4. What started as a case study for WEBRIS,
turned into a viable income stream.
$-
$1,000
$2,000
$3,000
$4,000
$5,000
$6,000
$7,000
$8,000
$9,000
$10,000
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
5. • Less than 10 hours a month
• Less than $5k total
investment
• This is a business in a box,
from me to you
8. Full stack marketer, specializing in SEO
8+ years of client facing
experience working in
online marketing strategy.
a.
Worked with clients like
Target, Best Buy, IBM,
Apple, Nike & dozens
more.
Currently own and
operate WEBRIS, agency
specializing in organic
search.
Not a member of OMG,
no affiliation, not getting
paid to be here.
100% “white hat” - no
PBNs, no bots, no 2.0s –
it’s just how I learned.
Believe in research,
strategy, process,
execution, GROWTH &
marketing at scale.
12. Picking a product to sell.#1
LOW HIGH
Cost
• Keeps your initial investment down
• Keeps shipping costs down
• Mitigates risk involved
Demand
• You need volume to sell enough to make money
• Check Google tools
• Check Amazon tools
Weight
• Keep shipping costs down
Passion
• Viral potential, passionate communities (check social)
• Something you’re interested in
Tech
• You don’t want to deal with faulty products, high
returns and pain in the ass customer service
• Mitigates low quality products
Potential
• Private label potential, ability to brand an everyday
commodity into something more
• Money making vs. business building
Competition / brands
• Want to be able to get visibility in the market as quick
as possible
• I chose shoelaces because a lot of brands don’t sell
them directly
13. Pick the platform that’s right FOR YOU.#1
Platform + / -
Amazon
• Internal marketing engine
• Fulfillment by Amazon
• Amazon specific marketing (new skill set)
• FBA takes a good chunk of revenue
Shopify
• Easy to use, out of box ready
• Good templates and options
• Customization is limited (for me…)
WooCommerce
• WP is easy to use, good SEO, able to make
adjustments
• Ability to market based on current skillset
• Have designers / dev on retainer to help
Big platform (Magento,
Demandware, Custom)
• Good for high volume sites
• CRM integrations
• Expensive, requires specific dev skillset
15. • Strategy is the driver – it dictates
your entire business.
• It requires a lot of work up front but
saves time in the long run
(reduces the need for rework)
16. It all starts with brand – it’s everything.a.
• At the end of the day, MOST of
us are all selling the same thing.
• BRAND is ultimately what
makes consumers purchase
(Apple users?)
• A brand can be built quick and
inexpensive now thanks to the
internet.
20. Find your brand’s niche.c.
• SHREDZ didn’t built their brand on the
WHOLE fitness market – they niched
down into bodybuilding (eventually
expanded)
• The internet allows you to market at
SCALE – there’s no such thing as a
“niche” anymore.
21. We found the right one.d.
• It’s filled with passionate people that
spend a lot of money, and essentially
collect, sneakers (#sneakerhead –
content).
• We chose to niche down and focus on
JUST the sneaker market.
• For laces, there’s a number niches –
boots, sneakers, athletic cleats, dress,
etc.
22. Know your customer within that niche.e.
• Who is most likely to buy from you?
• Age
• Sex
• Location (ASL?)
• Income
• Preferred media
• Slang used
• Social preferences
Where do they spend their time
online?
23. KNOW your audience, NO excuses.e.
Use Facebook
Audience insights
for help.
Old fashioned
research works the
best.
24. Our target customer.f.
Age 18 - 24
Sex Male
Education High school
Income Low
Reads Sneakernews, ESPN
Watches HBO, Netflix, Sports
Social Snapchat, IG, FB, Twitter
A younger customer with low purchasing power. This person is highly
active on social media, connected to their phone and rarely uses a
computer, aside from work or school.
25. Why does this matter?g.
• Pricing: Premium vs. Cheap
• Marketing Mix
• Branding / Image
26. We need to know our competitors, too.h.
Let’s run through a simple competitive research process…
In SEM Rush, type your main keywords into the search bar
27. We need to know our competitors, too.i.
Use them to discover your
top competitors.
28. We need to know our competitors, too.j.
Click on the link – what type of traffic do they get?
Is it going up, down stagnant?
29. We need to know our competitors, too.k.
Scroll down – review their top keywords.
30. We need to know our competitors, too.m.
Find cluster of their top pages by using the filters. Visit their top pages.
31. We need to know our competitors, too.n.
Ask yourself – what is this page about? What are they doing on this page to rank
for so many keywords (links, media, relevancy, authority, etc).
32. We need to know our competitors, too.o.
Click around the site…
• What does it look like?
• Is it responsive?
• How do they communicate?
• How many products do they
have?
• What do they charge?
Shipping?
• Are they blogging?
33. We need to know our competitors, too.p.
Check their link profile – where are they coming from?
34. We need to know our competitors, too.q.
Click through on their social profiles…if they’re not leaders, search for your keywords to
find the best accounts.
35. What we found from our competitors.r.
• Found range of pricing for the SAME product
on multiple sites (from 4.99 – 12.99).
• This told me brand would be HUGE
(same product).
• Didn’t want to price myself out of the
market until I had built a “premium” brand
(content).
• Also wanted to get sales data.
36. What we found from our competitors.s.
Review schema was everywhere.
37. What we found from our competitors.t.
The importance of category pages:
- Content
- Plural intent keywords
38. What we found from our competitors.u.
Found HUGE pain point was shoelace sizing.
39. What we found from our competitors.v.
Google did all the KW research (“on feet” keywords 50%, image search new
keywords, HUGE search volume for sneakers by name).
40. What we found from our competitors.x.
Google did all the KW research (long tails in the colors, sizes and “names”).
41. What we found from our competitors.y.
Found out a lot about links:
• Forums were legit, active and spam free.
• Big media sites actively link out to small blogs,
simply for photographs of people’s sneakers.
• A lot of low quality, spammy syndication sites.
Mostly coming from Chinese sites selling knock off
sneakers.
• Top competitors DON’T rank because of awesome
links.
42. What we found from our competitors.z.
Facebook and Instagram were the channels we HAD to be on, Twitter would be
nice but a lot of effort.
43. What we found from our competitors.z.
Sites rank for GOOD keywords with thin content.
High purchase intent keyword,
pages ranking with 25 – 50
words.
44. Let’s recap.z.
• Going to focus on the sneaker side of the
market – position laces as both replacements
and upgrades.
• Mid market pricing until the brand strengthens.
• Competing against low authority sites in a
niche with a TON of search volume – SEO and
content will be key.
• NEED to have a presence on at least
Facebook and Instagram.
47. Design is so, so, SO clutch.a.
• Nobody puts credit card
information into a P.O.S. site.
• I found a CUSTOM designer for
about $75 per page (Upwork)
• All the competitors have a nice
site, we need one too.
48. Key to getting a website designed “custom”…b.
Give them plenty of examples of sites
you like, sites you don’t.
You need to have them build page
templates, not the entire site. This
keeps costs WAY down.
Be clear to them what you’re looking
for, do mockups.
49. What was on our list?c.
Needed a quick, fast 1 page checkout
cart design.
Needed a home page, product page,
resource page, blog and blog post page
(rest came later).
Wanted something light with simple
colors.
Needed to look great on mobile.
50. Checkout as quick as possible.d.
Our consumer is a millennial / gen-Xer – getting them to do anything is a
hassle. They want things to be quick as possible, especially pay.
51. Built the site around pain points.e.
You can’t go
anywhere without
seeing sizing info.
52. Make sure the site is BUILT optimally for SEO.f.
Importance of
category pages –
need both review
markups and place
for unique text.
53. Make sure the site is BUILT optimally for SEO.g.
Yoast SEO Plugin
makes it easy to
edit the SEO data
on these pages.
54. Anatomy of a perfectly SEO’d eCommerce page.h.
Breadcrumbs.
55. Anatomy of a perfectly SEO’d eCommerce page.i.
Keywords in title and URL.
56. Anatomy of a perfectly SEO’d eCommerce page.i.
Review stars marked up with Schema.
57. Anatomy of a perfectly SEO’d eCommerce page.i.
Multiple high res images for people to view.
58. Getting clean product photos.j.
Product photos are INCREDIBLY important
Can get expensive to pay to get them
done
Instead, take them on your camera (or
iPhone) with strong natural lighting
Find a photo editing gig on Fiverr and
have them touch it up and drop the
background.
59. Anatomy of a perfectly SEO’d eCommerce page.i.
Raw image file
titled with
keywords, alt tags
and description to
rank higher in
image search.
60. Anatomy of a perfectly SEO’d eCommerce page.i.
Short, bulleted description of product (using keywords), benefits and selling
points.
61. Anatomy of a perfectly SEO’d eCommerce page.i.
Area for detailed description to add more text and KWs to page naturally. We
added some sneakers the laces fit with for semantic search long tails (i.e.
sneakercolor + laces).
63. Why content is REALLY important…a.
It takes time to rank for ‘money’ keywords, especially with a brand new
domain. When done right, content ranks QUICK, even on low authority websites
It’s scalable – you can only create so many product pages and rank those for
so many keywords. Content lets you stack on top of that at scale.
The path to purchase has a lot of touchpoints, you don’t just click a link and buy
stuff. It lets you build a funnel and push people down it, at SCALE.
Content generates links more naturally – you can be more aggressive with
link building when you have supporting content, it’s a sign of trust.
Content lets you join in the conversation on social – you can’t just post links
to buy your shit.
64. Start by finding topics to build around.b.
We want to find topics, not keywords, to build content around – it’s broader and
let’s us rank for more keywords.
65. Start by finding topics to build around.c.
Go back to the SEM Rush report looking at your competitor’s top pages.
66. Start by finding topics to build around.d.
Export it to Excel and filter by pages. Look at the groups of keywords, what story
are they telling (i.e. topic).
67. Start by finding topics to build around.e.
Take note of the ones that are non-product related, that still have intent or
relevancy to what you’re selling.
68. Start by finding topics to build around.f.
Do this over and over and build out a list of high volume topics in a Sheets
file to reference later.
69. What type of topics did we find?g.
• A lot of search volume around the “release dates” of brand sneakers (Nike,
Jordan, etc).
• Good volume about specific sneaker type lacing sizes (i.e. Jordan 1
shoelace sizing).
• Good volume about shoelace recommendations for specific sneakers (i.e.
lace swap, lace upgrades, etc).
• Insane volume around specific sneaker types and imagery (i.e. Jordan 1
Retro Red, Jordan 1 Retro Red on feet)
70. How do we attack these? With a funnel!h.
Desire
Action
Interest
Awareness
Attention
72. Awareness
Release Dates / Calendar
Short, high level content that satisfied
the direct searcher query.
Allows to build “domain level
relevancy” and helps establish a
trusted source of sneaker info.
73. Very long, detailed image heavy posts
that “roundup” a highly searched
sneaker.
These posts rank REALLY well when
done right – I also call these “one
upping” keywords.
Interest
HUGE Roundups of Sneaker Colorways
74. Detailed, insightful but not overly long.
These keywords have high intent,
quality on these is HUGE (we can
convert them)
This is the best way I know to rank for
“money” keywords quickly.
Desire
Sneaker Specific Lacing Pages
Lace swap ideas
75.
76. Attention
Facebook – Instagram - YouTube
As mentioned, social was needed but
it’s incredibly time consuming.
The content created on the site is
perfect to just push to Facebook and
Twitter as is.
But this doesn’t drive growth – more
on that later.
78. I knew I didn’t need a TON of links, just some good ones.a.
Started with guest posting, got
about 12 live before I lost interest
(NOT using agency resources to
work on this…yet)
Got a nice DA 42 link here…
79. I knew I didn’t need a TON of links, just some good ones.b.
They’re super easy to find and you
have have someone from Upwork
write an article for $20.
80. Product review outreach can be done in 10 minutes.c.
Fired up Pitchbox for a product review
outreach campaign.
Give it some KWs and it finds
bloggers accepting product reviews.
You write an email pitch and PB
fires it off to all (hundreds).
81. They have a high success rate.d.
You send them free product
(or pay for it), they write a
blog post about your store
and link to it.
82. “PR” is easily hacked when you know what to do.e.
Ran an “infographic” PR
campaign and got
placed in some of the
sneaker industries top
sites (DA 70+).
83. It’s about giving them something interesting.f.
Reporters are always looking for interesting headlines or value to
share with their readers. You can create that value with an interesting
infographic.
84. We build infographics ALL the time for clients…g.
• We find data points and make them visual
(best cities to get a job in 2016)
• We find listicles from Ahrefs Content
Explorer and make them into visual
diagrams
• For LO, we just did the shoelacing size for
all of the Jordan Sneakers (which we built
as a resource on the site, remember?)
• Find a designer on Upwork with skillz and
have them build it.
85. I knew I didn’t need a TON of links, just some good ones.h.
Once it’s done, just Buzzstream influencer search to find reporters the
niche, use Pitchbox to automate outreach.
86. The pitch is simple, and it works.i.
We got placed in 4 DA
70+ sites and 14 DA 20
– 40 blogs.
Total spent: $80
87. I knew I didn’t need a TON of links, just some good ones.j.
Got an account in forums…more on that later though.
90. If find yourself doing the same thing twice…a.
STOP. There’s a better way to do it.
Repeatable efforts should be turned into
a step by step process and handed over
to outsourced labor.
As the business owner, your time is best
spent focusing on growth. Writing
dozens of content articles, posting social
updates and building web pages is never
a good use of your time.
91. Laces Out is completely automated, I do next to nothing.b.
By building a private YT Channel with
training videos for my VA, teaching him:
• Social media management
• Researching and building content
• Product page creation and
optimization
• Customer service
Let’s take a deeper look at these.
92. Automating Facebook and Instagram growth.c.
1. Go to the top sneaker news sites
and grabbing the top headlines
about “sneaker releases”.
93. Automating Facebook and Instagram growth.c.
2. Save images to your desktop, then
upload them directly to the LO
Facebook Page, creating a video
slideshow from the images.
Schedule the posts to go live on the
FB page every 3 hours.
Copy the headline from the site and
use it as the title of the post.
94. Automating Facebook and Instagram growth.c.
3. Download the video created by
Facebook, upload it to Schedugram to
push to the LO Instagram account.
Schedule the posts to go live twice a
day.
95. How to outsource effectively.c.
4. Go to the Laces Out blog and create a new blog
post.
Title it “Sneaker Name” Release Date, Pricing Info
& Where to Buy.
Embed the Facebook video into the blog post.
Paste the link of where you found the headline into
the body of the text for the writer.
Open the Photoshop template and replace with
image of new sneaker – upload to WP as blog
image.
96. Everything in LO runs on a process and managed by a VA.d.
$2/hour x 3/hours a day = $6/day, or
$180/month.
This is the McDonald’s model – it
requires jobs to be boiled down to the
simplest form. You can still deliver high
quality work with low cost inputs.
I do this with everything in Laces Out –
I do it with WEBRIS too.
98. a.
The plan is to keep growing it and eventually
move into selling more than just laces.
The future is wide open.
The ultimate goal is to become the highest
trafficked website in the sneaker niche and
build relationships as a go-to media outlet.
Until then, we’ll keep doing what we’re doing.
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