Felix: Today I'm joined by Ace Reunis from Threadheads. Threadheads is a pop culture-loving T-shirt brand, illustration studio, and printing hub rolled into one delightful organization, and was started in 2018, and based out of Melbourne. Welcome Ace.
Ace: Thank you, Felix. Thanks for having me.
Felix: So you told us that when you came up with this business you had imagined a new business model for your niche print-on-demand graphic Tees that didn't really exist in the market. Can you tell us more about that? What is it about your niche and what differentiate your product from what was available in your market?
Ace: Yeah, I mean, I don't think it was an original business model from the get go, I think, in some ways, the actions led to the strategy. So, we really started with just the idea to sell graphic T-shirts and apparel. There wasn't really a good pop culture T-shirt brand in Australia at the time. There were some from overseas or that had moved overseas like Redbubble, Threadless, TeePublic, a handful like that, but there wasn't anything really in the Australian market that we thought was particularly good. So we got started.
I was actually overseas at the time. I'd basically been studying, I'd been traveling. I did a humanities degree, so I was in political science, and not really engaged in the business world that much. But I started to sort of get into digital marketing, and I could see that that was sort of the future where things were headed. So, while I was overseas, my brother put me in touch with Marcus, my business partner. And I knew, at the time, that Marcus was selling predominantly through the eBay channel and that eBay was starting to get some competition with Amazon and some other marketing platforms including Shopify. And so, he was really interested in moving to a direct-to-consumer brand. And he had some of the equipment, we had some dusty old printers. We sort of worked in a dungeon, to be honest. It was like this place with all these tiny rooms, I think it was a massage parlor or something. Anyways, it certainly didn't seem like the makings of anything serious.
And so we bootstrapped everything, around 50,000 total went into the business. And look, the original goal was to make just really an amazing graphic T-shirt store. We sort of looked at the rest of the market and even those companies that I mentioned overseas, and we felt that something was missing and that was really there wasn't an emphasis on quality, there wasn't an emphasis on, I guess, having a really strong portfolio of designs. And really the designs and the art and the illustration is at the heart of a graphic T-shirt store. And so, the goal for us was first of all to sort of curate the products that would come into our store. We were initially designing a lot of it ourselves, it was some very basic stuff, and we were drawing on a lot of pop culture inspiration there.
And then, basically, in 2019, we built a private app that allowed us to pay artists that would be able to join the platform and receive a commission to their work whenever they made a sale, basically. So around the same time we moved to Shopify, which was phenomenal, I think, the infrastructure that that gives you as a platform and then the ability, at the time anyway, to purchase a theme, like a USD220 for what I would consider to be a 10,000, $20,000 website was immensely powerful. So, I think, that's pretty much what happened. And the original goal was just to build the best graphic T-shirts in the world and that's still sort of our dream.
Felix: Awesome. So you had mentioned that the kind of seeds of the business came from your business partner selling on eBay, and you had mentioned that you guys are working together to bring this more direct-to-consumer, basically, from moving from a marketplace to your own platform, your own website. Now, when you're making this transition, which I think some listeners out there might be considering this where there are selling through a marketplace like eBay or Etsy and they want to make this transition into their own platform, what kind of assets or skills did you find were helpful in this transition from, again, selling on a marketplace to your own platform?
Ace: Well, I think, the first thing that you get is a control over your acquisition channels and retention channels. I basically started doing a master of management and marketing sort of at the same time as we started Threadheads. And what I could see in that course was it was really focused on traditional media, and that wasn't really where I thought the industry was headed.
Ace: So, my goal was always looking at digital media and working out, okay, well, how do we actually sort of grow a business online only? One of the things with eBay is that you can do paid advertising and then they sort of ship that to Google Shopping. And you can appear in organic Google Search as well through that and then, of course, you have the people that are just searching on eBay. But really you are limited in the scope of the sorts of channels that you can use to acquire and retain customers. So, today the fundamental difference to a direct-to-consumer brand on Shopify is you need to be aware of, first of all, how you can actually drive traffic to your website. And I guess we can go through some of the ways you can do that?
Felix: Yeah, yeah, we can definitely dive into the channels you get to now enable now that you're on your own.
Ace: Yeah. So, look, I think earlier on in the piece what you'll do when you have a website and you're sort of starting off fresh is you're not really focusing on driving traffic, even people that might have an acceptable conversion rate and their website might be optimized to a standard that they can actually generate revenue if they get enough traffic... But in the early days, for me, it was all about conversion rate optimization, website tweaks, I'd be thinking about the color of my Add to Cart button, should it be purple or something like that. Those weren't the tasks that moved the needles. And so, you'd also be focusing and be bogged down with customer service and other reactive tasks. I think the hardest path is to take the most time, consideration, and effort. And in the beginning, founders ultimately need to be marketers. You need to be obsessed with growth, to some extent.
What I think, if you're trying to think about getting your first customers in your Shopify store or for your Shopify store, SEO, conversion rate optimization and email, are sort of foundational. Okay? So, basically, you make sure you optimize your website for search and conversions when you launch your store. So, I'll go into that. So SEO, you go through your titles, your meta descriptions, trying to get ranking for your brand name as the first thing you want to do, and then some longer tail sort of keywords.
And then you need to optimize your website for conversion. So there are simple ways to do that, you might go and get reviews, have an organized navigation. One of the goals on the website, you want people to be able to find your products, you want people to be able to order products that they want, you want them to be able to add them to their cart, you want them to go through checkout all in a seamless sort of flow. Then you want your product page copy, so do you have compelling messaging on your product pages that can actually convert people? Can you actually persuade them to buy your product? Does it convey some sort of value proposition for them? And then, also, you use that in concert with product photography because people are visual beasts, ultimately, they want to see what they're buying. So a combination of product page copy, that is the written communication, and then the visual communication, the product photography, those in concert is what will get people to convert and go down your funnel to purchase.
Then, you've sort of set your website up. You've done a bit of SEO, you've done your conversion rate optimization, you need to actually drive traffic. And both SEO and conversion rate optimization, which I probably focused a bit too heavily on in the early days, don't do that immediately, they won't give you immediate wins. What you need then is you need to attract the initial customers with paid ads. And so, the great thing about a Shopify store and a direct-to-consumer brand, it's not like eBay, you have a lot of channels to work with. So, with paid ads, Google and Facebook, period. For Facebook, look, I really encourage people if they're starting off and they're learning, just go to YouTube to learn to do this stuff.
So Facebook you need to set up a prospecting campaign, and that means a campaign where you're going to try and get cold traffic, so people who don't know about your brand, don't know about your product, you're trying to get them to your website, you're trying to build brand awareness. Okay? Ultimately, you still want that cold traffic to convert and that is dependent on having a good website with all the stuff that it needs to convert. But you want to get people hitting your website so they at least know that you exist and then there's other ways to retarget them. Okay.
Then, the second thing I do, set up a Google Shopping campaign. So Google Shopping is a really powerful way of getting traffic and it really takes them to the product page, which is very close to conversion, so it's fantastic. And then you set up search campaigns, which are the sort of the text-based ads that you see at the top of Google Search results, above the organic listings. So, the only other thing I'd say in Google Search then, is also just bid on your brand name. I can't emphasize this enough. You need to bid on your brand name so people can actually... If you type in Threadheads in Google, not only do you get the organic listing because our SEO, Google has indexed us over time, and anyone who types Threadheads in Google will see us there, it's that organic listing, but you also get the paid listing above it. So you're getting all of this real estate for your own brand.
The whole point of building a D2C brand on Shopify is you're building a brand, you want people to find you, you want people to know that you exist. So those people that you're hitting up with Facebook Ads, and even word of mouth, you might be telling someone about your brand and they may tell someone else, or someone might buy a product and they might friend, they need to be able to find you. So bid on your brand name, and also try to get your name ranking in organic search. And that's already a great start to sort of making sure that your name carry some value or carry some weight, I would say.
And then, the important thing here is get Klaviyo, there is no other real, I think, email solution that works so beautifully with Shopify. It's just an amazing tool. And then you can set up flows like abandoned checkouts, which I'm sure people will be familiarly with, and you can capture sells on the backend. And then the other way to retarget people, retarget your warm traffic with Facebook Ads. So you can actually create an audience of people that have visited your website and then show them ads. And this is all basic stuff. But all of those sorts of activities working together, are pretty much how you sell products, and it is all dependent on having a great product and a good website experience, we talked about conversion optimization. But those are the way you actually get traffic to your website, which, I think, a lot of founders, at the start, they are not so focused on, they are focused on, maybe more product and experience. But you need traffic.
So I would just say lots of YouTube videos. I honestly made more money from one YouTube video that I watched in 2019 than I did from my entire $100,000, we get it sort of for free from the government here in Australia, but I sort of have a bit of debt from that, my entire degree that cost me $100,000 was less valuable to me and has made me less money than one 12-minute YouTube video by some, I can't remember his name, he's some French dude, but he's good at Facebook Ads, basically.
Felix: I'm going to have to grab that video link from you after this [crosstalk 00:13:02]
Ace: All right. I'm not quite as relevant as it once was, but it's still a fantastic video.
Felix: Yeah, I'll grab it from after the show. So lots of great stuff in here. You basically broke down a high-level the way that you generate traffic, not just traffic but profitable traffic. So let's break this down a little bit. So the first thing you talked about was kind of mostly based around, again, SEO and conversion rate optimization. I want to touch on this first and kind of go in order.
Ace: Sure.
Felix: So you had mentioned that the first thing you want to make sure is there is a seamless checkout process. Now do you remember what kind of changes you made along the way or maybe even what mistakes you see other people making, especially brand new entrepreneurs with their checkout process that you think if you make this change you can actually see a lift in your conversions?
Ace: Yeah. I don't think there is a silver bullet. I think there are things people miss out on. So the first thing you go to is like, okay, user review application. And it sort of depends on having a good product again. But you might use judge.me, I know a lot of people use Yotpo, there's Okendo and some other great one that are a bit more expensive. But judge.me is a great budget one to start with, judge.me, I think it's called. You want reviews, that's the first way I would say of gaining momentum.
Then, the second thing is, again, make sure your product descriptions and your product photography is really strong. And a lot of people will maybe cobble together their product pages. But you need to just make sure those things are really tight. And then I know a lot of themes. If I was going to the theme store now, I'll buy one of the... There's a few good themes. I still don't want to give them away. There's a few vendors on the theme store that know their stuff. Okay. And if you go to them and you get an extendable theme that is one that you can customize enough without knowing code... Me and my friend, we know a bit of code so we've been able to make adjustments to our website. But if you don't have any programming experience, you need something that allows you have a bit of control over it so you can communicate the benefits of your products really effectively, you can maybe include some of that brand story that sort of warms ups a prospect and sort of gets them to love what you do.
The number one rule with conversion rate optimization, for me, is go look at the best websites in the world that you look up to, maybe they're in your niche, maybe they're not, but they're on Shopify, and do what they do, if it makes sense. It depends, again, on the niche. And then once you get to checkout, I mean, it's Shopify checkout... I don't even touch the checkout, we're on Shopify Plus. But the Shopify checkout it's been designed by people at Shopify with the intention to sell. And they know what they're doing, I feel, better than I do, so I'm just like, "Yeah, I'll go with you guys. I trust you." So checkout, you're all good with Shopify, that's one of the great advantages of Shopify over big commerce, and WooCommerce. Hey, I wouldn't even touch those platforms anyway.
Felix: Awesome. Okay. So you mentioned getting those reviews, using different apps and tools to reach out to people in an automated way to get those reviews and show them on your product page. Are you highlighting or displaying these reviews anywhere else to get more use out of them?
Ace: Not really, honestly. Product page that's where you're converting people, so drive traffic to your product pages. Google Shopping, great example, people click on a link in Google Search, it takes them to a product page, they look at your product photography, they look at your description, they understand why the product will benefit them in some way, they scroll down, they get reviews. Okay, that confirms that there is some social proof this product has worked for other users. There's already so much trust built there that, for me, I wouldn't have my reviews anywhere but a product page. You could use some testimonials on the home page depending on what your brand is. But yeah, no, I think they're really effective on the product page, I'll put them there.
 So sticking with the product page a bit more, I think I've seen, I've had guests come on this show, their product page, some of them have thousands of words on the product page, some have less. How do you decide what is the right combination of how much copy, how much information you need to provide about the product itself to your customers?
I think it depends on the product. For us, we don't actually have a lot of copy, but we really touch on the key points. First of all, we go on the key points of the product itself. For us, the focus is on some of the designs are exclusive in-house illustrations by us, so we'll say exclusive designs by Threadheads. Then we'll say premium quality tee, 100% cotton. We'll have ethically sourced, because we have the accreditations for how we source our garments. And then we have printed in Melbourne or printed in Australia, I believe, because we sort of got that Australia focus, that's our market. We love Aussies, and that is sort of how we position our brand.
You want those key points there. And they're sort of for the product, but then, okay, do you have your shipping times there? And do you have a bit of flavorful copy about how they are going to actually get their product? And then what's the exchange process like? So make sure that you have something that's really accessible there that let's people know that they can exchange if that's part of your process, and I would encourage it to be. Because basically, people are going to have objections when they're on your product page, they're going think, okay, why shouldn't I buy this product?
Typically, it's those objections that get people to leave. So it may be price, it may be the fact that you don't have exchanges, it may be these sorts of things. So make sure you're just sort of answering any objections that you can think of that they might have. But as a general rule, if your product is more complex than, say, a graphic T-shirt which we sell where it's more predicated on the design itself... Do I like this design or not? then you need more detail, and you need to really communicate the benefits of this product over another one.
Felix: Got it. Okay. So then lets' dive into the actual traffic it been able to generate. And you had told us that you've had a crazy return, basically, on your investment, on your ad spend here, it says here $200,000 that got turned into $1,800,000 in return. That's a 9X return, which is a lot. I'm just letting people know because this is an important part for people to pay attention to because you had the experience, you had the success. So let's talk about that. So you mentioned first, prospecting campaign to keep things off, you want to get that cold traffic in. This is through both Facebook and Google Ads. What are doing to prospect for new customers?
Ace: What are we doing to prospect? So it depends on your store. We're a unique brand in that we have lots of different customer segments. So, I think, the first thing you do whenever you're targeting someone with an ad campaign, whether it's on Google or Facebook, is you're thinking about what your target audience is, and then you're thinking about which, within that audience, which respective segments are going to respond to a given message or product.
And so of us, in a prospecting campaign on Facebook Ads, I might think, okay, I'm going to go after people that like cat's and also like fashion and apparel. Okay. So they have a cat and some interesting clothing, and then I'm going to show them cat T-shirts. So that's an example of segmentation where in a prospecting campaign, these guys don't know our brand, they might even never seen Threadheads, but if I put cat T-shirts in front of someone who has a cat and also likes fashion and apparel and the cat T-shirts are funny, they might buy it. And I think there are a better chance of buying it than just showing it to everyone in Australia, for example.
I don't know how aware your audience is of the changes that are coming with iOS 14, but basically, Apple doesn't like Facebook, and their controlling data for user privacy on their platform or on their devices. So I think, segmentation will become even more relevant, and so you need to make sure that your targeting is on point. And the same thing for Google Ads, it's like, well, if I want people to find cat T-shirts, first of all, I'm only going to make it relevant to the keywords that evolve cat and T-shirt, and then I'm going to show them a landing page with cat T-shirts. And so, all you're doing is really trying to match what the user is looking for or what you think their interest might be, and then the offer you put in front of them.
I think this is fundamental marketing that people were doing even in traditional media, for example, on television, prime time, you might put a product that has a very broad appeal. We've got the tennis on at the moment, we've the Australian Open, you might put things that are more related to sport on television if you're running a TV ad. The great thing about digital media is, though, it sort of democratized the accessibility of it just like Shopify has in a way. You don't need to place a TV ad any more, it's not that expensive. So what I would say is test, experiment. Try to find those audience segments that are going to resonate with your message or your product. And then through testing, you'll find those segments and you'll start to see, hopefully, a good return on your ad spend.
Felix: I think that's a good point about how there's different types of segmentation depending on the kind of business that you're in, because your business is so design-heavy that it makes sense to segment customers based on their interests or their likely interest in the kind of designs that you have. But you also have a ton of products so there must be a lot of segmentation going. Talk to us about how you manage this or whenever you onboard or update your inventory, how do you make sure that you have an entire, basically, advertising infrastructure setup so that you can segment based on new designs?
Ace: Okay. So, look, there's a few ways. I think it depends what sort of ad creative you're doing. So if you do a carousel ad, for example, you could use a feed app. There is one called Awesome Facebook Product Feed. So if have a larger catalog store, you'd use a feed app. And you do the same for Google Shopping as well. And then you could do carousel ads and you could update that carousel with products for that given segment like the cat T-shirts and showing them to a cat segment. A cat segment, that's a thing. So, that's just one example showing this process.
I think the other thing is not only collections, you could do just a single image ad that shows someone wearing a cat T-shirt. And we're doing a gif one right now. Basically, this girl is in the cat dimension and there's these cats sort of floating in free space around her in this sort of portal. And that's just sort of a gif/video ad, short MP4 ad, and then that drives them to a cat landing page that shows just a Shopify collection. You don't need to even do carousel ads or anything like that. It's more like, okay, what do I need to make to drive people to this landing page? And then, who do I need to show it to? And then you think of a creative or an ad around that.
Felix: Got it. And I see the one you're talking about on your landing page on your website.
Ace: Yes.
Felix: Is there a difference that you see in the conversions or the return ad spend when you're doing something like just a good straight up product photo verses on a model or a lifestyle photo. Do you see a difference in what works, specifically for T-shirt companies and brands?
Ace: Look, I think if you're a brand like us, I don't think it matters as much. First of all, you want your product images to be good even if their templated. Ours ain't models or anything like that just because we have a huge catalog, and also, we're not targeting, specifically, men or women, so from the get go, for me, it was about, okay, I'm going to make unisex product pages, so I want men and women to be able to go to these product pages and they can still buy the product. So, that was really critical to us. But I think if you're trying to start a high-end brand, let's say you're trying to start a sustainable fashion brand, I know I've seen a lot of these popping up like hemp clothing, these sort of things, well, you probably want it to be a bit trendier, you want it to be cool, so you need some good model photography.
And in many cases, you're going to use the same photography that are on your product page in your ad. So if you're doing a photo shoot, you're trying to organize that product photography that I mentioned was so important, earlier on, for conversion rate optimization, you're getting some really good photography that you can use across multiple channels. Don't just use it in your Facebook Ads, use it on your product page. So first of all, there's a good fit between those two, if someone clicks on your ad, then they get taken to a landing page, and it has the same image, that's great, as well as other images, obviously. And then use that same image as a campaign or hero shot in your latest email, use it in your organic socials as a post, use it as story. What we're getting our heads around at the moment as a team, because we've got lots of creatives, it's like let's make content and let's make it omni-channel, let's use it across all of our channels. And I think that is probably the best approach when you're trying to come up with a piece of ad creative.
Felix: Yeah, certainly something that needs to be done. When you're talking about bootstrapping a business, you can't have assets that are one-time use, right, you have to be able to use it across multiple channels like you're talking about. Now, specifically, these prospecting campaigns, when these customers, these prospects see your products for the first time, are you looking to get the conversion right on their first visit, or what is the kind of funnel look like for you guys?
Ace: Yeah, I think, we're not a very high-involvement purchase, so that means there's not a lot of consideration that has to go into buying a T-shirt, it's not that expensive, I mean, it's a graphic T-shirt. So they might buy there and there, and we want them to. So I think, most of the time, with a brand like our, we definitely want a good return from our prospecting campaigns. And I think that's true for most Facebook advertisers or media buyers, it's like they want a return from their prospecting campaigns. It can't just be all done on the backend with retargeting. And I think that's even more true given the sort of changes we're seeing to the Facebook ecosystem coming now.
Felix: Got it. So if you have a low consideration product like a T-shirt, for example, they're talking about, you really have to optimize or aim to get the sale on that first visit, otherwise, it's probably not going to be profitable if you're looking just to get a customer on the backend, at least based on your experience. Now, if they land on your site and they happen not to buy, where do they typically come from next? Where does a customer come from next? Is it usually email or retargeting? If you had to focus on one area, especially anyone that's just starting out, where should their focus be on to get that customer if they haven't purchased yet?
Ace: Yep. So, there's three ways. So, the first way is retargeting on Facebook Ads. That's the most obvious way. Create a dynamic product ad and you show them the products that they were looking at. That's a very common one. The second way would be make sure, again, that you bid on your brand name in Google Ads and that you're optimizing SEO or optimizing organic search so you can rank for your brand name. Because people might not buy there but they might remember your name.
And we see this quite commonly, they might then type Threadheads in days later, go back to the website, and they still have that product in their cart, or they go to the product page they were looking at or they buy other products. So you need to be present to your brand name. And the third thing is, absolutely, pop up form with Klaviyo. Make sure you at least give yourself a chance to capture their email. If they get all the way to checkout and then they abandon, you'll get their email anyway through the Shopify checkout and that integration with Klaviyo. But if they don't make it all that way, if you have a popup form and they get their five or 10% code or whatever your offer is, then that's another great way of retargeting them on the backend.
Felix: Got it. So you mentioned this previously, then also just now, about bidding on your brand name. And when I first heard that, at first glance, it just sounded like a long-term play that eventually you have brand awareness where people will search for your name. But you're saying that you should try to capture that search traffic earlier than kind of a longer-term play. Is that accurate that from day one or from the beginning of you running traffic, to a brand new store, brand new brand, you still want to be able to bid on your brand name?
Ace: I think it will be in the first. I mean, if you think about it immediately, if you started a store and you haven't done that much SEO or you have done your SEO but you haven't given Google the time to crawl your page, well, if you start immediately running Facebook Ads, and let's say, they don't use an email capture form, and you don't hit them up with retargeting on Facebook Ads so you can't capture them that way, well, as soon as they leave your store, they won't be able to find you unless they do a direct query and type in Threadheads.com.au, for example. If it's not a direct visit and they don't remember your URL, well, they can't find you.
So you need to be somehow be appearing in search. You might say, "I'm happy to just go with the organic play and try to rank for my name using SEO." And that's fine. But there can be certain problems with that too like what if your name is similar to some other word, like for example, Apple, the tech company, it's like their name is also the same as a piece of fruit. So if you're starting off and your name is the same as a piece of fruit, well, potentially, you might run into issues there. But I think more generally, yeah, you can afford to bid on your brand name because you don't actually pay that much for the clicks if it's maybe technical, but if it's an exact match keyword then you're not going to pay that much for that. So I think the benefits of having that real estate to your name outweigh the cost.
Felix: Got it. Now you had mentioned that with SEO and organic, you mentioned that technicals need to be in order, like meta tags, titles, make sure that your images are tagged correctly. Is there much more that you can do if you're a T-shirt business? I think some businesses are highly technical or highly complex, were there's pros and cons to that, and one of the pros, I think, is they just have more things to talk about. When it comes to a T-shirt business, how do you give more kind of juice to Google in order for you to rank better?
Ace: Yeah. I think it's, overall, content. I don't think we've needed a lot of content. But at the end of the day, Google just vacuums up HTML, so you need to have text on your website. And that text may also include keywords that are relevant to what you're offering and what users are searching. And so the first step optimizing any website with it's on-page SEO is like, all right, I do my titles, I do my meta descriptions, I go through, I write my product page copy, I write my content on my home page.
The second thing might be trying to find what links you can possibly get. If you're not just doing just on-page, you might try to think about, okay, well, do I have a supplier? Are there any directories, maybe, in my area for local businesses and stuff like that? Is there any ways I can get some, what they call back links to my website? And what that does for Google is it sought of increases your domain authority. Google tends to respect websites that have other websites linking to that domain. So those are some of the basic ways.
I think a great tool, and it's a paid tool but you can start... First of all you need Google Search Console for SEO, and then there is this tool called Ahrefs, and it's industry standard, it's the best. Their blog is actually fantastic, so if you need to start on SEO, you need to work out what are the first 10 things I need to do to optimize my website for organic search, well, these blogs are fantastic. There's another guys called... Is it Brian Dean? He's from back linker, he is the guy who owns backlinko, he's fantastic. Neil Patel is like a industry heavyweight. He's blog posts tend to border on 100,000 words though, so I'd watch his video, probably, more than I'd read a blog post. And those are some people that I'd just look at if you're just trying to begin your SEO.
Felix: Awesome. So I think you mentioned that there are three things to do to recapture that customer that haven't purchased right off the bat, email, Google Search, and then also, I think, Facebook retargeting. So now when you are retargeting a prospect or even an existing customer, what are you showing usually when it comes to retargeting? Is it different than what you would show in a prospecting campaign?
Ace: Yeah, look, I'm probably out of practice, and I need to do better with retargeting. At the moment, we use, predominantly, DPA ads, dynamic product ads, that is we'll show the products that people have been looking at on our website. We've just gotten such a great return from those that I haven't really explored other options. But I know that brands are very successful using retargeting with single-image ads, video ads, showing creative…
And then having copy that's like... It can be playful about the fact that you know the user has been visiting your site or whatever. I think there is a really a great resource called Facebook Ads Library, and you can type in your favorite brand, let's say you type in... One of the big brands at the moment that's really crushing it on Shopify is called Allbirds. You might pop in their name in Facebook Ad Library and you can look at all of their ad creative running right now. And that's just absurdly powerful. I think the reason they implemented that, Facebook, was because of the election fraud, and so they needed more transparency into what advertisers were putting out there. But it's turned out to be a great tool for marketers. So if you need inspiration, you need to work out what Allbirds might be doing on the front end and the backend, well, just hit that up, pop their name in there, and you'll get a good idea.
Felix: Yeah, I think there is a lot to be said about just getting inspiration or looking at what's working, knowing that you don't have to kind of reinvent the wheel, looking at what's already working and apply to your business.
Ace: Absolutely. Like a ecommerce website, you're always going to have the cart. Where's it going to be? It's going to be in the top right corner. A lot of these principles don't change. There's very basic tenants of an e-commerce website. You need to just see what other brands are doing, and look at those fundamentals. Often, with e-commerce, there this sort of intersection between user experience or UI and conversion rate optimization. A lot of people say that design like experience is not as very different from conversion rate optimization than marketing and design links. Ultimately, user experience is about allowing people to achieve whatever goals they have in any given experience. So let's say in an e-commerce website is to find products they're after and then to be able to checkout with them, as we've touched on before. And really, the goals there align quite well with conversion rate optimization, so I think, look at the best brands, look at what they're doing, make sure it's a fit of your brand and then just implement it.
Felix: Awesome. So we talked a lot about things that worked well for you. Was there anything in a paid acquisition route where you spend money to drive traffic that just didn't work out as well as you would have liked?
Ace: Look, I don't think from a paid perspective, I think it's just, again, spending time on tasks that don't really move the needle. So don't just think you're really busy because you're doing customer service, because you're constantly sitting on your website and looking at what... All that conversion rate optimization stuff we said, just do it quickly, get it together, get your product photography, all these descriptions, you can optimize and you can improve them, but it shouldn't account for most of your time. I think the more time you spend in generating traffic, and thinking about that, the better you're going to do.
I think one of the things I stuffed up with paid acquisition in the early days, actually now I think about it, was not testing. So if you don't test, you're going to constantly run into this problem where you're like, "Oh, this campaign isn't working, already, well, turn it off." Well, look, maybe if you tested more ad sets or you were thinking about different audiences or different creative instead of choosing a different color for your Add to Cart button on your product page, you would get closer to your goal of getting a good return on your ad spend. So I think, yeah, more time testing, maybe on things that really should be tested, that are really important.
Felix: Yeah, I think this kind of forms self-awareness can make or break you, right, it can kill a lot of resources if you aren't aware that you're using your energy, or money, or time, on things that aren't actually moving the needle. So now this might just be maybe gut instinct for you or just second nature for you at this point, but what's the kind of the question that you ask yourself to make sure that you're focusing on the things that are actually moving the needle? How do you make sure that on a given task you're not sinking time on something that's actually not going to make a difference?
Ace: Look, I think it's actually a really hard one. How do you be highly productive all the time? And I don't think you can be. I think I go in waves, where I feel like I'm achieving a lot of things, and then times were I'm just like not quite getting as much done as I'd like. I'm not sure if this try, but I find that the harder tasks, the ones that require more effort, that require more thought, that require some modicum of research, those are the ones that actually move the needle. I'll give you an example, I have not done an about page, or what you call Our Story, an about page, I've not done it for months. My friend Ash who works with me, he's like, "Hey, have you done the about page?" And I still haven't done. That is something that adds a lot of value to the brand. A lot of websites have an about page, and we've gotten this far and we still don't. So look, I'll say, after this interview I'm working on the damn About Page.
Work on the tasks that take a bit of time, take a bit of effort, that you sort of know, intuitively, are valuable. And I think that also comes from just lots of research, you listen to podcasts, you're watching YouTube videos, you get inspiration, you see what other brands are doing, and you know it's working for them, so that already is a great source of truth, I think. You've got these people who probably know a lot more than you, I know a lot of people who know so much more than I do and I'm like, "Okay, well, it's working for you. You're sort in my niche, you're in e-commerce, you're a direct-to-consumer brand..." That will move the needle sort of thing.
And it should be, I should just say, it should be focused on selling. As I said, a founder has to be growth oriented, they have to be marketers. So we're talking about moving the needle, customer service is great if you're trying to keep customers and stuff like that, it's really important, customer experience is everything but think about how you're going to sell your next product, that's what I would say.
Felix: Yeah, I think keeping your eye on the right thing is super important. I think there is something to be said too about how, especially when you're just starting out early on, I think there's this tendency to almost act like a surgeon with a scalpel when you really should be using a sledge hammer and just trying to do bigger things. Right. Instead of changing color on a button, try a completely different angle for an ad, do something that is kind of more impactful. I think when you're at scale, right, then I think smaller changes make a bigger different, but when you're just starting out you kind of just got to, almost not go the shotgun approach necessarily, but you have to be doing things that are more higher leverage, essentially.
Ace: Agreed. Agreed.
Felix: Yeah. So now speaking of making sure that you're doing the right things, you, again, mentioned super early on in this interview about how you spent $50,000 that went into the business early on. I think a lot of people they want to bootstrap. What would say was some of the best value things that you spent your money on early on to grow the business?
Ace: Oh God, stock. We needed capital equipment to some extent, I think testing in Google Ads and having some sort of paid budget, buying a website, unless you're making your own custom one, I'd definitely advise if you're starting a shop at the start like we had, getting a website from the theme store is the best thing you can do, make sure you pick a good one. Yeah, having enough money to throw at your marketing is probably the right way but you don't want to be burning your cash either. So you need to make sure that you're testing enough, that you're getting that validation, and your dollars are not going to waste. A lot of people might throw it into one campaign and then sort of let it sit there even if it's not getting you a good return or they'll just be really reactive, they'll turn it off straight away. You need sort of a balance there.
But I mean, I think it's the same for all e-commerce brands, you need stock, you need inventory, so you need investment product. But you don't want to invest too much in product that you don't have enough to spend on marketing. There's so many examples of Silicon Valley brands that get all this venture capital funding, and of course, that's a lot more money than we had or people listening to this might have had. But they may have this brilliant product and they have no audience, they have no customers. So you need a bit of money for product but you need lot of money for actually driving traffic too. So I think striking that balance is really important.
Felix: Awesome. So the website, again, is Threadheads.co.au. And I'll leave this last question. What would you say you would like to see happen this year for your business in 2021 in order for you to consider it a successful year?
Ace: Okay. I'm not actually sure. I think we just want to gel more as a team, I think we want to be far more collaborative, we've got a lot of creatives. We've got two illustrators, graphic designer, some people in digital. As a team, we just want to put out some really good content. I think we want to increase our content game, push some more stuff out there, let people know who we are. From financial perspective, probably want to grow to a eight-figure brand. And then maybe push into some other markets too, but we'll see how it goes.
Felix: Awesome. Thank you so much Ace for coming on and sharing your story.
Ace: No worries. Thanks so much, Felix.