Good morning,
We had a call with a financial planner this morning. The kids are off to school. The knee exercises are done (ski season is coming). The dog has been walked - twice. And now? Now I have on my schedule to send this email. But, there is a problem. I've only just started to write it, just now.
I’ve been drafting these ahead of time by as much as 2 weeks. Instead, this week I’ve used writing time for putzing on other things. I also did some drafting on the Linkedin series I said I’d hit send on in the last post. I’ve also been working on a content series for email I’m thinking I’ll title Knife Skills. I figure, why not share the knowledge? Standby there.
So, here I am. Hot tea is in the dark green mug. And I have no draft to review for today. Just these words as I type them.
The bits for today. #1 That Linkedin series, #2 data from initial marketing tests and a bit about an internship idea.
Bit #1
Linkedin series. I have a four part series drafted that I’ll be publishing on Linkedin. Apparently there is under priced attention there. The post I made of four photos was seen by over 2k people in under three days a few weeks back.
A series of nudges have been in play overcome my hesitation and preparation to announce Vivront.com on Linkedin. First it was shipping. Do I have that figured out? Then it was sharpening volume. Can a manage volume? What if the service I was using stops wanting to sharpen the knives? Then it was the dot com. Is it good enough? It’s time to post. Even if it’s smart to polish things before you introduce something for the first time (you only get one first intro), it’s time to publish.
The unlock came when I read Nate Kadlac’s piece over the weekend about turn signals and intent. I had been trying to write all the things all at once. Why this? Why not that? Different than my brand, etc. Rather, as he suggests, it occurs to me that I can break this into parts… and ship multiple parts. A ha. Unlock. I’ll just start with signaling a turn coming. Thanks Nate.
Bit #2
Data snips from marketing. Lots, much, many things can and should be said about The FB and how humans are using it and societies are being impacted. Let’s just focus on the ad side from a marketer’s perspective. It’s amazing what kind of traffic can be generated for the dollars it takes to generate it. I have a long way to go but I’m learning. The next step is getting people to sign up on the email forms and buy things.
Some data points:
Boosting posts in FB and Insta can bring impressions and engagements for what seems like small dollars. But for what? Likes on photos? That strategy/tool seems like a waste at this stage - when building lists. It might play a bigger role later when there is a list to boost? 55 likes on this cost $5.85. Just because you can do it does not mean you should do it.
The best FB campaign I’ve tested so far has clicks for 36 cents and targets those interested in farmer’s markets in the Minneapolis Area. 69 clicks over 5 days. No sales. One sign up on the email modal for Free Shipping and $10 off at Vivront.com
Many other campaigns are 70 cents plus per click.
I’m most interested in the difference between FB audience and Insta right now. FB tilts hard 55+ and 68%+ female users click on Vivront.com ads on FB.
Insta tilts younger but stays majority women
My hypothesis that sharpening shops are not built, branded or designed for the customer who is searching for and using them (women with kitchen knives) is supported with this data. The same holds for google searches for kitchen knife sharpening terms, near as I can tell.
I’ve dusted off my video capture and editing capacity and the last few weeks and cut some video. Thanks Premier in two version. Video ads also do better on clicks and cost.
Page likes are worth a $1 or so right now. Or worthless? I think the page needs to be seeded with more followers so I’m buying them. If you’d like to help with the algorithm fight with a like https://www.facebook.com/vivront is the page.
The catalog sales integration with Shopify to FB is not worth much of anything so far. 388 impressions in the last three days for a $8.26 spend and zero sales.
Insta is slowly growing audience. 33 follows now. That’s up from 0 a month ago. It’s best when commenting and liking other user posts - btw. Algo help can be provided here - https://www.instagram.com/vivront_/ :)
During the outage last week I jumped to Google and Tiktok research. It was remarkable how many times I tried to load a page only to get the blank page during those hours last Monday.
The smart campaign does better than my custom campaigns in Google.
The use of negative keywords is going to need to be spot on from the early testing I’ve run. I let some wasted dollars teach me that.
A month of traffic has seen 870 unique page views. 111 unique views of the sharpening product on its page.
Google does not seem to like knife merchant accounts and I’m missing a Tiktok
Shopify suggests a need for 1408 more sessions needed to get to 10 orders.
Non digital means are what drive this business right now. Only 39 days remain to get your knives sharpened before Thanksgiving.
Bit #3
Idea. Kanye took and internship at the Gap (per the rumors) back in the day. He was learning fashion before Yeezy. I’m researching an internship idea at a digital media agency. It’s not the same scale but a similar idea. I’m going to become a practitioner of digital media and that’s going to need practice and coaching.
The thinking goes like this. Digital media is a transferable skill set to nearly any endevor, SaaS business or company/org that I’m or will be advising. It needs practice and goes better with context and coaching. Many many topics and businesses can be bettered by doing digital media well. I’m running media for Vivront.com and learning. But, I’d like to accelerate the growth by making fewer mistakes, setting campaigns up FTW right from the start and making impact faster.
So, who comes to mind? Who do you know that might take on a mid career dude as an intern? I’d like to learn from the ground up with my hands in the tools.
I’m going to be asking the same question of the Today in Digital Marketing Slack. I’ve run across an digital media agency running big budgets and a large team who has built a community resource + a Slack that their team helps oversee and assist with that’s $897 a quarter for founders to join. I hesitated. I have half a mind to approach one of the groups I know in town and see if making one of these founder group is interesting to them. Digital media is going to become a key tool for every org in the next 10 years if it’s not already today.
Sum
Ok, The tea is now gone from the dark green mug. I’m off to hit send on my Linkedin post one of four. You know more about the advertising learning on Vivront. I’m on the lookout for a mid career internship of sorts and today is Tuesday. Happy Tuesday.
Change
Snow is on the way. Go get your skis. Seriously. We got ours yesterday. Some places have this season’s items on sale now. Supply chain issues are only going to continue to impact our businesses and buying. So, buy now… buy early. New skis for me in the first time in over a decade. So stoked. Bring on the snow! Bring. It. On.
I listened episode 410 of the EcomCrew Pod this week regarding supply chain. Shipping container costs are up some 3 x from early 2020 according to them. Woah. Shipping into Amazon from China is also taking 3-6 weeks longer in total now vs 18 months ago.
I’ve been reminded this week of the wild flavors that can come from liquid if in the form of single malt, single barrel, cask strength scotch. It’s just nuts.
On Your Way
I’ve snagged a few pictures of the trees and sun this week but I’ve not made it to a sunrise or sunset. Somehow, I think I can feel a difference. I’m going to schedule getting to one. You?