In this episode of Ecommerce Marketing with the Pitbulls, John Roman takes us through the captivating growth story of BattlBox, a brand that's carved its niche in the e-commerce world with its unique outdoor and adventure gear subscription boxes. Launched in 2015, BattlBox has faced its share of challenges, adapting to changing economic climates, and evolving consumer behaviors.
🔍 *Key Highlights:*
- The inception of BattlBox and the golden era of e-commerce in 2015.
- The dual pillars driving BattlBox's decisions: the power of content and the value of community.
- Venturing into media production: risks, rewards, and the monumental Netflix TV show.
- Expert tips for small CPG brands: customer acquisition, content strategy, and the rise of micro-influencers.
- The significance of video editing in portraying brand authenticity.
- The dynamics of organic vs. paid content: finding the right balance.
- Building robust communities: the potential of Facebook groups and the challenges of membership communities.
- A candid look at the e-commerce landscape: the wins, the losses, and the unsung challenges.
Transcript from video:
0:06 Welcome to Ecommerce marketing with the Pitbulls where we catch up with craft brands to hear their story and learn
0:12 how they're growing their e-commerce channel. Hi, I'm Andy. And I'm Lindsey.
0:18 Today, we're joined by John Roman. He's the CEO of Battlbox So really excited to have this conversation today, John.
0:26 I'm going to give you a second, give you a moment in a second to kind of guide us through your background.
0:31 But looking through your bio here, I think you've kind of been beat around the bush a few times. It seems like you have a ton of experience all through the e-commerce space.
0:39 So I think we're going to get a ton of of of great insights out of this today.
0:45 Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about Battlbox, how you started it and kind of got to where you are now. Sure.
0:51 Any. Lindsay Thanks both for having me. Really, really excited to be here today.
0:57 Let's see. Battlbox Battlbox. We started in 2015, so, you know, you can't really time the market or time things,
1:06 but it was ultimately the optimal time to start what at the time was only solely a subscription box for outdoor and adventure years.
1:16 I think hiking, camping, if it has to do with outside in the great outdoors, then it would be Battlbox.
1:23 And yeah, it was a different time back then. Customer acquisition costs for sub $5 and not knowing how good we had it.
1:33 And you know, if I knew what I knew now, I would have maxed out every single credit card.
1:39 I would have borrowed money from anybody that would pick up the phone and would have completely taken advantage of
1:46 $5 acquisition cost. Because, you know, as you guys know, it's it's a completely different game now on on all our social channels, all advertising,
1:55 definitely. And then a half year you went through an acquisition and then eventually bought it, bought it back. Tell me about how that went.
2:01 Yeah, that's not that wasn't the plan. That's not how these things are supposed to go.
2:07 You you're you're building for that exit which, which we, which we got and
2:17 it just ended up, there was an opportunity. So you know, nothing against our,
2:24 our previous owner emerge there
2:30 SPAC out of, out of Toronto but you know it's just
2:35 anybody unless you're living under a rock you've seen what the markets have done in these past couple of years. They've been challenging.
2:42 They've been really challenging for four companies that went public via via, you know, a reverse buyout, a SPAC.
2:50 It's challenging losing, you know, 80, 90% of your market cap, regardless of
2:57 any sort of actual financial decision making on those their stock prices dropping.
3:04 And it just it was simply an opportunity where it was mutually beneficial for us to
3:12 take it back, for them to sell it and to buy it. Because, you know, we know the business better than anyone.
3:18 We're the ones running it. So was not part of the plan at all. In the plan was was get acquired,
3:25 stick around for two or three years to to receive our earn outs, our bonuses.
3:32 And I think the economic climate just suggested that there is another path to go and I
3:39 still can't believe that that it's it's the path we went. But I'm super excited that we that we have it back.
3:45 Definitely. I think that's a really cool perspective because as you mentioned, a lot of people in the space are looking for the, you know,
3:52 kind of grow to to sell, you know, kind of direction. So cool to hear the perspective of like, hey, you know, we got out.
3:59 You did everything kind of the way that everybody in, you know, the dream path for everybody. That's like there's still the meat on the bone here.
4:06 Let's let's see what we can can do. Yeah, it's interesting. It's again,
4:11 you know, I did say the same thing again, timing the market. But, you know, we time the market probably almost perfectly
4:18 selling in October 2021, at least as far as acquisitions in the e-commerce space go. Right.
4:25 Like everything was still like going up and to the right post pandemic.
4:31 It was moments away from correcting which which everybody dealt with. So it was kind of ideal. And
4:39 I guess if you look at right now, well, you know, we bought it back in April, but I would still put April in today in the same time period.
4:48 This is this is another opportunity. This is if it's not the bottom, it's probably close to the bottom.
4:55 Certainly. Yeah. It was another just timing thing where the opportunity was there to
5:02 to buy back at a fraction of what we had. So it's it's, it's how you can't time these things
5:08 but you know sometimes you can you can create opportunity from from timing That's awesome.
5:15 Well come on diving into it today, one of the reasons why I'm so excited for this conversation is I think you're doing
5:22 a lot on the content side. Probably as good as anybody out there. See, I'd love to just kind of get your perspective of,
5:30 you know, why that became such a big focus for your business and kind of how you how you fell into that and you're kind of where
5:37 where you see it going and the effect that's had on your business. Sure. So, yeah, so you know, the to
5:45 unpopular opinion, but for a business to stay state that the 2 to 2 parts
5:53 of the business to try to think of the right word and it's escaping me but that the two pillars that we make
6:01 all of our decisions all business decisions take this into consideration which is wild to say, but it's content and community
6:09 community being the community that we've that we've grown that that are Battlbox customers But bigger than that, right?
6:17 It could be Battlbox fans. It could be Battlbox vendors.
6:22 It's literally just an ecosystem all the way around. And we take both into consideration on on the content piece.
6:30 It's it's interesting because it's it is wasn't in our initial and immediate strategy was but not like it is today but kind of listening
6:41 to our audience, we quickly found that that was the way to go. So we and this is funny to say, because it's such
6:48 a, you know, any S.R.O. purists would would have a heart attack,
6:54 I don't know, about to say, but it was 2015. It was a different time. We had a pre-purchase survey
7:00 so consumers trying to give you the money. We say, no, wait, no click buy yet.
7:05 Hey, tell us where you heard about us. Now you know the best practice is having it post-purchase,
7:11 but amid that you know eight years ago nine years ago is pre-purchase. Just because we didn't know any better was naivete and it was the usual suspects.
7:19 Where did you first hear about us? Facebook, Google, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.
7:25 and we had other that you could click and mouth to.
7:31 We we had about 20% of our first time purchasers click on other
7:38 and type in current 1776. We don't know who that is.
7:44 We were we we had a we had an interesting arguably the time was probably bleeding edge
7:51 on on on thoughts thought that logic but our go to market strategy and in February 2015
8:00 we were sending at least 30 boxes every month of our product to YouTube reviewers and influencers
8:08 and that was now that's standard operating protocol for anybody, right? You know, you have to send your stuff to people to get more eyes on it.
8:17 But you know, 2015, that wasn't like that was I don't say it was crazy, but it just definitely wasn't best practice people knew yet.
8:24 Like that's really hit in the hype cycle like this year honestly. Like yeah you're so we're hearing so much about influencer
8:30 and how everything's going to be influencer driven. So yeah that's, that's, that's pretty crazy that you're, you're at it
8:36 in 24 right So we, I remember like it was yesterday we're getting these, we're looking
8:41 at the survey results and we're seeing current 1776 and we open up our Google sheet where we have these 30 something boxes
8:50 we're sending and they're corresponding YouTube or Instagram channel. And we don't see we don't see this current seen current 1776.
8:59 So we jump on YouTube, we find him and he sure enough is doing unboxing on of our box.
9:07 The best, the highest tier, the pro plus, and which is what we would send influencers.
9:12 Your viewers is the only box we send and we do a couple little bit of, you know, back and looking for this person.
9:20 We find him, he's a paying customer and he's driving traffic for us. He's
9:29 we're quickly saying, okay, this, this guy's onto something, so we reach out to him. Okay, Please keep doing this.
9:37 We're going to copy your box moving forward. If you have to pay 150 bucks sales tax in shipping anymore,
9:44 just keep doing the box and a few months go by. After that. And he's continuing to bring like some significant
9:52 traffic in and just equally important conversions. And we're seeing as we're growing his channels growing as well.
10:02 And we're just again, it's a timing thing. So we reach out again and our okay,
10:08 keep doing the box. It's going to be free. We're also going to write you a check each month for $500.
10:13 Do not stop like you have to keep doing this. And then the next conversation a few months after that was on,
10:21 Hey, do you want to move your your family, your wife, your three kids,
10:27 all of you guys down to Georgia and do this full time and buy this just content, be like the face of our brand.
10:34 And it was that's a wild, wild 88 to Z.
10:40 But we just saw that there was clearly something there. And once he came on full time and Brandon joined the team at that point,
10:49 we were able to really just double down, triple down on content. You know, prior to that, he was doing one unboxing every month
10:57 and that was his he had one piece of content that came out post post shipment, and we quickly said, okay, well, we're going to continue to do that,
11:05 but we're going to test gear and we're going to film it and we're going to do this and we're going to film and we're going to go on adventures and film it and really just leaned in on it.
11:14 And shortly thereafter, a few months of like putting out exponentially more content,
11:23 we saw our channels start to spike up and relative spike we were gaining maybe a thousand new subscribers a month,
11:33 which which was a big deal for a brand to be getting that kind of momentum. And
11:40 an agency or production studio reached out to us and pitched us on the idea of doing a TV show.
11:49 And fast forward a whole story there, but it ended up leading to the Netflix TV show we had,
11:56 which was kind of the ultimate shoot up in in validation off of this content.
12:03 Content. Yeah, that's awesome. That's the you know, we were saying, you know, kind of the picture
12:08 perfect storybook exit story probably the same with that's the best you can do in content right Right.
12:14 You can live and grow and until you get picked up by Netflix. Exactly. This whole story kind of reminds me, I think it was in like 2014,
12:22 I was at like a franchise conference and there was a gentleman there presenting and he was trying to tell everybody, listen, even now
12:29 you need to be thinking of your business as a media company, at least having some wing of a media production.
12:36 How important do you think that is now? Obviously, it's it's so much a part of all businesses now,
12:43 but I still feel like there's plenty of businesses out there who look at it like it's not worth investing in. And I think there's that moment you're talking about where you see
12:51 parent 1776 as channels starting to grow while you're growing and thinking, okay, this could be a good partnership.
12:58 And then even taking on the ability to help him create that content that seems like such a huge risk that a lot of companies are still like,
13:04 I don't know about all that. So can you talk a little bit about the media production side of it? Sure. So so yeah, it was it was definitely a risk, right?
13:13 It was not what everybody else was necessarily doing at the time. But I mean, clearly
13:19 now, you know, whether it was gentleman in 2014 at the franchise conference talking about it or
13:25 I was taking the chance and in early 2016, now we it's it's tough to argue
13:30 that that that the content piece and having a media arm is tough to argue that it shouldn't be a part a part of the business.
13:39 Right you're spot on a lot of brands continue to
13:46 struggle, right, Because it's not easy to execute. You have to look at things in a completely different lens.
13:52 I think we're in also matters. You know, I don't think every brand has to have it. I think you look at where you're at on the need want scale,
14:01 and the farther away you're from, absolute need and you're closer to the want
14:06 and you're following that discretionary income spend, I think you have to you have to have it.
14:12 And and the reason is because in zoomers behavior is changing, right?
14:18 Every year that goes by, consumers want to spend their extra hard earned dollars with brands that they feel some kind of connection with.
14:28 You look at I read an article today about about is it skims
14:35 Kim Kardashian's. Yeah I think they're they raised in a $4 billion valuation
14:41 they're talking about doing an IPO and it's going to be if it's successful and execute,
14:48 it's going to be like this victory that the stock market needs, which is just mind blowing wild to think of.
14:55 But you look at what she's done and then you you take a step back and you look at
15:01 I mean, the best, easiest example to talk about is Mr. Beast. The guy built content built community,
15:08 and then he's like, I'm going to launch a virtual fast food restaurant with no brick and mortar,
15:15 and we're going to be nationwide and everyone's app, and we're also going to be wildly successful at it.
15:21 And then we're going to drop a chocolate and cookie company. And the day we launch, we're going to be in all Wal-Marts nationwide.
15:31 Right. Which is something that any brand would would likely be very, very
15:38 hard pressed not to want to have something like that. But you can't just get in, get in. But they were always able to build these brands
15:46 and almost instantly have success based on their content. Right. And it's because their content is is showing
15:53 a human side of them or an element of them that people connect with. And there's so many, so many examples of this.
16:01 Another one that no boys, they have a podcast where they've had ridiculous hosts,
16:08 ridiculous guests on there and you're like, How do you get Elon Musk and you?
16:13 And you're just like, Wow. But then they they'll drop a brand. They have a hard seltzer product that they're getting in all of, all of these
16:21 grocery stores and all of these places across the country. And you're seeing kind of these content
16:27 creators and influencers are just people with reach with via content.
16:35 Now dumping these brands on top. And it's it's wild because they're
16:41 they're reverse engineering it and it just kind of makes it really, really, really evident that brands
16:49 that aren't doing it like you're going to get left behind it, it strikes me.
16:55 So we work with oftentimes a lot of smaller brands, some bootstrap brands where I think there's more hesitancy,
17:02 especially with the focus on, you know, customer acquisition cost and, you know, let's make sure that our margins are matching up right off the bat.
17:10 You know, it can be scary to put this investment forward, like, hey, I'm going to put out some money that likely isn't going to turn around immediately.
17:18 I'm not going to see like a it's not like, you know, a paid AdWords. Okay. Hopefully you're measuring return immediately from the ad itself.
17:26 It's you. Hey, I'm going to be investing in this channel for a while and hopefully it builds into something that's valuable.
17:32 But yeah, I'm curious if you kind of have maybe advice for some of these smaller brands where when we look at,
17:38 I think a lot of people get overwhelmed when they look at, you know, Mr. Beast or, you know, Kim Kardashian.
17:44 And we see, hey, that's clearly the path to some of these multibillion dollar brands.
17:49 That's where we're at. But like, how do we get started when we're just looking for, you know, we're still trying to break 100 K revenue, 200 K revenue in a given month.
17:58 You know, how do we find the cash to invest in that? Even on the influencer side, you know, it's it's it can be overwhelming
18:05 just because so many options, so many people, you know, even just a few free free boxes going out each month
18:11 could be a real struggle on the bottom line. So I'm curious if you have any kind of like where to start or advice for that smaller end.
18:19 Yeah, So so to a couple answers. One on the influencer piece on
18:27 on who to send send the product to if you if you you stack rank influencers based on their audience based on their reach.
18:36 I will 100 times out of 100 times choose the the micro
18:43 influencers I'd call it sometimes sub 100,000 followers.
18:48 They're they're the ones that are honestly oftentimes more passionate, more genuine.
18:55 They're, for lack of better words, grinding in, trying to make that work as their possible possible profession.
19:03 And you're going to get a lot more, a lot more effort from those groups.
19:09 So when you're able to on the influence shot, if you if you're limited by how many you can send, I would put and I never put my eggs in one basket
19:17 but in this in this scenario I would put the eggs all in in the micro-influencers and
19:25 they're just they're going to have the best, best return. Typically on the flip side, on the
19:31 the investment from a content perspective, it's interesting because the barrier to entry
19:39 now is so minimal. Everyone has a video phone, right?
19:46 Everybody has the ability to record videos. If you have
19:51 a decent Android or an or or an iPhone, you're able to download
19:56 ridiculous free software like cap cut where you can With zero. I have zero editing skills on graphics
20:05 or video on like the Adobe suite that we use. But even even myself at my age, I, I can use this app
20:14 and I can actually put a it's not as good as like a professionals video, but I can edit something.
20:20 I'm somewhat okay and that doesn't take that doesn't take a lot of time.
20:26 Right? You can you can set aside just record something
20:31 of of your your journey and it could be you're trying to get to 100,000 like dollars in sales like people want genuine.
20:39 And I would almost argue that it's good that you're not a video editor because you're at it's not going to be well polished, which is even better
20:49 because it's going to actually show that it's genuine and it's it's a story and people want to connect with you.
20:55 And we had to give a couple weeks ago, we're having our so we have a few video editors now full time on the team
21:02 and we're having our our our weekly video editing call. And I literally had to say, hey, guys, like
21:09 you're the most talented group of video editors I know of for this next group of videos we're doing.
21:14 Can we bring the polished down some? They look too good, which is which is wild to say,
21:20 but it was because like you, you could look at any of our feeds for a week and these videos are just too good, right?
21:27 It's not We're losing Soundbar genuineness because there's so professional.
21:32 So we had to we literally it's dumbed down a little bit. It's bringing back people want people want to see genuine right.
21:38 You're you're a business owner and maybe it's just you
21:43 take your phone do do some videos, do some slight edits or not even Ed just throw them out there.
21:51 Right. And and really try a few different takes on on what's what type of messaging you're trying to do.
21:59 Maybe maybe you're trying to give a transparent and see on on you trying to grow this business as an entrepreneur. Right.
22:06 Or maybe you have a cool story of the business you want to share or it's a cool product, like try it all and it's
22:15 and we've gotten really good at it. We were I was literally on a call today. We still we have a new a new full time creator we brought on
22:24 and one of our senior guys, Brannon was like, I wish we had like like
22:31 we can pretty much forecast success on videos, but it's still behind the scenes.
22:37 It's a shotgun approach and it's it's a little hundred pallets, but
22:42 because there's 100 pallets, one of them surely is going to hit the target.
22:47 And it's it's so true. It just it doesn't it doesn't take as much effort as as you would think.
22:55 I mean, I think everybody assumes that it does. But I mean, you look at not to discredit influencers,
23:02 but you look at some of these people that have a lot of following that unpopular opinion are talentless
23:11 and they're figuring it out. Right. So surely you have some business acumen.
23:18 You should be able to figure it out, too. Yeah, I think you have a great point that it's you know, a lot of times the excuse given is, hey, it's too expensive
23:25 or it's going to take too much of my time when I'm already strapped and trying to get orders out the door, whatever it is, you know, But I think a lot of it in there is,
23:33 you know, kind of a nervousness or a fear of putting themselves forward and getting out there.
23:38 And I think that's a really great message that like, it doesn't need to be polished, it doesn't need to be perfect.
23:44 And probably a lot of the videos will be pretty poor, but, you know, just keep churning them out. And, you know, at the end of the day, that's you're going to
23:51 hopefully hit on one, you know, And in the end, the thing is, I think people will give it a an attempt.
23:58 And after two weeks or four weeks, they don't see the success that they thought they needed to see on due to due to naivete.
24:06 They set an unrealistic goal. And the reality is it's not it's not quick.
24:12 You said it a second ago. It's it's a long game. People think SEO is a long game.
24:17 Know this. This is a long business. This makes this makes ACL look like instant satisfaction.
24:22 Granted gratification. It's it's such a long game on tik-tok.
24:28 So we we I remember I grabbed our Battlbox
24:34 username on Tik Tok in early 2020 sat on it for a complete year,
24:41 did not do anything with it, said well, we don't dance. Why do we even have this? Like, what are we going to do with this?
24:46 And then in February 2021, we posted our first video on there. We had weekly meetings talking about what type of content we were going to try.
24:56 We were taking a lot of previous content we had and chopping it up. We were trying everything.
25:02 We had some mild little tiny successes, but it wasn't.
25:08 It took the better part of an entire year before Tik Tok really like popped
25:15 for us, took a year of posting multiple hundreds, hundreds of videos
25:21 with very little to no success before before getting some sort of cadence where it was successful.
25:28 Now it's our biggest channel and that's for an established brand with like a really professional content department to begin with.
25:35 So that that level, yeah, we had the, we had the resources that would still, could crack it.
25:42 And when we look back on what the success videos were, a lot of them were the most genuine, least
25:49 edited ones. How do you think about I know a lot of times I hear with brands
25:55 that are very content focused like, Hey, some of the organic stuff is great when I can really start building a community and a following,
26:02 you know, people are really interested in following along, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to purchase, you know?
26:07 So how do you how do you think about, you know, getting from that community and you put the work in
26:13 and there's people in love with the brand to you're kind of parlaying that at the end of the day really into like, okay, now let's, you know,
26:20 either give the right offers or what is it take to get purchases out of that. So it's a great point and I wish I could sit here and tell you
26:29 that our organic traffic converts at the same percentage as our paid traffic, but it is nowhere near
26:37 the same, nowhere near literally a fraction of it. But it is a numbers game in the same sense.
26:43 We just know we need 20 acts more organic traffic to get to get the same results.
26:49 Yeah, if you have a product that is a product market fit, if it's having success in ads
26:56 and you're getting an acceptable acquisition cost, a return on ad spend where we're able to build in and scale a little bit,
27:05 improve through validity of the product that the the organic side comes.
27:11 It's just you have to put a lot more people, a lot more stuff at the wall, very artistic.
27:18 It just doesn't convert at the same rate and it's a much more methodical,
27:25 multi-step multitouch purchase. You know, we're able to get get customers
27:32 sometimes in one click in an ad, sometimes two clicks or three buy organic customers.
27:40 It's significantly more. We're 17, 18 touches, which is which is wild.
27:47 Do you have a feel for kind of like what's the right mix between, you know, I guess maybe purely entertainment,
27:53 educational type content versus like, you know, really mixing a CTA in there and saying, hey, you know, come, you know, this is our box unboxing.
28:01 Like let's wrap it up with, hey, that's actually a sponsored post. Like, come by, come buy this box kind of thing.
28:08 They don't work. It's the CTAs, the hard sales
28:13 never, never work. There's which is for organic obviously
28:18 they work on on the PED side you have to have them for the paid side. Yeah. On the organic it's
28:23 they with don't get me wrong we still spread them in on and and we're
28:29 always hoping for a different result than we get every single time. So do them because at the end of the day you do want it in there
28:36 even if it's not converting until people see it and they understand they might, they might see it and then it
28:41 that's touched number 14 and they see five more pieces of content that are not hard sell and they end up buying.
28:50 So I think it serves it's its use of being in there. But I look at the videos that have driven us the most sales.
28:59 They were talking about products, but they weren't pitching it at all. They were showing a product and use
29:07 and people saw that identified and said, Oh, I want that because I want to do what they did in the video.
29:16 I think that's I think it's it's not selling, not selling,
29:21 but showcasing a product sells best. Can we talk a little bit about building community
29:29 I know in with the TikTok and current 1776 is probably easier when you're
29:38 pulling someone in who has community and building off of that. What kind of advice would you give for a brand
29:45 that is starting with no community or very, very small amount of community? What are the important pieces that you employ
29:51 just to really scale up and build it so so you have to have because you know, we're not all in person, you have to have some kind of
30:00 meeting place, right? Whether it's a creating a Reddit style forum or the easiest thing,
30:08 which we used to have a forum, we converted to a Facebook group on the Facebook group is great
30:15 because it puts everybody in one spot. And I think it's key to to interact with with the customers
30:24 and they in the infancy, it's it's you driving it. You have to drive it. You have to be interacting with their posts
30:31 or making posts and asking questions to to drive engagement. You you have to be in the driver's seat of it.
30:38 You can't you can't build it and expect them to come. It's I wish you were that simple. You have to you have to build it and then be playing on it
30:47 for for them to be be attracted, attracted to it. I think that's
30:52 the easiest, easiest way. Right. You try to and maybe the group so you know our our Facebook group at this point is a members only group it's it's
31:02 part of the membership of the subscription you get access to there if you're not a subscriber you can't be in there on end.
31:10 But what I've seen work is I've seen people making a Facebook group that maybe isn't even necessarily based on your exact product.
31:19 It could be the space they are products in and you want to create a community of a resource
31:26 for that that may be higher on topic
31:32 and providing education in there or like minded people. So I think there's a few different ways to to skin that cat of the group
31:41 and you know, depending on your business, I think if anyone's listening to this right away, you have a couple of ideas and what your gut is saying.
31:50 The right group is is the right group. I'm curious to
31:55 I always seem to want to ask about this, what this says, but with Battlbox is demographics
32:03 and looking at building community on Facebook. And then I think about Gen Z and their unwillingness to be sold to
32:10 or at least interact with content that's very obviously calls to action and overly salesy.
32:16 What do you when you look at your demographics and you're thinking about selling to them, what are the different approaches
32:23 that you're taking based on generations are based on platform. It's different for each one or yeah, it is.
32:31 It is a little different. You look at the so our sweet spot is, is 24 to 45.
32:38 That's just the ideal male. So 90% of our, our buyers are male, that 10% that are
32:45 females, 50% of them are buying it as a gift for a male. So it's a very very, very male centric demographic.
32:53 It does it talking about the 24 year old and a 45 year old, they're definitely different buyers.
32:59 The the the older group, we're creating a sense of urgency that traditional old school,
33:08 hey, there's only 200 of these to get like that works
33:14 whether I mean it's it's genuine right make a special offer up 200 of them communicative transparent
33:20 we say there's only 200 of these sense of urgency works The younger generation does does not.
33:27 They don't care. They don't care if there's 200. They'll wait for it to be over and you'll
33:33 you'll make an extra one for them because they're special. It is just it's a totally different sale
33:39 that the younger generation doesn't want to be sold to. And rightfully so.
33:45 They they they want to make their own decision. So it's it's the value at that point of the content.
33:52 Right. And then eventually it's a soft sale through the content and eventually they'll
33:57 they'll they'll see CTA and they'll already be 99% of the way there and they'll they'll take it.
34:03 But it's it's totally different having our members only group on Facebook is a challenge too,
34:09 because some of our younger customers aren't on Facebook.
34:14 But we we run into the the flip side of it will have a tick tock going viral and we'll drop it in the members only group.
34:21 And people are like, Tick tock, what's that?
34:28 I wish. I wish there was honestly a better a better community option. But
34:34 Facebook is has the best that I've seen which was pains me to say because it doesn't meet all the needs of of our entire customer range.
34:44 It's just the best tool currently needs to be disrupted honestly because
34:50 you know it's it's wild now you're looking at some of that the younger audience members
34:55 and they live in a world where there is they never had a Facebook account,
35:01 which is kind of kind of crazy. But it's true, right? Their First social account was either Snapchat or Instagram
35:11 and then, you know, we all are the older people are out on Facebook now. We're all getting on Instagram and Snapchat.
35:18 We've scared them over to TikTok and now we're all coming over to Tik Tok so they'll go somewhere else. It's
35:26 it's very cyclical and so really interesting problems. I think, you know, especially at the smaller side
35:31 when you're just getting started up, you know, if you're thinking that, hey, your membership community may have in it
35:36 50 people or 40 people as you're kind of getting started, you know, it's scary in that like, well, you don't want to push people in there
35:43 and then all of a sudden have have it be crickets in there and you kind of gave a great answer of, you know, you've got to drive it
35:48 and you've got to be producing a lot of the, the, you know, engagement and content in there.
35:55 But yeah, it's interesting as people get a little bit more spread out across platforms. I know even in our world, you know, I've been in a number of masterminds
36:03 or different types of things on the marketing side where, you know, it's like, hey, for, for this one,
36:08 everybody's got to get discord for this one. You know, it's we're doing it all through Slack, this one. We're going to, you know, try to finagle something inside of LinkedIn.
36:15 And it's, you know, kind of like a lot of times it's a barrier to entry that people don't really want to jump over to learn an entire new platform
36:23 because they're only, you know, it's so much bandwidth. And this community, while it's very important, your brand probably
36:28 isn't the most important thing in that individual's life. So yeah, kind of interesting.
36:34 I don't know if there's a question wrapped up in there, but but yeah, kind of how you, how you do that and walk that line. Yes.
36:40 SAS providers listening are SAS entrepreneurs listening to this. Like this is an opportunity and they're because guys you're right
36:48 it's it's we're running into this problem across all all aspects right whether it's mastermind groups or brands committing creating community groups it's it's tough.
36:59 Where are you we're going to go and we've we've talked about it. Okay. Do we do we do we do we convert it to Slack group or do we offer a Slack group as well?
37:07 But then like Slack doesn't work because you are accessible that that maybe aren't their their profession or their job
37:14 isn't is in like uber business related. So they don't even know what slack is.
37:20 It's yeah, there's no right answer. We're still clearly just trying to figure it out.
37:25 Yeah, maybe that's the baseline, right? Just keep, keep trying things, keep throwing things against the wall and see what sticks.
37:32 Yeah. Awesome. Well, I had come into this conversation thinking we were going to talk
37:37 a ton more about subscription, and looking at the time, I think maybe we'll leave it there and save that for a future conversation.
37:46 Sure. This has been super, super enlightening and a great deep dive into all things
37:51 content and community. We like to take a little bit of time at the end of these
37:57 just to to see if you have anything that to kind of give you a shameless plug for those who don't mind being sold, do I guess?
38:04 Yeah. Tell us a little bit about Battlbox is a brand where people can find you and what they'll find when they get there.
38:10 Sure. So Battlbox Battlbox, there's no e in there.
38:16 That's that's why that's why there's an avenue. Because within a year, the domain was taken on. So,
38:24 yeah, you just Google Battlbox. It'll. It'll come up, right. I didn't misspell it too. It'll still come up on.
38:30 You can jump in Netflix and search for Battlbox there too. Our TV show Southern Survival will come up.
38:38 Shameless plug, but it's for good reason onlinequeso dot com.
38:43 So all one word. It's my blog. I try to post a lot of guest articles as well.
38:52 I think there's a problem in the e-commerce space currently where a lot of the thought leaders just talk about wins
39:01 and a lot of the thought leaders are self-proclaimed experts and they're not. And the reality is, yes, there's
39:07 some victories in the mix, but there's there's way more. Right. And the losses are where you you get your learnings and make it a point
39:16 that like the hours we do take, we talk about them on on the blog
39:22 because that's ultimately where the learning is. And more importantly, if someone else is reading it, it
39:30 be going down the same path. They can use my mistakes as kind of a roadmap on how maybe
39:37 we shouldn't do that because he tried that and it didn't work for this reason. So it's kind of just a
39:43 an honest look, look at e-commerce. That's really, really cool. I'll just bookmark that myself
39:52 too, because you're right, there is there is a culture around e-commerce.
39:57 We don't share the losses. We only share the wins. I'm the Zeta, come by my course and start it all over again.
40:04 So I love that there's community building and sharing all of our ells together.
40:09 Yeah. Because No you're, you're spot on. It's, it's, it's irritating and it's a little toxic.
40:15 Some platforms are worse than others. I think Twitter is or X
40:20 has has a lot of of the Yeah.
40:26 Toxic people I guess I probably should have asked before your blog but is there something that we didn't ask that
40:35 that you wanted to cover today or anything that we should have asked? No, we did just get back from Texas.
40:41 We put on five. So in our July box we put five golden tickets randomly in in the box.
40:49 You got a golden ticket. We flew to Texas and we put you in a tank
40:55 and you aimed the tank at a target down range. And if you were to hit that target, we were going to give you $100,000,
41:04 which is kind of like Willy Wonka meets Mr. Beast.
41:12 Just crazy. And it was interesting because it wasn't a sales tool. We announced it the day after our selling window closed.
41:20 So if you saw the video announcing it, it was too and you weren't a customer was too late,
41:26 which was cool because we we wanted our customers to understand this was genuinely being done for them and wasn't a sales tool.
41:34 So the best way to do that is literally make it impossible for it to be a sales tool.
41:39 So really, really cool, a lot of fun. We posted some videos on YouTube about it.
41:45 Definitely different shooting tanks. Awesome for money. Did anyone hit it now?
41:52 Which is great, which is really disappointing because we genuinely wanted it to be one.
41:59 And the way we structured it, it was it was an insurance policy, much like a hole in one or a half court shot when the car
42:07 same same principle, same type of underwriter. So we genuinely we had already paid for that policy and it was expensive
42:14 because we but we wanted someone to win. So I think it just it gave us some learnings.
42:20 The video could have would have been a lot cooler and that would have been a lot cooler if someone would have won.
42:26 So the next event we're going to do and we're going to do another one soon, there's going to be a guaranteed winner and we're going to give some,
42:33 you know, decent amount of of cash to this is a good story to to help someone.
42:38 Yeah. Yeah. That's really, really cool. Well, great. Yeah. Like I said, it's been an awesome conversation.
42:45 I think we covered a ton of ground, but we left a ton to uncover too, so I might just be reaching back out in coming months to.
42:51 To hopefully do this again. Yeah, I'd love to come back. Awesome. All right, Lindsay, would you read us out?
42:58 Yeah. And thank you again, John, so much. This was so great for so many reasons.
43:03 And thank you to those watching and tuning in to e-commerce marketing with the pit bulls. Don't forget to subscribe
43:09 to get all of our YouTube videos as soon as they're released. And if you find the show valuable, we really appreciate you giving us a look and we will see you all next time.
43:19 Hey, it's Andy. I'm here with Percy, the original PPC Pitbull. Thanks for checking us out today.
43:26 If you're ready to take the next step in your digital marketing journey, come on over to PC Pitbull, XCOM and book a Free Strategy Session.
43:33 We'll take a few minutes to get to know you and your brand, and I promise you'll leave with actionable insights that you can implement today.
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