Connected Commerce: Are You Paying Too Much for the Wrong Clicks?

Hai Mag 00:08

Hi everybody and welcome to the Connected Commerce podcast. Today, my guest is a special person that I know for years. Will from Belowics. He is the CEO and co-founder, should I say?

Will Haire 00:21

Yeah, that works.

Hai Mag 00:22

Well tell us about yourself how Bellovix is doing nowadays.

Will Haire 00:26

Yeah, thanks for having me. So Bellavics is a is an am is a marketplace marketing agency. We've been doing this since about 2018 and we've been pretty blessed. We're we're boutique. We don't work with a lot of brands, but the brands we work with, we've been working with for a while. and we've had some really good growth milestones. I think recently we hit over half a billion dollars in sales on the platform and

Will Haire 00:49

you know, we do the full full range of services and inside the platform. So I'm excited to be here to share some of my my connected

Will Haire 00:56

projects and ta tactics.

Hai Mag 00:59

first of all, like you said, 2018, it's almost like eight years. So I'm really, really looking forward to hearing from you the

Hai Mag 01:09

connected commerce story, but before that, maybe you know, you tell us about like what changed over the last eight years for Bellowics and also the way you approach the to the Amazon brand the brands on Amazon because I know you started from Amazon although you do it more now. What is the big change that you see in the last eight years?

Will Haire 01:29

Yeah, I mean, my God, so much. even before that I was working at agencies doing advertising. So there was a time where the PPC didn't even have the visuals. You used to have to download all the reports and and drop them into Microsoft and make make your own visuals. So it's come a long way. I'll just talk about like maybe the last two years 'cause that's that's where I mean the technological innovations inside of Amazon is insane.

Will Haire 01:55

You know, we have access to the API, so our ability to automate processes, work on our own custom software. And it frees up my team's time from spending a lot of time doing manual reporting. We have a lot of systems and automations in place now. And so we're able to spend time being strategic and actually really being a partner with our brands. So I like to differentiate.

Will Haire 02:18

ourselves compared to other agencies. It's like we're really embedded with who we work with. and we have about a 36 month attrition rate. So most brands that come with us, they stay with us for a little bit.

Hai Mag 02:30

And thirty six months is like an amazing number. So

Will Haire 02:33

Thanks.

Hai Mag 02:33

definitely. And you know, one of the things that I also very much like you to like yourself, very much focused on the technology

Will Haire 02:41

Uh-huh.

Hai Mag 02:42

aspect of it, like how to use the tech to

Will Haire 02:45

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 02:45

be to to kind of automate the mundane tasks so

Will Haire 02:48

Yeah.

Hai Mag 02:49

that as an agency, as a brand manager, then there is more focus on the strategy

Will Haire 02:54

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 02:55

aspect rather than just the operational stuff.

Will Haire 02:58

Yeah.

Hai Mag 02:59

So

Hai Mag 02:59

What about like one of the things like of course like this the customers started talking about the Omni

Will Haire 03:05

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 03:06

Channel, you know, everything on Walmart target and

Hai Mag 03:10

Of course, Shopify and Amazon, besides Amazon and also TikTok is the kind of the new kid

Will Haire 03:15

Yeah.

Hai Mag 03:16

on the block for this year, as kind of the most famous. But in general, it seems like the customers need a more connected commerce

Will Haire 03:24

No.

Hai Mag 03:25

experience. And that's also the reason why we are doing this podcast, because we're gonna we want to hear from you maybe a story where you see this the value of that, the connections with different

Hai Mag 03:38

channels or different parts of the business.

Will Haire 03:41

Nailed it. So yeah, I'm excited to share this. So the first story, I ran through our case studies and I talked to one of my advertising managers for this this story I'll share with you now. But I want to talk about connecting shopping behavior with your bidding strategy. And so what's nice is when you can plug your shopping behavior signals into your advertising account, you can really optimize bidding strategies. And so we were working with the supplement brand and it's it's a relatively large

Will Haire 04:08

well-known supplement brand. And the price of being the big guy on the block is that, and specifically for this category, generic keywords are a price like beachfront property. They are very expensive. We're talking plus ten dollar cost per clicks in order to just have a presence. And in certain supplement categories, that's kind of the price you have to pay because you need to have a presence in order to acquire those new customers. So the

Will Haire 04:32

Issue initially was that standard PPC they rate all shoppers the same. So if you viewed my product and added Descartes and then decided to go away versus somebody just kicking tires and researching, I'm paying the same price per click essentially than somebody that's shown actual intent. And that is a lot of money to spend on indifference.

Will Haire 04:55

hi, I know you're familiar with this, but Amazon Marketing Cloud is amazing. And so what we did at Bellavics is that we took Amazon Marketing Cloud and we created audiences with some of these top products. The audiences we built and we called the segment high value audience segment. And we created a viewed the product segment, add the cart, saved a wish list, and then never, never made a purchase. And then on the bidding side,

Will Haire 05:19

What we did is we lowered our base bids on some of the broad category keywords. We tightened our belt in some other areas, and we doubled down in audiences that shown intent. So they raised their hand and they looked at a product detail page or they engaged a competitor. And so the payoff of bridging, connecting these two commerce platforms together, we saw our click-through rate for those campaigns that were built on these audiences was about 2%.

Will Haire 05:45

Our median click-through rate on the account was 0.69%. And then not only that, with the same amount of ad spend, we managed to increase our ad sales, which cut our overall ACOS about 50%. And so it's the same keywords, but it's different audiences. And the keywords were never the problem. Everyone treats the

Will Haire 06:05

keywords as the unit intent, but it's not. The shopper is. So once we were able to combine behavior data.

Will Haire 06:11

With bidding operations, we were able to improve the account efficiency. So that's that's my my case for for connected commerce.

Hai Mag 06:20

I love it because you know, one of the things like if we go back five years, six years ago, advertising started as a keyword strategy. And

Will Haire 06:29

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 06:30

you know, with the keywords, it's more about intention. Of course, not the the the the it's more about the lower end of the funnel where the people has the intention, so that's more the the keyword base. Then a

Will Haire 06:42

Yeah.

Hai Mag 06:43

couple of years back the audience based strategies started to emerge on

Will Haire 06:47

Yeah.

Hai Mag 06:48

Amazon.

Hai Mag 06:49

Similar to Google or Meta strategies, but the thing that you're describing is not a pure audience-based strategy and not a pure keyword-based strategy, but you are basically talking about, hey,

Hai Mag 07:05

Who is going to bid a vitamin C as a keyword? That's like maybe 15 bucks.

Will Haire 07:11

Yeah.

Hai Mag 07:12

So, but what about what you're saying? Like, what about like attaching an audience into that keyword where that audience is now specific, right? Like maybe it's the ones which check the product, the ones which

Will Haire 07:26

Yeah.

Hai Mag 07:27

I don't know, we use the competitor, for example. That's

Will Haire 07:29

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 07:30

something we do a lot. we

Hai Mag 07:33

attach the audience, but the ones which checked a competitor also and things like that. So when you create an audience plus keyword strategy and then you have a much better result. That's what I'm hearing from you.

Will Haire 07:50

Mm-hmm.

Will Haire 07:51

Mm-hmm. Yep. And and that's the evolution advertising. To your point, hi. You you've been in this game as long, if not longer, than I have, and you've seen the evolution. So I look at it as like Amazon as an advertising platform has grown up a little bit. And our ability to build audiences and create full funnel strategies is is something we didn't have. I mean, three, maybe four years ago. Like it's still pretty recent.

Hai Mag 08:13

is pretty still pretty recent. although it's getting also now in an interesting point. Like I know that there is another very nice story you want to tell us, but maybe before that you can also share with us like, you know, like this this TikTok and similar

Will Haire 08:29

Mm.

Hai Mag 08:30

platforms, maybe Instagram, maybe a little bit like the Amazon you know, affiliates and all that stuff. But there's all this discovery

Hai Mag 08:38

moving into AI tools like chat GPT or tic tac which means that now upper funnel strategies are maybe more focused on how we can get this customers from tic tac or different ways but what's your view of like with the tic tac and ai kind of occupying that upper funnel

Will Haire 09:00

Yeah.

Will Haire 09:00

It's pretty interesting. So I don't have a lot of data points. We're we're relatively new to TikTok and we are working with on social. But I do know for a fact like what we're seeing is the social media as a as a as a funnel. It it's where your audiences live, like especially for like supplements, beauty like there's certain categories that they're gonna go to. Discovery happens on TikTok. If they're a little older, it's on Instagram.

Will Haire 09:27

And if they're really old, it's on it's on meta or what used to be Facebook. So we've seen the evolution. We'll build ad strategies around that and we'll drive traffic to like store pages and measure results. so it is pretty interesting for sure. and we'll see. I mean, it's just crazy the evolution of how social influences commerce pretty much.

Hai Mag 09:48

Exactly, because maybe I'm thinking that now let's go back like fifteen years ago, you go into Amazon and you have an intention, right? Like vitamin C supplement, whatever. Then what you see is like the real results, like organic results. Even if you remember there was like all the the people who bought this product also purchased that product. I mean, there is all types

Will Haire 10:10

Yeah.

Hai Mag 10:11

of honest recommendations. Now

Hai Mag 10:13

Over the time, last six years, right? We know that the the estate of that page, digital page, it is occupied more and more by ads. Because you know, this is now

Will Haire 10:24

Yeah.

Hai Mag 10:25

by far the most profitable line of business for Amazon. 99% profit. The more Amazon ads,

Will Haire 10:32

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 10:33

the better. Now, because of that.

Hai Mag 10:35

The trust is a little bit like going down because like you when you search, you don't find exactly what might be the best product, but you still look into the reviews, ratings, etc. Now more and more

Will Haire 10:47

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 10:48

people are going to chat GPT and they ask for hey, I am this, I don't know, I'm a 50 years

Will Haire 10:53

Yeah.

Hai Mag 10:54

old lady, like have this problem, this and that. I'm using this supplement. What should I use more?

Hai Mag 11:00

Well, actually I'm doing the same thing. Like I'm asking more chat GPT if I don't have time. If I have more time, I I use cloud. So I think that I think that's me. But then there are other people they're like looking into TikTok and then they try to figure out like who is using what

Will Haire 11:16

Yeah.

Hai Mag 11:17

and what's the benefit. Kind of trusting

Will Haire 11:18

Yeah.

Will Haire 11:19

Yeah.

Hai Mag 11:19

more all these videos. I'm not sure if that's a good idea too, but it seems like the discovery is not happening.

Hai Mag 11:26

as much as it was before on Amazon.

Will Haire 11:29

I agree,

Hai Mag 11:29

Right.

Will Haire 11:30

Hyatt. I I think we're on the precipice of of shopping behavior shifting. you brought up a really good point, and I tell my clients like AEO, what it's AI engine optimization, like gotta love all the acronyms. but I'm still convinced that a majority of people are still going to Amazon and searching on the search bar. And you know, if your product is under a hundred dollars for argument's sake, I do think a lot of product discovery still happens on Amazon.

Will Haire 11:53

So similar you, hi, like part of running an agency is like we gotta be tip top of our game. It's why we we do the news and we give away information. so I we are conscious and we do try to build listings and optimize for for AEO, but we we're not overselling it now. We're we're definitely kind of letting demand and letting you know overall growth dictate kind of how we're we're updating listings and what we're doing on the back end. But it's definitely something that is.

Will Haire 12:19

It's really interesting. Like five years from now, I mean who knows how they might be wearing Google goggles and microchips on your wrist. I mean, who knows? But it's gonna be fun. We're gonna be part of it.

Hai Mag 12:31

Actually, you know, between you and me, and I don't know how I I just wanna record this this piece. Like I started buying a lot of Tesla shares because I believe that when Tesla starts releasing the Optimus, that's the robot, right? That's coming.

Hai Mag 12:48

In a couple of years, maybe you and I will start talking about as as the consumer is the robot, right? Like

Hai Mag 12:56

Why not? Right? Like that

Will Haire 12:57

Yeah.

Hai Mag 12:57

guy will check the fridge, check the supplements and all that stuff, and decide what to buy on Amazon. I think we are not

Will Haire 13:05

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 13:05

like more than c five years away from that happening. Of course, then that robot will not check the advertising, then it will be a big

Will Haire 13:13

Yeah.

Hai Mag 13:13

issue, right? Like but probably there will be things that the robot will check, like you mentioned AEO, answer engine optimization, things like that.

Hai Mag 13:23

Now probably that that robot will check.

Hai Mag 13:25

answers to the questions and that will be the future of you know kind of the agencies trying to figure out

Will Haire 13:32

Yeah.

Hai Mag 13:33

like what these guys want to buy. If you look at like the Tesla forecast, like they want to be like in five years probably there will be like at least a hundred thousand robots replacing some people or being a a a a new maid in the in in the house, right? Like taking care of everything. I don't know. So

Hai Mag 13:54

That would be a interesting.

Will Haire 13:56

I I wish I can't wait till Rosie's part of my family. I've been waiting for years, what I I just read Elon's biography and I'll just sub like don't bet against Elon, so you're making a smart investment. But his ability from timelines tends to be a little off, but there's no doubt that that that man's gonna figure it out. And then we could coin it here, Ario robot engine optimization. So if you heard it first on on your new podcast.

Hai Mag 14:20

Exactly. So tell us more. Like, you know, you you mentioned you may have a second story for us tonight.

Will Haire 14:26

I do, I do. So this this story is about teams coming together. I I decided we talk a lot about tools and we tech out, but at the end of the day, it's people that that make these things happen. And being part of a great team is really special. So the the story, the connected commerce I'll be sharing is in-house creative with a agency analytics, the tales, the tale of two teams coming together. So

Will Haire 14:52

Actually, not too long ago, we were working with and we still work with this beauty brand, and they they generally have like a really top-notch in-house team. Their team is printing money on social media. That's why you brought up TikTok and Instagram. Like these two ladies just understand that audience, they understand how to message to it, and they create some of the most beautiful, compelling content you can imagine. But

Will Haire 15:15

And you know this, I unfortunately that doesn't always translate over to Amazon. So like the stuff that we inherited was just like the word count on images was insane, not mobile friendly, the dimensions were off standard, and they're it looked like a brand deck and and not not anything useful. And so the usual agency move is to take the creatives in-house, which honestly it it turns into a turf war because somebody's feelings are gonna get hurt.

Will Haire 15:42

And at the end of the day, like who's the real loser? It's the brand. The brand voice is impacted, and you have this inconsistent experience between platforms. So we decided to do the opposite. We said, you know what, you guys keep the execution and we'll bring the data to the table. So we did competitive analysis, we gave them, you know, platform-specific directions. I love to do image audits and we we wireframe things out. And

Will Haire 16:06

Not only that, but we also tracked conversion rate and traffic improvements. And so we were able to give the brand and Amazon facelift and we did it together in like a very collaborative environment. And so over the course of four months, we saw a 21% increase in sales. And that's we had like our baseline, what we were doing, and then what we were actually able to achieve, and we saw incremental growth. And that final month was the first time that brand broke six figures. So they did a hundred

Hai Mag 16:32

Absolutely.

Will Haire 16:32

thousand plus.

Will Haire 16:34

in sales and that that was a big moment for these guys and we were really happy to be be part of that. So the breakthrough here wasn't a better image or dis it was deciding who owns what. They own the brand, we own the data, and nobody had to be wrong for it to work out. So I just I thought that would be a fun connected commerce story to share with you hi.

Hai Mag 16:54

But here's the thing. First of all, what I really like about the way you explain the stories will is you talk about the outcomes. Not just that there is a connection or like we did this, but there is a a real outcome as a result of that. And I always believe people do not come to us just to keep the lights on

Hai Mag 17:15

or just to make sure we manage some stuff. Amazon, Meta. They come to us because they need growth.

Hai Mag 17:21

It's also very,

Will Haire 17:22

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 17:22

very hard to grow the business from insiders.

Will Haire 17:25

Yeah.

Hai Mag 17:26

Insiders, they already have their luggage of the company and

Will Haire 17:29

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 17:30

all the other work that they need to do. Then we come as the external people come up with all these nice technologies, processes, better people, something, creativity.

Hai Mag 17:41

And now we're talking about

Will Haire 17:41

Yeah.

Hai Mag 17:42

the outcomes because after many years we know, right? Like that's all about like outcomes and growing the business. And if we don't

Will Haire 17:50

Yeah.

Hai Mag 17:50

grow the business sooner or later, you know, the brands will not work with us. So that's why I always say, Hey, what is the outcome? And the customer is happy. No, I don't want just happy customer.

Will Haire 18:02

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 18:02

I need

Hai Mag 18:03

you to grow the business. Like, I mean, what are we doing

Will Haire 18:05

Yeah.

Hai Mag 18:06

to grow the business? We are not the people to be in the comfort zone. That's maybe the customer. If they are happy, they can be in the comfort zone. Not us. We need to grow the business. Then people like

Will Haire 18:14

Yep. Amen.

Hai Mag 18:16

I had the same problem again and again, like somehow like hitting to that creative designers, they are amazing.

Will Haire 18:23

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 18:24

Now we are more the data guys. Now you're already talking about this, right? Like how this

Hai Mag 18:29

Creative designer or designer's team on the customer side versus your team and how like these things will come together. And I know that's that's very tough. One of the things, for example,

Will Haire 18:42

Yeah.

Hai Mag 18:42

just to support your thing, especially when the customer is very strong with Shopify, which means that for sure they have a very good creative designer team. And then this team is

Will Haire 18:53

Yeah, yeah, it's so true.

Hai Mag 18:54

trying to influence Amazon, then they think, you know, the brand store, the most important. And we say, hey, it is important. Not the most important though, but it is important, but not

Will Haire 19:03

Yeah.

Hai Mag 19:05

as much as you have it on Shopify side. Because Shopify it's the most important, right? Like you have you need to it it helps the conversion.

Will Haire 19:14

Exactly.

Will Haire 19:15

Yeah.

Will Haire 19:15

And that's the biggest point too. It's like there's a disconnect between systems. And, you know, to my point, they they are killers on social media, but they just didn't and and you know this, Amazon, Walmart, they're their own ecosystems. The shopper behavior is different, the expectations are different. So to your point, you know, ha having a great Shopify could almost be a curse when when they're coming over to to Amazon and needing that cohesion and experience.

Hai Mag 19:41

Because they ask why?

Will Haire 19:42

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 19:43

Why we cannot do that? Well, because that is a different game. You focus on the conversion,

Will Haire 19:48

Yeah.

Hai Mag 19:49

better graphics design, everything. And here we focus on data intentions. because we don't know exactly the consumer, but we know their behavior. We know which search terms they look for.

Hai Mag 20:01

So, but it's that's why I like it very much because

Will Haire 20:03

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 20:04

it's always a bit of a specific like we are very much the data

Will Haire 20:08

Yeah.

Hai Mag 20:08

guys, tech guys. That's the the muscle we have. But then dealing with the the other side, which is more like very much like they know the creative design aspect of it.

Hai Mag 20:19

it's hard. I don't know what you think about the impact of AI right now into the creative.

Hai Mag 20:26

Design because that is becoming

Will Haire 20:27

Yeah.

Hai Mag 20:28

a big war that's like AI is winning

Will Haire 20:31

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 20:32

every month. It's getting better

Will Haire 20:33

Yeah.

Will Haire 20:34

Yeah.

Hai Mag 20:34

If you remember like January, that was like nano banana stuff. my god, great, amazing. And then cloud design, and then I think it was image GPT two dot zero, whatever. At this moment, it's almost like you can create an A plus content in a few minutes.

Will Haire 20:51

So with it's a weird position. So Amazon Creative Studios is also another great option. We actually use that a lot for ads, ad creatives. I I like it. I like it for certain types of brands, and you might feel the same way. So, like if you're a brand that's like under five million dollars for argument's sake, like

Will Haire 21:10

Yeah, you're you're still bootstrapping it, you're still working on retail, you're you might still be figuring out Shopify. So like I love the speed in which we can iterate and test. And that that is really where I love the AI. Cause like, yeah, you could tell, but like honestly, it's good enough to test with. You know, you good enough for an MVP. For brands that like have.

Will Haire 21:29

branding and they have certain expectations and they've built their audiences. So generally these are eight figure plus brands and some may be in retail, some may just be giants digitally. Like they I like to you could still iterate with EI, but a but there's nothing like having your own brand assets, doing a photo shoot with the studio, planning it out and having like a really tight experience tied to a campaign that might be seasonal or not. Those I think you

Will Haire 21:55

your your return you can get on that and what it does for the consumer is something AIs can't do yet.

Hai Mag 22:04

And two yeah, exactly, as you said, right. You know, and also it makes a lot of sense. It basically helped this smaller brands, they can instead of like doing all

Will Haire 22:12

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 22:13

this you know, capturing the videos, video shoots and things like that, now they can just do it with AI. So at least it just closed the gap between the small guys

Will Haire 22:23

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 22:23

and the big guys, but there's still a gap.

Hai Mag 22:26

and the authenticity is becoming

Will Haire 22:27

Yeah.

Hai Mag 22:29

more and more important in the AI world. I don't know.

Will Haire 22:32

Yeah.

Hai Mag 22:33

now I

Hai Mag 22:33

can even immediately understand if a website is done by AI or if an image is done by AI.

Will Haire 22:39

Hey hi, do you think we're just tech nerds? You think that's it? We we could see it everywhere 'cause we're in it every day? You think like the layman really knows? Like the the car mechanic, the the teacher?

Hai Mag 22:49

I honestly think that we the day we think we say we know and then we don't

Will Haire 22:56

Yeah.

Hai Mag 22:56

know again. Like I mean, because every single day AI is getting better. That's for sure. But but I

Will Haire 23:02

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 23:04

mean for this if the audience is interested, as the AI is getting better, it is also consuming more resources to be better. It's not consuming less resources because if it is

Hai Mag 23:15

Less resources are consumed and it's getting better. It's good. But right now it's going the other way around, meaning that it's getting also more and more expensive. Not only expenses,

Will Haire 23:25

Yeah.

Hai Mag 23:26

like everywhere in the US now there is a data center construction going on.

Will Haire 23:31

Yeah.

Hai Mag 23:31

And and I don't know where it will go, but everybody should know that as we are using cloud and open AI products, they are not making profit out of it yet.

Hai Mag 23:44

That's another problem.

Will Haire 23:44

Yet.

Hai Mag 23:45

But I mean, Amazon didn't make profit for twenty years. So I mean

Will Haire 23:49

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 23:50

we cannot say that the businesses are like complete non profitable whatever businesses just like

Will Haire 23:58

Yeah.

Hai Mag 23:59

growing revenues, but it

Hai Mag 24:01

some point I believe that it will catch up with like a a human behavior and it will be very unlikely for us to understand between what ai is doing in terms of creative design versus

Will Haire 24:14

Yeah.

Will Haire 24:15

yeah.

Hai Mag 24:15

human.

Will Haire 24:15

Yeah.

Hai Mag 24:16

I think it's maybe a year or two years away. We are already in the middle of it 75% done. The rest, you know another couple of years.

Will Haire 24:25

Incremental. And

Will Haire 24:26

it's just to show you too, like now on what storefronts and A plus content you have to call out if it's an AI generated person. So like it it's it's so close to your point. It it might it might be the end of this year, you know, we might might not be able to tell.

Hai Mag 24:41

And if I were a creative designer, I will definitely focus on AI and you know, be the best

Will Haire 24:46

Yeah.

Hai Mag 24:47

creative designer who is using the AI in the best way, something like that, right? Like and the the

Will Haire 24:52

Amen. Yep.

Hai Mag 24:53

ones which are not using AI, I think they are all elev eliminated as we speak. It's just a matter of time, right? But I mean that's

Will Haire 24:59

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 25:01

an amazing point. I love both stories, Will. It shows like your

Hai Mag 25:05

experience

Hai Mag 25:06

of like dealing with so many customers and focusing on outcomes, leveraging AI and tech as much as you can. I mean, that's all great. And thank you for being a guest of the Connected Commerce podcast.

Hai Mag 25:19

Thank you.

Will Haire 25:20

Thanks for having me on. Pleasure as always. Hi.