Ep #240 Boosting Your Ecommerce Biz with Meta Ads & TikTop Shop

Someone has probably told you to "just run ads" or "get on TikTok Shop" if you have an ecommerce business, and they're not wrong, but...

There is a time and place for each of these strategies depending on the size and stage of your business. When done at the wrong stage it is a waste of time and money - two things busy entrepreneurs don't have a lot of. 

My guest on today's podcast is Ari Gordon of Like and Likes, an agency that manages CPG digital strategies to boost sales online.

I love that Ari did it himself first as a brand founder of Hone and is now helping other brands choose and execute the right strategy at the right time for their business.

Stop the endless research and overwhelm! Know exactly what each sales channel looks like for success and create a roadmap for your unique business - join me in the Sales Channel Challenge - 3 days April 15, 16 and 17. Reserve your space for just $27 at https://www.foodbizsuccess.com/challenge

MAKE A BIG LEAP THIS YEAR! Commit to the support and accountability you need to create a beautiful business!

• Get Food Business Success to launch and scale to $100K guaranteed
• Scale your existing business to $300K in 2025 with the financial and operational foundations and become the CEO of your biz in Master Your Business

Pick up your copy of "Key Ingredients" on Amazon here.

Check out my YouTube channel at www.foodbiz.tube for how to videos to start and grow a packaged food business.

Transcript

Sari  0:00  
Which sales channel should I focus on first in my food business? I've been hearing the same question for years from passionate food entrepreneurs, just like you. And the reality is, there is no cookie cutter, one size fits all answer. The right channel for you depends on your specific product with your unique benefits and challenges, your current life situation, your personalit, and your business goals. Some of you will see the most success by going to farmers markets. Some of you have a product made for e commerce, and some of you are going to do really well getting on store shelves. And some of you would benefit from having a mix of two, or even all three of those. But what's important here is that you are making the decision based on you, and not what someone else is telling you that you should do. That is why I am so excited to announce our newest live training experience. It's called the sales channel challenge, and it's three days to build a roadmap for your food business success. If you are an early stage entrepreneur, you're thinking about launching or you have launched into one or even two of those channels, but you're struggling to manage the overwhelm and to get traction, then this is a challenge for you. Join me April 15th through 17th for a one hour call each day, and we are going to dive into each of these sales channels so that you really understand what it's going to take to succeed, what is required of you, and whether that feels like a yes. April and I are going to help you assess and really figure out, based on facts, what is the right sales channel for you right now. And here's the best part, it's just $27 and you're going to walk away with that clear understanding of each channel and a roadmap for you. Head over to foodbizsuccess.com/challenge to secure your spot today. We are limiting the number of seats, so you don't want to put this off. Go and get your spot. Foodbizsuccess.com/challenge. I can't wait to see you there. 

Sari  2:27  
Welcome to your Food Business Success. This podcast is for early stage entrepreneurs in the package food industry ready to finally turn that delicious idea into reality. I'm your host, Sari Kimbell. I have guided hundreds of food brand founders to success as an industry expert and business coach, and it's gotta be fun. In this podcast I share with you mindset tools to become a true entrepreneur and run your business like a boss. Interviews with industry experts to help you understand the business you are actually in and food founder journey so you can learn what worked and didn't work and not feel so alone in your own journey. Now let's jump in!

Sari  3:13  
All right. Welcome back to the podcast. I am really excited for today's conversation. This is a topic that I get a lot of questions about. It's definitely very relevant to almost all of you. Anyone who's doing e commerce, you're definitely going to want to listen in to my conversation today with Ari Gordon of Like and Likes. So welcome. 

Ari  3:37  
Thanks. Great to be here. 

Sari  3:38  
Yeah. So I met you a couple years ago when you were kind of back and forth from Seattle to Denver. And at the time we met, you had a matcha tea, like an adaptogenic matcha tea powder called Hone, was the brand name. And since then you, you know, you were growing that and really scaling it, and you really like went through a lot of challenges and growth through that, and then you decided to shut that down, and now you are using everything that you learned in that business as you grew it through e commerce to help other brands. So maybe just go into a little bit more of the background, like, tell us about Hone. And you got started in 2019 and like, what happened in those, you know, five years? 

Ari  4:35  
So yeah, Hone is a mushroom macho blend, right? And so kind of trying to compete with, like the mud waters and everyday doses of the world, right? We launched about the same time, in 2019 right before the pandemic, so perfect timing. And our, a lot of our supply chain was overseas, so that immediately was, was the challenge, right? And we just kind of learned it. Learned how to do it from there, right? I think that was also a blessing in a way because we were fully focused on e commerce because of it. So originally, we were just posting on socials, just trying to go viral and everything, and growing our email list and growing our SMS list, and just doing the things to get it so we could actually run ads. And then, because we were basically bootstrapping, we had to learn how to do everything ourselves. So it took a pretty intensive course on how to make meta ad successful, rather than just kind of throwing money at the ether and praying that it works. 

Sari  5:33  
Let me boost this post,. 

Ari  5:35  
Yeah, all the time, and I mean, I had to slap my partner on the wrist. So seismic. Now, don't do that. Just try to actually make money,

Sari  5:46  
How about that?

Ari  5:49  
And I mean, it's, you know, we grew our business, and we learned how to use absolutely no money to make money, and then how to have, like, a relatively big budget, because eventually we raised like 300k and then just we got into Kroger as well. So we kind of got some good touches to be able to actually grow it. We can talk about this later, but Kroger is a blessing and a curse, right? And so that was kind of a part of why we decided to shut it down, is we also got sued at the same time. So we, we were kind of over it, but it was great. We learned everything that we really could. And now I'm lucky enough to be able to have enough knowledge to help other founders and doing this e commerce agency with a lot of applying AI to basically everything, so it's faster and cheaper and better, really. 

Sari  6:38  
I love it. So you really grew this as a direct to consumer brand first. I mean, you kind of had, didn't have a choice. You launched it, and then the world shut down. And so it sounds like you were growing it. What did you grow it to? If you don't mind sharing numbers, what did you grow it to, like before you start getting into wholesale?

Ari  6:59  
Yeah, we were at about 200k.

Sari  7:01  
Nice. Okay, yeah, so you grew it from nothing to growing it through social and, I mean, Tiktok wasn't even really much of a thing.

Ari  7:11  
Which is also about me. 

Sari  7:14  
You're like, if only we had Tiktok. So then you were a, I mean, this is the challenge, right? With any CPG business is, like, cool, we got into Kroger, amazing, and then you need a whole bunch of capital to scale. The cash flow challenges are real. 

Ari  7:37  
And time. I mean, like, then you have to go and table at all these stores. And then if you have any production issues, which we also get, then everything also becomes a mess in that regard, too.

Sari  7:52  
Oh, the story of CPG. But what I loved is, I mean, you took some time off to kind of, you know, process all of that. But what you were realizing is like, oh, I actually have, like, a real skill and passion for, like, getting into meta, using ads, and using AI to really make all of this work, and I love that you have taken, you know, that's like that silver lining, one of many, but silver lining from the business.

Ari  8:32  
Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, that was what by the end, right? Because, I mean, it kind of goes stories kind of always go back to cook, but I had to automate our entire business, right? I didn't have time to to do any of the marketing for several months, right? Because I was going all across Colorado to go store to store and sampling. And then I did the same thing in Seattle, and like the Fred Meyers, right? And so I learned how to make all of our social media posts through AI, our ads through it, and that was a skill that not many people already had at that time. And with my knowledge, with doing ads like it, just became a thing where the way that I approach e commerce is from a founder's position, rather than from an agency position, which is just, how do we make them spend as much money as possible and then do okay? Mine's like, how do we actually grow your business, right? 

Sari  9:29  
Which I have not had very many, if I don't know if any like, because we're going to talk about ads, and it's not something that I've been reluctant. I am reluctant to kind of endorse or refer out, because I do find most people are agencies and and it's expensive, and it can be a big drain, and you just never know, like, do people really get it and I've just heard so many horror stories of founders that invest with an agency that makes all these promises and then under delivers, and it's so frustrating and can be a really big drain on your budget. And so when you and I reconnected, and you're like, I'm doing this, you know, you and I have been in a lot of conversations about this, and I'm seeing your business. And I'm like, okay, you actually know what you're doing, and you have the founders perspective as well and understand that budgets are tight. 

Ari  10:31  
Sure, and so, I mean, it's and, you know, like, ads aren't for everybody, right? And I think, like, that's the thing that is, I guess, a little bit different than how I approach it, right? It's like, I will tell you talk to it. 

Sari  10:43  
Because some people are like, turnkey. Just, yeah, everybody, everybody should be doing ads. Let's just throw money at it. And it's like, it's not for every business, and it's not for every stage of business. 

Ari  10:53  
Yeah. 

Sari  10:55  
So let's get into it. We can talk about it. We're like, okay, thanks. But like, let's really talk about. So when you're first starting out, what do you recommend as an e commerce brand to, like, start that growth process? Where would you invest?

Ari  11:14  
Yeah, I mean, everything is always content. And I think it's really hard as an e commerce founder to get yourself to actually do the content, and like in any regard or what that means, and I think that's what you have to try to change about yourself is how do you get yourself to post daily? How do you get yourself to film yourself if you can, how do you get to the point where you actually can do your own content, especially in this world that it's becoming like you have to constantly bring stuff out if you can become a content creator, that's essentially what the business is, right? And I know that that's kind of a hard reality sometimes, right? But that is the truth.

Sari  12:01  
Like, I just want to sell my matcha tea. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. But you have to create all this content to do that. That's part of the game. 

Ari  12:10  
Sure, and like and, you know, and don't be afraid. And I think that's just the biggest thing, right? Just force yourself to do it, and you'll get better over it, and you end up liking it. I mean, content is fun. Like, that's really the idea of it, right, even if we're not, even if we're not the young people, right? It's like, it still can be enjoyable. 

Sari  12:32  
I'll do a quick little plug. We have an incredible social media course that Kayla King came and did for us. And it's like, how do you pump out all this content and make it really fast, really easy? And we got to drop all that perfectionism of, like, I need to be camera ready all the time. 

Ari  12:53  
And you never know it's going to blow up, especially on Tiktok, like, there's the weirdest videos that just go viral.

Sari  13:03  
Could be like, four seconds long.

Ari  13:06  
I know, you genuinely have no idea.

Sari  13:10  
So you're creating content, you're putting it out on social media. Where else should you be using your content? 

Ari  13:17  
So I mean, that's the first place, right? And then, I mean, even before that, right, you need to do email and SMS marketing, right, like, I know, especially SMS, people are skeptical over now and then, and it works, right? It might take a little bit to grow that list, but it does work, and it's shown to work, and people are just kind of accepting it. The people that don't want to text will text stop, right? So if it's all good, you're not going to lose that customer either way. But, yeah, have a pop up, set that up right now and try to get that going and try to send out, I mean, send out an email every week, right? Come up with something and have your pop up be 10% discount, right? Don't have it be a newsletter. 

Sari  14:04  
Join our newsletter list. Nobody cares. 

Ari  14:08  
Yeah, everybody gets, like, so much of it, right? Yeah, set up too, right?

Sari  14:18  
Yeah, for sure. 

Ari  14:20  
Like, you're welcome, close, get that really positive, you know, and try to do a good job on it, right? Like, I think, like, that's a thing that I would suggest hiring out for if you're not a designer, right? Just because as soon as those are done, then you have a template, and you have like, 20 emails templates that you can use for weekly and then you can do it yourself on a weekly basis that look good and everything but that initial flow setup, if you don't really know you're doing, try to get a few few k out and get something to do it for you, right?

Sari  14:55  
Yeah, and you do that with in your company, helping people get those flows setup and they are tedious. And it does matter, like layout does matter, for sure. So I'm a big fan of finding who's to like make things, you know, the things that you're not good at, just hire out. Make the investment. It'll be well worth it because, well, I'm curious how did you get people on your email list was it just through that discount piece, like just creating interesting content, and then?

Ari  15:26  
No, I mean, we did markets too. And so we would like, we would always get people to sign up at our markets, right, and then giveaways are probably the biggest one, right? So we would just partner with different brands and do giveaways form and just be like, you have to like us on Instagram. You have to give us your email, right? And you have to do all this, and all of a sudden you get 1000, 2000 emails from a giveaway. 

Sari  15:52  
Okay, so, yeah, they're all interesting. All right, nice.

Ari  15:56  
So you can find other brands around you. 

Sari  15:58  
So you put in all this energy up front to get all these emails, and then if you don't have a good welcome flow and things set up, then you're like, it's like, that's just such a wasted investment. So and you want somebody that can work with you that's like, looking and seeing what's working. Where are people falling off? Let's tweak this one, you know, change that photo or that subject line, and you're using AI for so much of this that you're able to come up with great stuff to test it, to do, you know, different kinds of AB testing and things like that.

Ari  16:35  
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's tour that basically takes in all the data that's worked, and we find out what tone of voice has gotten the most open rates and purchases, and then we adjust it accordingly, right? And then we basically built all this out so, like, it creates really good copywriting, right? We always make sure that we check it, though, right? Because you don't really know. 

Sari  16:57  
That's the thing with AI. Use it for what it's good at but always have the human check. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. So building out starting with your email list. I mean, that's the only way you own your customer, right? That's the only way that you're going to be able to talk directly to them. And it's really important always, always, always be growing your email list.

Ari  17:21  
Yeah, I mean, no matter what, like, one of the brands we're working with is pretty big brand, and because we're doing so much more on Tiktok now, right, like their email list is actually shrinking and be we're like, okay, well, we have to start running meta ads to actually continue to grow the email list, not to get anything else, just to get emails. And so no matter what the scale it's like you, you always want your emails because it can account for 20 to 40% of your revenue. Almost always. 

Sari  17:51  
Yeah. It's got a huge ROI. And we got to get over our fear of sending too many emails.

Ari  17:59  
I know, some brands send it every day. 

Sari  18:03  
I guess. I mean, there's a lot of brand. I just have, like, an email, email, right? Like, that kind of stuff goes to and, yeah, I get a lot. But it's fascinating. I also use it as you know, it can be very like, oh, what do they do? What are they doing here? 

Ari  18:23  
And like, if you don't have your flow set up, right, and you've been running your business for two to three years, or even a year, if you go and spend 2 to 5k on designs, you will make your money back in two months, right? Like, you already have the email list. You're already there. You just, if you don't have that set up, like, you'll get that money back so quickly that, like, you just need to do it right. 

Sari  18:54  
Yeah, it's powerful stuff when you do it right, for sure. All right, so email list is first, SMS, which I have not worked with very much, but I'm glad you have experience with that. I'm sure some people are a little intimidated. I mean, I recommend using Klavio. Is that the system you used, or what do you use?

Ari  19:16  
Yeah, for email, Klavio is the easiest and the best, right? For sure. I'd recommend One Text for SMS. They just have a good job, and they have a lot better automated system for abandoned cart and everything like that. Their kind of system is built around that, so it's kind of a new one and then. But if you want it simple and easy, just use crap. They have both, because they have just get it done.

Sari  19:43  
Okay, great. All right, let's talk about meta ads. So in the past, I've always been a fan. I've said, you know, do not boost posts that is burnt like just lighting money on fire. I'm a big fan of lead ads, and I've talked about that Zach Buckler on another podcast, and he's done a course in my program, and that's a way to get people paying some money towards ads that are specifically to get people on your email list. But we're going to talk about those direct to purchase ads, which are very scary for some people, including me. I'm like, I don't know. I don't want to do that for me. But tell us about, like, what do we need to know about direct to purchase ads, like, what's the budget? And I think some you know, where do we need to be at as far as a stage in our business?

Ari  20:41  
Yeah. I mean, I always recommend, and this is not what we did with Helen, but just because, if you really don't know anything about it, and you don't have a care to learn anything about it, right, like you need probably 5k a month, like that, you can go do this, and you need that for two months at least, right? So, like, assume it's a 10k investment up front, like, if you have it right, and then you can start getting people if you have it right, I can see right, then you can start making close to 5k revenue by the third month, right? The second month will be like, assume you get half of that right, but essentially, like, you have to test, right? This world is about testing and testing fast and just kind of seeing what happens with the world now is, is that testing is faster and easier, right? When we were doing it, we had to really intensely test, right, and do all the thing like that. But like, we can get there a lot faster now, right? Like, our testing took three to six months to get us to a place that we had a good landing page and a good like, good ads and like, actually, like being able to monitor it, because I don't know if any guys were in business, but when the iOS update happened in 2020, I believe it just made it so you couldn't track anymore at all. And then you had to spend $500 a month, at least, on a tracking software, right? And so, like that just made it so you just had no really idea, right? And now that's changed, right? Facebook is actually pretty good for tracking again, which is great. So you don't have to spend $500 a month on the tracking software, which is lovely, yeah. And then yeah. So essentially, like what we do, right? And I think this is what I would recommend, no matter what is, is you want to take it a step by step process, right? So, like, look at us as, like, a scientific test, right? Is, like, first you want to test what people actually what, what problem are you solving, right? I know it's kind of hard for food, right, but, like, the the example that I have is we have a seafood brand that we work with and, okay, like, what problem is seafood for people, right? But it's like, really, like, what people are looking for and why they want the best seafood is, if they want to be as fresh as possible, they want to know on that they want to taste the best, right? Like, yeah, that's simple. But, like, we were like, Okay, this has to be restaurant quality. We have to do this. But until we really tested it, we're like, No, those are the only two things people care about, right? Is the fresh and taste. And so, like, as soon as we kind of, like, looked into it, the pain points became very clear. And so we scraped data from Reddit. We scraped data from like, Amazon reviews. So your competitors, Amazon reviews, you can go and do this yourself. Just look at your top five competitors. Go on to Amazon and just look at all of them. We have a tool that escapes it, right? So we have more information. And then you turn in that into copywriting. You go in and actually, like, full on test that copywriting to see what actually works and what doesn't work, what people click on. Then you turn that into headlines, right? So, like, instead of just, like, I wish I had fresher seafood. It becomes like, get the freshest seafood out there, right? Obviously, those aren't that good,