessible to people. And when it's accessible and available, it's a lot easier to get people to show up to your website. You never want to have someone having trouble searching for your site. It needs to be readily available at all times on all pieces of content that you distribute.

Felix: Okay, so just to make sure I understand this. So the micro-content, there is no direct call to action, but there is some kind of reference to, that there is more to see, there's another 20 minutes, and they go to your site to watch that, and ideally they watch the entire thing or a good portion of it, and they're like, "Wow, these guys are super interesting, I want to follow more along with what they're doing. Maybe I'm not a customer yet, but I like where they're going with this content, let me sign up for their email list."

Austin: Exactly.

Felix: That's the thought process.

Austin: And an important thing to note is that those long form contents, and a lot of our content, is hosted on our website. So we want people to go there and then that's linked to YouTube. So if we can get people to the site to watch the different videos and the different documentaries, different people that we partner with, the longer you can keep them on the site, the more likely they are to shop around and maybe have an idea in the future of where they could use the product.

Felix: Right, okay. So it sounds like it's definitely a worthwhile investment of your time to create this 20 minute video. I think it might still seem super daunting to people out there, to how do I even put on a production like this. Does it take a lot of plan out, like you need to have a lot of people involved, what is... If someone is a one person team, how can they follow along with your strategy to create long form content that can then be distributed as micro-content to eventually get people to sign up for email lists?

Kyle: Yeah, I mean ultimately when we started, we didn't necessarily have a plan of, "Hey, we're going to build out this extremely in-depth production." We just started by documenting what we were doing. When we started out, Teddy was good with the camera, but now he's great with it, but he wasn't anywhere near the level he's at now.

Kyle: So just by documenting, there's so many resources to putting videos together, just showing the process of, "Hey, this is what we're doing, this is what our journey looks like." Just getting that message across of, "Hey, this is us, this is what we do," selling them on the brand first, I think that's really important. It doesn't need to be super well thought out, super high quality, just as long as you're documenting what you're actually doing.

Austin: Yeah, if you're a one man show, it's totally possible. I mean relationship selling is never going to die, and people buy the Why, they don't always buy the What. So if you can convey that personal touch, that genuine, sincere product and connection, why you created it, what your story is. If you can put that into video form or photo form, whatever it takes, but then find ways to distribute that and get it in front of your customer's eyes, people are going to remember the story. When they purchase the product, they'll be sharing that story that they remember seeing about your product whenever they're out using it.

Austin: So we're huge on making sure we're documenting all of the large events that we go to, anything unique that we're doing from a day to day basis, and just try to be as genuine with the content as possible. You can record it on an iPhone for all the matters. It doesn't have to be, like Kyle said, a full fledged production. Just do some unique and different stuff and be comfortable talking in front of the camera, and if you're not, do a little bit of practice. But it'll go a long way, once your customer base can make a connection between what you're selling and why you're selling it.

Kyle: And ultimately it doesn't even need to be video content. If you're documenting what you're doing, you're taking pictures, you can repurpose that into a blog, or call it a photo story, which is something that we want to get more into because that will also fuel our site media and our marketing media and so on and so forth. So it's really just using... If you are your core customer, use your product and document it.

Felix: Right, so you don't have to plan a polished movie, you're talking about just documenting your journey. Almost like if it's too professional, it looks too distant from your customer, they key is to be genuine and authentic and I mean, do you recommend sharing the problems and the issues, how transparent do you recommend people get with their documentation of their journey?

Kyle: I mean ultimately it's up to them.

Austin: Case by case.

Kyle: We try and be as authentic as possible, we try to add a little bit of humor into it, we all think we're funny guys. So it really comes down to the person. Yeah, I think it's really on a case by case basis, like Austin said.

Austin: Yeah, the big thing that I think with the video or any content is showcasing the problem that your product is solving. That's been our most successful thing is, when we went up on Shark Tank, I was carrying a big bulky Yeti cooler, and my partner was carrying a styrofoam cooler, and we were showing the negatives of those two products, and how our product was the solution. So just keep that in mind whenever you're creating content or depicting a story on social, is problem-solution oriented.

Felix: Got it, okay cool. I want to talk a little bit about the recommendations that you gave us about the applications you used, the first one here is OptIn Monster, which you use for A/B tests, email sign ups and the messaging and the landing pages. So tell us about this, how exactly do you use OptIn Monster on a day to day basis?

Austin: Yeah, so one thing we do is, we create different [legion] forms based on pages. So if someone's on a product page and OptIn Monster has the beautiful ability to do exit in 10 pop ups, and they're about to exit, hey, throw them some type of value, whether it be a code for a gift card on your next purchase, an add-on, like we do free koozies, or as we like to call them, "brewzies," or bottle openers, and just kind of capture that purchase when you have their attention.

Austin: And then also things like media, the media page example, we do a more targeted legion form for that, and from that we're able to segment our lists based on what form they're signing up for, where they're signing up for it, so on and so forth.

Felix: Got it. And then you also mentioned you use the Shogun page builder for landing pages. How do you use that?

Kyle: Yeah, so based on whatever ad we're running, for example after Shark Tank, we just did a broad outreach ad, trying to target people who watch Shark Tank, people that we thought were in our core demographic of customers, and then we would go and drive them to a Shark Tank specific landing page.

Kyle: We made a big production documenting our journey to Shark Tank, called it, "No Way," just because we didn't expect to get the deal, it was kind of a surreal experience for us. So we... I'm sorry, I completely lost my train of thought there.

Felix: How do you use the Shogun page builder? So you mentioned that you build around different events or different things you guys are promoting.

Kyle: Yes. So yeah, so Shark Tank was a great example. For our prospecting ad, we try and drive people to a more education-based page. We've found that educating people on this product is more difficult than we thought. People think it's a cooler, people think it's, like Austin said, just an insulated bag. Getting across that messaging of, "Hey, you have to slide the case in, you have to keep all layers on it." So whether it be event specific or goal specific, we try and tailor our landing pages according to what the end goal is.

Felix: Makes sense. Awesome. So buykanga.com is the website, B-U-Y-K-A-N-G-A dot com is the website, and I'll leave you with this last question. What do you guys think has been the biggest lesson that you've learned so far this year that you certainly want to take advantage of this lesson that you've learned in the upcoming year?

Austin: Yeah I think for me personally, the biggest thing that I've learned has been to be open-minded wen you're engaging new consumers, when you maybe have one idea in your mind of who your customer is, that might not necessarily be the case. After you do the rounds of testing, after you get the feedback and after you analyze what people have said, you need to be open-minded to be able to adapt and change who that core customer may be, because coming out of the gates, we thought that this was a 21 year old college student product just for tailgating, but now we're able to sell to 30, 40 year old people who are going to gift it away as part of a holiday gift for this upcoming season, who are going to take it on the boat, the golf course, take it to the beach.

Austin: And that wasn't necessarily what we had in mind for the product when it was developed, but now we're kind of double-downing on that because we all were open-minded and we were willing to adapt to our surroundings, and be willing to test the different things that are out there, and it's really a cool thing once you start to find some success on the e-commerce side of the business, and it's just been a rewarding experience for us so far.

Austin: But I just tell everyone out there to be open-minded, try as many different things as you can. When you find the things that work, double down on them, but then don't stop trying new things. Even when things are working, keep testing and trying other things, because you really never know what's going to be the most effective for your business. So that'd be my piece of advice.

Kyle: Yeah, mine was a little different. For me I was just going to say, more of a personal thing, starting this, this being all of our first entrepreneurial venture, I really have learned the value of balancing work and life. Entrepreneurship is a really all-encompassing lifestyle and it can be really lonely, so finding that time to set aside, "Hey, I'm going to step aside for a couple hours, go do this," and really finding that balance is extremely important and ultimately will make you happier, and that's what I've learned just from my experience and my journey.

Felix: Awesome, I appreciate that. So buykanga.com, again is the website, thank you so much for your time Austin and Kyle.

Kyle: Thank you Felix, we really appreciate it man, and then check us out on Instagram too, it's at kangacoolers.