The Complete Checkout: Russ Macumber, Co-Founder at Impressive Digital

Russ Macumber found his start in eCommerce through marketing, running six-cent ads through Google in the early 2000s, focusing on a handful of banner ads and minimal tracking data.

He remembers that back then there was very little information about how well ads were performing, and what exactly is bringing customers into your store. 

Growing up serving customers in his parent's business, Russ knew very well how important that kind of information is to your overall business. And now years later has helped found Impressive Digital, a young and innovative ecommerce marketing group focused on delivering new digital and in-person traffic to your store, as well as providing tracking data and proven methods to lead customers towards conversions. 

Hear more about Russ's journey, the challenges he has had to overcome, and the insights gained along the way below.

Resources from this episode:

• Connect with Russ on LinkedIn
• See more from Impressive

 

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Transcript:

Jason:
Well welcome to the podcast today. Russ Macumber, who is co-founder and general manager of Impressive Digital. Welcome, Russ.

Russ Macumber:
Good day. Thanks for having me guys.

Jason:
Absolutely. So, this is the inaugural, the first podcast, kind of walking through and venturing into the eCommerce space. And one of the things we wanted to ask is, how would you, if you were explaining to someone who was not in the eCommerce space and not doing specifically what you do, how would you explain your job to them?

Russ Macumber:
I always just try to make it as real world applicable as possible. So, and I always think, well, how would I explain this to my Nan?

Jason:
Yeah.

Russ Macumber:
And I start there and then sometimes I get halfway through saying it and I'll be like no, no, I get how online works, but that's kind of my starting point. But it would be, if you've got a shop, whether it's online or whether it's physical, you need a method to try to get people to that store. So what we do is we bring traffic to your store. So whether that be foot traffic in whatever means by whatever channels to try to draw people in. That's something that my agency does. And then, in terms of just eCommerce as a whole, I mean, I always think of every part of that eCommerce by journey is somewhere between someone who doesn't know your store exists to someone's inside your store, to someone standing there with their credit card at the counter and how easy you're making it for them to just give you that card and pay or they forget to pay and they put it away and they walk away and, you want to get them back in there.

Russ Macumber:
So I just try to bring it back because that's really what it is. We can overcomplicate it in a lot of ways, but it really is just digitized shopping. So, yeah.

Jason:
How did you get your start or, or what drove you to getting into working with merchants and kind of focusing your expertise and your skill sets in the space?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. Well, interesting. So I've been in marketing sort of broad marketing, I've done everything from in the early 2000s I was doing, I paid 6 cents per click for Google ads and running some banner ads and just having no idea what it was doing through to-

Jason:
I know that very well. And I feel like that dates me.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah, totally. Totally. And you remember back then, you're just like telling me it works, showing me stuff. I don't know. And so I'm doing my prints, I was doing flyers, I'm doing all sorts of different things. And then, moved on to corporate events, experiential marketing, all sorts of things, got into digital about 10 years ago. And as someone who grew up in small businesses, what I loved about digital was just how much more measured and traceable it was. So then in terms of eCommerce specifically, to be able to know with much more certainty, and there's a big conversation that I'm sure we're going to get to around how certain you can be. But at least knowing how many people come into your store and how many of them are turning into customers and those sorts of things and what levers you've got to pull to try to get more of them to turn into customers. As someone who literally grew up serving customers in my mom and dad's stores and have that in my sort of background, it was a pretty natural pull to try to help business owners and marketers make that a really smooth journey from entry to happy customer.

Jason:
So, talk a little bit about the journey of just Impressive as a company, as the journey from Melbourne to the states and opening that. I mean, I think it would be great to understand, one, that journey, but two, what was the tipping point where you're like, okay and raise your hand and I'm going to go do this. And we're going to go to the U.S and start this thing here and extend, what was that process? What was that like?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. So interesting. So Impressive as an agency, we just had our sixth birthday. So we've only been around not very long. And I joined the agency, I was staff member number six, and I worked in the sales team and I headed up the sales team. So I was there in 2017 and we were doing some really cool things. I'd been in digital marketing for a few years and Impressive was doing some really cool things specifically with fashion eCommerce, that was the sweet spot then in 2017. And I'd come from another tech company who'd really struggled, really struggled with eCommerce fashion. So I was really enticed to, okay, well, how do they do this? What's going on? What are these funnels they're talking about? And what's happening with social and the like, so from 2017, 2018, we started to get some really good results for those fashion eCommerce businesses.

Russ Macumber:
They were curious. So we were based in Australia at the time, and they were really curious about this massive market over in the states. And they were getting some random orders every now and then through their .com.au sites. So they had a little bit of intelligence on the markets would work, but they had no idea how to execute campaigns in the U.S. So there was one brand particular Misha collection that we went to market with, into the U.S. And we helped them with everything from setting up those campaigns to 3PL and everything else. But we started running some campaigns for them and got some really good results after some trial and error early on to be completely frank because we hadn't run U.S campaigns before. But once that started to work, word got out amongst other specifically, fashion retailers, Australian fashion retailers who were already getting sales in the U.S organically, just because at the time there was a big, this is 2017, '18 into early '19.

Russ Macumber:
There's lots of that sort of Bohemian linens out of Byron, that sort of thing. So that was a big trend, which was really coming out of Australia at the time, but they weren't running campaigns over here in the states. So we started running a few and started getting really good results. From there, we just organically started picking up American businesses. At some point, we realized that it wasn't so much the, I mean, the executing of the campaigns, we got better and better. And now that we're here, we will get better and better again, but it was more the client servicing. So you mentioned, what was the tipping point to go "We've got to get over there."? And that happened pretty early on once we picked up American clients and the time zones, just don't match at all. You get there's six months of the year where there is literally no overlap of business hours. So client meetings, escalations, anything like that, it just didn't work. So 2019, '20, we decided-

Jason:
I'm sure a lot of hustle to get it to work though.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah, well, this is the things. Well, I was doing 4:00 AM starts for 18 months before getting down. Yeah. That was the only way. The only way we could make it work. And even then it's only giving our U.S clients a small little chunk of their day, me doing 4:00 AM starts might have given them depending on what side of the states, they're on either a small on the west coast, it was a much bigger part of their afternoon we could service. 2019, '20, owner of Impressive Australia, Rob says to me, "Hey, I reckon we should open up over there. And I reckon you and I should do it." And I put it to my wife and I had this big, long PowerPoint presentation of all the pros of why we need to move our family of four kids and six of us-

Danielle:
You used PowerPoint to pitch to your wife?

Russ Macumber:
Well, I wanted to be prepared and to her credit, I said, "That U.S agency Rob's been talking about, he wants me to head it up and for us to go into business together, what do you think?" And she said, expletive, "Yeah, let's do it." Pretty much. So, oh, you sure I've got this? I've got this wonderful slide deck to run through, but no, so yeah. Anyway, we're supposed to get here in 2020, COVID hit, we got locked in Australia. So hence the 4:00 AM starts for 18 months while we were stuck in Australia and then got here in October 2021. So we've been here for six months now.

Jason:
That's amazing. You mentioned, one thing I want to get to at some point is, and I feel would be super interesting is, you talked about some of the getting and testing campaigns in the states. At some point it would be great to understand, what were you seeing in terms of nuances between how you acquire customers in different geos? Because you have a view that not many have, coming from a completely different country, coming to the states and then also trying to figure out, okay, how do you adapt? How do you adjust to consumer expectations? What consumers are doing and those buying habits. But maybe before we get into that, maybe what I think would be good to understand is, I know Impressive's got a host of different pillars in terms of what they support, for your focus, specifically for you.

Jason:
I mean, obviously as an agency, as a digital marketing agency, you bring the full breath, but for you, where do you spend a lot of your time and what are some of the customers that you kind of work with and how do you approach them?

Russ Macumber:
Yep. Cool. So, I mean, at the moment I'm across pretty much every U.S based client and I'm doing everything from bringing them on board to performance directors. So the way our business works is you have a team of specialists doing the work. You've got a project manager handling all of the access and the day to day comms and the grunt work of the projects to make sure they're running to time. And then you've got a performance director overseeing from a strategy perspective, here's our business objective, the client's business objectives, picking out the channels and some of the tactics and the specialists go ahead and do the work. So that performance director part is a big chunk of my day. And I mean, we work across a bunch of different channels. SEO is my favorite channel.

Russ Macumber:
I've just always been really fascinated by the way that channel works. I've got my own podcast on it as well. But in terms of the way some of the clients that we work with, we've got some pretty big fitness brands here in the U.S. So Top Fitness, Utah Home Fitness, Precore is one that most people don't know the brand, but then you go to the gym, next time you're the gym, just have a look at the logo on the brand. You go, ah, that's what Russ was talking about, Precore. So that's a brand that we work with. And we've got some fashion brands that we work with here as well. And we've still got some Australian fashion brands that we do work for here. That's been a really successful vertical for us for a long time.

Russ Macumber:
And yeah, but back to your original question, that performance director part is probably the part I enjoyed most about the role is taking a really sort of top line strategy look at it, being able to align what the customer wants. Because quite often your specialists can get into the weeds. And I haven't been on the tools for three or four years. So if I was to jump into business manager or Google ads manager, they change the UI every three months it feels like, I get lost. But I love talking strategy and just being able to connect the dots for marketers and for business owners and then getting our really clever people internally to kind of pull the levers.

Danielle:
Russ, can you kind of go back just one step and talk about maybe dive a little deeper into those business objectives and what are the metrics that matter the most to the eCommerce customers? And then I'd love to go from there into some of the challenges that you see or the nuances.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Because it'll depend on, a lot of it depends on the maturity of the business. If it's a business, which is really in its first year or two, and they're just all about top line revenue than ROAS, let's just drive up that ROAS, it's sitting at five or together to 10, ROAS, ROAS, ROAS. Much more established businesses, they're probably looking more at things cost per acquisition, as paid media costs are going up because there's lots of other things that are eating away at that. That cost per acquisition of a customer is going to be really important to them. Other metrics that are really important and our top line sales, it sounds obvious, but I think what we've been really, really sort of honing in on with our customers is just that not splitting up because attribution is just a whole beast, which is broken and everything else, but not splitting up a per channel KPI for ROAS or for sales.

Russ Macumber:
Let's just have how much money in, how much money out. Okay, cool. Let us just do what we need to do within that to make it work. I mean then we've got different businesses. We've got one we're working with at the moment where the KPI is actually sessions. They've got to get more eyeballs on the brand. They've done some PR things and they've really got to capitalize on that. So a key KPI for them for this quarter is driving up the sessions to a number which is substantially more than it was last. But then while they're driving up hard on sessions, we're also like okay, I know you're not so worried about CAC and ROAS, and these things, but we're going to keep an eye on over there as well. Because we want to make sure that we're delivering sustainable success as opposed to just lots of eyeballs right now.

Jason:
How often do you find yourself having to do that? Right. I mean, because an agency brings with it experience across verticals, different customers, geographies, all that. Right. And you're also working with brands that are just getting started or in different stages of their growth cycle, and as part of a trusted partner, I imagine that you probably are often faced with scenarios where you're not pushing back, but guiding right. And saying you are focused on just to your point, right? Yes, we understand you want sessions, but we can't lose track of, or we need to keep an eye on the ball. I mean, how, I mean, do you find that from a strategy perspective or in terms of how you work, that you are doing that a lot just because not only things are changing, but do you have a system where it's like yeah, we get it, you want sessions. But at the same time, these are also extremely important metrics because they impact your bottom line, your CAC, all those things.

Russ Macumber:
Yep. I guess what's important is we frame that up really early from the start that I mean, you can go out and hire freelancers from anywhere and get the grunt work done. If you know exactly what you want and you feel comfortable owning that strategy and you just want people to go out and do exactly what you want, we're not the agency for you. We're just not. It would be a really expensive choice that is probably going to frustrate you because we just keep arguing with you on things, it's not going to be a good fit.

Russ Macumber:
So from the start, it's really coming to them with a, as you said, as an agency, you deal with tons of clients across lots of different verticals. I've been doing this for a long time. So I try always to come at a new business from more sort of peer to peer level. So, and understanding, I don't know their product, I don't know their business insides and outs anywhere near that they do, but I'd bring a whole lot of else to the table, which they get when they come with us, they get that whole experience and that whole strategy side and that whole, excuse me, just the ability to be able to guide and push back. And sometimes the pushback is not, you're wrong. It's just okay, fine. Well set that as a primary KPI, but we are going to set these as supporting KPIs because these are related. And I know you want us to focus on that, fine that's a primary, but we are a hundred percent keeping an eye on these things as well. Trust us, this is better for the long term because in six months time, nine months time when your ROAS is stable, you'll be thanking us that we weren't just pumping a whole heap of rubbish traffic at your site.

Danielle:
Yeah. Also, you mentioned before the comparison between driving traffic to someone's store and just those pillars of getting them in and making sure that they're coming back and making a purchase, but in the digital space, how do you cut through the noise? You can type in a product search and get 30,000 results return. Whereas you can go to the bodega on the corner and there's four choices for that particular product.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. That's tough. I mean, good creative always helps good product and good creative with the starting point. We are very much at the mercy of what we're working with in terms of the strength of the product. We've got creative resources in house, but we're not a brand agency. We're not a creative agency. So we've got clients who will need to sort of push back a start date, those sorts of things. We've got one right now which we're onboarding, which we've had to push the start date out a month because they've got some, they're working with another creative agency. They would like to start when we plan to start with the creative they've got, and then just switch it up in a month where it's like, let's just wait a month. There's no big season starting that you need to hit up right now.

Russ Macumber:
We are going to be in a much better place if we've got that really strong creative with the new branding and everything else from day dot rather than switching it up. So yeah, cutting through the noise that creative is crucial. If you think about on social or any other platform, the stuff that sticks in your mind is the creative that's done really, really well, whether it's motion, whether it's really great copy, I think, or good creative starts with great copy, but that's probably the starting point, but it only gets you in the door. If you want those repeat customers, the product has to be what it says it is. Okay.

Danielle:
Well, so that was my next, so how important is it to get them to their direct to consumer experience and then kind of walk us through some of the biggest challenges that you see in that arena?

Russ Macumber:
In terms of getting them to the door or getting them?

Danielle:
Yeah. Once from there and making sure it's trackable.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think having some sort of system, I mean, obviously having all of your analytics set up properly is important. Having [inaudible 00:31:23] and so you're tracking user journeys on your site. So you're giving yourself an opportunity to optimize the user experience for just an as frictionless as possible path to point of sale. What are some other things that you can do along the way? I mean, things like social proof really, really, really key some of the obvious things reviews and the like. But then I did hear something the other day just about someone's, I probably shouldn't say who it is, but someone really well respected within SEO talking about where reviews have gone a little bit too far in terms of affiliate platforms and large volumes of scam reviews and stuff and Google potentially deprioritizing some of those things. So if that's happening, then what else are we doing to build that social proof? I think that's really key.

Jason:
You recently talked at DCX three and you, if I remember, one of the things that you were keen on, I mean really kind of the core piece you presented was specifically on SEO.

Russ Macumber:
Yep. Yeah, it was. Yeah. And I mean, the funny thing is, I've mentioned those periods with 2017, '18, '19, fashion brands, we had lots of encounters and we've been told that SEO is dead for eCommerce, SEO doesn't work for fashion. And we're like, okay, how about you just let us highlight some of these search volumes and some of the ways that we're doing it for other clients and you tell me whether that traffic would be handy or not? But people got Facebook and Instagram, especially, they just got so used to just sort of being able to pump out ROAS on that the eyes went off SEO for a long period of time. But the brands had doubled down at that time were pretty happy, especially as things like iOS happen, as things like attribution gets muddier. If they can have a steady stream of traffic coming through, increasingly authoritative domain, then that's a positive thing.

Jason:
Well, what was, I mean, for the folks that weren't there. I mean, what were some of the, I know you talked through some tips and you went through a bunch of them, but what were some of the key ones that you talked through that if you were to give top five?

Russ Macumber:
Top five?

Jason:
Yeah.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. I think the main one would be just differentiating different types of how to set up the strategy from the start. So internally at Impressive, we use two different types. We use it's either spec based or product based SEO, product based is more your obviously eCommerce. So, but just understanding that the way you optimize for a product based store, as opposed to spec based store is very, very different. So when you're talking, if you've got an eCommerce store and you're talking to someone and they're giving you case studies or examples about stores or about sites that don't look like what we would define as a product based site, then what they're telling is really irrelevant because the whole structure of that site and the way that it gets indexed and the way that people search is completely different to what would need to be done for your site. So that's probably the main thing. So a product based site, there's much more work around the actual products and there's much more work around those categories that the products sit under and understanding how can we flesh out those categories even further and have each of those having their own page, which is index percent has its own authority.

Jason:
So you're talking, I mean, from an SEO perspective, you're talking physically about the actual URLs, right? Meaning that they've got their own category on page with their own links and making sure that strategy exists, it's fleshed out. And even to the point where, if I'm hearing kind of some of what you're saying underlying, you might even work with partners who don't have specific categories, no we need to break these out-

Russ Macumber:
Hundred percent.

Jason:
Because we need to take this line in this line, which you have lumped as one actually are going to get your rankings higher by breaking those categorically out as two.

Russ Macumber:
Yep. That's exactly spot on because as much as Gabe from our SEO team has got this saying, which is people think of Google as, and it is, it's the most amazing machine ever. The intelligence behind it's crazy, but in a lot of ways, you've got to talk to it like it's a toddler. If you've got two categories on one page and it's trying to decide, which one do I go to? Which one do I prioritize? Just make it easier, split it out. So we are working with a couple of clients right now where the URL mapping or remapping is a big chunk of what we're doing to try to make sure that we can get each of those little categories into subcategories, which have some good volumes behind them that we want to be getting authority into those pages.

Russ Macumber:
But the bonus of these really solid category pages, which have products, which are completely aligned to those categories, which have search volumes behind them, SEO, okay. We just explain, it makes sense for Google, but then if you're running Google ads to those pages, it also gives you high quality, more relevancy because the Google ads for that particular product are showing on a category page with all of that particular product. Google is Google, whether it's paid or organic. So, there's that extra bonus that you get from your paid side of things as well.

Danielle:
That's great. And you talked about friction, so what do you see as the biggest friction causer, that doesn't make sense? But you know what I'm saying/

Russ Macumber:
That's that's actually easy, it's site speed.

Danielle:
Yeah.

Russ Macumber:
People have no patience. So that's literally the first thing we'll do with any new client we bring on is look at the site speed at the homepage, with the main product pages, category pages, what's happening, why is it loading slowly? What can we do to rectify that? That's your lowest hanging fruit to smooth up that path. Because people have, especially, even more especially for eCommerce, you're trying to get people on an impulse by, and they're having to wait three seconds for a page to load. And that's three seconds is a long time for them to see something else and they're off. So yeah, site speed would be the number one thing.

Danielle:
And then is there any distraction on page? I mean, we know that there's distractions on page, but is that the common challenge?

Russ Macumber:
It is. It is. And I think even things like just having too many options terms, we talked about that before, how do you break through the noise in the whole marketplace, but then on that product page, how do you break through the noise on your page? How many options are we giving them? Do we need to have a billion different types of options? Or can we just make it simple? Can we have a nice clear, it might even be so that we've found this a lot on sites. There's a particular Shopify theme. And I can't remember the name of it, but where the purchase calls to action are, there's an image. So right hand side of the screen, there's image of the product. And there's some purchase calls to action above, and there's some below. As a user it's counterintuitive, you're going, ah, and that kind of, what am I doing here is just enough time to lose the customer. So bringing those.

Danielle:
You mean like color and size of the product?

Russ Macumber:
No, but even the layout.

Danielle:
Oh, like add to cart?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason:
Too much. It's information overload, am I clicking on the right one even though they both say the same thing?

Russ Macumber:
Exactly. Exactly. And I mean, because then you get that-

Jason:
I just want to buy this thing. How do I do it?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. Yeah. I want to buy it. I don't want to buy it twice. I'm not buying the wrong color, am I?

Jason:
Yeah.

Russ Macumber:
All that sort of stuff in this day and age where people just want to boom, get it done, buy it so I can go do something else. Yeah. That causes decreases in conversion, for sure.

Jason:
Kind of, Danielle was talking about analytics, one of the things that I'd be curious in terms of, obviously you live and breathe analytics, right. But what are some of the concerns that you have and merchants, should they have around investing in all the efforts? Getting Impressive on board and spending the time, effort, energy to revamp their site, recategorize, SEO, actually doing SCM, doing paid media when-

Danielle:
Diversifying their marketing channels.

Jason:
Exactly. Right. So all the things that they should be doing to garner more sessions, activity, conversions, we know that there are providers out there, there are extensions, et cetera, that can ultimately take credit where credit is not due for conversions. And then start to skew this whole story around success and where you and/or a merchant should invest dollars in. So, your perspective amongst that and other things, what are some of the things that merchants need to be mindful of as they're looking at the data, but also making sure that, how do they scratch the layer back to make sure that the right parties are taking the right credit for that for a conversion or something that they drove, that someone else says, "Hey, no, I got it." And trying to figure out, okay, well, why do I have to pay a fee or commission on something that I actually drove as the brand?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. It's tough one. Danielle mentioned this before, diversifying your channels is a big thing. Making sure you've got a number of different, your eggs in a few different baskets. When the big iOS changes came through and Facebook, the attribution for Facebook, obviously people are putting all this money into Facebook. And now it's saying that it's making so much less. For people who all they were doing was Facebook, it doesn't work anymore. Or if they were doing a couple of channels, that one doesn't work anymore. Okay. I'm going to put it all into Google because my analytics are telling me that Google is where my sales are coming from. Nine times out of 10, they were not doing that and then getting all the sales back from another channel, what we found was, we like to run a number of channels.

Russ Macumber:
And what we found was, you decrease that, we would never pull it right out, but you decrease it back a bit just to let a client know we can push back enough times until they go, just stop spending so much there because we're not making as much. Okay. We can peel it back a little bit and just watch those overall sales just peel back with it, pump it up a little bit. Watch those overall sales pump up a little bit. So yeah, that sort of not, there's a big thing around attribution. There's no perfect attribution software out there. If anyone tells you that there is, they're just selling you a program that they're trying to make commission off. So there's no perfect solution out there, but I think diversify your channels is huge. But, it's a tricky thing, especially with affiliates and the like, they've got to look for technologies that can help protect them. Yeah.

Danielle:
I was going to ask you, do you recommend customers run a robust discount strategy or that they use digital coupons and then, yeah. What do you do to kind of keep those on track and making sure that the right guys are getting paid for the right conversions?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. Yeah. It depends on the brand. We've got some brands who they just have a straight up policy of no discounts. So that's just not a lever we can pull when we're running every targeting. So then we're looking for value ads and those sorts of things, what can you throw in on top? What sort of twofers can we do? Yeah, yeah. So those are some of levers.

Jason:
Do you find, sorry. Do you find, Russ, in those scenarios that the policy is warranted and what I mean by that is that, I mean, we have a side of the business where we work with merchants and one of the things that we have found too, is that in partnering with some of those merchants, there was a fear of coupons. If you have this robust strategy that they can leak and they can get out there. And so it's like all of a sudden, everyone just tightened up and said, "I'm not going to do this because I don't want that to happen." And do you see some of that in terms of, almost like it's a fear of it happening, so they just made this policy that says no dice, we're not doing this? More of a question, I'm genuinely curious or if it's just something, is it more related to the brand image where they don't want to be associated with a discount?

Danielle:
[inaudible 00:44:16]

Jason:
What have you seen with regards to the why?

Russ Macumber:
For us more specifically, in truth, it's been more just about the brand prestige and not wanting to be seen as a discounted brand, but we do work with lots of brands at discount as well. And it has to be a concern for them, codes that are out there, people doing a Google search, getting through the checkout and going, oh, maybe I'll just do a little search and see if I can find a code and punch a bunch of those in there. So I can't see how it wouldn't be a concern. Right. I guess and again, it comes down to the maturity of the brands because we've got some brands that we work with where we have to sort of, what's the word, just curb their enthusiasm for huge discounts, just to get those sales through. Your whole business can't be built on lost leaders because where's the profit come from? So yeah. But then, more mature businesses, we don't obviously have that sort of problem.

Danielle:
Right. And there's a stage in the process as well. Right. Do you suggest, I should probably ask instead of saying, do you suggest that you segment out your customer base for loyalty, new customers, return users and that those discounts are appropriated by stage?

Russ Macumber:
For sure. For sure. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. A hundred percent. I haven't got much to add there, that's definitely, the more targeted the message and the more warranted the discount then obviously, because if it's to a particular segment, so yes.

Danielle:
Great.

Jason:
Russ, I know we've been talking a lot about data and what's important to merchants and consumers, but one thing I was thinking about, was when you started the business in the states. How good did it feel when you won your first customer? How cool was that, right? I don't know. I think about that sometimes because everyone's hustling always, right. And I think about those moments that are, the moment that's ingrained, because you could probably literally recall the email or the response you got, word for word? How cool was that? What was that experience, you literally went to a different country and started a business?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah, yeah.

Jason:
Obviously you had support. Right. What was that like?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. I mean our first clients, so the way we started was we had some Australian clients that moved into the U.S agency that were running for from there. But the first U.S based client, I was still in Australia and I was doing my cold calls at four in the morning and yeah cold emails and the like. And it was a winery brand, direct to consumer winery brand. And to be frank, I remember I got the positive response. I'm like, really? You sure? Okay.

Jason:
We're really doing this.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. And then got on the call. And I was very clear that just so you know, we're in Melbourne, but we've run lots of these campaigns before. I didn't want to be one of those guys like "Yeah, I'm in New York. Oh that's on the window. I can see the Empire State Building."

Jason:
We're global. We're global. It's no big deal. Yeah.

Russ Macumber:
So I wanted to be very clear on where we were, but what she wanted and the product itself and the average order value and the vision she had for it, I mean, it fit in with lots of stuff that we'd done. So it was pretty easy for me to go though her questions, but what about this and how does this work? And I'm like well, for the last half a dozen, we did it worked like this and yeah, the copywriting would be ideally more direct responses in these places and that sort of thing. So from that initial point of, whoa, really? It was like, oh actually, yeah, we do this, we've got this. So, but I still do remember it very clearly and it will hold it special place in my heart, I think.

Jason:
Oh, that's so good. In the space of eCommerce, it would be great to know kind of from your experience and what you're seeing going on, who are some folks that are doing awesome stuff either on the brand side or on the partnership side, where are you seeing, who are you seeing kind of make waves in that space and why?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. Yeah. So two come to mind. One from brand, one from partner side. Brand wise is an Australian brand and they're here as well, but they're not physical here called Culture Kings. Man, I love that brand. They're just for every 40 year old dad who still thinks it's the nineties and wants to dress like a hip hop star, that's just right.

Jason:
I'm looking this up right now. And just, I mean the homepage alone, I'm digging.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. Yeah. Their physical stores in Australia are amazing. They've got DJs and basketball rings and stuff. You walk in as a barber, it's an experience.

Jason:
Oh wow. So they have a whole retail experience.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. But what they've done amazingly well is from a digital perspective, the tone and the messaging and everything else just aligns with exactly what you'd expect when you walk into the store. So, you get retargeted and it's just language you'd imagine.

Jason:
The look and feel.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. It's just completely, and they were doing it probably two, three years ago where it was just that completely consistent messaging and tone and look and feel from walking into the store to getting that Facebook messenger when it was a little bit more open to get those little sequences through and you're making your way through and it just feels like I'm talking to the guy wearing the Jordan top. And from a brand perspective, Culture Kings, very cool. From a tech partner, tech side perspective, Gorgeous. I just think for eComm to be able to bring, I think their platform is... Again, it really comes back to the same thing about unifying that customer experience and just making sure that every customer, no matter where they interface with your brand, that they get that similar experience. In fact, I wonder whether Culture Kings use Gorgeous, that would make sense.

Danielle:
They probably do.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. They probably do.

Danielle:
To go to your point, that is something that we've heard. I guess if we did a rewind and tried to see how many times we've all said it, user experience, I think was one of the most important words, right?

Russ Macumber:
Yep.

Danielle:
So how does that, we talked about time on site or latency, but it's really the user experience is at the heart of all of it. Right. And it being consistent and frictionless.

Russ Macumber:
Yep.

Danielle:
What would you say other attributes are that are the most important?

Russ Macumber:
I think timing is a big part of it so that the messages are coming through at that point in your user journey and the messaging is consistent with where you are and it's consistent with what you'll get in store or on this site or anywhere else. What else? I think if we just come back to the creative side of things, the way it makes you feel. It's a data driven performance market. I can't put my finger on, I can't put a number around it as much as I'd like to, but I do know that some brands just, you connect with, they make you feel good.

Jason:
And I feel like that's all the way from, it's the whole package. It's the ad creative, it's the copy on page. It's the copy in the ad. It's the flow of the site. It's all interconnected in that way, which to your point, there are just some brands you're like, yeah.

Danielle:
That's kind of like the rise of the brand ambassador. That's why brand ambassadors were born because they actually love the brand enough to go and tote it and then brand ambassadors turned into social influencers. And that space is getting, I don't know if you want to speak to that space a little bit, but it's evolving.

Russ Macumber:
It is, it is.

Danielle:
A lot.

Russ Macumber:
Well, I think even I actually did a piece in Umbrella just two weeks ago from South by Southwest, where we talked about just the rise of actually there was a few speakers at South by Southwest just spoke about this and I just sort of let it ruminate in my head, just around the rise of content creators. When did we start calling influencers content creators? I'm not sure.

Danielle:
That's part of that evolution, I guess.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah, yeah. But, the rise of content creators and that complete and utter alignment with the brand, but then where do they sit in the funnel? It used to be influencers it's top of funnel, just it's building brand awareness, that sort of thing. But then you've got your affiliates and down the road, we've got in shopping experiences in the actual social platform. So they all of a sudden become, they're almost a full funnel.

Danielle:
Yeah. Well, we talked about the importance of reviews, right? It's kind of like a walking talking review that you can interact with.

Russ Macumber:
Yep, exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, but I think one interesting thing I'll tell you from having, well, one thing I've loved being here for six months. So we've been marketing brands here for a couple of years, but being on the ground here is different to marketing from Australia. But content creators are a much more integrated part of the performance marketing puzzle here in the U.S than they are in Australia. They will be there, I'm sure. But I think just that recognition that they can drive sales, they can align with your brand. They can impact your brand in different parts of the funnel. It's something which our team is really excited about. Just getting much more, I mean, our team's really excited about the extra UGC that they get to use in their campaigns, but also just having another lever to pull, to try to drive sales.

Danielle:
And are you a proponent of those micro influencers or micro content creators where you have many, so that you're kind of spread into, you have really strong connections into those audiences or the big overarching influencers?

Russ Macumber:
No, definitely the micro, I think because the micro ones, there's a deeper authenticity to it and there tends to be much higher ratios of engagement.

Jason:
What would be an example of a micro influencer?

Russ Macumber:
So I think the definition I saw most recently was 10,000 to 50,000 followers, I believe.

Jason:
And this will be what, just a straight product review.

Danielle:
No. More social content. They're using the product, right?

Russ Macumber:
Yep. Yep. So it'd be, I mean there might be product.

Danielle:
Lipstick by the way. That's why I did this.

Jason:
I see that. I don't know.

Danielle:
What she's making reference to, sorry. Lipstick.

Jason:
Anyone listening and not watching, just things making lipstick.

Danielle:
Sorry.

Jason:
Sorry Russ, go ahead.

Russ Macumber:
No, that's okay. Well, what were we talking about? Yeah, so usually the term of engagement could be a number of posts over a specific period and there needs to be this type of content, there needs to be unboxing, needs to be reviews. There needs to be more organic install, that sort of stuff. So there'd be a particular brief that goes out those micro influences, you could have a range of them that there's lots of different platforms out there that you can actually measure how effectively that's working. But yeah, they're definitely the bigger play these days. It's almost like rather than having one big influencer with a million followers you're much better off having, a hundred with 10,000 followers. Is that a million?

Jason:
Is it well, I mean-

Russ Macumber:
Yeah, yeah. My quick math.

Jason:
Is it fair to presume that when content creators, that name kind of came in into play that we started, or the industry started to see more content creation in the form of product reviewer comparison from bigger publishing players that wanted the opportunity to maybe, in the space, like a New York times, so ones that weren't necessarily the opposite of micro, where they actually got into the space because everyone was Googling something, were from product review to what have you, where there's the opportunity for them to also jump into the space in terms of creating content that could actually drive conversions. Right. I mean, so, ultimately the opposite, but did you also witness, maybe it's just me, but I feel like I also saw that over the last five, six years, the rise of that type of content creation on other types of platforms, outside of TikTok, et cetera, where they have the ability to write and create content on larger platforms.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. I think, I mean, you've always got bigger businesses out there looking for new, exciting ways to drive revenue. So obviously that's a big part of it. I think the rebranding, I'm not sure if this is part of the question, but the rebranding of that industry from influences to content creators was just, I think largely just a factor of just the influence as a whole, that whole space, it had a bit of a stigma to it. There was lots of that Instagram take a photo selfie, all that sort of stuff that there was lots of other players in the industry that weren't doing that, that weren't selling fashion products, that weren't doing the Bali body and everything else, didn't want to be associated with that. So that's where content creators. But I think even calling it content creators, sort of piggybacking on your point a bit, it does broaden what they can do in terms of video and other channels and other platforms and other ways to kind of create that content to get it out there. So it's probably empowering for them, but it also opens up people's eyes to different ways that user generated content can drive traffic and sales.

Jason:
Right. I mean, I just think about and I don't know if you guys are the same way, but I think about, I feel like every answer restart research, goes to the browser search bar, right? In terms of looking for a brand, or even if you find a brand that you like, it's this brand versus that. And it's nature, I think in some of these cases. So it's interesting to see the evolution of that process and that space, and how that ultimately leads to, or can lead to the ability for conversions, et cetera, and driving users in that space.

Russ Macumber:
Yep. For sure. For sure.

Jason:
Well, sweet, well, Russ, I tell you what this has been, it has been a blast and I have a feeling that this will not be the last time.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. I'd love that.

Jason:
That we chat, but we really appreciate you making the time and coming on and chatting with us and talking to everybody. So, yeah. So our pleasure to have you.

Russ Macumber:
Awesome. Thanks so much, Jason. Thanks, Danielle. It's been great. Love talking to eCommerce, so thank you.

Jason:
Awesome. Thanks, Russ. We appreciate it. Bye.
Jason:
Hello? Hello? All right.

Danielle:
Jason, can you hear me?

Jason:
I can. Wow. That was fun. Russ, you there?

Danielle:
Hey, Russ. A podcast for an hour.

Russ Macumber:
Yep. Good day.

Jason:
Hey, Russ. How are you?

Russ Macumber:
Oh, no, can't hear you. Hold on. That's me. That's me. Not you. Okay. I think I can hear you now. Hello?

Jason:
Yeah. You good?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason:
Sorry about that. So we just installed a, as a part of growing up as a company, we use Rippling for payments and all that stuff. And we also use it now for security. So it's installed as an app on all of our computers and did not like Zoom until I restarted my computer apparently. So it's just perfect timing.

Russ Macumber:
No dramas, all good. I feel every time I have, it seems that sort of stuff times when you've got someone waiting for a podcast or something, it wouldn't happen in the morning, first thing on your own.

Jason:
Of course. Why would that actually happen when you're just messing around?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah, yeah, totally.

Jason:
Sweet. So we are recording right now, but in terms of getting started, so actually just a heads up, we actually came up with a name for the podcast.

Russ Macumber:
Oh, cool.

Jason:
We're going to call it The Complete Checkout.

Russ Macumber:
Yep. I like that. I like that.

Jason:
Yeah. So we do a little brainstorming and so we also have the team working on just cover art and all that, that'll have us on it. So, yeah. So, one of one, soon to be one of many. So we definitely appreciate you jumping into this with us.

Russ Macumber:
No, that's very cool. That's very cool. When are you looking? You obviously want to get a few recorded in the bank first, before you go live, but when are you looking to actually launch it?

Jason:
So our goal to actually have a few out there is the end of April.

Russ Macumber:
Oh, wow. Okay. Quick.

Jason:
So one of the things, just to kind of preface at the end of this and we can kick off in a minute, but just at the end of this, one of the things that we'll ask is, one, who are you seeing doing awesome work in the industry. It could be a brand. It could be another partner, that you work with that supports you, that supports eCommerce, but ultimately with a goal of trying to get them on. So if you've got kind of a referral or someone that you feel like is doing cool stuff in the space, we'd want to get them on. So just as we go through this, and as you think about it, we'll kind of try and end on that note and then if you're open to it, just a warm intro.

Russ Macumber:
I've already got one in my head, but you might have someone there at Gorgeous. Do you have anyone at Gorgeous?

Danielle:
Oh yeah. I love them.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. So do I.

Danielle:
Were you thinking Christina? Christina or?

Russ Macumber:
Oh, my contact's... Oh, wait a sec, yeah. It's Christina.

Danielle:
Is it? She's super sweet.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Danielle:
Yeah, she's awesome. Mantane?

Russ Macumber:
Mantane, something like that. Yeah.

Danielle:
Something like that. Okay. I wasn't sure if I was saying it right.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Danielle:
She's the sweetest. That's actually a good call. Jason, she's smart.

Jason:
That's cool.

Danielle:
She's super personable.

Jason:
Sweet. Yeah. That's great. Awesome. So, well, I will kick off here with an intro and then we'll get cranking, sound good?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. Cool.

Jason:
Sweet.

Russ Macumber:
Are we doing the 22 SEO, or is it more broad conversation?

Jason:
So, I kind of figured what we do is, and fair enough. So what I kind of thought, what might be good is, I kind of had that document up, just that we had kind of gone through it and thought what we could do is one, is kind of introduce you just a little bit of background. Co-founder and GM of Impressive USA, how did that journey start for you, understanding where Impressive kind of lives in the ecosystem of support and working with DC brands and then thought what we could do is kind of dive into your specialty. Right. So get into SEO, even go through and talk through some of the examples, kind of one, capabilities, just understanding where does Impressive kind of fit into that space?

Jason:
Where does SEO fit in? And then also kind of going through, I think it would be great to talk about maybe a couple real world examples. So in that doc, you shared, you have a few case studies, so maybe getting into some of the brands, from a case study perspective. And I figured what we could do is just during that, just talk through what were you looking at measurement wise, KPIs? Why is SEO important? And then honestly it would be great to, one of the things that we were thinking we could kind of get into was how, and what are some of the things that you're looking at from a fraud perspective, but where you see risk for merchants, in terms of instances where you're trying to do all this hard work and potentially you've got instances where affiliate partners or the stuff that you're driving is being snaked by other third parties.

Jason:
Right. Hmm. And not for us, I think, we were thinking about it. I don't want to use that as an opportunity to plug cleanCART, but more just have you talk about what are some of the things that merchants need to be very conscious of and cognizant of in this world where you don't want to have ballooning cat costs, you want to be as efficient as possible, how do you do that and how do you monitor it? And we thought that kind of having a conversation around what merchants need to be on the lookout for would be a good way to kind of bring up the awareness problem in terms of being aware that you might have a great affiliate partner, you might think your affiliate data is solid, but if you're not looking or if you're not looking at last... I don't want to put words in your mouth, but that's just kind of what we were thinking.

Russ Macumber:
No, I mean, there's a whole conversation around attribution and then how that informs where you're putting your marketing spend and so that's pretty easy to tie up in a way that gets to where you want it to go.

Jason:
Yeah. Do you feel good about that?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason:
Is that hitting on all the things that you want to make sure, because I want to make sure we hit on all the stuff that you also get across? Okay.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. No, I think so. So I tend to just I'll go with the flow. So once my mouth starts going, it'll go.

Jason:
I figured I was looking through the deck and I actually thought that I think what we talked about was we can share the deck as an output. But I actually like the talk track that the slides went through in terms of talking about growth and where you guys are. And I feel live that kind of fits into just your story, Impressive's story. Even understand about your team, the tools you're using, the team is using and then kind of switching gears and getting into application and your customers.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. Cool. Easy. Give me two seconds. I've just put something on my feet I'll just be a moment.

Jason:
Yeah, of course.

Danielle:
Meanwhile, I just totally yelled at my husband and he was trying to be nice because we had the cleaning people here, so I locked the sunroom door and then he was pulling on the door, the dogs started barking.

Jason:
Not now.

Danielle:
And I was like, "Hey, I'm on a podcast." And he's like, "I was just trying to bring you a drink." And I'm like, oh that's nice and I was being a total jerk.

Jason:
It's okay.

Danielle:
I need a filter on too.

Russ Macumber:
Okay. Oh, other question. Can I get a screenshot of us? Is that cool? Do you mind?

Jason:
Oh, totally. So yeah, absolutely. Because this is also not just an audio but video, so we're going to post it too.

Russ Macumber:
Oh it is? That was my next question too.

Jason:
Yep.

Russ Macumber:
Okay. Excellent. Unreal. I'm going to take a shot now. So get ready to smile. 3, 2, 1. Boom.

Jason:
Sweet.

Russ Macumber:
Grab that. Ah, sorry. I have to do it again. I pressed the wrong button. 3, 2, 1. Cool. Sorry. As you were, running the show.

Jason:
All good. All good. Let's see.

Danielle:
I pre-apologize, I have my Vegas leftover voice.

Russ Macumber:
Oh wow. What's going on there?

Danielle:
I sound like one of the golden [inaudible 00:11:59]

Jason:
Shop Talk.

Danielle:
I just came back from Shop Talk.

Russ Macumber:
Ah, for sure. Okay. How was it? I've seen it a lot on my LinkedIn feed.

Danielle:
It was a good show. I probably planned weird, I left on a 5:00 AM flight, so I just stayed out and then packed up and left.

Russ Macumber:
Yep. Okay. Oh, you're doing well to be here and be bubbly.

Jason:
Coming back. All right. Well welcome to the podcast today. Russ Macumber, who is co-founder and general manager of Impressive Digital. Welcome, Russ.

Russ Macumber:
Good day. Thanks for having me guys.

Jason:
Absolutely. So, this is the inaugural, the first podcast, kind of walking through and venturing into the eCommerce space. And one of the things we wanted to ask is, how would you, if you were explaining to someone who was not in the eCommerce space and not doing specifically what you do, how would you explain your job to them?

Russ Macumber:
I always just try to make it as real world applicable as possible. So, and I always think, well, how would I explain this to my Nan?

Jason:
Yeah.

Russ Macumber:
And I start there and then sometimes I get halfway through saying it and I'll be like no, no, I get how online works, but that's kind of my starting point. But it would be, if you've got a shop, whether it's online or whether it's physical, you need a method to try to get people to that store. So what we do is we bring traffic to your store. So whether that be foot traffic in whatever means by whatever channels to try to draw people in. That's something that my agency does. And then, in terms of just eCommerce as a whole, I mean, I always think of every part of that eCommerce by journey is somewhere between someone who doesn't know your store exists to someone's inside your store, to someone standing there with their credit card at the counter and how easy you're making it for them to just give you that card and pay or they forget to pay and they put it away and they walk away and, you want to get them back in there.

Russ Macumber:
So I just try to bring it back because that's really what it is. We can overcomplicate it in a lot of ways, but it really is just digitized shopping. So, yeah.

Jason:
How did you get your start or, or what drove you to getting into working with merchants and kind of focusing your expertise and your skill sets in the space?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. Well, interesting. So I've been in marketing sort of broad marketing, I've done everything from in the early 2000s I was doing, I paid 6 cents per click for Google ads and running some banner ads and just having no idea what it was doing through to-

Jason:
I know that very well. And I feel like that dates me.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah, totally. Totally. And you remember back then, you're just like telling me it works, showing me stuff. I don't know. And so I'm doing my prints, I was doing flyers, I'm doing all sorts of different things. And then, moved on to corporate events, experiential marketing, all sorts of things, got into digital about 10 years ago. And as someone who grew up in small businesses, what I loved about digital was just how much more measured and trackable it was. So then in terms of eCommerce specifically, to be able to know with much more certainty, and there's a big conversation that I'm sure we're going to get to around how certain you can be. But at least knowing how many people come into your store and how many of them are turning into customers and those sorts of things and what levers you've got to pull to try to get more of them to turn into customers. As someone who literally grew up serving customers in my mom and dad's stores and have that in my sort of background, it was a pretty natural pull to try to help business owners and marketers make that a really smooth journey from entry to happy customer.

Jason:
So, talk a little bit about the journey of just Impressive as a company, as the journey from Melbourne to the states and opening that. I mean, I think it would be great to understand, one, that journey, but two, what was the tipping point where you're like, okay and raise your hand and I'm going to go do this. And we're going to go to the U.S and start this thing here and extend, what was that process? What was that like?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. So interesting. So Impressive as an agency, we just had our sixth birthday. So we've only been around not very long. And I joined the agency, I was staff member number six, and I worked in the sales team and I headed up the sales team. So I was there in 2017 and we were doing some really cool things. I'd been in digital marketing for a few years and Impressive was doing some really cool things specifically with fashion eCommerce, that was the sweet spot then in 2017. And I'd come from another tech company who'd really struggled, really struggled with eCommerce fashion. So I was really enticed to, okay, well, how do they do this? What's going on? What are these funnels they're talking about? And what's happening with social and the like, so from 2017, 2018, we started to get some really good results for those fashion eCommerce businesses.

Russ Macumber:
They were curious. So we were based in Australia at the time, and they were really curious about this massive market over in the states. And they were getting some random orders every now and then through their .com.au sites. So they had a little bit of intelligence on the markets would work, but they had no idea how to execute campaigns in the U.S. So there was one brand particular Misha collection that we went to market with, into the U.S. And we helped them with everything from setting up those campaigns to 3PL and everything else. But we started running some campaigns for them and got some really good results after some trial and error early on to be completely frank because we hadn't run U.S campaigns before. But once that started to work, word got out amongst other specifically, fashion retailers, Australian fashion retailers who were already getting sales in the U.S organically, just because at the time there was a big, this is 2017, '18 into early '19.

Russ Macumber:
There's lots of that sort of Bohemian linens out of Byron, that sort of thing. So that was a big trend, which was really coming out of Australia at the time, but they weren't running campaigns over here in the states. So we started running a few and started getting really good results. From there, we just organically started picking up American businesses. At some point, we realized that it wasn't so much the, I mean, the executing of the campaigns, we got better and better. And now that we're here, we will get better and better again, but it was more the client servicing. So you mentioned, what was the tipping point to go "We've got to get over there."? And that happened pretty early on once we picked up American clients and the time zones, just don't match at all. You get there's six months of the year where there is literally no overlap of business hours. So client meetings, escalations, anything like that, it just didn't work. So 2019, '20, we decided-

Jason:
I'm sure a lot of hustle to get it to work though.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah, well, this is the things. Well, I was doing 4:00 AM starts for 18 months before getting down. Yeah. That was the only way. The only way we could make it work. And even then it's only giving our U.S clients a small little chunk of their day, me doing 4:00 AM starts might have given them depending on what side of the states, they're on either a small on the west coast, it was a much bigger part of their afternoon we could service. 2019, '20, owner of Impressive Australia, Rob says to me, "Hey, I reckon we should open up over there. And I reckon you and I should do it." And I put it to my wife and I had this big, long PowerPoint presentation of all the pros of why we need to move our family of four kids and six of us-

Danielle:
You used PowerPoint to pitch to your wife?

Russ Macumber:
Well, I wanted to be prepared and to her credit, I said, "That U.S agency Rob's been talking about, he wants me to head it up and for us to go into business together, what do you think?" And she said, expletive, "Yeah, let's do it." Pretty much. So, oh, you sure I've got this? I've got this wonderful slide deck to run through, but no, so yeah. Anyway, we're supposed to get here in 2020, COVID hit, we got locked in Australia. So hence the 4:00 AM starts for 18 months while we were stuck in Australia and then got here in October 2021. So we've been here for six months now.

Jason:
That's amazing. You mentioned, one thing I want to get to at some point is, and I feel would be super interesting is, you talked about some of the getting and testing campaigns in the states. At some point it would be great to understand, what were you seeing in terms of nuances between how you acquire customers in different geos? Because you have a view that not many have, coming from a completely different country, coming to the states and then also trying to figure out, okay, how do you adapt? How do you adjust to consumer expectations? What consumers are doing and those buying habits. But maybe before we get into that, maybe what I think would be good to understand is, I know Impressive's got a host of different pillars in terms of what they support, for your focus, specifically for you.

Jason:
I mean, obviously as an agency, as a digital marketing agency, you bring the full breath, but for you, where do you spend a lot of your time and what are some of the customers that you kind of work with and how do you approach them?

Russ Macumber:
Yep. Cool. So, I mean, at the moment I'm across pretty much every U.S based client and I'm doing everything from bringing them on board to performance directors. So the way our business works is you have a team of specialists doing the work. You've got a project manager handling all of the access and the day to day comms and the grunt work of the projects to make sure they're running to time. And then you've got a performance director overseeing from a strategy perspective, here's our business objective, the client's business objectives, picking out the channels and some of the tactics and the specialists go ahead and do the work. So that performance director part is a big chunk of my day. And I mean, we work across a bunch of different channels. SEO is my favorite channel.

Russ Macumber:
I've just always been really fascinated by the way that channel works. I've got my own podcast on it as well. But in terms of the way some of the clients that we work with, we've got some pretty big fitness brands here in the U.S. So Top Fitness, Utah Home Fitness, Precore is one that most people don't know the brand, but then you go to the gym, next time you're the gym, just have a look at the logo on the brand. You go, ah, that's what Russ was talking about, Precore. So that's a brand that we work with. And we've got some fashion brands that we work with here as well. And we've still got some Australian fashion brands that we do work for here. That's been a really successful vertical for us for a long time.

Russ Macumber:
And yeah, but back to your original question, that performance director part is probably the part I enjoyed most about the role is taking a really sort of top line strategy look at it, being able to align what the customer wants. Because quite often your specialists can get into the weeds. And I haven't been on the tools for three or four years. So if I was to jump into business manager or Google ads manager, they change the UI every three months it feels like, I get lost. But I love talking strategy and just being able to connect the dots for marketers and for business owners and then getting our really clever people internally to kind of pull the levers.

Danielle:
Russ, can you kind of go back just one step and talk about maybe dive a little deeper into those business objectives and what are the metrics that matter the most to the eCommerce customers? And then I'd love to go from there into some of the challenges that you see or the nuances.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Because it'll depend on, a lot of it depends on the maturity of the business. If it's a business, which is really in its first year or two, and they're just all about top line revenue than ROAS, let's just drive up that ROAS, it's sitting at five or together to 10, ROAS, ROAS, ROAS. Much more established businesses, they're probably looking more at things cost per acquisition, as paid media costs are going up because there's lots of other things that are eating away at that. That cost per acquisition of a customer is going to be really important to them. Other metrics that are really important and our top line sales, it sounds obvious, but I think what we've been really, really sort of honing in on with our customers is just that not splitting up because attribution is just a whole beast, which is broken and everything else, but not splitting up a per channel KPI for ROAS or for sales.

Russ Macumber:
Let's just have how much money in, how much money out. Okay, cool. Let us just do what we need to do within that to make it work. I mean then we've got different businesses. We've got one we're working with at the moment where the KPI is actually sessions. They've got to get more eyeballs on the brand. They've done some PR things and they've really got to capitalize on that. So a key KPI for them for this quarter is driving up the sessions to a number which is substantially more than it was last. But then while they're driving up hard on sessions, we're also like okay, I know you're not so worried about CAC and ROAS, and these things, but we're going to keep an eye on over there as well. Because we want to make sure that we're delivering sustainable success as opposed to just lots of eyeballs right now.

Jason:
How often do you find yourself having to do that? Right. I mean, because an agency brings with it experience across verticals, different customers, geographies, all that. Right. And you're also working with brands that are just getting started or in different stages of their growth cycle, and as part of a trusted partner, I imagine that you probably are often faced with scenarios where you're not pushing back, but guiding right. And saying you are focused on just to your point, right? Yes, we understand you want sessions, but we can't lose track of, or we need to keep an eye on the ball. I mean, how, I mean, do you find that from a strategy perspective or in terms of how you work, that you are doing that a lot just because not only things are changing, but do you have a system where it's like yeah, we get it, you want sessions. But at the same time, these are also extremely important metrics because they impact your bottom line, your CAC, all those things.

Russ Macumber:
Yep. I guess what's important is we frame that up really early from the start that I mean, you can go out and hire freelancers from anywhere and get the grunt work done. If you know exactly what you want and you feel comfortable owning that strategy and you just want people to go out and do exactly what you want, we're not the agency for you. We're just not. It would be a really expensive choice that is probably going to frustrate you because we just keep arguing with you on things, it's not going to be a good fit.

Russ Macumber:
So from the start, it's really coming to them with a, as you said, as an agency, you deal with tons of clients across lots of different verticals. I've been doing this for a long time. So I try always to come at a new business from more sort of peer to peer level. So, and understanding, I don't know their product, I don't know their business insides and outs anywhere near that they do, but I'd bring a whole lot of else to the table, which they get when they come with us, they get that whole experience and that whole strategy side and that whole, excuse me, just the ability to be able to guide and push back. And sometimes the pushback is not, you're wrong. It's just okay, fine. Well set that as a primary KPI, but we are going to set these as supporting KPIs because these are related. And I know you want us to focus on that, fine that's a primary, but we are a hundred percent keeping an eye on these things as well. Trust us, this is better for the long term because in six months time, nine months time when your ROAS is stable, you'll be thanking us that we weren't just pumping a whole heap of rubbish traffic at your site.

Danielle:
Yeah. Also, you mentioned before the comparison between driving traffic to someone's store and just those pillars of getting them in and making sure that they're coming back and making a purchase, but in the digital space, how do you cut through the noise? You can type in a product search and get 30,000 results return. Whereas you can go to the bodega on the corner and there's four choices for that particular product.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. That's tough. I mean, good creative always helps good product and good creative with the starting point. We are very much at the mercy of what we're working with in terms of the strength of the product. We've got creative resources in house, but we're not a brand agency. We're not a creative agency. So we've got clients who will need to sort of push back a start date, those sorts of things. We've got one right now which we're onboarding, which we've had to push the start date out a month because they've got some, they're working with another creative agency. They would like to start when we plan to start with the creative they've got, and then just switch it up in a month where it's like, let's just wait a month. There's no big season starting that you need to hit up right now.

Russ Macumber:
We are going to be in a much better place if we've got that really strong creative with the new branding and everything else from day dot rather than switching it up. So yeah, cutting through the noise that creative is crucial. If you think about on social or any other platform, the stuff that sticks in your mind is the creative that's done really, really well, whether it's motion, whether it's really great copy, I think, or good creative starts with great copy, but that's probably the starting point, but it only gets you in the door. If you want those repeat customers, the product has to be what it says it is. Okay.

Danielle:
Well, so that was my next, so how important is it to get them to their direct to consumer experience and then kind of walk us through some of the biggest challenges that you see in that arena?

Russ Macumber:
In terms of getting them to the door or getting them?

Danielle:
Yeah. Once from there and making sure it's trackable.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think having some sort of system, I mean, obviously having all of your analytics set up properly is important. Having [inaudible 00:31:23] and so you're tracking user journeys on your site. So you're giving yourself an opportunity to optimize the user experience for just an as frictionless as possible path to point of sale. What are some other things that you can do along the way? I mean, things like social proof really, really, really key some of the obvious things reviews and the like. But then I did hear something the other day just about someone's, I probably shouldn't say who it is, but someone really well respected within SEO talking about where reviews have gone a little bit too far in terms of affiliate platforms and large volumes of scam reviews and stuff and Google potentially deprioritizing some of those things. So if that's happening, then what else are we doing to build that social proof? I think that's really key.

Jason:
You recently talked at DCX three and you, if I remember, one of the things that you were keen on, I mean really kind of the core piece you presented was specifically on SEO.

Russ Macumber:
Yep. Yeah, it was. Yeah. And I mean, the funny thing is, I've mentioned those periods with 2017, '18, '19, fashion brands, we had lots of encounters and we've been told that SEO is dead for eCommerce, SEO doesn't work for fashion. And we're like, okay, how about you just let us highlight some of these search volumes and some of the ways that we're doing it for other clients and you tell me whether that traffic would be handy or not? But people got Facebook and Instagram, especially, they just got so used to just sort of being able to pump out ROAS on that the eyes went off SEO for a long period of time. But the brands had doubled down at that time were pretty happy, especially as things like iOS happen, as things like attribution gets muddier. If they can have a steady stream of traffic coming through, increasingly authoritative domain, then that's a positive thing.

Jason:
Well, what was, I mean, for the folks that weren't there. I mean, what were some of the, I know you talked through some tips and you went through a bunch of them, but what were some of the key ones that you talked through that if you were to give top five?

Russ Macumber:
Top five?

Jason:
Yeah.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. I think the main one would be just differentiating different types of how to set up the strategy from the start. So internally at Impressive, we use two different types. We use it's either spec based or product based SEO, product based is more your obviously eCommerce. So, but just understanding that the way you optimize for a product based store, as opposed to spec based store is very, very different. So when you're talking, if you've got an eCommerce store and you're talking to someone and they're giving you case studies or examples about stores or about sites that don't look like what we would define as a product based site, then what they're telling is really irrelevant because the whole structure of that site and the way that it gets indexed and the way that people search is completely different to what would need to be done for your site. So that's probably the main thing. So a product based site, there's much more work around the actual products and there's much more work around those categories that the products sit under and understanding how can we flesh out those categories even further and have each of those having their own page, which is index percent has its own authority.

Jason:
So you're talking, I mean, from an SEO perspective, you're talking physically about the actual URLs, right? Meaning that they've got their own category on page with their own links and making sure that strategy exists, it's fleshed out. And even to the point where, if I'm hearing kind of some of what you're saying underlying, you might even work with partners who don't have specific categories, no we need to break these out-

Russ Macumber:
Hundred percent.

Jason:
Because we need to take this line in this line, which you have lumped as one actually are going to get your rankings higher by breaking those categorically out as two.

Russ Macumber:
Yep. That's exactly spot on because as much as Gabe from our SEO team has got this saying, which is people think of Google as, and it is, it's the most amazing machine ever. The intelligence behind it's crazy, but in a lot of ways, you've got to talk to it like it's a toddler. If you've got two categories on one page and it's trying to decide, which one do I go to? Which one do I prioritize? Just make it easier, split it out. So we are working with a couple of clients right now where the URL mapping or remapping is a big chunk of what we're doing to try to make sure that we can get each of those little categories into subcategories, which have some good volumes behind them that we want to be getting authority into those pages.

Russ Macumber:
But the bonus of these really solid category pages, which have products, which are completely aligned to those categories, which have search volumes behind them, SEO, okay. We just explain, it makes sense for Google, but then if you're running Google ads to those pages, it also gives you high quality, more relevancy because the Google ads for that particular product are showing on a category page with all of that particular product. Google is Google, whether it's paid or organic. So, there's that extra bonus that you get from your paid side of things as well.

Danielle:
That's great. And you talked about friction, so what do you see as the biggest friction causer, that doesn't make sense? But you know what I'm saying/

Russ Macumber:
That's that's actually easy, it's site speed.

Danielle:
Yeah.

Russ Macumber:
People have no patience. So that's literally the first thing we'll do with any new client we bring on is look at the site speed at the homepage, with the main product pages, category pages, what's happening, why is it loading slowly? What can we do to rectify that? That's your lowest hanging fruit to smooth up that path. Because people have, especially, even more especially for eCommerce, you're trying to get people on an impulse by, and they're having to wait three seconds for a page to load. And that's three seconds is a long time for them to see something else and they're off. So yeah, site speed would be the number one thing.

Danielle:
And then is there any distraction on page? I mean, we know that there's distractions on page, but is that the common challenge?

Russ Macumber:
It is. It is. And I think even things like just having too many options terms, we talked about that before, how do you break through the noise in the whole marketplace, but then on that product page, how do you break through the noise on your page? How many options are we giving them? Do we need to have a billion different types of options? Or can we just make it simple? Can we have a nice clear, it might even be so that we've found this a lot on sites. There's a particular Shopify theme. And I can't remember the name of it, but where the purchase calls to action are, there's an image. So right hand side of the screen, there's image of the product. And there's some purchase calls to action above, and there's some below. As a user it's counterintuitive, you're going, ah, and that kind of, what am I doing here is just enough time to lose the customer. So bringing those.

Danielle:
You mean like color and size of the product?

Russ Macumber:
No, but even the layout.

Danielle:
Oh, like add to cart?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason:
Too much. It's information overload, am I clicking on the right one even though they both say the same thing?

Russ Macumber:
Exactly. Exactly. And I mean, because then you get that-

Jason:
I just want to buy this thing. How do I do it?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. Yeah. I want to buy it. I don't want to buy it twice. I'm not buying the wrong color, am I?

Jason:
Yeah.

Russ Macumber:
All that sort of stuff in this day and age where people just want to boom, get it done, buy it so I can go do something else. Yeah. That causes decreases in conversion, for sure.

Jason:
Kind of, Danielle was talking about analytics, one of the things that I'd be curious in terms of, obviously you live and breathe analytics, right. But what are some of the concerns that you have and merchants, should they have around investing in all the efforts? Getting Impressive on board and spending the time, effort, energy to revamp their site, recategorize, SEO, actually doing SCM, doing paid media when-

Danielle:
Diversifying their marketing channels.

Jason:
Exactly. Right. So all the things that they should be doing to garner more sessions, activity, conversions, we know that there are providers out there, there are extensions, et cetera, that can ultimately take credit where credit is not due for conversions. And then start to skew this whole story around success and where you and/or a merchant should invest dollars in. So, your perspective amongst that and other things, what are some of the things that merchants need to be mindful of as they're looking at the data, but also making sure that, how do they scratch the layer back to make sure that the right parties are taking the right credit for that for a conversion or something that they drove, that someone else says, "Hey, no, I got it." And trying to figure out, okay, well, why do I have to pay a fee or commission on something that I actually drove as the brand?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. It's tough one. Danielle mentioned this before, diversifying your channels is a big thing. Making sure you've got a number of different, your eggs in a few different baskets. When the big iOS changes came through and Facebook, the attribution for Facebook, obviously people are putting all this money into Facebook. And now it's saying that it's making so much less. For people who all they were doing was Facebook, it doesn't work anymore. Or if they were doing a couple of channels, that one doesn't work anymore. Okay. I'm going to put it all into Google because my analytics are telling me that Google is where my sales are coming from. Nine times out of 10, they were not doing that and then getting all the sales back from another channel, what we found was, we like to run a number of channels.

Russ Macumber:
And what we found was, you decrease that, we would never pull it right out, but you decrease it back a bit just to let a client know we can push back enough times until they go, just stop spending so much there because we're not making as much. Okay. We can peel it back a little bit and just watch those overall sales just peel back with it, pump it up a little bit. Watch those overall sales pump up a little bit. So yeah, that sort of not, there's a big thing around attribution. There's no perfect attribution software out there. If anyone tells you that there is, they're just selling you a program that they're trying to make commission off. So there's no perfect solution out there, but I think diversify your channels is huge. But, it's a tricky thing, especially with affiliates and the like, they've got to look for technologies that can help protect them. Yeah.

Danielle:
I was going to ask you, do you recommend customers run a robust discount strategy or that they use digital coupons and then, yeah. What do you do to kind of keep those on track and making sure that the right guys are getting paid for the right conversions?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. Yeah. It depends on the brand. We've got some brands who they just have a straight up policy of no discounts. So that's just not a lever we can pull when we're running every targeting. So then we're looking for value ads and those sorts of things, what can you throw in on top? What sort of twofers can we do? Yeah, yeah. So those are some of levers.

Jason:
Do you find, sorry. Do you find, Russ, in those scenarios that the policy is warranted and what I mean by that is that, I mean, we have a side of the business where we work with merchants and one of the things that we have found too, is that in partnering with some of those merchants, there was a fear of coupons. If you have this robust strategy that they can leak and they can get out there. And so it's like all of a sudden, everyone just tightened up and said, "I'm not going to do this because I don't want that to happen." And do you see some of that in terms of, almost like it's a fear of it happening, so they just made this policy that says no dice, we're not doing this? More of a question, I'm genuinely curious or if it's just something, is it more related to the brand image where they don't want to be associated with a discount?

Danielle:
[inaudible 00:44:16]

Jason:
What have you seen with regards to the why?

Russ Macumber:
For us more specifically, in truth, it's been more just about the brand prestige and not wanting to be seen as a discounted brand, but we do work with lots of brands at discount as well. And it has to be a concern for them, codes that are out there, people doing a Google search, getting through the checkout and going, oh, maybe I'll just do a little search and see if I can find a code and punch a bunch of those in there. So I can't see how it wouldn't be a concern. Right. I guess and again, it comes down to the maturity of the brands because we've got some brands that we work with where we have to sort of, what's the word, just curb their enthusiasm for huge discounts, just to get those sales through. Your whole business can't be built on lost leaders because where's the profit come from? So yeah. But then, more mature businesses, we don't obviously have that sort of problem.

Danielle:
Right. And there's a stage in the process as well. Right. Do you suggest, I should probably ask instead of saying, do you suggest that you segment out your customer base for loyalty, new customers, return users and that those discounts are appropriated by stage?

Russ Macumber:
For sure. For sure. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. A hundred percent. I haven't got much to add there, that's definitely, the more targeted the message and the more warranted the discount then obviously, because if it's to a particular segment, so yes.

Danielle:
Great.

Jason:
Russ, I know we've been talking a lot about data and what's important to merchants and consumers, but one thing I was thinking about, was when you started the business in the states. How good did it feel when you won your first customer? How cool was that, right? I don't know. I think about that sometimes because everyone's hustling always, right. And I think about those moments that are, the moment that's ingrained, because you could probably literally recall the email or the response you got, word for word? How cool was that? What was that experience, you literally went to a different country and started a business?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah, yeah.

Jason:
Obviously you had support. Right. What was that like?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. I mean our first clients, so the way we started was we had some Australian clients that moved into the U.S agency that were running for from there. But the first U.S based client, I was still in Australia and I was doing my cold calls at four in the morning and yeah cold emails and the like. And it was a winery brand, direct to consumer winery brand. And to be frank, I remember I got the positive response. I'm like, really? You sure? Okay.

Jason:
We're really doing this.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. And then got on the call. And I was very clear that just so you know, we're in Melbourne, but we've run lots of these campaigns before. I didn't want to be one of those guys like "Yeah, I'm in New York. Oh that's on the window. I can see the Empire State Building."

Jason:
We're global. We're global. It's no big deal. Yeah.

Russ Macumber:
So I wanted to be very clear on where we were, but what she wanted and the product itself and the average order value and the vision she had for it, I mean, it fit in with lots of stuff that we'd done. So it was pretty easy for me to go though her questions, but what about this and how does this work? And I'm like well, for the last half a dozen, we did it worked like this and yeah, the copywriting would be ideally more direct responses in these places and that sort of thing. So from that initial point of, whoa, really? It was like, oh actually, yeah, we do this, we've got this. So, but I still do remember it very clearly and it will hold it special place in my heart, I think.

Jason:
Oh, that's so good. In the space of eCommerce, it would be great to know kind of from your experience and what you're seeing going on, who are some folks that are doing awesome stuff either on the brand side or on the partnership side, where are you seeing, who are you seeing kind of make waves in that space and why?

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. Yeah. So two come to mind. One from brand, one from partner side. Brand wise is an Australian brand and they're here as well, but they're not physical here called Culture Kings. Man, I love that brand. They're just for every 40 year old dad who still thinks it's the nineties and wants to dress like a hip hop star, that's just right.

Jason:
I'm looking this up right now. And just, I mean the homepage alone, I'm digging.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. Yeah. Their physical stores in Australia are amazing. They've got DJs and basketball rings and stuff. You walk in as a barber, it's an experience.

Jason:
Oh wow. So they have a whole retail experience.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. But what they've done amazingly well is from a digital perspective, the tone and the messaging and everything else just aligns with exactly what you'd expect when you walk into the store. So, you get retargeted and it's just language you'd imagine.

Jason:
The look and feel.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. It's just completely, and they were doing it probably two, three years ago where it was just that completely consistent messaging and tone and look and feel from walking into the store to getting that Facebook messenger when it was a little bit more open to get those little sequences through and you're making your way through and it just feels like I'm talking to the guy wearing the Jordan top. And from a brand perspective, Culture Kings, very cool. From a tech partner, tech side perspective, Gorgeous. I just think for eComm to be able to bring, I think their platform is... Again, it really comes back to the same thing about unifying that customer experience and just making sure that every customer, no matter where they interface with your brand, that they get that similar experience. In fact, I wonder whether Culture Kings use Gorgeous, that would make sense.

Danielle:
They probably do.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. They probably do.

Danielle:
To go to your point, that is something that we've heard. I guess if we did a rewind and tried to see how many times we've all said it, user experience, I think was one of the most important words, right?

Russ Macumber:
Yep.

Danielle:
So how does that, we talked about time on site or latency, but it's really the user experience is at the heart of all of it. Right. And it being consistent and frictionless.

Russ Macumber:
Yep.

Danielle:
What would you say other attributes are that are the most important?

Russ Macumber:
I think timing is a big part of it so that the messages are coming through at that point in your user journey and the messaging is consistent with where you are and it's consistent with what you'll get in store or on this site or anywhere else. What else? I think if we just come back to the creative side of things, the way it makes you feel. It's a data driven performance market. I can't put my finger on, I can't put a number around it as much as I'd like to, but I do know that some brands just, you connect with, they make you feel good.

Jason:
And I feel like that's all the way from, it's the whole package. It's the ad creative, it's the copy on page. It's the copy in the ad. It's the flow of the site. It's all interconnected in that way, which to your point, there are just some brands you're like, yeah.

Danielle:
That's kind of like the rise of the brand ambassador. That's why brand ambassadors were born because they actually love the brand enough to go and tote it and then brand ambassadors turned into social influencers. And that space is getting, I don't know if you want to speak to that space a little bit, but it's evolving.

Russ Macumber:
It is, it is.

Danielle:
A lot.

Russ Macumber:
Well, I think even I actually did a piece in Umbrella just two weeks ago from South by Southwest, where we talked about just the rise of actually there was a few speakers at South by Southwest just spoke about this and I just sort of let it ruminate in my head, just around the rise of content creators. When did we start calling influencers content creators? I'm not sure.

Danielle:
That's part of that evolution, I guess.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah, yeah. But, the rise of content creators and that complete and utter alignment with the brand, but then where do they sit in the funnel? It used to be influencers it's top of funnel, just it's building brand awareness, that sort of thing. But then you've got your affiliates and down the road, we've got in shopping experiences in the actual social platform. So they all of a sudden become, they're almost a full funnel.

Danielle:
Yeah. Well, we talked about the importance of reviews, right? It's kind of like a walking talking review that you can interact with.

Russ Macumber:
Yep, exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, but I think one interesting thing I'll tell you from having, well, one thing I've loved being here for six months. So we've been marketing brands here for a couple of years, but being on the ground here is different to marketing from Australia. But content creators are a much more integrated part of the performance marketing puzzle here in the U.S than they are in Australia. They will be there, I'm sure. But I think just that recognition that they can drive sales, they can align with your brand. They can impact your brand in different parts of the funnel. It's something which our team is really excited about. Just getting much more, I mean, our team's really excited about the extra UGC that they get to use in their campaigns, but also just having another lever to pull, to try to drive sales.

Danielle:
And are you a proponent of those micro influencers or micro content creators where you have many, so that you're kind of spread into, you have really strong connections into those audiences or the big overarching influencers?

Russ Macumber:
No, definitely the micro, I think because the micro ones, there's a deeper authenticity to it and there tends to be much higher ratios of engagement.

Jason:
What would be an example of a micro influencer?

Russ Macumber:
So I think the definition I saw most recently was 10,000 to 50,000 followers, I believe.

Jason:
And this will be what, just a straight product review.

Danielle:
No. More social content. They're using the product, right?

Russ Macumber:
Yep. Yep. So it'd be, I mean there might be product.

Danielle:
Lipstick by the way. That's why I did this.

Jason:
I see that. I don't know.

Danielle:
What she's making reference to, sorry. Lipstick.

Jason:
Anyone listening and not watching, just things making lipstick.

Danielle:
Sorry.

Jason:
Sorry Russ, go ahead.

Russ Macumber:
No, that's okay. Well, what were we talking about? Yeah, so usually the term of engagement could be a number of posts over a specific period and there needs to be this type of content, there needs to be unboxing, needs to be reviews. There needs to be more organic install, that sort of stuff. So there'd be a particular brief that goes out those micro influences, you could have a range of them that there's lots of different platforms out there that you can actually measure how effectively that's working. But yeah, they're definitely the bigger play these days. It's almost like rather than having one big influencer with a million followers you're much better off having, a hundred with 10,000 followers. Is that a million?

Jason:
Is it well, I mean-

Russ Macumber:
Yeah, yeah. My quick math.

Jason:
Is it fair to presume that when content creators, that name kind of came in into play that we started, or the industry started to see more content creation in the form of product reviewer comparison from bigger publishing players that wanted the opportunity to maybe, in the space, like a New York times, so ones that weren't necessarily the opposite of micro, where they actually got into the space because everyone was Googling something, were from product review to what have you, where there's the opportunity for them to also jump into the space in terms of creating content that could actually drive conversions. Right. I mean, so, ultimately the opposite, but did you also witness, maybe it's just me, but I feel like I also saw that over the last five, six years, the rise of that type of content creation on other types of platforms, outside of TikTok, et cetera, where they have the ability to write and create content on larger platforms.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. I think, I mean, you've always got bigger businesses out there looking for new, exciting ways to drive revenue. So obviously that's a big part of it. I think the rebranding, I'm not sure if this is part of the question, but the rebranding of that industry from influences to content creators was just, I think largely just a factor of just the influence as a whole, that whole space, it had a bit of a stigma to it. There was lots of that Instagram take a photo selfie, all that sort of stuff that there was lots of other players in the industry that weren't doing that, that weren't selling fashion products, that weren't doing the Bali body and everything else, didn't want to be associated with that. So that's where content creators. But I think even calling it content creators, sort of piggybacking on your point a bit, it does broaden what they can do in terms of video and other channels and other platforms and other ways to kind of create that content to get it out there. So it's probably empowering for them, but it also opens up people's eyes to different ways that user generated content can drive traffic and sales.

Jason:
Right. I mean, I just think about and I don't know if you guys are the same way, but I think about, I feel like every answer restart research, goes to the browser search bar, right? In terms of looking for a brand, or even if you find a brand that you like, it's this brand versus that. And it's nature, I think in some of these cases. So it's interesting to see the evolution of that process and that space, and how that ultimately leads to, or can lead to the ability for conversions, et cetera, and driving users in that space.

Russ Macumber:
Yep. For sure. For sure.

Jason:
Well, sweet, well, Russ, I tell you what this has been, it has been a blast and I have a feeling that this will not be the last time.

Russ Macumber:
Yeah. I'd love that.

Jason:
That we chat, but we really appreciate you making the time and coming on and chatting with us and talking to everybody. So, yeah. So our pleasure to have you.

Russ Macumber:
Awesome. Thanks so much, Jason. Thanks, Danielle. It's been great. Love talking to eCommerce, so thank you.

Jason:
Awesome. Thanks, Russ. We appreciate it. Bye.