Ryan Skidmore

Multiple Shopify stores had a rough Monday-Wednesday this week. After spending thousands $$$'s in team resources, we found out the issue... Crowdstrike patches impacted browsers + Cloudfare (Shopify's distribution network). Users had latency issues and difficulty with checkout. Was I frustrated? Yes. Lose sleep? Yes. Take it out on my team? Yes. Their fault? Yes. My fault? Yes. No one's fault? Yes. The fact is, even when these things happen (and they do happen in the world of digital), it may not be our FAULT, but it is our responsibility. There's always a way we can improve. Processes, communication, management (patience), all get sharpened when there's a "fantom" issue. Doesn't mean they won't happen again, but how we can recognize the pattern faster. Appreciate the diligence and, more importantly, the patience of the Everything Bagel team with me. #cloudstrike #shopify #digitalmarketing #management

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Saw the Adam Robinson post on RB2B churn numbers and had two major takeaways: 1. I wonder what portion of the field is actually using larger tech stacks. When I look at RB2Bs premium offering (compared to free) I see a ton of value, but value that is dependent on you also using (and paying for) other tools in the stack. If you only need one or two of those integrations, it seems like you might be losing out. Which is maybe a marketing/offering phrasing? like the next tier should be presented as a X number of resolutions and Y number of integrations? I don't know... I suppose this would be dependent on the operating costs per integrations per user. 2. It's crazy to me how many people need to be prescribed what to do with the information that RB2B. It makes me believe the number of tools available have actually handicapped peoples ability to think and figure shit out for themselves. It also tells me that they might just not have good strategy outside of their tools. In many instances (if you have traffic) clearly resolving a small portion of your traffic is infinitely valuable in validating your strategy. RB2B (or any other tool)won't help if you: a. don't have traffic. b. don't have the right traffic. c. wouldn't convert anyway. Meaning...the shiniest new tool in the world can't help you if your foundation is trash and you don't know what you're doing. #b2b #demand #contentstrategy

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I’m gonna mix a little bit of info with a lil sharing. If you know me this is pretty standard behavior. I was chatting with someone about programmatic direct mail and incrementality. When I think of incrementality I think of stickiness vs reach. Showing your ad to a new person is dope, but the data shows that channel diversification is more about breaking through the noise then unlocking a new audience. If you’re spending in the millions there’s a pretty good chance you’re hitting a lot of your target demo on digital channels. Tell me the last 10 meta ads you saw? 5? Tell me one meta ad you saw today? (This brings up another convo of frequency in this evolved digital age but Idk best practices) it takes a lot for something to stick so if you’re going to a new channel for incrementaltiy choose channels that are going to stick. Hence programmatic DM. When you start testing I’d think of it as a lift channel. Part of your lifecycle nurture flow. Test with unconverted audiences and see if it lifts. Then use the lifted to lal for prospecting. Ok the other thing. I was chatting with a brilliant marketer who complemented my posts and it gave me the biggest imposter syndrome ever. I thought about it a bit and I think it’s because all of these posts are the results of failures, experiments, and learning from other great marketers. Plan A has worked so rarely I could count it on my hands. The speedy pivot to plan B, C, & D is the real gold. I’m learning new stuff constantly because I care about marketing (I’m learning about social media right now). I’ll probably suck at it for a bit and then I’ll get good and write something about it if I think it can be helpful. Idk just thought I’d share.

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🚀 Audited ad accounts for a high-growth, $30M Ecom. 10 recs we gave to scale faster & profitably ➡️   Google:   1. Use Blotout or Elevar to maximize conversion signals sent to ad platforms.   2. Pass micro-conversions (not only purchases) to better train ad algorithms.   3. Don’t fight PMAX. With 1-2, it blows the doors off manual media buying.   4. Optimize Merchant Center Feed:   - Analyze high-vol, AOV, & margin SKUs - Ensure impressions reflect top performers - Fix feed errors & warnings - Test titles, images, & descs for growth   Meta:   5. Shopify CAPI isn’t enough. Implement Blotout or Elevar to improve signal.   6. Reduce reliance on ABO. Test CBO & Adv+ for better results.   Data & Attribution:   7. Enhanced conversion tracking will boost key email flows by 20%+.   8. Pass Elevar to GA4 to find best/worst CVRs & fix. E.g., Home > Browse > PDP > Cart > Checkout > Order   9. Implement Northbeam for more effective spend allocation.   10. Use media mix modeling & holdout tests for growth post-#9.   #ecommerce

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Paid Search (PPC) vs Organic Search (SEO). PPC is not the same as SEO. They have different roles in marketing, often at different times in a brands growth. Paid search is direct advertising. You are doing it because you want immediate sales. This is even built into how paid search is measured, through ROAS (return on ad spend). The goal of paid search is efficiency. As such an effective paid search strategy seeks to win sales by nudging prospects at the last second prior to purchase. Organic search is different. SEO serves as product placement/ distribution. The aim is to increase the ease and convenience that prospects can buy a brand online. And to do this, you show up in as many search rankings as possible that have purchase intent. This increases a brands physical/ digital availability. The aim of organic search (SEO) is to reach as many buyers as possible. The difference is that not all of these buyers are ready to buy today. Many of them are researching the category. This gives brands a chance to be discovered by consumers. One of the core problems is that brands overspend on paid search because of either last click attribution or even weirder, bidding on their own brand. This is paying Google to access customers they would have won anyway. Or over estimating paid search performance due to incorrect attribution. But when working effectively, brands often get stuck on the performance plateau. This is where a brand cannot grow beyond it's effective paid search reach. They are at the limit of efficiency and anything beyond this has diminishing returns. Organic search (SEO) success comes through keyword variations. A single page can rank for hundreds of high purchase intent searches. Resulting in a brand being advertised and discovered by thousands of potential 'in the market' buyers. And because you don't pay per click there is no incremental media spend. In essence, your spend on SEO compounds in value over time and adds value to your business as your website is an asset. Often even in insolvency, a brands website is purchased for millions. The problem is of course that paid search budgets are vastly larger than SEO budgets. Each business enters a bidding war forcing the cost per click up. When SEO can be fuelled through digital publicity, providing immediate business benefits. Also, your investment in SEO tends to be in physical time in staff/ agencies that directly work on your website. You are investing in your business. All the evidence points to organic search being a huge opportunity for most brands. And when brands wake up from their huge paid search hangover they've built up over the last 16 months. They'll wake up and look for new ways to aquire customers. And SEO will be waiting. The best time to invest in SEO was years ago. The second best time to invest in SEO is today. Make the decision.

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Been getting my hands dirty with a few more Ecomm brands as of late. Fun when you get to work with brands who have built up a good reputation, but have basically neglected doing any SEO. Lots of wins to be had. July YoY stats for one of my top performers: +25% in organic traffic (wasn't a small number to begin with) +32% in revenue from organic traffic (also not a small number to begin with) +145% in organic traffic to blog +282% in sales from organic traffic to blog (this, in fairness, was a smaller number) What I've focused on with them: 1. SEO titles for product pages Like many big brands who neglect SEO, they were primarily getting traffic to their product pages for brand terms. I found some good, relevant keywords that each page could actually rank for, and changed the page titles. 2. Links We build links to two places - product pages and blog articles. But we only build links to: a) blog pages that have commercial intent (think "best [category] for [problem]" type topics) b) product pages where the competition has a lot of links too We'd typically build links to the homepage too, but this brand is well known in their space and picks up links there naturally. So we put their budget towards a and b above instead. 3. Content This brands' customers do a lot of research about products in the space. They're looking at which products are best for specific desires, comparing products, and how specific products help their pain points. These are all perfect opportunities for us to create content on and bring in more customers for the brand. If these steps sound obvious, it's because they are. What's not obvious is how you pull the strings across each. Finding the *right* keywords to use in a product page's title, knowing which pages need and will respond to links, and choosing blog content topics that drive revenue.

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You know what's cray? It's cray that companies today have pricing pages...that don't show any pricing. The % of websites with a pricing page was higher compared to last year (68% vs. 58% last year). so that's good I guess But having a pricing page on the website does NOT always mean the page SHOWS the actual price. Which is just cray 🤯 🤯 🤯 It's kinda like having a Homepage but sharing nothing of substance on there 🤨 And you know what's even crayer? Overwhelmingly, buyers emphasized the importance of transparent pricing when asked "What do you wish was different about tech buying?" Crystal clear. Clear as day. I would say this is def. not subtle. You gotta read these two reports if you wanna get deeper insights re: B2B buying this year, interesting info + cool to see overlapping info. Links in the comments. ✌️&❤️ Navattic Chili Piper Pavilion TrustRadius #marketing #startups #founders

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Most industry experts say CPC caps are unnecessary The idea is that the CPC is balanced against the RPC 🐂 "A $200 click is justified if it delivers $1,000 in value" they say "You wanted a 5x, why the complaining?" they say This misses the point Price is supposed to be set by supply & demand In Google's world - price is set by an algorithm that knows the maximum amount possible for you to pay. Demand from competitors could be near 0 There could be a high volume of searches (high supply) But, if you let Google charge you $200 they still will I don't care what the industry thinks. Set caps #GoogleAds #SEM #PaidSearch #PPCchat

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In the last 10 days, I’ve audited 7 $1M/yr. DTC Agencies and learned 5 things: → Nobody tracks metrics. Even those who track metrics, don’t track the right ones. They will track lagging metrics like revenue, churn… and not leading metrics like on-time delivery or revision rate. → Nobody has an operational strategy. Many have a lead gen strategy… Few have a solid operational or people strategy. → Nobody has a well-defined ideal customer. “Ecomm brands” is too broad. Go deeper. Find out what segments drive the most long-term profit... and ease of business. → Nobody has clearly defined processes. Old SOPs in a Google Doc are useless. You need visual processes created by your team, for your team. → Nobody knows what to pay people Most agencies guess what to pay people. They lack a well-defined compensation strategy and hire randomly. That’s why today, I’m opening up 9 spots for the Agency Operators: Level Up paid community. For the next 9 people who join, I’m giving away my 6 Foundations training... I boil 10 years of running 7 and 8-figure agencies into 33 minutes. You’ll get: - Clarity on the steps to reach your profit goals. - Insight on who to hire, when to hire, and what to pay them. - Strategies to find clients who respect you and pay you what you’re worth. Plus, my $1,000 mini-course: “How to Double Your Profit Through Operational Excellence.” If you’re having Ops issues, this will guide you on exactly how to fix them. And, for the next 9 members, a private 1:1 call with me to solve your #1 issue for 2025 ($1,250 value). This session has given clarity to dozens of agency owners on exactly what they should be focused on. If you're interested in an early invite to Agency Operators: Level Up, comment “Invite” below.

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The BIGGEST issue with email/SMS A/B testing sits with declaring true winners/losers. Enter Type 1 and Type 2 errors, aka 'false positive and false negative' declarations i.e. stating that some change resulted in a better result, where in fact, it doesn't have a true positive impact. e.g. Adding a GIF to an email leads to higher placed order rates --> if you analyze it more statistically, that could be far from the truth and lead your team astray. It's a VERY slippery slope when analysing A/B testing results.

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"Who is the Simone Biles of buyer-first websites?" 💪 🏅 that was the big Q at Navattic's first "Buyer First Bites Pop-Up Series" yesterday it's a quick 20-min. series of sessions that review websites for buyer-first best practices if ya missed it, Corrina Owens brought the best bites 🍿🧁🥨🌮 including: 1. What are the buyer-first criteria? (HINT: Accessible, Usable, and Visible) 2. 10 minutes reviewing the buyer-first website SmartPass, love 'em 3. Corrina also analyzed RevPartners website, what works really well, what could be improved e.g. their CTAs and she suggested they try some others that are softer than Book Demo, she also discussed their form fields (try to shorten to a few fields you really need) 4. Bonus request came thru to review a website LeadIQ other websites ppl brought up in the chat: RingCentral Vidyard Jellyfish Aligned Better Agency soooo many knowledge bites in just 20-min. recording link in the comments, stay tuned for the next ✌️&❤️️ #marketing #startups #websites

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My 22-point email audit has made $60m+ for DTC brands. Here are the 3 unexpected mistakes almost everyone’s making 👇 1/ Deliverability - the silent killer For an email to generate sales, your audience needs to actually see them. If Yahoo, Gmail, etc are throwing your emails in the spam/promotional folder, good luck getting seen. No views → no opens → no clicks → no sales 2/ Superficial Flows The magic is in the follow-ups. So, after countless split tests we weren’t surprised that comprehensive flows performed much better than run-of-the-mill 4-email flows. Yet, most email flows we inspect have criminally few variants or follow-up emails in their sequence. 2-4 emails per flow won’t cut it. 8-10 emails are better. (with specific exceptions) 3/ Sales to Value Ratio Many brands send out a wave of sales emails without providing any value. Or try to create value-based emails & come up short. You’d want to provide value in the form of content that nurtures the relationship with your audience, vs. only repeatedly asking them to buy something right now. Strive for a 70:30 value to sales ratio for your emails. Value emails will train your audience to open your sales emails in the first place. I’ve done this audit for 150+ DTC brands and every time I see the same mistakes. Concerned you’re making mistakes with your email marketing? Send me a connection request & I’ll audit your setup.

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Privacy-by-Design identity solutions in a multi-ID landscape will be table stakes... Adstra was built for this... #Publishers #PublishersFirst #Identity #FirstPartyData #PrivacybyDesign

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SaaS companies: Stop wasting money on Google Ads. 3 critical mistakes I see over and over: 1. Bidding on low-intent keywords "Facial recognition software" sounds great, right? Wrong. You're attracting tire-kickers, not buyers. Instead, bid on "facial recognition for law enforcement" - less volume, way more qualified leads. 2. Ignoring search terms Just because you bid on a keyword doesn't mean you show up for it. Google's algorithm is tricky. Check your search terms report. You might be spending $$$ on irrelevant searches. 3. Not tracking qualified leads Leads ≠ sales opportunities. Most SaaS companies can't tell which keywords actually drive revenue. Result? Budget wasted on campaigns that look good but don't convert. The fix: • Bid on high-intent keywords • Monitor search terms religiously • Track leads through your sales pipeline Want to stop burning cash on Google Ads? Comment "AUDIT" and I'll review your account for free.

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Pro tip for all DTC founders: Share your product on Reddit. Reddit users are brutal, and the active ones are nerds. Meaning? They'll take the time to research your product, and then kick your ass for any issue they find. Half-assed products WON'T survive the heat. You'll find areas of improvement really quickly.

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Hit by Helpful Content Update?: "Google has clearly stated that HCU includes a sitewide signal. That is a big signal to suggest that removing low-value content is probably worth accelerating… but what really counts as low-value content?" 👇 Read this analysis by ✅ Dixon Jones (URL in comments)

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Pssssst. This is for the upper-level folks out there. The ones who may be managing SEOs but have never specialized in it themselves, or the ones that have been out of the IC chair for a long time. This is really important, so come here and listen closely. You don't need to micromanage your SEO folks at the keyword level. While we tend to think of "exact match" on the paid side of things, the reality is that SEO has long drawn a relationship between keywords, exactly as they are typed, matching with pages. So...yeah, "exact match" but make it organic. While keyword strategy and tracking is still a vital part of our business model, I keep hearing stories about decision-makers requiring SEOs to toil over page-level keyword strategies -- both integration and tracking/reporting. The BERT algo update came out in 2019, pushing Google's understanding of search terms further into conversational, natural language and away from verbatim queries. Additionally, personalized search makes it a heck of a lot harder to accurately track individual keywords at the page level. If you're still over-emphasizing exact keywords that don't weave into the content in a reader-friendly way, shoehorning them in because THIS IS THE KEYWORD, and then expecting your SEO team to track them closely...please stop. You're doing a disservice to your users, you're likely harming the morale of your SEO team, and you're probably making some Google programmer responsible for the search engine's semantic language understanding cry because of the insult to the machine's intelligence. I'm not saying you abandon keyword tracking altogether. But take a more intuitive, holistic approach to SEO. I've seen sites lose horribly in organic because of over-reliance on a few specific "exact match" keywords and neglect of the big picture. There are better ways to structure your strategy and track your performance and growth -- ones that aren't more than half a decade old.

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