Latest / Pitch to Product / How Ecommerce Brands Should Use Organic Social Media To Drive Sales
Transcript
- Nat/Leanne: Selling the proof of concept, but doing it in different ways instead of us as the person posting the video saying, Okay, this didn't go viral. I'm upset. Well, how many shares did it get? Yeah. How many people saved that video like I save videos that are going to look back at it later and maybe be that late purchaser? Like we maybe didn't get them in the impulse zone of buying, but we got them at least interested. Hello, my name is Natalia. And here with me is Leanne. Welcome to the Pitch to Product Podcast. And today we are going to be talking about social media. Something that everyone knows and loves. And some people are very good at it. Some people are lost at what to do with it. And we're here to kind of just talk through it casually, like we're at dinner, talking about the things we normally would talk about. but you know, here in front of you guys now. So I'd say the biggest thing that we should talk about, and then you know, we'll riff and raff and go in a few different directions, would be kind of in 2026 with e-commerce brands, which is what we specialize in, you know, what is social media's impact and where is social media going? And I think most importantly, talking about kind of AI and what that looks like. in my mind, when I think about this question, and feel free to agree with me, disagree with me, but I think with AI and algorithms taking over and people really leaning into the idea of using AI as a tool and some people really getting lost in it and using it as like their everything. it's not supporting really paid advertisements as much as it used to, right? Like meta ads, Amazon ads, you know, bidding for X, Y, and Z sponsored posts, you know, putting your product on Etsy or you know, Walmart.com, any any marketplace online. You mean it's still important to be on them, don't get me wrong. That's how you generate sales, but Social media is where AI is like, I want that, I need that, and I'm going to reward you for posting that. The more content that you can get out that would lead organic sales that would then bring a client or a customer to your website to then purchase, to me, is more valuable nowadays than putting a certain ad spend every month behind a meta campaign and hoping for to generate and praying that your cactus in through the roof, right? Cause AI right now is loving Quantity and quality. So as much social media as we can produce, instead of leaning into all this ad spend stuff all the time on marketplaces, why not post seventy videos a day, get organic, you know, interest and then go to Lebs. I think I think you do have to be careful using so much AI. just because I think you can go on social media and you can immediately tell if something is completely AI generated versus if something is UGC. I think that that UGC builds the trust. Whereas if I see something that's completely AI, it just reminds me of a commercial. Yeah. It's almost like there's like a the demographic shift here. It's like my parents, who are, you know, like what are they, baby, baby boomers? Maybe I'm dating them. I have no idea. But but yeah, they they they they are not used to seeing something that's AI versus UGC, right? And in their minds, they're like, wow, that cat just flew and landed on that penguin and swam into the North Pole. Like, They don't get it. Yeah, they're like, I need that. And and I think the clickbaitiness of the AI is what maybe would bring a client to the website and be like, this is a load of you know what. But maybe that interest of the clickbait would bring them to the website, and maybe that's where there's pillars, right? Like UGC content. And and this is really what I think I meant earlier was like social media has become the new way to sell product, right? Yes. And I'm not saying making social media content with AI, I'm saying making social media content, feeding it to algorithms and letting the AI and the algorithms push it out to the right people. you know, the biggest thing that we're preaching, at least with the brands that I'm running and managing and owning and all the clients that you're working with at our marketing agency, is why don't we just like boost posts? What happened in boosting posts? What happened to posting something, seeing it go viral, and then putting money behind something we know that works instead of putting money and throwing it out the wall and saying, hey, ad spend, please do this with this graphic I made, right? Exactly. I think like Making sure you're keeping an eye on the posts that do well, that get more engagement, get more shares or reposts, and then double downing on what works. A hundred percent. And that's the other thing I want to speak to about social media. I mean, I don't know, you know, how many videos you watch or I watch or you guys watch, you know. Too many. Too many that say, yeah, you have to go viral with views and impressions and this and that and the third. We haven't talked about any other metric that is that does exist on social media. There's likes, there's shares, there's saves, there's comments. There are, you know, TikTok now is a big thing about, you know, showing those green screen videos of like, you know, have you guys seen this product? And it's a green screen video of someone using it. Well, I use it every day and it's gotten rid of my wrinkles for the past 10 years, whatever it might be, right? Selling the proof of concept, but doing it in different ways instead of us as the person posting the video saying, Okay, this didn't go viral. I'm upset. Well, how many shares did it get? Yeah. How many people saved that video like I save videos that are going to look back at it later and maybe be that late purchaser? Like we maybe didn't get them in the impulse zone of buying, but we got them at least interested. We can look at that content, say, hey, what worked, what didn't, what converted, what didn't get them to the cart to actually, you know, press add to cart and shop and buy and order. What can we do differently? But what can we take from something that's already worked? And to speak to your point, I will die on this hill. I believe that shares are the best form. of like measuring success. Preach. Like it one gives it to another set of eyeballs. But two, it says, Hey, this was super relatable. And this reminds me of you. I thought of you. I'm gonna send it. And like when you get when you get a message or a DM from someone that says, Hey, I thought of you, it's gonna make me more likely to buy that product. Of course. Because my friend or your my mom, my dad sent it to me. Yeah. There's meaning held to it now. It's it's like you see that product and you're like, I remember when someone sent that to me and thought of me. Exactly. it's not just the algorithm feeding it to you. It's your friends. It's your friends. And then honestly, I mean, at the end of the day, every single business is trying to make what money. So if we're sharing, if someone is sharing your post on a meta platform, whether it's Facebook or Instagram, Meta's gonna say, or the algorithm's gonna say, All right, bet, that's working. I'm gonna keep feeding this to more algorithms, more feeds, more people of any demographic, really. on any device. And hopefully, with the more, you know, they say activity reads activity, with more activity with sharing, hopefully that post would go somewhere else to somebody else. Exactly. Who knows if it lands into the hands of a big buyer, a big retail buyer? I mean, all we talk about is D2C, direct to consumer, you know, getting that one time, two time, three time purchase. But the bulk buying is is massive. I mean, when when Stanley, you know, posts a video of their water bottle. You know, I know that you and I send it to each other because we like the color bubblegum, but what happens when like a TJX buyer says, Hey, you know, I want to sell this in our store. I know it's hot now, so we're gonna probably get it next season when it's out of season and you know, we'll outlet it and retail it. It's just small things like that. It's like content is so important for so many different things. And we keep thinking, you know, let's let's serve it to an individual. No, let's serve it to a big company. Yeah. It's like a a huge B2B also. It is. I I heard someone say like, B2B is ultimately still B2C because you're still selling to a human. Like they're always selling to a human being with emotion. And I think you really have to tie your content into that as well. 100%. So I mean, this podcast serves as a way to educate and also just a way for us to get our thoughts out too, because we're working all the time during the day. Sometimes it's hard to catch and break the talk, but What would we say is is a good practice for folks that are looking to get better at social media? And I mean, of course, hey, we're here to help you, but there's always a a version of someone who says, you know, I want to learn it on my own, which we respect. what are some things that someone can start practicing or doing now? Is it creating content calendars? Is it saving videos they're feeling inspired by? Is it, you know, I don't know. Yeah, some ideas. I think like as a business owner, typically like they're not super fluent in social media. Like some of the best business owners might be the worst content creators. So funny. And vice versa. Like some of the best content creators might not be the best business owners. And I think trying to like mesh the two together are really hard. but I think someone starting out, like just posting, and it doesn't have to be like good quality. When you're just starting an account, just get as many like posts out as you can. Right. And double down on what's working and what's not. And like over time, you'll get better at editing, you'll get better at writing hooks, you'll get better at writing captions. And you know, once something goes viral, you'd ride the wave, lock in on making even more content because you wanna take advantage of that that viral trend that just I wanna bookmark the fact that you said ride the wave. There are way too many times in social media where A company, a person, an influencer, whoever might be a single entity or a larger business will post something, it'll go viral. And they're like, sweet, check, that went viral. What are we gonna do next to go viral? No, post again. Do the same exact thing you did because if it resonated with the audience, where whatever the audience you know might have been at that time, followers, non-followers, it's working. Yeah. Like I know so many creators, at least that you know, I personally know that you know went off and now are doing influencing and they're creators for other brands. They post the same content all the time, whether it's voiceovers, whether it's B-roll shots, whether it's Day in My Life or Get Ready With Me is whatever it might be. If it hits, it hits. Yeah. Right. There's no reason to change. And I think like speaking of like riding the wave, if you get a viral piece of content and it's just escalating, you bet you're gonna start doing that more long form, trust building content as soon as you see your your viral rail take taking off. Because that's when you really want to get your story out. You want to build your trust with your audience. You wanna like send a message. Like that's when like more of the the personal emotional content comes up. Yeah, I like that. I wanna speak to that for a second. So it's almost like what we can think about it as is when you're starting off with social media and you're you have your iPhone or your Samsung, whatever phone you have, whatever device you have, and you wanna start making content but you don't know where to start, make as much short form content. And when we say short form and long form, like we can We can kind of extrapolate on that. So short form can be anything from an eight second video, which is most of our attention spans nowadays, to call it, I don't know, 25, 30 seconds. Long form might be 45 to two minutes. you know, for different reasons and different purposes, you post short and long. But what I'm hearing from you, which I totally agree with, is post short form, post a lot of it, see what's hitting, gather analytics because analytics and data is so important before you start throwing money behind anything. Cause at the end of the day, we always say this at 52 launch. Investors are not going to invest in your company without sales because if they were gonna do that with everyone, no one would have any money. They they wanna see proof of sales, they wanna see, hey, it's worth putting more money into this. The same thing with social media and advertisements. I don't want to spend money on something I know that's not landing or resonating with my audience and raise my cack through the roof where I'm actually paying twenty dollars for someone to buy my product. That's ridiculous. You have landing costs, you have shipping, you have all the different things that that go into selling a product that no one really thinks about. And then you add. Ad spend on top of that. But anyways, going back to what I was saying, my side tangent. Short form, short form, short form. Get analytics, get data, figure out what works. When something hits, lean into that long form. Like you said, talk about your brand story, talk about who you are, build trust, build credibility, talk about what platforms you sell on, but organically. Post a video saying, hey, we're on Amazon. Let that person go to Amazon organically and find your product and buy it instead of being served a sponsored ad or a sponsored post. 100%. Yeah, that's actually really good advice. Short. your short form to long form and keep hitting on what is working. And definitely like balance out the short form and long form. And like if you think one of the long form, because I think that's like harder to make the long form because you have to keep them engaged. you'll you'll get better at it. So like keep putting out that long form content and you know if it doesn't hit, just do it again. And I think that's the great thing about social media is like you're not faulted for a bad post. You just keep going. And in fact, it even helps because it's just content is content. I love that line. You are not faulted for a bad post. Social media is very forgiving. As long as you don't say the wrong things online, then there's cancel culture. We won't get into that. But long story short, social media is very forgiving. Ad spend is not so much. And I'm not trying to like discredit ad spend. I mean, I run ads for my own personal products. It's not that I don't like doing it. It's just really hard to justify spending so much money a month to convert, you know. X amount of whatever it I'm doing, even if I'm in the green making money, I'd rather just post a crap ton of videos and get that social organic engagement that leads to a sale rather than putting money behind the sale. Yeah. And I think what's important about the the agency is that you could have a great product, but if you're not marketing it the way you should, especially with AI, like honestly, like anyone can make a product. And it takes a lot more to then take that product to market and to go into a competitive market. So I think like having that social media, having all the the knickknacks of the agency fifty-three. Is huge for a client. Correct. I mean, listen, like you just said, anyone can bring a product to market. If you have the money, you can go and work in a factory. You can go and get your marketing analysis through ChatGPT. Probably won't be as great as a human doing it, but nonetheless, you can do it. not everyone that is an inventor is a CEO. That's the difference. Is you can be an inventor, you can bring something like this to market and make it the better mousetrap and add a spiky handle and call it the spike mug or whatever you want to call it. But Are you a CEO or a brand owner enough to actually make this scale? Get this in front of the right eyes, get this on the right platforms, push media for people to see to really want this. How are you letting your customers know, hey, you should resonate with this or you should remember me? That's the difference. Yeah. That is what agency 53 does. You know, 52 launch is a product launch company. Agency 53 is a product sales company. We are helping you scale and move your first a thousand units, 5,000 units, whatever it is that you may have. you need that because. It's lovely to launch a product to market. It's like your baby. I mean, you've done it. I've done it. So we appreciate the launch and and we appreciate all the effort that goes into it, the time, the stress, the hurdles. But the biggest thing is the reward once you get your tool or you get your first sample. But the biggest thing is is it gonna sit in your basement for the next 10 years? Are you gonna sell it at a yard sale and say, that was fun? No. You wanna hustle, you wanna make a business out of this. I mean, we've had clients that do this for fun, bring a product to market with us because they just wanna side hustle. We have other people that have been able to walk away from their jobs and make this their their life, right? And have dropped multiple products or multiple SKUs. So it's really what you want to make it. we are here at agency fifty three. It's really us it's not even really a sell or a set, you know, I'm not trying to soft sell you or hard sell you. It's just the truth. I mean if you want to move product, you have to work with an agency. And why not work with an agency that already has all your files and your and your information and your your history because we also helped you launch. So but yeah it was a pleasure speaking to everyone today and obviously speaking to you. we sit next to each other so we get to speak every day, but this is cool in front of all the lights and all the fancy stuff. but yeah, we appreciate the time today and we appreciate you guys watching. Yeah, thank you.