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You’re in for a treat in this week’s episode of the Brand Builder Show where we’re joined by product development pro, Oren Schauble.
Oren has a distinguished resume having worked with a wide range of successful brands and agencies in the eCommerce space.
He uses his wealth of experience to create engaging and informative content around product development and organic marketing.
In this episode of the podcast, we talked about:
- How to ensure the highest possible quality in your products
- Where to find the absolute best manufacturers
- What are the biggest product opportunities this year
- How every brand should be using short-form video for effective marketing
- An organic TikTok playbook
- And heaps more…
An episode not to miss!
Episode Links
Talking Points
0:00 Introduction to Guest: Oren Schauble
0:43 Oren’s Background
2:41 Get To Know More About Oren’s Favorite Five
6:49 Fundamentals of Product Development
9:35 How To Find Good Manufacturers
12:56 Sourcing Clothing through Mixed Supply Chain
14:15 Ensuring Product Quality
15:02 How To Be Clear On Product Quality Expectations
15:52 How To Make Your Products Stand Out
17:07 Marketing Your Product on Multiple Platforms
18:12 Getting Started on TikTok
20:48 Repurposing Video Content on Different Platforms
26:17 Biggest Product Opportunities in 2023
28:57 Find Out More About Oren
Ben Donovan 00:00
Welcome to another episode of The Brand Builder Show. Today we’re going to be talking all things product development. It’s going to be exciting episode. We’ve got a great guest with us today. Oren show Oren, welcome to the show today.
Oren Schauble 00:12
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it, Ben.
Ben Donovan 00:14
No, it’s gonna be good. A man whose face I’ve seen so much on green screen TikToks on my Twitter feed lately. You’re you’re pumping out that content man. Are you enjoying it at the moment?
Oren Schauble 00:26
We are? Yeah. And I think it’s almost been helpful to do hive high velocity to make a lot of them. I think I try to make three or four a day. It’s actually I find it easier than trying to make one.
Ben Donovan 00:35
So yeah,
Oren Schauble 00:36
why you see so much.
Ben Donovan 00:38
Nice, good, man. Nice, great content, you know, I’m loving it. So we’ll dive into all of that. But give us a little bit of a background, who are you what you’re doing? And then we’ll dive into some questions.
Oren Schauble 00:47
Yeah, no problem. So I’ll try to keep it short. But basically, I started my career as a designer, agency side in New York. And I worked with a lot of companies in food and beverage and hospitality and liquor companies, companies like Red Bull agency side became a creative director, got more into marketing on the technology side became a VP of Marketing and a VP of Sales really in consumer electronics. And so helped build out the camera drone channel kind of worldwide, as those were becoming prominent and sold into places like Best Buy and Fries and international things like that. Harvey Norman and Australia for Anakin, France, you know, places of that nature. And then after that, I started an agency with a few friends of mine that does high tech product development called called going partners, where it’s still about today, we’ve got 45 contract engineers that that work at our firm, we have service clients that help develop really complex things that are similar to the space we were in, in drones. And then, over the last few years, I’ve been less involved there while that team runs it, and I did a kind of roll up in, in consumer packaged goods in the cannabis space. And we took a company public last July. And then now and this last year have been truly been focused on you know, making product development content, helping different entrepreneurs make their own products. I built this website called product world where I teach people all the kind of nuance of product development and have a newsletter called product people, it’s really popular about that same thing, and just kind of bounced back and forth between making educational content, you know, working with the agency and then consulting on product of
Ben Donovan 02:16
Yeah, man, it’s quite the resume.
Oren Schauble 02:18
Thank you. It’s been it’s been a long, decade or two.
Ben Donovan 02:21
Yeah, and you only you only look about 23. So I’m not sure how you fit it all in health and wellness. You know. That’s good, man. We’ll dive into a bunch of that easy. It’s a great newsletter, product people I’m on it. I kind of read it every every week, I think you send out wherever it comes. I read it. So definitely what we’ll get people on that at the end of the episode. But just to jump in when we’re doing a new slot in the podcast, we call it favorite five. Over the year, we’re going to ask all of the guests their favorite five on these subjects. So hopefully, you can rattle these off. But yeah, we’re gonna go for the first one is your favorite e-commerce brand.
Oren Schauble 02:57
You know, I really like there’s two I really like grasa get grace with the olive oil brand. And then the second one was like I actually had this bookmarked for this exact reason. But there was one who I just found the other day who just had an absolutely amazing set of landing pages. And this one alright, it is called bite toothpaste bits.
Ben Donovan 03:20
Oh, yeah, I’ve seen the pages. They are a piece of art.
Oren Schauble 03:25
incredibly well done. And I know there’s a lot of people out there who believe okay, you don’t need to have the most immaculately designed things. I totally agree to launch but if you’re in some competitive new space, and you can do some really incredible landing pages like the way theirs looks, then I think it really helps you. Yes, it looks incredible. The product was good as well. Yeah, interesting.
Ben Donovan 03:41
Yeah. Good. Okay, next up second on the list, your favorite software or tool that helps you run your business or life.
Oren Schauble 03:51
You know, I use a lot of Asana it’s kind of built into all the workflows I have with my various teams just for project management, which I definitely love and also bet I know kind of is on the E-commerce side. We’ve just made an awful lot of money and time with with Klaviyo and then my newest favorite tool I know I’m answering a bunch of kind of here is definitely Triple Whale which I’m using on a all the accounts we spend you know 50k Plus on on advertising. Triple Whales that are really helpful to kind of get exposure to our exactly what our returns are and so it’d be hard to live without those those three tools. Yeah nice yeah love the guys at Triple Whale that did something pretty incredible there. Speaking of marketing, organic marketing channel,
04:33
TikTok all day. We are in such a blessed time where we can just make creative short form video and have it pushed on the timeline to millions of people. It is a absolutely incredible tool and I think other people who have seen complain about it or say they’re better off on Instagram just haven’t haven’t put enough time in. Those are all great channels too but it organic wise, the the reach and sales pull through on that is incredible.
Ben Donovan 04:55
Yeah. Okay, how about paid marketing?
Oren Schauble 04:57
You know, the majority of paid marketing You know we’re doing is still kind of on meta platforms. But honestly, we’ve been shifting as much budgets away from that as possible and to spending that money on organic. Really, I’m trying to shift as many brands as possible into organic is top of funnel and paid is just purely retargeting and we do that across as many platforms we can retarget on as possible.
Ben Donovan 05:17
Yeah. Is that because of the issues with pixels, etc, or just the
Oren Schauble 05:22
no just power of organic? Yeah, just like the fact that you can make good content and put it on TikTok, reels, shorts, Facebook reels, even LinkedIn and Twitter. As you see, we talked about the start of every post all my tech talks on Twitter and too great. And so the fact you can make one piece of content pushed all those places get a ton of organic reach. And then the more content you do, it keeps pushing it out. You’re not gated from it the way we were on a meta platforms the last few years is like, wow, that opportunity is there. Let’s use that as much as possible versus paying money.
Ben Donovan 05:51
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I’d love to dive into TikTok a bit more through the episode. So we’ll jump on then to the final one, your favorite business book?
Oren Schauble 06:00
Great. So I guess I’ll give two answers. I think my first one’s probably a relatively typical answer, which is Alex for moseys 100 million dollar offers, which has just really changed how I think about a lot of things. But then the other one I really like, and this is more suited towards my backgrounds, there’s a book called Capslock, which is about the history of graphic design in commerce, and about how like the design of everything from individual bills, to credit cards, etc, like impacts the way we think about money in business. And I found that book, fascinating from a psychological perspective, especially as we’re in such design driven lives and building and ecommerce and product development right now.
Ben Donovan 06:36
Yeah, no, I’ve never heard of that. But it does sound fascinating, I’m gonna have to check it out. Because somebody will appreciate you answering those guesses to know you a bit more and helps our audience explore some new things. Your expertise is obviously I want to get onto TikTok, but also product development, talk about those two things, dig into those as much as we can, and then pull some stuff out that will really help our listeners, product development is obviously a big topic, and we don’t have time to go into everything about it. But for someone that’s starting a brand in 2023, you know, I personally believe that product is more important than ever, you need to produce really, really good products to stand out in a growingly competitive space. Some of that’s just starting out right now, what are some of the fundamentals that you’re going to tell them? You have to get this right with product? I know, it’s a big question. But if you could kind of talk us through some of the fundamentals that you have is
Oren Schauble 07:26
an exercise, I really encourage for everyone who wants to do a product in a category. So you want to make a headphone, for instance, or I think that’s a good example to start with. Because it’s kind of relatively complex, but not too complex, is encourage people to do kind of what I call an end to end walkthrough, where you literally go to the pick two or three brands, go to their websites, search for the product online, figure out how you get there, actually walk through the E-commerce experience, order order from them order from Amazon, whatever it is, and then just notate that entire process of how you found them. Did the value proposition speak to you? What did they say was in the box? What were the things they called out? And then see what happens? When did you get an abandoned cart email that you get a thank you follow up when someone ordered it when you actually received the package? How fast did it come? What was it packaged in? What was the internal packaging? Like? What was the unboxing experience? Like what was the usage experience like, and just kind of really notate out every one of those things around two or three products in your niche. And what you’re going to end up with is this really thorough list of things you never thought of, of like, oh, man, I have to coil the headphone cord around an object inside the box, or it doesn’t wrap right, you know, or they actually sent me a branded shipping box, whereas this other company didn’t. And then you’re gonna end up with this master list that I used to make briefs, right, you then use to say, here’s my brief for my packaging, here’s my brief for the product I want to make and be able to base it on that I feel like it’s a really strong starting point. And in that process, you might go oh, man, this isn’t the product for me, or Oh, wow, here’s a huge opportunity that none of these brands are doing. And I think that’s why exercises like that are so important.
Ben Donovan 08:56
Yeah, it’s interesting, because you’re obviously thinking about products far broader than most people would. You’re thinking about it beyond just the foam ear pads on your ears, you’re you’re thinking about the whole experience when it comes to product.
Oren Schauble 09:07
Yeah, ‘cuz some people make a great product. And I think you obviously start to focus on that. But if it’s not explained, well, or the person doesn’t have that basic engagement of like, okay, well what happens when I open the box and get to use it, I feel like you miss a lot. And I now weighed almost 50/50 the experience around the product, basically what it’s like to start using it, the adoption of it, and then the actual continued use of it and how easy that is as much as the actual function of it itself. Just because people are so finicky about if it’s not easy for them, they just move on.
Ben Donovan 09:35
You speak a lot about creating high quality products. You also speak a lot about manufacturers, you I’ve seen you give out names of factories for people to source products, you obviously have done a lot of sourcing. How do you find good manufacturers?
Oren Schauble 09:47
Yeah. And so it’s interesting, because everyone always wants a manufacturer for this or that it’s the most common question I get. Can you help me find a manufacturer for X and I think that’s almost like a false skate. It’s so easy to find manufacturers now. People are just afraid to pull it trigger on a sample. And so a lot of why I give out so many factory links is because I just want people to see how easy it is and the fact you just kind of go and try. So how I find people is as I have a list of different platforms I work with. So one is Piatra Studio, it’s about 40 bucks a month. And it’s kind of like a curated list of factories that they’ve vetted across a ton of industries. And then there’s Alibaba, which most people know, which is just a huge sea of kind of unvetted factories for anything you want. Then there’s Thomasnet, which is a kind of a US factory aggregator, and then Euro pages, which is a very mediocre UX, but has a lot of European factories. But basically, what I do is I go through those, you know, you look at their examples, you look at their reviews, you send so I send messages to probably three to four factories for anything that I want to sample and then also see what’s their response time, what’s their English like, and then just order samples, a lot of what I do in every factory that I post, I order something from I’m constantly ordering samples, just because I’m vetting a wide swath of different companies. And it’s really, you know, generally pretty cheap to do, no matter what you’re ordering, whether it’s 20 bucks or 100 bucks, you can get an example product from them, you can see what communication is like. And then you can begin look at what the options are to build your own custom thing. But we have so many options out there to find those places, no matter where you are, and what you’re looking for that it really just comes down to searching for it. Finding people that communicate well, and then ordering from them.
Ben Donovan 11:23
When you have a product idea, you want to source say your headphones or some other category, do you specifically go to certain location? China Europe based on the product type? Or is it just just something you’ve come to think this might be a good product for this location? Or do you try and source
Oren Schauble 11:40
100% So anything electronics wise, that isn’t doesn’t have like, isn’t made for defense or anything like that I definitely go to China for and then where it gets nuanced is things like consumer packaged goods, or like foods or supplements or things like that a lot of that really anything needs to get kind of CO packed or has freshness tend to work really specifically within the US if possible. But then you really need to vet if they’re bringing in things from overseas or if they’re making it in the US. And then anything that’s kind of a lot of steel and metal and things like that is also something we still look to the US for and then in fashion, just kind of a wide swath where when you when you end up doing like leather or higher quality materials, you’re gonna be looking at kind of Pakistan, you might be looking at Portugal, you know, Italy, to a lesser extent, and Turkey. But then there’s still plenty that stuff that’s made in China and made really well. But it’s just kind of a matter of the quality you want what you want your label to read what communication looks like, there’s a lot of cultural nuance. What I like most about China, especially with Alibaba is everyone’s super responsive. There’s a lot of good communication back and forth. There’s a messaging platform that everyone knows how to use. And when you get to some of these other countries, communication and and even cultural nuance around what they tell you versus what reality is a little bit different. I think that’s the hardest learning curve for people.
Ben Donovan 12:56
If you were to, you know, if you were to want to source say like a clothing company, you’re saying about how China is on the list, a big one on the list. Are you finding a change in consumer sentiment that people don’t like to see made in China on clothing labels?
Oren Schauble 13:11
Yeah, I think there’s a regard that a luxury brand should have something else on there, whether it’s made in Portugal’s have been a nice in between for between Italy, but it’s the quality is there 100% In China, and what a lot of people don’t realize I think is just is thinking right, where if you request something from China, they’re so used to people coming to them for cheap goods, a lot of these factories and like coming to them because of price that they offer their cheapest things first, whereas a lot of them have the capability to do significantly higher quality, but you have to really ask for that and spell that out. And let them know that you are focused on quality throughout this process, to have them understand what you’re going for. But yeah, but consumer sentiments are all over the place. But what we do a lot of is kind of mixed supply chain as well, where we will end up with fabric from one place that is put together in China that sent his a base garment to the US and then finished with wass houses or embroidery or screens, things like that in the US to be able to kind of take advantage of mass production and getting 10,000th of a thing, but then being able to customize it or move around seasonality and trends by adapting that domestically. So there’s a lot of different strategies to approach it.
Ben Donovan 14:14
Are you doing anything unique to ensure top quality? You obviously inspections? Manufacturer?
Oren Schauble 14:22
Yeah, there’s a service like called QIMA Q-I-M-A, we use lot for factory inspections, I love about them, I think it’s like $400, roughly, but they’ll inspect a factory anywhere in the world with a checklist that you provide them. And so that’s been really helpful too, because you’ll you’ll get a sample, but obviously sometimes quality can change when they’re entering into high production. And so having a service like that, that can go and actually check that before it ships to you is a super useful kind of use of funds. So I definitely do things like that. But also it’s just establishing that rapport and really communicating what it is you want and what your expectations are. I feel like most people who have issues just haven’t clearly communicated their expectations. And if they have clearly communicated them and they have a problem. It’s way easier to resolve it in your favor?
Ben Donovan 15:02
How you being clear? Is it messaging back and forth? Or do you create a real detail, PIO?
Oren Schauble 15:06
Yeah, which is a really detailed briefs, basically. And then really detailed messaging. And so I like to kind of do is, again, similar that exercise we did before it’s like, Okay, think through every step of how this thing is being produced. And you can even ask them, okay, what are the different steps of production, and then going through and being like, alright, we want to make sure our buttons are attached like this with an example. Or we want to make sure it’s placed in a box like this with an example. And it’s tedious, and it’s painstaking. But it’s, it’s completely worth it to make sure your things are done, right. And it’s a matter of like, also letting them know to communicate with you. And they have questions and be like, Hey, if you have a question with a quality, or if there’s any decisions need to make, please, I’d like to review all those. And I found that manufacturers have no problem getting on FaceTime or getting on a chat and walking through those things, you’d have to ask for it.
Ben Donovan 15:52
Okay, so once you’ve made a really good product, how do you market it in a way that shows how your product is better than the market.
Oren Schauble 16:01
So a lot of that comes down to the storytelling behind it. And so I really encourage brands now to kind of build in public and showcase a lot of the process, I was just talking about being like, Hey, we’re working to this product with our manufacturer. And here’s all the choices that we’ve made. And here’s kind of the detail of what we’re describing and sharing a bit about that process. So consumers can learn the work that goes into it. And they can get excited about the journey of going from sample to reality. And then even when you get it just really making content that describes those details that describes that experience, why you made those choices. And if you’ve gone through the exercise I described to start where you actually have said, Hey, I’m evaluating these products and these things, and I think I can make these better. You’ve also basically established your roadmap for making content about how your product is differentiated. And one thing I don’t see a lot of brands doing that they should is that not only does that content live on your social media, it should also live in every email you’re putting out about those products, it should live on the actual e-commerce pages, like the fact that people might have deep dive videos on their products that you can’t access from the page you’re going to buy it on is the kind of dots I think you can connect to help better tell your brand’s story.
Ben Donovan 17:06
And you think most brands should be doing this on TikTok first,
Oren Schauble 17:09
I think it depends on the brand and the category, I do think that there’s a unique opportunity on TikTok for reach for kind of top of funnel awareness. But I think that you know, every brand should be making short form video content, no matter what industry you’re in, whether it’s SAS, or physical products, or fashion or whatever that ends up being, and then distributing that across multiple platforms. And I think it depends on your community and your audience and where you’re going to have resonance. But it’s so easy to make one distribute to many now that I think it’s highly worth doing that. And, you know, while TikTok may generate the most top of funnel awareness, you may find that Facebook reels is the one that actually converts the highest for you.
Ben Donovan 17:44
Yeah, and if you were to predict the future of TikTok, you think he’s got a long future in the Western world?
Oren Schauble 17:50
I think it’s all social media that we’ve kind of seen definitely comes and goes, well, I’m trying to think about is, how long are we going to see an uncapped algorithm the way we have now, or any kind of you can succeed without having to pay a significant amount of money for it. And I think that that is either going to last for a long time and be part of their core brand, or we’re going to see that wrap up in the next 18 months or so.
Ben Donovan 18:11
And then, so for someone that’s just getting started on TikTok, or they want to document the process, what would be the keys you would say, for getting set up, just record yourself talking about the product? Give us an
Oren Schauble 18:23
I would say so my recommendation for this. And I’ve actually been think about this pretty in depth because I’m like, basically helping a lot of brands get on the platform, currently, especially larger brands, is that I will go through it and you’ll have to consume TikTok to understand it, you’re not gonna be able to jump into this without doing it. And also, if you understand TikTok well performs on there, you’re going to understand the other video networks as well, because they’re just basing themselves on what works on TikTok currently. And so I would just go through, follow brands that are in your space or in entrepreneurs that are in your space, and then bookmark the videos of theirs that do well, and basically use that as your content plan, I would try to get 50 concepts from people and brands of videos you think are smart, and then basically plan your content. And I would plan out a lot of videos, I will plan to make 100 videos now, Joe, because I think that’s what you really need to take to evaluate to actually get good at the platform and evaluate whether it’s gonna be successful for you or not. But they don’t take a ton of time, your first one might take a while your second one, your third one, by the time you’re on to number 10. You’re like, Oh, I’m doing these in 20 minutes. And so I think that it’s about getting that plan together of here’s all these ideas I want to try. I’ve seen other people work. And then I’ve seen work for these brands. And then when you launch going on just doing them again and again, and not being afraid to do three versions of the same video or five versions of the same video and find what’s successful and just keep going. I think anyone that gives up before they’ve done 100 videos is not understanding what the potential is of the platform.
Ben Donovan 19:41
You mentioned about doing the same video three, five times. Is that kind of a TikTok thing. Are there any other kind of TikTok inside strategies that are unique to the platform like that that you might be using? Yeah, well,
Oren Schauble 19:52
I think if you have a good idea that you really feel is a good idea just because it doesn’t go the first time I like looking at like minorly adjusting it Adjusting graphics suggesting the hook adjusting the length is I would stick with that idea until you really feel it just it’s just not working. So I think that’s something that’s specific to that platform. For sure. I think the other is one of the other things I found successful is that if you do start having videos go like if you say, oh my videos starting to get I got 100,000 views is I would set up to go live maybe a day or two later, like schedule your live, because what I found is there’s a feature where it basically promotes people to sign up for your live and to view your live if it’s upcoming if it’s scheduled, when you have on the videos that you have that are going and then when you actually go live if you have videos that are doing well on the algorithm, it seems like TikTok pumps those a lot while you’re live for a couple hours. So I think using live intelligently is a great way to you know basically boost your reach and also build some rapport with your customers beyond your video.
Ben Donovan 20:47
And for most brands, you are repurposing these from TikTok to Instagram Facebook YouTube. Yep, and the other person
Oren Schauble 20:54
Yes, so I think also we’ll be considering LinkedIn and Twitter on that as well. I think Twitter is a very underrated platform for conversion I saw something that Mr. Beast put out recently about how his highest converting click through channel to sales for festivals was Twitter because I just think it’s a it’s because people click links that’s a part of kind of what they do their especially on the profile etc and so I think there’s something interesting there. I will basically exert any platform that takes video I will be I will be putting it on and there might be some some light nuance and how you do captions, etc. Or how the velocity of your posts but if you’re not and I’m guilty of this too because I’m not like actively posting on some of these platforms and I should be like you’re you’re definitely like losing out if you’re not putting it everywhere.
Ben Donovan 21:35
How about YouTube shorts? You seen some good progress and percent Yeah,
Oren Schauble 21:38
and the only the only complicated part is that yeah, you have a three minute video cap on TikTok you have a 92nd video cap on Instagram rules you have a 62nd cap on YouTube shorts so if you really want to be repurposing well you need to make everything in like sub 60 seconds. And so YouTube shorts is a little more broad though one of the things I’ve noticed it’s worked well or not and again all these change every few months so it take it for what it is, is that more amateur content like the green screen continent do that’s not a pro camera works really well on on TikTok, but a lot but more polished content tends to work better on YouTube shorts, and to a lesser extent Instagram rules. And so there’s some amount of like, Alright, do I make content for each of these? Or do I fully repurpose, and each of them has some nuance, YouTube TikTok is very good at putting your content in front of your exact consumer or an exact demographic, whereas YouTube is much broader, so you kind of have to have some broad appeal to. So there’s some nuance to all the different networks.
Ben Donovan 22:27
And have you tested much paid or paid to TikTok ads.
Oren Schauble 22:31
And that really beyond retargeting, I have definitely found we have to like, you know, we can pretty now I can pretty steadily whip up like any day I feel inclined to we can get a 50k or 100k view video on TikTok. And obviously take some more to get to get a million just by taking a couple shots on goal. And so retargeting is really the only thing we’ve spent money on there. Although I’ve heard really good things about people who are doing top of funnel on TikTok ads, we just haven’t found we have to
Ben Donovan 22:56
these videos that get 50 100k views. What kind of business objectives to be achieved beyond that traffic? Are you seeing conversions from those ads?
Oren Schauble 23:04
so like a lot of what I’m so I guess there’s two scenarios, there’s content like I’m putting out where I’m really trying to focus on getting email subscribers. And so there’s a lot of people just either clicking through or following and the more content they do, the more likely they are to kind of go follow that call to action. And then on for branded videos on that. There’s a lot of interesting click through to the site, you’ll kind of see based on what you have. But I think the biggest thing that we’ve noticed is you’re consistently doing that as a brand and you actually have some big presence like you’re in retail or you have some presence regionally where you are, you’ll begin to see the impact that it has on your sales and kind of in the zeitgeist because you know, people may not click through to buy something on e-commerce there but is a huge retail driver. Yeah, and
Ben Donovan 23:44
Now it’s really interesting when the you’re talking about the moving the budget from page to organic, what are you spending money on for stuff like TikTok short form video,
Oren Schauble 23:55
I think a lot of it is more creators to basically tell the story in a different way. One of the things I’ve noticed about TikTok is that it does show people the kind of people that they like, like you will see if someone they like wants to watch older, more respectable people that are well presented TikTok will show them more of that if they want to, you know, if they’re if they’re kids, and they want to see other kids, they’ll show them more of that. And I think that having a diverse selection of creators, sometimes even with different social media accounts or making content for the brand is definitely a place where we’re using funds. I also just the amount of like editing and repurposing and experimentation of different types of content. Yeah, that’s really where it is. Because it is it’s a grind in and like the idea of how many videos you can make to take advantage, like if you’re making, you know, two videos or four videos a day across multiple accounts and repurposing them that becomes a pretty complex machine pretty quick.
Ben Donovan 24:44
So, you mentioned before about getting started, the best plan would be to map out 100 video ideas and just get started with them. You know, is it one of those progress over perfection type things?
Oren Schauble 24:55
100% And I think that like you can’t learn it until you’re doing it. And you also if you do 20 You haven’t gotten anywhere, and you haven’t done enough. And I think people really start to find their groove afterwards. And it also encouraged like, if you have an account and you just been getting nowhere, you know, start start again, get rid of that account, pop, pop a new one up, do the follow that same idea and process and hit it. And because there I do think there is some amount of like the algorithm gets used to what a how an account performs, it’s been up there for a year and haven’t really done much. And I do think that there’s something to be said for starting fresh and going hard at it.
Ben Donovan 25:27
And for the perfectionist brand owner that wants everything to look amazing. Good luck to get past that.
Oren Schauble 25:31
Yeah, that’s, that’s probably the biggest conversation I have is I’m like, that’s not what people want. And that’s also not what people expect from a brand. And you have to experiment with it. And I don’t think it’s not it’s, it’s impossible, I use the one of the ones I think does really well is ASRV, it’s like a Men’s Fitness brand. They’ve done really well highly polished content that works on all platforms. But that’s not gonna happen for everybody. And I would just let it go, because consumers are going to be telling your story online anyway. And you can’t control that. So you should be open to experimenting more.
Ben Donovan 25:57
Definitely, yeah, they got such product, good product quality. And this is why when I was asking you earlier about how do you, how do you show that product quality is because I think they do it up there with the best SRV you know, they just show the quality of the product in their marketing so well.
Oren Schauble 26:14
100%.
Ben Donovan 26:16
So just rounding up then in terms of opportunities, because you often will post about, you know, here’s a good opportunity, you could do this product, I always I love it, because you’re like, you know, just get this product going, here’s a manufacturer just do it. I love that attitude. What are some of the biggest opportunities in 2023? Product opportunities, market opportunities?
Oren Schauble 26:37
Yeah. And so I’ll kind of answer this in two ways. First, I’ll get kind of concrete and some things I think are have a lot of potential, I do think new sports is still a huge thing we’ve seen, everyone’s kind of gotten super hard after pickleball. We’ve seen tons of golf brands emerging. And so now those spaces are ultra competitive. But I look at any of these smaller niche sports, like building lifestyle brands, or building really compelling value propositions as to the quality of items specific to that use case for things like field hockey, lacrosse, women’s soccer, I think there’s a lot of like niche down in sports and make either again, like I don’t, I can’t think of a huge women’s soccer lifestyle brand, you know, or even a medium sized one. But yet it’s one of the most popular sports in America and the world. And and also is there anyone actually making really specific performance where the way like a district vision or a satisfy running has made for like distance running for the lacrosse niche or something of that nature. I think that if you start small in those niches, I think there’s a lot of opportunity there. Another one I think is interesting opportunity is interior design specifically for men, I feel like there’s been this awakening the last few years because of social media of like men’s fashion in general, and men dress a little better and a little more conscious, we will still walk into an apartment of like a guy who has this amount of money. It’ll be like a mattress on the floor and nothing on the walls. And I think that’s an exaggeration. But like, I think there’s an opening for that as well. But really, those are like very specific niches. I think that the the idea and why promote this idea of just starting is that like, I wouldn’t look at it as like, Hey, I’m doing a brand and it’s done, I will look at his eyes and individual, whoever you are, I am starting an entrepreneurial journey by putting a product out there or starting a brand. And I have that now forever. Even if it doesn’t do great. Now I can revisit it when I know more than three years because I have a website and some IP and some inventory. And I’ve had that experience. And I would look at it as like these are things that can evolve over time for your entire career. If you look at if you’re 25 or 30 or 35 now and you say oh, when I’m 60, how much more will I have learned. And if I invest a little bit of money here and there to continue improving this, and I’ve started or I get a better idea. And I’ve built an email list, you now have this foundation you have forever I think people kind of ignore that. And they’re afraid of failure when it’s a cool failure means you still have 2000 emails to go for your next thing.
Ben Donovan 28:45
These are super helpful thoughts. So yeah, it’s clear to me, you know, you’re so in the trenches with this stuff. It’s going to be really helpful for people that listen and so I appreciate you taking time out to come on, man. Where can people find out more about you?
Oren Schauble 28:57
Yeah, so I’m at Oren Meets World, O-R-E-N, on basically every social media platform and then product world that XYZ is the website and it’s where you can sign up for the email list I try to send every week it’s usually more like every other but they’re pretty in depth when they do factory links and ideas and concepts and examples and yeah, you know, DM me anytime.
Ben Donovan 29:16
Definitely yeah, they are definitely in depth and I highly recommend you guys. Go check it out, sign up or appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on. And thanks everyone for listening. And I will see you in the next episode next week. Take care.
Welcome to another episode of The Brand Builder Show. Today we’re going to be talking all things product development. It’s going to be exciting episode. We’ve got a great guest with us today. Oren show Oren, welcome to the show today.
Oren Schauble 00:12
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it, Ben.
Ben Donovan 00:14
No, it’s gonna be good. A man whose face I’ve seen so much on green screen TikToks on my Twitter feed lately. You’re you’re pumping out that content man. Are you enjoying it at the moment?
Oren Schauble 00:26
We are? Yeah. And I think it’s almost been helpful to do hive high velocity to make a lot of them. I think I try to make three or four a day. It’s actually I find it easier than trying to make one.
Ben Donovan 00:35
So yeah,
Oren Schauble 00:36
why you see so much.
Ben Donovan 00:38
Nice, good, man. Nice, great content, you know, I’m loving it. So we’ll dive into all of that. But give us a little bit of a background, who are you what you’re doing? And then we’ll dive into some questions.
Oren Schauble 00:47
Yeah, no problem. So I’ll try to keep it short. But basically, I started my career as a designer, agency side in New York. And I worked with a lot of companies in food and beverage and hospitality and liquor companies, companies like Red Bull agency side became a creative director, got more into marketing on the technology side became a VP of Marketing and a VP of Sales really in consumer electronics. And so helped build out the camera drone channel kind of worldwide, as those were becoming prominent and sold into places like Best Buy and Fries and international things like that. Harvey Norman and Australia for Anakin, France, you know, places of that nature. And then after that, I started an agency with a few friends of mine that does high tech product development called called going partners, where it’s still about today, we’ve got 45 contract engineers that that work at our firm, we have service clients that help develop really complex things that are similar to the space we were in, in drones. And then, over the last few years, I’ve been less involved there while that team runs it, and I did a kind of roll up in, in consumer packaged goods in the cannabis space. And we took a company public last July. And then now and this last year have been truly been focused on you know, making product development content, helping different entrepreneurs make their own products. I built this website called product world where I teach people all the kind of nuance of product development and have a newsletter called product people, it’s really popular about that same thing, and just kind of bounced back and forth between making educational content, you know, working with the agency and then consulting on product of
Ben Donovan 02:16
Yeah, man, it’s quite the resume.
Oren Schauble 02:18
Thank you. It’s been it’s been a long, decade or two.
Ben Donovan 02:21
Yeah, and you only you only look about 23. So I’m not sure how you fit it all in health and wellness. You know. That’s good, man. We’ll dive into a bunch of that easy. It’s a great newsletter, product people I’m on it. I kind of read it every every week, I think you send out wherever it comes. I read it. So definitely what we’ll get people on that at the end of the episode. But just to jump in when we’re doing a new slot in the podcast, we call it favorite five. Over the year, we’re going to ask all of the guests their favorite five on these subjects. So hopefully, you can rattle these off. But yeah, we’re gonna go for the first one is your favorite e-commerce brand.
Oren Schauble 02:57
You know, I really like there’s two I really like grasa get grace with the olive oil brand. And then the second one was like I actually had this bookmarked for this exact reason. But there was one who I just found the other day who just had an absolutely amazing set of landing pages. And this one alright, it is called bite toothpaste bits.
Ben Donovan 03:20
Oh, yeah, I’ve seen the pages. They are a piece of art.
Oren Schauble 03:25
incredibly well done. And I know there’s a lot of people out there who believe okay, you don’t need to have the most immaculately designed things. I totally agree to launch but if you’re in some competitive new space, and you can do some really incredible landing pages like the way theirs looks, then I think it really helps you. Yes, it looks incredible. The product was good as well. Yeah, interesting.
Ben Donovan 03:41
Yeah. Good. Okay, next up second on the list, your favorite software or tool that helps you run your business or life.
Oren Schauble 03:51
You know, I use a lot of Asana it’s kind of built into all the workflows I have with my various teams just for project management, which I definitely love and also bet I know kind of is on the E-commerce side. We’ve just made an awful lot of money and time with with Klaviyo and then my newest favorite tool I know I’m answering a bunch of kind of here is definitely Triple Whale which I’m using on a all the accounts we spend you know 50k Plus on on advertising. Triple Whales that are really helpful to kind of get exposure to our exactly what our returns are and so it’d be hard to live without those those three tools. Yeah nice yeah love the guys at Triple Whale that did something pretty incredible there. Speaking of marketing, organic marketing channel,
04:33
TikTok all day. We are in such a blessed time where we can just make creative short form video and have it pushed on the timeline to millions of people. It is a absolutely incredible tool and I think other people who have seen complain about it or say they’re better off on Instagram just haven’t haven’t put enough time in. Those are all great channels too but it organic wise, the the reach and sales pull through on that is incredible.
Ben Donovan 04:55
Yeah. Okay, how about paid marketing?
Oren Schauble 04:57
You know, the majority of paid marketing You know we’re doing is still kind of on meta platforms. But honestly, we’ve been shifting as much budgets away from that as possible and to spending that money on organic. Really, I’m trying to shift as many brands as possible into organic is top of funnel and paid is just purely retargeting and we do that across as many platforms we can retarget on as possible.
Ben Donovan 05:17
Yeah. Is that because of the issues with pixels, etc, or just the
Oren Schauble 05:22
no just power of organic? Yeah, just like the fact that you can make good content and put it on TikTok, reels, shorts, Facebook reels, even LinkedIn and Twitter. As you see, we talked about the start of every post all my tech talks on Twitter and too great. And so the fact you can make one piece of content pushed all those places get a ton of organic reach. And then the more content you do, it keeps pushing it out. You’re not gated from it the way we were on a meta platforms the last few years is like, wow, that opportunity is there. Let’s use that as much as possible versus paying money.
Ben Donovan 05:51
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I’d love to dive into TikTok a bit more through the episode. So we’ll jump on then to the final one, your favorite business book?
Oren Schauble 06:00
Great. So I guess I’ll give two answers. I think my first one’s probably a relatively typical answer, which is Alex for moseys 100 million dollar offers, which has just really changed how I think about a lot of things. But then the other one I really like, and this is more suited towards my backgrounds, there’s a book called Capslock, which is about the history of graphic design in commerce, and about how like the design of everything from individual bills, to credit cards, etc, like impacts the way we think about money in business. And I found that book, fascinating from a psychological perspective, especially as we’re in such design driven lives and building and ecommerce and product development right now.
Ben Donovan 06:36
Yeah, no, I’ve never heard of that. But it does sound fascinating, I’m gonna have to check it out. Because somebody will appreciate you answering those guesses to know you a bit more and helps our audience explore some new things. Your expertise is obviously I want to get onto TikTok, but also product development, talk about those two things, dig into those as much as we can, and then pull some stuff out that will really help our listeners, product development is obviously a big topic, and we don’t have time to go into everything about it. But for someone that’s starting a brand in 2023, you know, I personally believe that product is more important than ever, you need to produce really, really good products to stand out in a growingly competitive space. Some of that’s just starting out right now, what are some of the fundamentals that you’re going to tell them? You have to get this right with product? I know, it’s a big question. But if you could kind of talk us through some of the fundamentals that you have is
Oren Schauble 07:26
an exercise, I really encourage for everyone who wants to do a product in a category. So you want to make a headphone, for instance, or I think that’s a good example to start with. Because it’s kind of relatively complex, but not too complex, is encourage people to do kind of what I call an end to end walkthrough, where you literally go to the pick two or three brands, go to their websites, search for the product online, figure out how you get there, actually walk through the E-commerce experience, order order from them order from Amazon, whatever it is, and then just notate that entire process of how you found them. Did the value proposition speak to you? What did they say was in the box? What were the things they called out? And then see what happens? When did you get an abandoned cart email that you get a thank you follow up when someone ordered it when you actually received the package? How fast did it come? What was it packaged in? What was the internal packaging? Like? What was the unboxing experience? Like what was the usage experience like, and just kind of really notate out every one of those things around two or three products in your niche. And what you’re going to end up with is this really thorough list of things you never thought of, of like, oh, man, I have to coil the headphone cord around an object inside the box, or it doesn’t wrap right, you know, or they actually sent me a branded shipping box, whereas this other company didn’t. And then you’re gonna end up with this master list that I used to make briefs, right, you then use to say, here’s my brief for my packaging, here’s my brief for the product I want to make and be able to base it on that I feel like it’s a really strong starting point. And in that process, you might go oh, man, this isn’t the product for me, or Oh, wow, here’s a huge opportunity that none of these brands are doing. And I think that’s why exercises like that are so important.
Ben Donovan 08:56
Yeah, it’s interesting, because you’re obviously thinking about products far broader than most people would. You’re thinking about it beyond just the foam ear pads on your ears, you’re you’re thinking about the whole experience when it comes to product.
Oren Schauble 09:07
Yeah, ‘cuz some people make a great product. And I think you obviously start to focus on that. But if it’s not explained, well, or the person doesn’t have that basic engagement of like, okay, well what happens when I open the box and get to use it, I feel like you miss a lot. And I now weighed almost 50/50 the experience around the product, basically what it’s like to start using it, the adoption of it, and then the actual continued use of it and how easy that is as much as the actual function of it itself. Just because people are so finicky about if it’s not easy for them, they just move on.
Ben Donovan 09:35
You speak a lot about creating high quality products. You also speak a lot about manufacturers, you I’ve seen you give out names of factories for people to source products, you obviously have done a lot of sourcing. How do you find good manufacturers?
Oren Schauble 09:47
Yeah. And so it’s interesting, because everyone always wants a manufacturer for this or that it’s the most common question I get. Can you help me find a manufacturer for X and I think that’s almost like a false skate. It’s so easy to find manufacturers now. People are just afraid to pull it trigger on a sample. And so a lot of why I give out so many factory links is because I just want people to see how easy it is and the fact you just kind of go and try. So how I find people is as I have a list of different platforms I work with. So one is Piatra Studio, it’s about 40 bucks a month. And it’s kind of like a curated list of factories that they’ve vetted across a ton of industries. And then there’s Alibaba, which most people know, which is just a huge sea of kind of unvetted factories for anything you want. Then there’s Thomasnet, which is a kind of a US factory aggregator, and then Euro pages, which is a very mediocre UX, but has a lot of European factories. But basically, what I do is I go through those, you know, you look at their examples, you look at their reviews, you send so I send messages to probably three to four factories for anything that I want to sample and then also see what’s their response time, what’s their English like, and then just order samples, a lot of what I do in every factory that I post, I order something from I’m constantly ordering samples, just because I’m vetting a wide swath of different companies. And it’s really, you know, generally pretty cheap to do, no matter what you’re ordering, whether it’s 20 bucks or 100 bucks, you can get an example product from them, you can see what communication is like. And then you can begin look at what the options are to build your own custom thing. But we have so many options out there to find those places, no matter where you are, and what you’re looking for that it really just comes down to searching for it. Finding people that communicate well, and then ordering from them.
Ben Donovan 11:23
When you have a product idea, you want to source say your headphones or some other category, do you specifically go to certain location? China Europe based on the product type? Or is it just just something you’ve come to think this might be a good product for this location? Or do you try and source
Oren Schauble 11:40
100% So anything electronics wise, that isn’t doesn’t have like, isn’t made for defense or anything like that I definitely go to China for and then where it gets nuanced is things like consumer packaged goods, or like foods or supplements or things like that a lot of that really anything needs to get kind of CO packed or has freshness tend to work really specifically within the US if possible. But then you really need to vet if they’re bringing in things from overseas or if they’re making it in the US. And then anything that’s kind of a lot of steel and metal and things like that is also something we still look to the US for and then in fashion, just kind of a wide swath where when you when you end up doing like leather or higher quality materials, you’re gonna be looking at kind of Pakistan, you might be looking at Portugal, you know, Italy, to a lesser extent, and Turkey. But then there’s still plenty that stuff that’s made in China and made really well. But it’s just kind of a matter of the quality you want what you want your label to read what communication looks like, there’s a lot of cultural nuance. What I like most about China, especially with Alibaba is everyone’s super responsive. There’s a lot of good communication back and forth. There’s a messaging platform that everyone knows how to use. And when you get to some of these other countries, communication and and even cultural nuance around what they tell you versus what reality is a little bit different. I think that’s the hardest learning curve for people.
Ben Donovan 12:56
If you were to, you know, if you were to want to source say like a clothing company, you’re saying about how China is on the list, a big one on the list. Are you finding a change in consumer sentiment that people don’t like to see made in China on clothing labels?
Oren Schauble 13:11
Yeah, I think there’s a regard that a luxury brand should have something else on there, whether it’s made in Portugal’s have been a nice in between for between Italy, but it’s the quality is there 100% In China, and what a lot of people don’t realize I think is just is thinking right, where if you request something from China, they’re so used to people coming to them for cheap goods, a lot of these factories and like coming to them because of price that they offer their cheapest things first, whereas a lot of them have the capability to do significantly higher quality, but you have to really ask for that and spell that out. And let them know that you are focused on quality throughout this process, to have them understand what you’re going for. But yeah, but consumer sentiments are all over the place. But what we do a lot of is kind of mixed supply chain as well, where we will end up with fabric from one place that is put together in China that sent his a base garment to the US and then finished with wass houses or embroidery or screens, things like that in the US to be able to kind of take advantage of mass production and getting 10,000th of a thing, but then being able to customize it or move around seasonality and trends by adapting that domestically. So there’s a lot of different strategies to approach it.
Ben Donovan 14:14
Are you doing anything unique to ensure top quality? You obviously inspections? Manufacturer?
Oren Schauble 14:22
Yeah, there’s a service like called QIMA Q-I-M-A, we use lot for factory inspections, I love about them, I think it’s like $400, roughly, but they’ll inspect a factory anywhere in the world with a checklist that you provide them. And so that’s been really helpful too, because you’ll you’ll get a sample, but obviously sometimes quality can change when they’re entering into high production. And so having a service like that, that can go and actually check that before it ships to you is a super useful kind of use of funds. So I definitely do things like that. But also it’s just establishing that rapport and really communicating what it is you want and what your expectations are. I feel like most people who have issues just haven’t clearly communicated their expectations. And if they have clearly communicated them and they have a problem. It’s way easier to resolve it in your favor?
Ben Donovan 15:02
How you being clear? Is it messaging back and forth? Or do you create a real detail, PIO?
Oren Schauble 15:06
Yeah, which is a really detailed briefs, basically. And then really detailed messaging. And so I like to kind of do is, again, similar that exercise we did before it’s like, Okay, think through every step of how this thing is being produced. And you can even ask them, okay, what are the different steps of production, and then going through and being like, alright, we want to make sure our buttons are attached like this with an example. Or we want to make sure it’s placed in a box like this with an example. And it’s tedious, and it’s painstaking. But it’s, it’s completely worth it to make sure your things are done, right. And it’s a matter of like, also letting them know to communicate with you. And they have questions and be like, Hey, if you have a question with a quality, or if there’s any decisions need to make, please, I’d like to review all those. And I found that manufacturers have no problem getting on FaceTime or getting on a chat and walking through those things, you’d have to ask for it.
Ben Donovan 15:52
Okay, so once you’ve made a really good product, how do you market it in a way that shows how your product is better than the market.
Oren Schauble 16:01
So a lot of that comes down to the storytelling behind it. And so I really encourage brands now to kind of build in public and showcase a lot of the process, I was just talking about being like, Hey, we’re working to this product with our manufacturer. And here’s all the choices that we’ve made. And here’s kind of the detail of what we’re describing and sharing a bit about that process. So consumers can learn the work that goes into it. And they can get excited about the journey of going from sample to reality. And then even when you get it just really making content that describes those details that describes that experience, why you made those choices. And if you’ve gone through the exercise I described to start where you actually have said, Hey, I’m evaluating these products and these things, and I think I can make these better. You’ve also basically established your roadmap for making content about how your product is differentiated. And one thing I don’t see a lot of brands doing that they should is that not only does that content live on your social media, it should also live in every email you’re putting out about those products, it should live on the actual e-commerce pages, like the fact that people might have deep dive videos on their products that you can’t access from the page you’re going to buy it on is the kind of dots I think you can connect to help better tell your brand’s story.
Ben Donovan 17:06
And you think most brands should be doing this on TikTok first,
Oren Schauble 17:09
I think it depends on the brand and the category, I do think that there’s a unique opportunity on TikTok for reach for kind of top of funnel awareness. But I think that you know, every brand should be making short form video content, no matter what industry you’re in, whether it’s SAS, or physical products, or fashion or whatever that ends up being, and then distributing that across multiple platforms. And I think it depends on your community and your audience and where you’re going to have resonance. But it’s so easy to make one distribute to many now that I think it’s highly worth doing that. And, you know, while TikTok may generate the most top of funnel awareness, you may find that Facebook reels is the one that actually converts the highest for you.
Ben Donovan 17:44
Yeah, and if you were to predict the future of TikTok, you think he’s got a long future in the Western world?
Oren Schauble 17:50
I think it’s all social media that we’ve kind of seen definitely comes and goes, well, I’m trying to think about is, how long are we going to see an uncapped algorithm the way we have now, or any kind of you can succeed without having to pay a significant amount of money for it. And I think that that is either going to last for a long time and be part of their core brand, or we’re going to see that wrap up in the next 18 months or so.
Ben Donovan 18:11
And then, so for someone that’s just getting started on TikTok, or they want to document the process, what would be the keys you would say, for getting set up, just record yourself talking about the product? Give us an
Oren Schauble 18:23
I would say so my recommendation for this. And I’ve actually been think about this pretty in depth because I’m like, basically helping a lot of brands get on the platform, currently, especially larger brands, is that I will go through it and you’ll have to consume TikTok to understand it, you’re not gonna be able to jump into this without doing it. And also, if you understand TikTok well performs on there, you’re going to understand the other video networks as well, because they’re just basing themselves on what works on TikTok currently. And so I would just go through, follow brands that are in your space or in entrepreneurs that are in your space, and then bookmark the videos of theirs that do well, and basically use that as your content plan, I would try to get 50 concepts from people and brands of videos you think are smart, and then basically plan your content. And I would plan out a lot of videos, I will plan to make 100 videos now, Joe, because I think that’s what you really need to take to evaluate to actually get good at the platform and evaluate whether it’s gonna be successful for you or not. But they don’t take a ton of time, your first one might take a while your second one, your third one, by the time you’re on to number 10. You’re like, Oh, I’m doing these in 20 minutes. And so I think that it’s about getting that plan together of here’s all these ideas I want to try. I’ve seen other people work. And then I’ve seen work for these brands. And then when you launch going on just doing them again and again, and not being afraid to do three versions of the same video or five versions of the same video and find what’s successful and just keep going. I think anyone that gives up before they’ve done 100 videos is not understanding what the potential is of the platform.
Ben Donovan 19:41
You mentioned about doing the same video three, five times. Is that kind of a TikTok thing. Are there any other kind of TikTok inside strategies that are unique to the platform like that that you might be using? Yeah, well,
Oren Schauble 19:52
I think if you have a good idea that you really feel is a good idea just because it doesn’t go the first time I like looking at like minorly adjusting it Adjusting graphics suggesting the hook adjusting the length is I would stick with that idea until you really feel it just it’s just not working. So I think that’s something that’s specific to that platform. For sure. I think the other is one of the other things I found successful is that if you do start having videos go like if you say, oh my videos starting to get I got 100,000 views is I would set up to go live maybe a day or two later, like schedule your live, because what I found is there’s a feature where it basically promotes people to sign up for your live and to view your live if it’s upcoming if it’s scheduled, when you have on the videos that you have that are going and then when you actually go live if you have videos that are doing well on the algorithm, it seems like TikTok pumps those a lot while you’re live for a couple hours. So I think using live intelligently is a great way to you know basically boost your reach and also build some rapport with your customers beyond your video.
Ben Donovan 20:47
And for most brands, you are repurposing these from TikTok to Instagram Facebook YouTube. Yep, and the other person
Oren Schauble 20:54
Yes, so I think also we’ll be considering LinkedIn and Twitter on that as well. I think Twitter is a very underrated platform for conversion I saw something that Mr. Beast put out recently about how his highest converting click through channel to sales for festivals was Twitter because I just think it’s a it’s because people click links that’s a part of kind of what they do their especially on the profile etc and so I think there’s something interesting there. I will basically exert any platform that takes video I will be I will be putting it on and there might be some some light nuance and how you do captions, etc. Or how the velocity of your posts but if you’re not and I’m guilty of this too because I’m not like actively posting on some of these platforms and I should be like you’re you’re definitely like losing out if you’re not putting it everywhere.
Ben Donovan 21:35
How about YouTube shorts? You seen some good progress and percent Yeah,
Oren Schauble 21:38
and the only the only complicated part is that yeah, you have a three minute video cap on TikTok you have a 92nd video cap on Instagram rules you have a 62nd cap on YouTube shorts so if you really want to be repurposing well you need to make everything in like sub 60 seconds. And so YouTube shorts is a little more broad though one of the things I’ve noticed it’s worked well or not and again all these change every few months so it take it for what it is, is that more amateur content like the green screen continent do that’s not a pro camera works really well on on TikTok, but a lot but more polished content tends to work better on YouTube shorts, and to a lesser extent Instagram rules. And so there’s some amount of like, Alright, do I make content for each of these? Or do I fully repurpose, and each of them has some nuance, YouTube TikTok is very good at putting your content in front of your exact consumer or an exact demographic, whereas YouTube is much broader, so you kind of have to have some broad appeal to. So there’s some nuance to all the different networks.
Ben Donovan 22:27
And have you tested much paid or paid to TikTok ads.
Oren Schauble 22:31
And that really beyond retargeting, I have definitely found we have to like, you know, we can pretty now I can pretty steadily whip up like any day I feel inclined to we can get a 50k or 100k view video on TikTok. And obviously take some more to get to get a million just by taking a couple shots on goal. And so retargeting is really the only thing we’ve spent money on there. Although I’ve heard really good things about people who are doing top of funnel on TikTok ads, we just haven’t found we have to
Ben Donovan 22:56
these videos that get 50 100k views. What kind of business objectives to be achieved beyond that traffic? Are you seeing conversions from those ads?
Oren Schauble 23:04
so like a lot of what I’m so I guess there’s two scenarios, there’s content like I’m putting out where I’m really trying to focus on getting email subscribers. And so there’s a lot of people just either clicking through or following and the more content they do, the more likely they are to kind of go follow that call to action. And then on for branded videos on that. There’s a lot of interesting click through to the site, you’ll kind of see based on what you have. But I think the biggest thing that we’ve noticed is you’re consistently doing that as a brand and you actually have some big presence like you’re in retail or you have some presence regionally where you are, you’ll begin to see the impact that it has on your sales and kind of in the zeitgeist because you know, people may not click through to buy something on e-commerce there but is a huge retail driver. Yeah, and
Ben Donovan 23:44
Now it’s really interesting when the you’re talking about the moving the budget from page to organic, what are you spending money on for stuff like TikTok short form video,
Oren Schauble 23:55
I think a lot of it is more creators to basically tell the story in a different way. One of the things I’ve noticed about TikTok is that it does show people the kind of people that they like, like you will see if someone they like wants to watch older, more respectable people that are well presented TikTok will show them more of that if they want to, you know, if they’re if they’re kids, and they want to see other kids, they’ll show them more of that. And I think that having a diverse selection of creators, sometimes even with different social media accounts or making content for the brand is definitely a place where we’re using funds. I also just the amount of like editing and repurposing and experimentation of different types of content. Yeah, that’s really where it is. Because it is it’s a grind in and like the idea of how many videos you can make to take advantage, like if you’re making, you know, two videos or four videos a day across multiple accounts and repurposing them that becomes a pretty complex machine pretty quick.
Ben Donovan 24:44
So, you mentioned before about getting started, the best plan would be to map out 100 video ideas and just get started with them. You know, is it one of those progress over perfection type things?
Oren Schauble 24:55
100% And I think that like you can’t learn it until you’re doing it. And you also if you do 20 You haven’t gotten anywhere, and you haven’t done enough. And I think people really start to find their groove afterwards. And it also encouraged like, if you have an account and you just been getting nowhere, you know, start start again, get rid of that account, pop, pop a new one up, do the follow that same idea and process and hit it. And because there I do think there is some amount of like the algorithm gets used to what a how an account performs, it’s been up there for a year and haven’t really done much. And I do think that there’s something to be said for starting fresh and going hard at it.
Ben Donovan 25:27
And for the perfectionist brand owner that wants everything to look amazing. Good luck to get past that.
Oren Schauble 25:31
Yeah, that’s, that’s probably the biggest conversation I have is I’m like, that’s not what people want. And that’s also not what people expect from a brand. And you have to experiment with it. And I don’t think it’s not it’s, it’s impossible, I use the one of the ones I think does really well is ASRV, it’s like a Men’s Fitness brand. They’ve done really well highly polished content that works on all platforms. But that’s not gonna happen for everybody. And I would just let it go, because consumers are going to be telling your story online anyway. And you can’t control that. So you should be open to experimenting more.
Ben Donovan 25:57
Definitely, yeah, they got such product, good product quality. And this is why when I was asking you earlier about how do you, how do you show that product quality is because I think they do it up there with the best SRV you know, they just show the quality of the product in their marketing so well.
Oren Schauble 26:14
100%.
Ben Donovan 26:16
So just rounding up then in terms of opportunities, because you often will post about, you know, here’s a good opportunity, you could do this product, I always I love it, because you’re like, you know, just get this product going, here’s a manufacturer just do it. I love that attitude. What are some of the biggest opportunities in 2023? Product opportunities, market opportunities?
Oren Schauble 26:37
Yeah. And so I’ll kind of answer this in two ways. First, I’ll get kind of concrete and some things I think are have a lot of potential, I do think new sports is still a huge thing we’ve seen, everyone’s kind of gotten super hard after pickleball. We’ve seen tons of golf brands emerging. And so now those spaces are ultra competitive. But I look at any of these smaller niche sports, like building lifestyle brands, or building really compelling value propositions as to the quality of items specific to that use case for things like field hockey, lacrosse, women’s soccer, I think there’s a lot of like niche down in sports and make either again, like I don’t, I can’t think of a huge women’s soccer lifestyle brand, you know, or even a medium sized one. But yet it’s one of the most popular sports in America and the world. And and also is there anyone actually making really specific performance where the way like a district vision or a satisfy running has made for like distance running for the lacrosse niche or something of that nature. I think that if you start small in those niches, I think there’s a lot of opportunity there. Another one I think is interesting opportunity is interior design specifically for men, I feel like there’s been this awakening the last few years because of social media of like men’s fashion in general, and men dress a little better and a little more conscious, we will still walk into an apartment of like a guy who has this amount of money. It’ll be like a mattress on the floor and nothing on the walls. And I think that’s an exaggeration. But like, I think there’s an opening for that as well. But really, those are like very specific niches. I think that the the idea and why promote this idea of just starting is that like, I wouldn’t look at it as like, Hey, I’m doing a brand and it’s done, I will look at his eyes and individual, whoever you are, I am starting an entrepreneurial journey by putting a product out there or starting a brand. And I have that now forever. Even if it doesn’t do great. Now I can revisit it when I know more than three years because I have a website and some IP and some inventory. And I’ve had that experience. And I would look at it as like these are things that can evolve over time for your entire career. If you look at if you’re 25 or 30 or 35 now and you say oh, when I’m 60, how much more will I have learned. And if I invest a little bit of money here and there to continue improving this, and I’ve started or I get a better idea. And I’ve built an email list, you now have this foundation you have forever I think people kind of ignore that. And they’re afraid of failure when it’s a cool failure means you still have 2000 emails to go for your next thing.
Ben Donovan 28:45
These are super helpful thoughts. So yeah, it’s clear to me, you know, you’re so in the trenches with this stuff. It’s going to be really helpful for people that listen and so I appreciate you taking time out to come on, man. Where can people find out more about you?
Oren Schauble 28:57
Yeah, so I’m at Oren Meets World, O-R-E-N, on basically every social media platform and then product world that XYZ is the website and it’s where you can sign up for the email list I try to send every week it’s usually more like every other but they’re pretty in depth when they do factory links and ideas and concepts and examples and yeah, you know, DM me anytime.
Ben Donovan 29:16
Definitely yeah, they are definitely in depth and I highly recommend you guys. Go check it out, sign up or appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on. And thanks everyone for listening. And I will see you in the next episode next week. Take care.
