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YouTube Growth Strategies and Expanding into E-commerce

52 min listen

Jesse and Richie go behind the scenes with Shannon Rollins the wife and business partner of Kent Rollins. They run KentRollins.com — Cowboy Cooking. Kent is the celebrity chef who has appeared on many cooking shows — Chopped, Cutthroat Kitchen and Throwdown! with Bobby Flay.

They discuss growing a YouTube channel including strategies and tools to grow to 1.5 million followers.

Transcript

Jesse: Happy Friday, Richie.

Richard: It’s that day. It’s funny every time we say that, although I know we’re super excited it’s Friday, and I know if you’re waiting patiently for the upload of the new episode, you’re hearing it on Friday too. But I always got to remember. Hey, Happy Tuesday. Happy Monday. Happy Saturday night, depending on when you listen to this.

Jesse: Happy day wherever you are. We’re here to help you out, get your business rolling so we’re happy to help. Today this one’s tough because it’s right before lunchtime, and I’m already hungry, and it is Friday but I peeked ahead to the website of our guest, and it’s all about food — and good food.

Richard: My favorite kinds of food too.

Jesse: Yeah. This is real. This is Cowboy Cooking. So let’s bring in our guest, Shannon Rollins, how are you?

Shannon: Hey guys. Thanks for having me.

Jesse: It’s good to have you. You are not the name on the website. The website we’re talking about is KentRollins.com — Cowboy Cooking. So who are you?

Shannon: I’m the behind the scenes gal, I am married to Kent and we run the Cowboy Cooking. Now it’s primarily an online kind of business. Kent started years ago doing chuck wagon cooking and cooking for traditional ranches in the spring, in the fall when they’re working cattle. It’s when I came aboard and got married. I sort of decided to switch the business model a little bit. Now we do a lot of online. We’ve got the online store through Ecwid and do a lot of YouTube actually.

Jesse: OK. Awesome. Before we get into the online here, there’s a lot of things that people are probably wondering like a chuck wagon, what the heck is that? We don’t want to rush past that too fast. And in cowboy cooking, for people that are driving and can’t go to KentRollins.com. But Kent is like, he’s real cowboy here and give us a little description on what is chuck wagon, Shannon.

Shannon: The chuck wagon is as Kent says it’s the first meals on wheels. I’ll give you just a brief history. Back in eighteen-hundreds when they were the big cattle boom moving west. They would use the chuck wagon to feed cowboys moving cows up to the railheads. And people are surprised that this is still a tradition that’s going on and that we continue it. So we go out. It’s a wagon that is like our mobile kitchen and we drag that out onto ranches as big as three hundred thousand acres. As I said, we cook for cowboys in the spring, in the fall and then kind of expanded to catering a little bit. But Kent has been featured on Food Network quite a bit, some different cooking shows. And so we expand beyond just the ranch and reach a different audience too.

Jesse: OK. That’s great. This is real cowboy cooking out on ranches and then now Kent’s got a lot of personality to him. It seemed like he might have been perfect for TV, you mentioned these TV shows. What type of shows are we talking about here?

Shannon: He’s done a lot with the Food Network. He’s done a couple, Chopped: Grill Masters. He did Chopped Redemption, Cutthroat Kitchen. He beat Bobby Flay in a Throwdown with chicken fried steak. He did CBS Sunday Morning. Quite a bit of food programming. And we’ve been approached a lot about doing different cooking shows and that is how we really transitioned into YouTube. We needed a way that we could share our videos and our cooking. But in so in a way that we could control it and we knew our audience and we knew what we wanted to cook. And so that’s how our YouTube page exploded.

Richard: That’s a great way to work that there. We talk about this all the time. We know people need to create content and just that word is so blah. Sometimes you like: “Content, what is that?” And having an awesome character like Kent. Because we did go to YouTube and watch some of the videos and it was awesome. He’s definitely a true cowboy. I love it, and the theme song, and everything, it’s great. But at the same time though to your point, it can have multiple benefits. Here you are showcasing Kent and his abilities, not only can that drive traffic to your website. Not only can you potentially profit from ads on YouTube and we’ll get into how you are utilizing those different monetization forms. But also this third one that now Kent can even get more exposure because they see firsthand. They don’t have to ask you, they see: “Oh, this guy can handle the camera. He’s got a great personality.” You’re probably even getting more requests for these shows. But I would assume as you do more, you’re only going to get more. I would think he gets the attention. Is that true, one?

Shannon: Yes, absolutely. And that was something that we really didn’t anticipate at the beginning. We put up a couple of little episodes here and there, nothing really serious. And then when people started watching I thought: “This is maybe something that we should focus on.” So we started putting more, and posting more consistently on YouTube, and then we just saw this weird snowball effect to where our online sales were going crazy. And then our other platforms were also building too in terms of like Facebook and Instagram. And then also like you said, we got a lot more notoriety. And then sponsorships started coming and different avenues that we never really even thought of. It just all started coming together.

Jesse: Yeah, that’s great. When you’re on the shows, that’s awesome. But you’re right, you do not control that. Like that section, you’ve had the best joke ever and they cut it. Exactly. You don’t control that. So with YouTube, you control the whole experience. And YouTube’s got this. There are so many people watching videos on their phone and on their TV at home. YouTube is definitely a place to expand that, so I think that’s awesome. The question I had is we mentioned these TV shows where they have all the lights and the cameras and everything. For YouTube, did you have all these lights and cameras or how did you get going with it?

Shannon: Well, I’m a perfectionist and so since I’m behind the scenes I get really particular thinking: “OK, we need the good equipment.” And I’ve been on some of these sets with Kent. I’m like: “Oh my gosh, do I need a camera guy?” And I got really paranoid about it. But what I realized and why I really love YouTube is that it’s very organic and people like more raw and the more genuine feel to YouTube. And so our crew is me holding primarily my iPhone, it is what we film on. And then, of course, we have our beagle who is the taste tester and then there’s Kent and that’s it. Primarily all of our episodes are shot outdoors and so it’s so hard to control lighting and sound and everything. We’ve finagled some things with our audio and stuff but it’s really up to Mother Nature. We’re in her kitchen and so we just roll with it and I think that’s what people really like about it. And no, we don’t have fancy equipment. It’s just the three of us and that’s it.

Jesse: And the beagle’s probably not as much help as you might think. (laughing)

Shannon: But he is the star.

Richard: I was gonna say too, what do you mean, Jesse? That might be the key to the business when you have a taste tester that’s a dog, all of your food looks amazing. (laughing) Not taking anything away because we actually would love to fly out there and actually taste the food. Again, we said this, but who doesn’t love a dog? That’s love in the barbecue that someone just made. I mean it’s fantastic, it’s great. Also, though you’re hereby proving once again that behind every great man is a great woman getting the real work done.

Jesse: I know how much work this takes to do all this stuff, and so Kent’s the star but you’re the one doing the heavy lifting here. Let him know. (laughing) Jesse and Rich said we know that you’re doing the real hard work here.

Richard: Other than hanging out next to the fire. I’m sure in your weather out there, what’s the temperature out there right now?

Shannon: Today it’s one hundred and five. There have been days where before we even build a fire, it’s 117 degrees. It gets a little rough and especially now. We’re in the summer season, we have to film really early in the morning or late at night, so it doesn’t get too hot.

Richard: So it didn’t take you too long to come on to this idea of “We got to change this business model, Kent, no more chuck wagons.”

Shannon: It’s a very labor intensive business. We have this large chuck wagon. We cook all with cast iron. We build fires. There’s no electricity, it’s all fire driven. And so that gets hard and long and it set the bug when Kent was doing all these cooking shows. We’re sitting here and he’s doing this but it’s blasting out to millions of people. And I thought how can we recreate that in our own way. And so instead of us going and maybe cooking for somebody’s birthday party for 20 people we can sit at home, create a great recipe, sharing the food and the scenery and our lifestyle and that can blast out to thousands of people. And so it was a much better way for us to work smarter not harder.

Jesse: Perfect. I’m all about that. Like most people listening too are trying to get into the online world or are already making money on the online world. So that’s great too. You’re amongst friends here on the podcast.

Richard: I was going to ask, we talked about these cooking shows and people on those shows there. They’re fighting to get some pretty big numbers and last I looked on your YouTube channel, I don’t even have the updated stats, I should pull it up right now but it literally changes by the day. It was over a half million when I looked at the first time, what is it at these days?

Shannon: It’s crazy. Yeah, we can gain, I think we peaked at gaining maybe 20,000 followers within a couple of days. It’s all over the place. It depends on what we post a certain week or even the time of year, how people watch, it all changes. But yeah, it’s quickly growing.

Richard: So that being said for someone who’s just getting started. Was this a slow organic thing? Did you have some pops along the way? Because partially we want to give you tips but we also want to pull out nuggets that other Ecwid users can learn from you and what all the hard work you’ve done. Hopefully, they’re not doing barbecue stuff too. (laughing) But you’ve got a big jumpstart on them. So I’m not too worried about that either. But what was that process like? Was it long and daunting? And how was that?

Shannon: I think probably the biggest initial tip I have for people is to pick your platform, your main platform and go from there. We spent a lot of time and got super frustrated about what social media aspect did we need to focus on or do we need to do them all or do you know… And it was just crazy. And slowly we found our niche with YouTube, I think because we’re very tutorial, it’s very visual and the cooking is really big right now. That’s where we landed after a lot of trial and error. The way we do it is YouTube is our main platform and focus, and then everything trickles down from there. But having said that, I think you also need to realize that the other platforms for us it’s Facebook and Twitter. We did Twitter a little bit. Twitter isn’t really are things, I’ve dropped out. But it’s Facebook and Instagram and they all have to support your main platform.

Jesse: I think that’s helpful advice for everybody. As you enter the online world, there are all sorts of shiny objects everywhere. Boy, I get distracted on a lot of different things but it really helps to have one main focus and for you that was YouTube and I think you made the right choice. A lot of it is really entertainment first and how-to at the same time. Whether you knew it was going to be YouTube from the start or you stumbled across it, I think you’re on the right place. I think that’s helpful advice for others.

Richard: Yeah. And since that seems to be the one that you chose, YouTube, and to your points there you said it was daunting in the beginning because it was like where do we go, where do we start. And then I’d imagine you might not have actually white-boarded it or something but you said: “Well, what are we working with. We have a cowboy. We have a visual of that. People want cooking news.” And you slowly start to realize: “Well, I think YouTube is going to be the platform we’re going to choose.” So instead of going down a bunch of the other platforms right now for the Ecwid listeners that think for their products, YouTube might be a great fit. Maybe they have something that takes the demonstration to use or showing someone maybe they see how fun it is and they might want to go buy it. If they’ve made that choice, what are some tips you have for Ecwid users that they might apply? Maybe apps or techniques or anything you can think of that could help other Ecwid users help build their YouTube channel.

Shannon: You should just kind of an overall deal, I think is consistency. And for us, you have to train your audience and we were posting. We’ve tried different posting like days of the week or multiple times a week but we found out we post every week Wednesday at 2:30. And your audience, you start training them and then they expect it and then they respond better. And more isn’t always better. We were doing two or three videos and we weren’t getting the same viewership. And so for people starting out particular in YouTube but this also for other platforms as well. Train your audience with consistency and don’t always feel like you have to just flood the market with a bunch of content. Less is sometimes more in that situation in terms of like a plug-in that I use, VidIQ is something that’s worked well for us, and that’s an SEO deal. And that really helps us look at the back end of YouTube and look at what are people searching for, what would be a good video to post or how do we title this to get more hits. And that’s a free download that you can do, it is the VidIQ.

Jesse: OK, that’s good and we’ll include them in the show notes. And I think that’s something that’s helpful to that. People spend a lot of time making the video and you do this perfect video and you edit it and whatever and then you posted it. If you don’t put an appropriate title on it, nobody’s going to see it.

Shannon: Yeah, it’s a lot about reverse engineering too. We found out we could have the most amazing recipe for a raspberry souffle. But if people aren’t searching for it, no one’s going to see it. So what we typically do is we step back. We like: “OK, what are trending recipes?” Or what’s really great, like comfort. The thing we found that trends really well is comfort food, authentic, traditional. And so we look at those recipes and then work our way from there.

Jesse: OK. I like that. You don’t just make a video and see what happens. You’re looking at the data first, then choosing the recipe that fits that but sticking to your brand and your personality. I get that. That’s good. And then I noticed on your YouTube channel you have a very consistent look and feel to it. How do you… you said you don’t have a team. How do you make them look so good?

Shannon: Yes. That’s another thing that goes along with our consistency thing. And a big thing that we noticed caught on more with our subscribers is a consistent thumbnail. YouTube will just automatically pick a random clip from your video and add that as your thumbnail. You never want to use that. I use a program called Canva. A lot of people might be familiar with it. They’ve got a paid version. I just use the free one. They have all different kind of templates that you can use. Not only for YouTube but Facebook and other platforms. And it makes it really easy. And so I’ll just take a couple still photos of Kent and our food, plug it into the Canva template. And it’s good to go.

Jesse: All right. Now does Kent cooperate? Does he stand still?

Shannon: That’s probably the hardest. I’m trying to get Kent to smile and we don’t smile a whole lot. (laughing) That is tricky. I’m not that good of an editor.

Jesse: You can turn that frown upside down via Photoshop or Canva. (laughing) That’s good. Well, somebody’s gotta be the producer, the director out there to push him. But I think something I noted here is that the last three things we talked about YouTube, Canva and VidIQ. They’re all free. Or they have free versions. It’s not like we’re starting with this massive budget here. We’re starting with some talent and some drive but ultimately these are all free tools that you’ve used and you have all these followers on YouTube.

Shannon: Correct.

Richard: So what you’re saying then, Jesse, is the biggest expense they have is the food that they’re feeding to the beagle. What’s the beagle’s name again?

Shannon: Bonehead.

Richard: Awesome. (laughing)

Jesse: I love it. Are you also getting ad revenue from YouTube as well?

Shannon: Yes. So our biggest income from that is through YouTube and it’s a pretty simple process. As you upload, you just hit the monetization that YouTube provides via Google ads. And it’s good to go. And now I’m not sure they’ve changed us up. I think you have to have a minimum of like 1,000 or 10,000 subscribers to monetize. But then after that, yeah, that’s where we get a bunch of streaming.

Jesse: People show the little print. I think it’s called pre-roll, so you have the videos ahead of time before your video and you get paid. Maybe it’s fractions of a cent per. But you do get paid for that. That’s one of your main monetizations.

Shannon: Yes. And what I have learned also when we’ve switched up our business model and gone online more is you need to have multiple markets or platforms to monetize. At first, we were just monetizing YouTube but you have to look at like “Well, how do we expand this more?” And that’s when we added our online store or added the sponsorships. You need to like make sure you broaden yourself as you go along.

Jesse: That’s good. I was gonna try to lead you in there, that’s perfect. (laughing) You knew you got there before I was. Let’s talk online store a little bit. So you have this huge audience, see a huge following and you sell some stuff on the site now as well. Was that because people were asking for it or how did that come about?

Shannon: We had a very basic online store. We had like a couple of seasonings just to have before we really got into YouTube and we had very minimal sales. It was maybe four sales a week. And then YouTube started happening and then we got a more robust store, easier checkout. And then there was just this transition that happened where people were watching YouTube and you say: “Hey, if you’re interested, we’re using this rub, you can get it over here”, link it. And our sales exploded. And like I said before it wasn’t something that we had anticipated blowing up as it did.

Richard: That’s a a good point. I’ll go back to what you said prior to Jesse’s question there and then go into this his question as well. The reason you started to monetize via YouTube, in the beginning, is you didn’t have a lot of traffic. You had a store that was up but you didn’t have a lot of traffic. You said: “All right, I’m going to hit this monetization button” because by that time you had multiple thousand subscribers. And then it’s let’s say a game of ping pong or tennis or a little bit of back and forth whatever way you want to look at it. To where you’re looking at the stats and saying: “All right. Mm-hmm. Well, I don’t necessarily want to turn off this monetization but I might be driving people away from my web site with this ad and now we’re finally getting more sales.” So it’s an interesting balance act and I’m sure you think about that daily. You get enough views but I can tell by looking at your YouTube channel now and you have enough subscribers that I can totally see why you wouldn’t want to turn it off. Right now however as the business gets more and more I’m sure it can get it tempting. What percentage of sales do you have at this point of time that is coming from the YouTube ads and your actual online store? If you don’t mind asking.

Shannon: Well, in terms of YouTube ad we don’t run any YouTube ads. Is that what you mean?

Richard: Or I guess the ads that you let people run on your YouTube channel.

Shannon: Like what percentage of it are we getting from ads and what percentage from sales?

Richard: Correct.

Shannon: It would be pretty close. I think YouTube ads are still outweighing our online sales but it’s starting to even out.

Jesse: That’s good. I’m the commerce guy. I like to hear that and I noticed from looking at your YouTube videos. Basically, you just have the links in the description of the video you have links that go back to the site that’s the main way.

Shannon: Correct. Yeah. And sometimes I’ll have a card but primarily. We’ll link it in the description.

Jesse: OK. That’s good. One thing I want to mention more of. So this is that we’ll do a little tip section here for people listening. There’s the ability in YouTube called TrueView for shopping. Have you enabled that yet?

Shannon: I have not.

Jesse: All right. I’d like to try to provide tips that you people haven’t done yet. So TrueView for shopping, it requires your product feed to be integrated with the Google merchant center, so there are some steps there. But what that is then during the video if you’re talking about a specific product, that product it’s like a product card. I don’t know the exact terminology. It’ll show up in on the YouTube video. You can use it on the right-hand side. So that way you still have the links in the description but while people are watching the video the actual product is right there and links directly back to your store.

Shannon: It pops up in the video itself?

Jesse: Correct.

Shannon: That is awesome because a lot of times currently what I do in editing is I’ll edit the product like it will pop up. So that would save me a huge step and link it right then.

Jesse: Yeah. And it leads right to your store. Why not. And I’m not an expert on this and things change quite a bit but definitely look up TrueView for shopping and it requires the product feed that you might already have for Google shopping anyway. It utilizes the same technology basically.

Richard: I would add one tip very similar to that. Right now you’re allowing YouTube to put people in front of your videos that you’ve built your audience and they’re basically saying: “Oh great, thanks, Kent, thanks, Shannon.” This is awesome you built this amazing channel and now you have five hundred and some thousand people that you’re allowing us to put ads in front of you. I would recommend to you. You do that exact same thing, those ads that when you click the monetization, they’re actually called in-stream ads where they’ll do pretty rolls or there are various different ways, sometimes it’s just a bump up. But especially with something like the Bobby Flay chicken fried steak video you can take and do the exact same thing that others are doing to your videos in front of their video. So you create an in-stream ad and a lot of people don’t realize that the amount of time is changed. But if someone hits “Skip ad”, you can get your branding and the consistency of that video and not even actually pay right for the ad. Literally, I want to say right now it’s up to 30 seconds actually where if you don’t pay until they watch 30 seconds or the entirety of the video depending upon how long that ad is. So you could specifically say, be kind of playful. It goes literally in front of that chicken fried video that he won on the chopped and is something could pop up and say: “You want to really cook real barbecue. Listen to this.” You could be playful I mean humor is huge. It’s probably why you want to get him to laugh more and smile. But I would literally take advantage. We’re not trying to say by any means that you’re wrong for letting other people. What we’re trying to do is just add additional tips to you, saying now that your store converts, you have plenty of sales it’s moving up to let’s just say 50/50 for not getting into the weeds here. That’s a good knowledge set to have to then say: “Well, shoot, why don’t.” Instead of getting cents on the dollar for ads of someone that takes someone away to potentially to someone else’s video, why don’t we now do that same thing. Spend cents and come back and get dollars because we’re still in the audience off the other end of stealing little to say ethically, borrowing. But you get what I’m saying. Literally, do the exact same thing you’re allowing YouTube to do with your customers and. I truly believe you will start to see. You probably might want to turn off your monetization and just do those ads eventually. I don’t know. You got to look at the data as Jesse and I are marketers and so we believe you take educated guesses and then you look at the data to see what really happens. And I know it’s enough income that I wouldn’t just like turn it off yet but I would start to do those. And if you start to see: “Wow, every dollar I spend over here, I get two dollars, three dollars, five dollars.” Why not just get better calls to action on your own videos, drive them directly to your site instead of getting cents.

Shannon: Gotcha.

Jesse: I think I’d probably even leave your own monetization on but just try to borrow the audience from other people. I would just use Bobby Flay. For example, maybe you just target all of Bobby Flay videos and maybe the request is maybe… I think, be fun with it, like the throwdown of the chicken fried steak. But even if they subscribe to your channel and become listeners, you don’t make that money back immediately but you will make it over the long run. And maybe there are specific chefs out there that there’s a good enough crossover.

Shannon: Yeah. Like when you guys say that actually Bobby Flay isn’t that big but we do get a lot of crossover with Gordon Ramsay and Elton Brown. So that would be that makes a whole lot of sense to just target those kinds of ads.

Jesse: Yeah, and the ad might just be “Just come check out my channel.” It’s better than that. But your request isn’t that big. It’s just you pop it in front of them. You’re in there for five seconds and maybe they’ve been on the same TV show together anyway so it’s not like that much of an interruption marketing. They’re watching the chef on YouTube. This is just a different chef on YouTube, it’s not that crazy.

Shannon: Yeah.

Richard: People are being bombarded with ads all day. We act like ads have gone away. People say: “Oh no, no one’s watching commercials anymore.” Well, I beg to differ. They’re not watching commercials in the traditional 30 seconds but YouTube and Facebook and all these companies, they are advertising companies. That’s what they do. That’s why you’re getting paid revenue. Back to the comment, I made a couple of minutes ago. I would just test a bunch of different things. It could be as simple as “You like barbecue! And do you like barbecue as much as Bonehead?” And then your dog comes out. It’s literally just playful and you’re just maybe specifically going after barbecue videos. And you can go way wider. Now you’re not necessarily trying to steal from a particular person that might they could care less about barbecue but they love Gordon Ramsay right now. I would just test, test, test, test headlines, test thumbnails. And just a quick aside on that. Not everybody… So I’m going to say this for Ecwid listeners that don’t know what a thumbnail is. A thumbnail is just the very first image that people see and that is a huge relevant factor on YouTube recommendations. Thumbnails are almost more important if not more important than search terms and a lot of people don’t realize that. Thank you for providing that tip. I just wanted to let people, Ecwid users specifically know that’s all a thumbnail is. What is the thumbnail? It’s just the very first image and so you’re recommending Canva to go back to that real quick as a good application that’s free that people can put the consistent look and feel. Keep it as a template and then as they take more pictures, just throw that new picture in the template, so they have the same look and feel and then you keep the font the same, keep the colors and your branding the same. Thank you very much for that tip. That’s great.

Jesse: That’s perfect. Yeah. All right. We did a little deep dive on YouTube. Shannon, I know you get a lot of followers on YouTube. How about the other social media game here? How are Facebook and Instagram doing for you?

Shannon: They’re good. We’ve been focusing a little more on Instagram and that’s been catching up more as we’ve tweaked some different things. And I think we’re nearly about 20,000 on Instagram and a little over 20,000 thousand on Facebook.

Jesse: All right. It’s definitely lagging. There’s five hundred thousand plus I saw 160 thousand YouTube. They’re not quite up there yet but I think you’re on the right path here, you’ve got YouTube essentially mastered. Right. So now we also get those videos on Facebook and Instagram. And are you uploading the videos natively to Facebook and Instagram?

Shannon: No. I do native ones but it’s more either teasers or shortened edited versions. One thing that we’re still… we’re getting better. You have to tailor your content for the different audiences and the different platforms so it’s not full video length. Our videos run for 14 minutes. That’s a little while, obviously, long for Instagram, a little long for Facebook. That’s why I tailor it a little bit.

Jesse: Got it. 14 is probably a bit long for Facebook and for sure for Instagram. Yeah, I think those are good. All right. I don’t really have much of a tip there because you’re on the right path. Instagram has to be more snack of all different formats but there is a huge huge audience there as well and you might as well start tapping into that.

Richard: You guys both came on to something there that’s actually important for Ecwid users to remember is that each platform people are going to that platform for a specific reason, a specific purpose. I don’t remember the exact stats but one of the number one things people do besides being entertained on YouTube is to learn to find out how to do things. Yes. And so you’re providing a perfect, it’s why you’re hitting a home run on YouTube. Here’s how you cook like this. Here are the ingredients you use for this and that. And it’s matching up with the platform of what people want to do and it’s entertaining. You’re double dipping there. That’s entertaining and they’re learning how to do something. It’s no surprise to me or us why that’s a home run for you. Going back to where I think Jesse was going if you could take those videos, break them into bite-sized pieces and almost use it as a retargeting option where you have your Facebook picks on your site. Someone went to your YouTube channel, they watched the video. They were intrigued enough to actually go to KentRollins.com. They go to KentRollins.com. They were there but then it’s time for dinner or they’re at work or whatever it is, they don’t buy. And stats are somewhere between, it varies from business to business but virtually across the board it’s one to two percent conversions. That means that every hundred people that went to Kent Rollins. 98 aren’t buying it and instead of thinking that as a negative, that 98 percent aren’t buying. In the case that I’m just starting to get into here. If you had a pixel from Facebook, that’s super easy to do in your Ecwid store, you then could place these bite-sized snack Apple videos only in front of the people who’ve been to KentRollins.com. And you can get those a lot cheaper because now it’s all these platforms are really just trying to keep people and provide a good user experience. And so if they’ve already watched the video and then they liked the video enough to go to the site, it’s just another form of the proverbial seven to ten touch points till someone buys. And who knows where but that’s a huge opportunity because as long as you have your Google Analytics and you start to see in your analytics how many people actually come from YouTube. When you combine those two monsters of Facebook and Google, you’re really combining four monsters because Google owns YouTube, and Facebook owns Instagram. So when you can get those working together and just realizing OK. Facebook people aren’t necessarily going to discover how to do something but why not go ahead and remind them. Maybe they’re going and they’re looking to see what their aunt is doing is like “Oh, yeah, we’re going to have dinner this weekend. Oh wow.” There’s that video again and now they click and it. That’s what they’re gonna have for dinner Friday when they’re connecting with their family. So it’s I think that would be a huge opportunity for you to read target people that have been on your site. Super small videos make and be the funniest pieces or whatever you know try different things again. Test, test, test, test. Yeah. But it would potentially be a huge opportunity to really see a big lift. Now I’m not necessarily saying that’s going to make a big lift in your subscribers or a big lift in engagement on Facebook but who cares if they like the video and click and go back to Kent Rollins to buy something.

Shannon: Exactly. And yeah, that’s why I think it’s important like we said you have to hit all the different platforms and dip your hand in a little bit of everything to make the funnel all come together.

Jesse: Yeah, for sure. You’re doing really well on YouTube. But the same people who are watching YouTube videos, they also use Instagram and they use Facebook. And so if you’re everywhere they go, it makes you look so much bigger and it reminds them. Maybe they’re just not into buying. They’re not ready to buy when they see it the first time but they might be later and that’s all I respond.

Shannon: I’ll search something like “Yeah, OK.” And then I forget about it but then I search something and then it pops up and pops up and we need that reminder and right now the only retargeting I have is just the abandoned cart. And so I feel like I need to expand on that and target it a little more. This would be perfect.

Jesse: Yeah. If you were just starting out I might say maybe you’re not ready but I do think you’re ready for that. I would encourage you a couple of different types of retargeting. The one Rich mentioned where if they’ve been to the site maybe you’re showing those snack table videos. Something that’s a little more, not super-targeted but more like the personality. And then they’ll they can start to follow you on Facebook and Instagram and then they’re pixel there again. There’s also the dynamic product ads. If they’ve looked at a specific product, that product will follow them around on Instagram and YouTube. Or Instagram and Facebook could also do the same for Google shopping as well. They have it for Google and Facebook and Instagram. So those would definitely be options I would look at. Your products are a little on the low side as far as the price. I usually like to be at… I don’t want Facebook and Google calling me and saying: “Hey.” But I think 50 dollars is a right about the cutoff line for me. But you can be less and actually I’m looking at your site now. Some of the products I imagine have higher margins on, so you might be able to get away with it at a lower price level because you make the product yourself. I rambled on a little bit there but you should definitely be remarketing on both Facebook and Instagram for videos and you should be doing dynamic product ads there. And then on the Google side, there’s Google Shopping, you might want to look at Google smart shopping. I believe it would be good for you because it targets all over the Internet, including YouTube and Gmail and just everywhere. You’re going to have exponentially more coverage across the Internet and because you already have so many followers, then Facebook and Google won’t target everybody and only target the people that are more likely to buy. And trust me they do know who is likely to buy. They know, they’ll specifically target those products to people that have shown that they’ve purchased over history. So there was a couple there. Now, of course, one of my favorite things you mention are the on Facebook and Instagram, the Shoppable posts functionality. Have you set that up yet?

Shannon: I have not, but I think that’s what you’re talking about where if I’m scrolling through and it’s like “Hey, we use this product” and there’s a little like a direct link. Is that what…?

Jesse: You got it. If you’re scrolling through…

Shannon: How to incorporate that?

Jesse: It’s not that hard. You need to get a product feed to Facebook. And by the way, for people that are Ecwid users, this is super simple. In your control panel just go to the Facebook shop section and it’s going to walk you through all this. Really what it does behind the scenes is it connects your product feed to Facebook, actually, Facebook business manager and then from there that product feed. Sometimes takes a couple of little bit of time to get approved with Instagram because there’s not a 1 800 number for Instagram. Be a little patient. I don’t think you have an issue because they’re gonna see everything looks legit and there’s a lot of traffic. But anyway getting to the point here, those product feeds will then connect with Facebook and Instagram. Then when you do either a post on Facebook, you can now tag a product. Instead of tagging a person, you’ll tag a product and they’ll have that little shopping bag and the link to it with the price and such. And then on Instagram, it’s even more valuable on Instagram because you can’t put links in Instagram, you only get one link. Yes. I think this is a hack that people should be jumping on because now not only are you providing, you’re adding a link all over the place on Instagram but it goes directly to your product. And so people that click on a little shopping tag inside of Instagram they know what this is. There’s no trick here. They clicked on the seasoning rub and it said ten dollars and they click on it. They know that they’re gonna go buy this thing. Anyway, I think it’s really easy to do, that’s actually free. There’s no extra charge for that. You don’t pay Instagram or Facebook for that. I would definitely do that and I’m certain that it will work.

Shannon: What is that called again?

Jesse: There’s not really good naming. Maybe it’s called Instagram shopping or Shoppable posts, kind of the turnout. Yeah, Shoppable posts. If you go into through Ecwid, look for the Facebook side. I’m not looking at the control panel right now. Sorry. Sorry, support. Don’t be mad at me. It’s in the upper left-hand side, I believe. It definitely says Facebook. I will look in five minutes and be like “Oh yeah. That was it.” But I think those would definitely take your store to another level. There’s a lot of there. There’s a little bit of work involved with some of those, but some of those are also very easy. Dynamic product ads are easy and Shoppable posts are pretty easy as well once you get it connected. I’m excited for you. Actually, you’ve got this huge YouTube following, you’re already doing well, getting advertising money there and that’s leading to sales in your store. This is just the next level that will definitely take you further.

Shannon: Well, it sounds like this is stuff that I can integrate pretty easily without having to do a bunch of coding or researching, how I need to do that. Because also it’s a great benefit. But I don’t have a whole lot of time and that seems like it can integrate pretty easily with what we’ve got going on.

Jesse: For sure. The Facebook and Instagram Shoppable posts, that’s gonna be easy. Trivia shopping to give you a little more research on by the way just to set the level there. It is a little bit harder setup and then those dynamic product ads, those are actually quite easy because we have automated options inside of Ecwid. Check those out as well.

Richard: Yeah. Other than the TrueView, you actually could probably set up every single thing we just talked about it as long as this podcast is. The longest part of this process will just be once you’ve attached your product feed to your Facebook store to actually get approval from your store from Instagram. That’s just a waiting game. It’s not that long. We’ve seen everywhere from a day to three days. somewhere in that zone but you’re not doing anything. Just like planting a seed and waiting for the garden to go. You’re off doing your other things, creating more content but then to Jess’s point from earlier. You wouldn’t necessarily want to do it on every single post but now once that’s approved and your product feed is in there. Now when you take a picture and you do something on Instagram. it’s going to give: “Would you like to attach a link to this?”.

Jesse: It says: “Tag a product”.

Richard: Yeah, exactly, tag a product. That’s the specific terminology, “tag a product”. Then again I would recommend probably not doing it every single time. Pick a number, test that out too. I’d say test everything but maybe every third post, every fifth post. There’s this seasoning and you’ve got an action shot of the seasoning going on the beef and they can click on the seasoning and next thing you know they’re back on KentRollins.com on the actual product page of that exact seasoning.

Shannon: Perfect. We want Kent to roll it everywhere.

Jesse: Yes, it will happen this weekend. You get all these things done. And Kent Rollins is going to take over the Internet. (laughing) I love it. I love it. Shannon, is there any other questions we could answer, any help we can provide?

Shannon: I don’t think so, that really covers it and gives me some good stuff that’s quick action and then also a little more in the future. I like it.

Jesse: Awesome.

Richard: And I was just going to say. Normally, we talk after. You need to send a picture in but since we referred to him so many times, can we have a picture of the whole team? You may or may not have the whole time but when you send us after this for just so we can put that and see Bonehead and see Kent, and see you all. You can take a selfie since you’re that iPhone user.

Jesse: Yeah. We definitely want to see you. This is not behind the scenes today. This is you’re front and center.

Shannon: I’d take a shower. That’s the only problem behind the scenes.

Jesse: Yeah. You don’t have to.

Richard: The good news is you only have to do this picture once. (laughing) Forget it.

Jesse: And smile though, you have to smile. Otherwise, your husband will be like: “Hey, you tell me to smile that time”. Awesome and if people want to learn more about your husband, where he’s going to be, taste the food in person, where can they go?

Shannon: Yeah. KentRollins.com is our main website. And that clicks to everything else. We’ve got events listed there. Of course, you can check out Cowboy Kent Rollins on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube as well.

Jesse: All right. We’ve got the full coverage. And once you go there everybody, I hope you’re gonna be pixeled. That means Shannon has followed our advice.

Shannon: Ready.

Jesse: Yeah. I love it. All right. Rich, any last questions here?

Richard: No, I don’t have any questions. I am just very hungry and it’s perfect timing because it’s lunchtime for us here so I’m ready to get going and I’m ready to let you get back to work and keep the business growing and say hi to Bonehead for us.

Shannon: Perfect, guys. Heym thank you for all the tips of course.

Jesse: All right, Shannon. Really appreciate you being on the show. Everybody listening. check out KentRollins.com and check out Ecwid.com/podcast for all the details. Thank you.

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So simple to use – even my most technophobic clients can manage. Easy to install, quick to set up. Light years ahead of other shop plugins.
I’m so impressed I’ve recommended it to my website clients and am now using it for my own store along with four others for which I webmaster. Beautiful coding, excellent top-notch support, great documentation, fantastic how-to videos. Thank you so much Ecwid, you rock!
I’ve used Ecwid and I love the platform itself. Everything is so simplified it’s insane. I love how you have different options to choose shipping carriers, to be able to put in so many different variants. It’s a pretty open e-commerce gateway.
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I like that Ecwid was easy to start and to use. Even for a person like me, without any technical background. Very well written help articles. And the support team is the best for my opinion.
For everything it has to offer, ECWID is incredibly easy to set up. Highly recommend! I did a lot of research and tried about 3 other competitors. Just try ECWID and you'll be online in no time.

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