E135: Gabe Kovacs

Richard:
Hi, and welcome to another episode of eCom@One. Today's guest, Gabe Kovacs, VP of Marketing Annmarie Skin Care. How you doing, Gabe?

Gabe Kovacs:
I'm doing great. Thank you for having me.

Richard:
Good. Now, Gabe's all the way out in Los Angeles today. I'm a little bit jealous, I can't lie. I'm in not so sunny Lincolnshire as always, but great to have you on the show, Gabe, I'm looking forward to this one. Gabe was recommended to us by one of our fellow podcast friends, so really looking forward to getting stuck into this. But I think it'd be great to kick off, Gabe, introduce yourself and tell us how you became the VP of marketing at Annmarie Skin Care.

Gabe Kovacs:
Yeah, so my name is Gabe Kovacs. I've been marketing for about, I don't know, close to 15 years now. I ended up at Annmarie Skin Care through a bunch of various avenues. So I started my career out in the headphones world, I was working at Beats.

Richard:
Oh, wow.

Gabe Kovacs:
Beats is still a startup. I ended up leaving Beats as a spinoff to start Sol Republic headphones. Next thing you know, I'm marketing sunglasses. Next thing you know, I'm marketing home furnishings. And then soon I ended up into protein shakes and things like that, and then now I'm in skincare. So I ended up coming to Annmarie Skin Care for a number of various reasons, but not for a lot of reasons why people end up in skincare. I'm not a person that has the craziest skincare routine. Skincare is not my biggest passion out there. My biggest passion is connecting with customers, and I just really connected with the founders of Annmarie Skin Care. I really liked how they approached business and e-commerce marketing, and that's really what drew me to the company. So I've been here for almost two years now, absolutely love the company and where we're headed, and it's great to be part of a company that has a really good head on their shoulders and a good approach to marketing that's a little bit different than everybody else.

Richard:
Yeah. Well, we'll get stuck into that. It's great to have guests on the show that are really doing great things actually on the ground. I mean, merchants on the ground, so looking forward to this. So obviously quite a lot of channels you're working on and you've got obviously all that many, many years of experience working in with different products. Beats, did you miss out on some shares back in the day then?

Gabe Kovacs:
I definitely did. I was not part of that. Yeah, I actually worked with Beats when they were still part of Monster Cable.

Richard:
Yeah, I remember.

Gabe Kovacs:
And so I was working with Monster Cable and did some projects with Beats, and then I ended up staying on with the Monster Cable side, and then that's where we launched Sol Republic. So yeah, I missed out on the big billionaire cash out, but it is what it is.

Richard:
This time around then. Annmarie, come on. So working with a lot of channels and what's been your, and what is your, main channel revenue driver at the moment?

Gabe Kovacs:
Yeah, that's an interesting, and it's a tough question to answer, but I would say the main focus of ours is going to be email and SMS are some of the big ones for us. Obviously social media is a big challenge for us. Affiliate revenue is a big one for us as well. But I'd say the big constant is going to be our email program. We joke inside that we are an email company.

Richard:
Yeah. So what's been some of the standout, so if we step through email, so you say email, SMS, social, did you say affiliate there as well?

Gabe Kovacs:
Yeah, there was some affiliate there too. Yeah.

Richard:
Yeah. These are all crackers because we very much do a lot around SEO and PPC, but it's nice to hear you not mention those. I hope my SEO and PPC team team don't listen to this one, but it's nice to hear that. So email obviously, step us through some of the things that have been working for you with email over the past six months or so.

Gabe Kovacs:
The biggest thing that we do with email is just personalizing the customer experience as much as we can. And when you say personalize, I know that's a trigger word that has a lot of things associated with it, but really it is trying to serve the customer the best possible content for them in that moment of their buying journey, and then using email and SMS to really supplement all the different stages in the customer buyer journey. So when people come to the site, if they're window shopping, serve them this. If they have purchased something and they're ready to repurchase something, serve them this. And as you can imagine, skincare, consumable products, you use a product, it takes you x amount of time to get through your cleanser, to get through your face, through your serums, or even through your shampoo or conditioner products. So we have a lot of opportunities for cross-selling, for rebuying opportunities and things like that. So that's really where we bring a lot of our retention audiences, through email and SMS.

Richard:
So a lot of segmentation based on... Well, there's obviously a few things there, but obviously any other skincare brands or beauty brands or beauty e-comm store selling beauty products, the reality is that most things they get used in a week or a month or three months or six months. And obviously the idea being that then you can serve that past customer with content to encourage them to rebuy at a certain trigger point. So you've got, based on different types of products then different types of times timing for them to rebuy, and then layering in SMS with that.

Gabe Kovacs:
Exactly. SMS, for the most part, I layer them in on different triggers on people. So abandoned cart, do you need more of this product? Things like that. I really rely heavily on SMS, not as much for the general campaign blast that we're sending out to people as a newsletter type of thing, I try to keep SMS slightly separate from that and really focused on that customer specifically. But segmentation is so big for us, it's so big for the entire skincare industry. I can tell you, if you go to most skincare sites now, they're going to have some sort of skin quiz, some sort of assessment on their site. It's basically a way to collect data to understand this customer best, because when you have so many skews that appeal to very specific skincare needs, you need to put that customer in a certain basket in some way. So it's just critical for our space to have that information on customers.

Richard:
So quizzes, you are absolutely big tick still to be able to drive and build that segmentation. So how many people are listening right now that are in the skincare industry, beauty industry, that don't have quizzes, I wonder? Maybe one or two too many. Obviously, the ability for all those people to get the perfect product to then ultimately segment them so they're getting the skincare products for the, I don't know, the really poor 50-year-old man's skin or the beautiful 25-year-old female's Asian skin or whatever it may be. Yeah, absolutely. And then obviously segmenting, taking that data from those quizzes, and building out campaigns based on the results from those. So going back to SMS then, so what would you say is some of the best SMS uses you have in your campaigns? You talked about, I think when the people get to check out and things like that. Did you mention that? What?

Gabe Kovacs:
Yeah. So I would say the best SMS performers that I've had in the past are the simple, basic things that you just want to get on your phone. Abandoned cart, that's a huge one. Huge one for us. It gets people back there. The thing is, when you're on your phone, there's a 100% open rate because you are seeing that message. So it's the easiest path to get to the website, but it's also one of the easiest paths to unsubscribe. So what you need to do is you need to make sure that you're serving people things that are worth their time. If you constantly are blasting people with 25% off here, 10% off here, they're going to unsubscribe, they're going to get over it quickly. So you have to do things that are related to them in order for them to stay on the list, and that's what I have found.

So, "Hey, you might be three quarters of the way through your serum. Would you like to repurchase now? You can add it here to your cart and we'll give you a $5 off coupon now." Things like that to just get right ahead of them and stay top of mind really what it's about, because ideally we want our audience to see us on multiple touchpoints. I want them to see us on our social platforms. I want them to get our ads. I want them to see us in search. I want them to see us in their email inbox, and then I want them to see us on their phones on SMS as well. So to me it's really a cohesive strategy across the board to have everything really work together and each channel really has its purpose in that ultimate plan.

Richard:
Yeah. Oh, I love it, because I think, is it is Klaviyo, I assume you're using? Is that correct?

Gabe Kovacs:
Yep.

Richard:
I don't know about you, but the amount, obviously you're working with one particular brand now, but the amount of Klaviyo accounts we see that don't have the SMS side of things set up, it's quite frightening. Just very simply being able to obviously very easily add that in. Obviously you need those details in there, the phone numbers, et cetera, which then to be able to then, basically you've got another channel that you're marketing to, very, very simply and very, very cheaply, ultimately as well.

Gabe Kovacs:
Yeah. And the great thing there too is you can do things in, by having everything kind of into one system with Klaviyo, for example, I like it because I have all of my information there. So for example, if I send you an email campaign, you didn't open that email, I can automatically send you an SMS and I can have that as part of a whole automation plan. And so it really unlocks a lot of power there because every single time you send an SMS, you have to pay individually for that SMS. And if you send it with a picture, great, MMS is going to be three times as much. So it adds up quickly. So if you're being strategic about it and you're only sending two people that meet all of those requirements, this person didn't buy from that promotion and they clicked on the email, but they didn't convert. Great, let's shoot out the text in five minutes. And so having that really can save you on one end, but also just make sure that you're only giving that content to the people that need it because why would you send that text to somebody who just bought, for example?

Richard:
Another blast based on what they've done, or not done. So you talked about, just a few more moments on the email side, so I think a lot of merchants are just too quick to go, right, 10%, 5%, 20%, 15%. And you've talked about, obviously there's other things there, we talked about building our quiz, for example. Depending on what you're selling, there's always a option to do a quiz, doesn't have to just be skincare to do quizzes. But what other things would you recommend on the email side of things that are not discounts to get people's details, to get them to subscribe?

Gabe Kovacs:
Yes. Okay. So the big one I like to do is supplemental educational content. For us, we put so much effort into our skincare products. Everything we make is wildcrafted with organic ingredients, we like to say that we're one of the cleanest brands on the planet. We put so much effort into every single ingredient in our product. And so a lot of that is educating customers on the ingredients and why we've chosen those ingredients. I mean, today for Valentine's Day, actually happy Valentine's Day, I never mentioned that.

Richard:
Oh, yes.

Gabe Kovacs:
Happy Valentine's Day. But today for Valentine's Day, we're talking about the neroli flower, and it's a flower that is present in one of our toning mists. And we're talking about the benefits of that flower and why we specifically chose to use neroli in our toning mist for various reasons. So it's supplemental content which is essentially supporting the reason why you should buy that product, but also validating your purchase.

A lot of times they say the most excited moments in the customer journey is when you put your credit card down and you're excited because you feel like you're getting something great. And then that moment when your product is coming and when you're waiting for that box to arrive, those are some moments that you're really excited about the product. So that's the perfect time that I like to provide that supplementary content to really validate your purchase. Nobody likes buyer's remorse. No one wants to sit there and think, "Oh man, did I just drop too much money on this product? Am I wasting my time here? Is this not worth it for me?" So that's a great time where I like to really fill people's inboxes with great content that not only is validating your reason for choosing our brand and reiterating our core values and why we exist and why we've decided to go on this journey of creating these meticulous skincare products. And then two is really talking about specifically the products that you are about to receive and getting you ready. It's almost like you're getting the Lego instructions of how to use the products before they come so that when it comes there's not really any question mark, you're just excited to get moving. So that's the type of supplementary content that I like to give that's not really promo based.

Richard:
Yeah, I love it. Absolutely love it. Because there's quite often that disconnect, isn't it? Say you've had that moment where you've bought the thing, or the customer's bought the thing, and then the two days passes but there's not a lot happening in those two days where it's a perfect opportunity to bridge that, get that culture, get the values, depending on the product, the how-to videos, the experiences of other people using it. Yeah, love it. Too often we just don't see it, and obviously then that package arrives. There's things you can do with the packaging to personalize the packaging and things like that to make that whole experience like, "What? I am not going anywhere other than Annmarie Skin Care, because I want to feel that every three months, two months, a month," depending on what you're buying. Brilliant. So obviously it's been an interesting year or two to say the least in e-commerce, ups and downs with everything that's been going on with the economy and COVID fun and games. But what would you say some of the biggest or the biggest challenge you've faced during your time at Annmarie Skin Care and how did you ever come it?

Gabe Kovacs:
Yeah, so we are in a tough time now. Right now, ads are extremely expensive. We've seen this time and time again. A couple years ago, you could spend the same amount and hit 30 times the amount of audience and performance there. So it is a very tough time on social media, specifically for cold audiences, so that's been a massive challenge for us. And then the other thing that's really hard for our space is SEO has been a big challenge for us because we are technically in the natural health space, and SEO used to be one of the biggest drivers for us as far as visitors, but we've been dinged a couple times by Google based on them feeling that we are giving claims that are not true. But it's tough to overcome some of those challenges, so those are the two biggest challenges that have hit our company.

And those really are two avenues that were massive, massive providers of top of the funnel leads, essentially. So the biggest challenge for us is getting new customers in, and that's a big challenge for a lot of e-commerce brands, and I'm sure you talk about this quite a bit on the podcast. So for us, we've been leaning heavily on affiliate channel and our relationships with all these influencers in the natural health space that we've had for years. And we put together affiliate deals with them, and we bring in customers through a lot of those affiliate programs, so that's been a big one. And then getting more strategic and being just more strategic with our content that we're putting out for our social media ads, making better videos that can drive more customers and just trying to be as lean as possible on our ad spend. Whereas three years ago it was a whole different environment and you could be a little bit lazy on your spend and still get a lot of people coming through the top of the funnel. So those have been the two biggest challenges for us, I would say.

Richard:
So a bigger push on the affiliate side, I guess the guys that are listening in, affiliates are quite often one that I think aren't used, or they're one of the last channels. I know a couple of big networks in the UK and it's surprising how many multi seven figure brands are not using affiliates still. But I guess there's an element of, I might be wrong, but there's got to be a nice amount or a decent amount of margin in your products in the first place for affiliates, would you agree with that?

Gabe Kovacs:
Yeah, being in skincare, you're definitely blessed with better margins than a lot of other areas and so we can give up some of that for affiliates. And when I say affiliate, it's in between of an affiliate and an influencer program. We work with these big influencers that have massive email lists and they will blast out our offers to these individuals. Typically, it's an entry level offer that's like $20, you get a pack of four different trial sized products, and then we do what we can to keep those individuals to come back and buy with us for a second purchase. So that's been a big strategy for us on new customer acquisition, for sure.

Richard:
Love it. So you talked about investing more in video there, and my next question was how do you come up with disruptive and campaigns that can get through the noise? Obviously a lot of people doing any industry really, there's 101 skincare brands. So how do you come up with those ideas? You talked about videos, video been key?

Gabe Kovacs:
Yeah, so this is a new avenue that we're pushing for 2023, so hopefully we can figure out the video program. What we're trying to do is we're trying to really show why our company is different than all the other skincare brands out there from our wildcrafted ingredients and our infusion process, because it is quite unique compared to other skincare brands out there, and is the reason why we've been able to be around for 14 years and constantly grow and be a D2C brand. So there's that.

And then the second is, show our audience in these videos. We cater to an older demographic, our key customer is between 50, 60 years old, and we focus on women that are looking for anti-aging products that are clean. So really showing individuals that are the right demographic. I mean, we see time and time again, 25-year-olds trying to market anti-aging skincare products and I can tell you right now, if you talk to a 65-year-old woman, they're just going to say, "Well, my skin looked perfect at 25, so good for you." So really trying to just be honest and real and just tell people why we've created these products and how they can really benefit your skincare routine. So we'll see how it works out. I'll check back in with you in a couple months.

Richard:
I'll have to get you back on in six, 12 months. I think it's like anything, any more, most channels, when you're creating your content, if you're creating the wrong content and you're not doing your research, you're not finding out where the gaps are or who your customers are and segmenting those on the email, but also when you're creating content, like you say, if you're creating content for 25-year-old ladies when clearly your products are geared for 50, 60 plus, there's a mismatch, isn't there? So it's understanding, it's pretty clear in your instance, but I see a lot of people making that mistake where they're just banging out content for the sake of it, rather than really understanding, right, okay, actually this 20% of products, or this 20% of our revenue is coming from this set of products. So if you hone in there, who's buying these things?

And then creating whether that's, we're talking about SEO strategy and the content that we're creating for that, the FAQs we're focused on. Are we writing FAQs to talk to that 55-year-old, or are we talking to a 25-year-old an FAQ? Same as on the video and FAQs, FAQ schema, SEO, this is all related sort of thing. But I think a lot of people, again, they'll go and create video because video's the thing, but hang on a minute, it's just dialing it back and thinking, what video? Who are we creating that for? And it's quite often I think a lot of brands miss the mark.

Gabe Kovacs:
The next thing with the videos, we're doing a lot of aggressive testing on our videos, which is, we'll shoot one video, but we'll cut it 20 ways. And we're testing out the different CTAs in it, the different messages that we have. Because nowadays, you got this thing where it's like you point up in the corners and then words come, things like that. So we're testing out all the different verbiage there, all the different CTAs, music, the different cuts, how short is it? What's the opening part? So almost like we shoot it and then we put all the different puzzles in different ways and we put it out and see, how does this perform? And bring it back, and do the same thing. So we're really excited about this, we started working with a new partner that does this a lot and this is their expertise, so we're hoping it's a win for 2023.

Richard:
Well, I'll keep an eye out. And I would suggest those eagle eyed listeners, you could have a look at obviously what Annmarie are doing on the social channels. You can maybe have a little sneaky look at the ad library, you might see a few things on there, what they're up to, and get some ideas. And then we'll look at getting Gabe back on in six, 12 months, and we'll do a bit more of an episode around video, social video and things like that. So tell us about your worldwide DJ influencer program.

Gabe Kovacs:
Okay.

Richard:
This is a new one.

Gabe Kovacs:
Yeah, so this has taken a trip back a little bit. So as I mentioned earlier, I was one of the first people that started a headphone company called Sol Republic. I was employee number five. I like to say I was the rookie on the All-Star team. I was 22 years old, just finished college, right after college. It got me my MBA in entrepreneurship because I graduated the time when there was this massive recession and there was no jobs available. So I went and I just got into and continued my education. But anyways, so I was 22 years old, I got brought in at Beats, I was interning there, and I was this crazy wild idea kid that had all these disruptive marketing ideas and they said, "Hey, we're starting a new headphone company. We want you on our starting team," and I said, "Great, let's go," and we started Sol Republic headphones.

So I came up with the name of the company, helped launch this company. It was really fun. It was a lot of fun. We were running around with big names like Steve Aoki and Calvin Harris and deadmau5 and Skrillex and all these DJs at the time when DJing was becoming really, really big worldwide, you had these massive names taking over, and we targeted the college market. And so I would say this is between 2010 and 2014 was when we were really hitting it big here, but essentially we wanted to create a roster of these musicians and we called them our Saviors of Sound. And basically what my job was is my job was to go around the world to find the biggest DJs in the world and get them to join our program and sell them on this program when we were paying them $0 to join our program, this was not an endorsement. We had very tight budgets at the time.

And so what I would do is I would make friends with these DJs and their managers and I would find ways to help their marketing and help our marketing together. So what I would do is I'd run monthly giveaways on their social platforms. We would make them custom branded headphones. We would support their tours with products so they could throw headphones out into the crowd to their audiences. Basically what I did in this influencer program was I made their audience Sol Republic fans, and then in turn made our fans, their fans, and we really worked together. And a lot of this was on social, but to be honest with you, it was a different world then. This was when I could text Calvin Harris' manager and say, "Hey, you think Calvin Harris can Instagram our headphones today?" And he's like, "Sure, we got nothing else going on. Let's do it."

Whereas now, as you can expect, it's a very, very different world. But what's really fun and unique about this program is I grew this to having over 500 DJs worldwide, all the way from these ghost writers that are riding tracks for Diplo in their basement on a Tuesday night, to big worldwide DJs like Steve Aoki who are traveling to play 200 plus shows a year. So it was really unique, but the cool thing was these artists would support each other. And if these artists were opening with each other, they would, "Hey, come on stage with us. Oh, you're part of the Sol Republic program too. Awesome." So we really tried to create something new and create a really fun world around it. And this was the spin out from Beats headphones so, as you can imagine, it was all in that world and we had all these names associated with the two, so it was a really fun program.

Richard:
Sounds like a lot of fun to be involved with back in the day. Absolutely.

Gabe Kovacs:
It was. Especially for a 22 to 26-year-old, going around, it was a dream job at the time. It was really fun, and I learned a ton about marketing. I learned a lot about how to really cut through the noise and connect with your customers. It was a really unique program to build. And then on top of that DJ program, we also created an ambassador program to support that, and we called those our soldiers because our name was Sol Republic, so they were our Soldiers of Sound. And what was really cool about those is we had 15,000 soldiers, which were essentially college students around the world that just supported our brand. And we had the program with different college ambassadors and campus generals and things like that so there was a hierarchy within that program. But what was really cool about it is we would send these ambassadors, or these fans, these super fans, to support us at certain things.

So for example, Black Friday, we all know Black Friday is absolutely crazy. One of our biggest retailers was Best Buy and the Apple Store, those were our two biggest retailers. So what we'd do is we'd send 5,000 college ambassadors to go to the Best Buy stores with donuts to give the employees. And they would literally just go to the employees at Best Buy and say, "Today's a hard day, we're bringing you donuts. Sol Republic says thank you." And all those employees would sell our products like crazy. It was a really smart push marketing strategy for us, but it was also in line with our wacky ways and how we would do things and so it was a lot of fun in those days.

Richard:
It's great listening to that. I would say to the guys listening, I would say stop and rewind the last five, 10 minutes, because I think obviously that's great looking back on what you were doing, a very, very super fun, but think about some of how that relates to today, working with partners, working with influencers, partners, different... We do a lot around partnerships in our agency, and I know if you are working with other brands that you can partner with, it's quite different, but it's got some sort of connection there. But make it fun working with people that you enjoy working with, but have those key partnerships. It's incredible. We're running an event tomorrow, actually, believe it or not, timing is perfect. And it's a partner event, we've got various partners, and together we're one plus one plus one equals about eight, I think, in terms of the reach we're going to get, the three companies working together. But that sounds like one hell of a time, I'm quite jealous. And here we are now, just sat in front of the computers all day. I don't know about you, but I don't go to many gigs anymore.

Gabe Kovacs:
No, I don't. But to be honest with you, it's not that different from what I'm doing now, because at the end of the day, it is putting programs together that emotionally connect with your audience. And for these college students that I was marketing to in the headphone space, music was their be all, end all. It was their escape. It was going with their friends and having an amazing time at a festival and building those memories. Well, in these other brands that I work with, we have that same kind of emotional connection, but we try to find it in different ways. When I worked in the sunglasses world, sunglasses are almost like an escape for style. You can have a very bland style, put on a pair of wacky sunglasses and transform your look entirely. And you feel different when you have that on. So it's how do you connect with your audience on that?

Skincare, the same kind of thing. The skin is such a personal thing. Putting your routine together, it's almost like a meditative experience and a routine and it can make you feel better about your skin and feel better about how you're presenting yourself to the world. And so it's all tying back to people's emotions and at the end of the day, we have to just leverage people's heartstrings from marketing and that's what I've found really works in every single industry that I've been in, for all audiences. It's just finding what are those chords that matter?

Richard:
Yeah, absolutely love it. So, uncertainty seems to be the flavor at the moment, and rightly so. What would you say are some of the things you are doing to navigate the times you're in at the moment as specific advice you would give to our listeners around navigating this uncertainty that we seem to be going through at the moment?

Gabe Kovacs:
Yes. The biggest thing that I think we can do right now is none of us have a crystal ball, we can't predict what's going to happen. But what we can do is control what we're doing right now. And what a lot of marketers and a lot of e-commerce folks tend to do is they tend to think, "I need these additional tools. I need these additional levers for us to drive in new customers or to drive retention or to make our site better." And a lot of times, people just don't realize what they have under the hood is amazing. And so the biggest thing I would say, given uncertainty right now is, and you might not want to go out there and spend a couple of thousand dollars every month additional on top of what you're doing for a new tool or a new feature or something like that, is optimize what you've got and make changes and test with what you have too.

So I can tell you pretty much every e-commerce company has to have some ESP that they're happy with. If you don't, I would say look for one. But optimize your organic channels as much as possible, so fix your email funnels, get that in line, get a strategy on social that you're happy with that you don't have to spend too much time with because it depends on your business, but get a social strategy that you're happy with, that you think your customers are resonating with. Optimize your website. Look at your customer behavior. Look at where people are falling off. If there's something that you want people to do, like a skin quiz on your site, well test different placements for it. Test different pop-up strategies, promotion strategies, get your promotions in line. If you're a brand that does a lot of discounting, then find ways to stay unique. If you're a brand that doesn't discount and that's just part of your ethos, well find ways to provide that value to customers beyond just discounting.

And so I would say really just look at what you have right now and try to optimize every single link in that customer journey because there's always something that's weaker than another one. And everybody's busy. Every single e-commerce person I talk to, they've, oh, got so much going on, got this going on, and there's always something that just doesn't get the attention that it needs. Always. And so I would say try to work on those, but the thing I would not recommend is spend a bunch of money on getting all these new tools, hoping that those tools are going to fix your problem because a lot of times your problems are something that you already have.

Richard:
I think unfortunately, most marketers are quite... What's the word? That shiny object syndrome. Just need this course, or we just need to sign up to this tool, and we just need to pay for this, and I just need to do a day with this guy and another two grand in. Whereas the reality is, as an e-commerce marketer, yeah, you're probably wearing 15 hats at any one time, maybe, depending on what your internal setup is with agency or house team, et cetera. But still, there's a lot of hats to be worn, isn't there? But there's core channels that can be optimized to the absolute eighth degree and optimized, optimized, optimized, optimized. Right. I've set up Klaviyo. Well, hang on a minute. When did you do that? Well, about a year ago. Have you actually done anything to your flows yet? Have you? Oh, no. Well we did that eight months ago. No, no, no. So going in optimizing. No, I think it's just so easy, isn't it? To go and bring in a new thing. Although, sometimes if you're completely not doing certain channels, then there's an argument for that. So what is your focus then, next 12 months? So obviously you've talked about you're working on video, if you can get quite a bit of success on the affiliate side and you're working on the video side, but what is your 12-month focus now?

Gabe Kovacs:
Great question. So our 12-month focus right now is optimizing all of our channels to bring in new audiences, and that's really what we're focused on. So we're going heavy on our SEO strategy, we're going heavy on our affiliate strategy, we're going big on the ad program. And then at the same time, we're optimizing all of our top of the funnel things like our skin quiz, that is another one that we're optimizing there. But not just the quiz, but what are we doing after the quiz? What are we doing after somebody enters that top of the funnel? So we can get them to convert, and get them to convert quickly because it can be timely to get these individuals to convert, especially when they're looking at something that's over a hundred dollars. A lot of our products are over a hundred dollars, so they're not the cheapest products out there. So really our big focus for Q1 and Q2 this year is really just, like I just said, tightening up all of these areas and testing all of these areas to the best of our abilities. Cross-selling is a huge one. People focus on welcome journey and then that's it. A lot of time on flows, but what happens after you welcome them? What happens after they make their purchase, their first purchase? How do you take them from making a first purchase to a second purchase, and from a second purchase to being subscribed?

Richard:
Like a loyalty program.

Gabe Kovacs:
Exactly. To subscribe on to get a program every month. And then after that, how do you get them to refer their friends? So that's really what we're focusing on right now. We're putting a lot of effort into our loyalty program, into our referral program, and just really, again, optimizing every single link in our chain that we have right now of our customer journey because we don't want to bring in any new tools right now. We have enough tools, we just need to make the best out of our own tools and that's what we're focusing on.

Richard:
No, I was hoping you'd say that because that's what you recommended and that's what you're doing. So it's nice to see you doing what you say you're going to do. So yeah, it sounds absolutely brilliant. Well, it's been absolutely brilliant having you on Gabe. I think last couple of questions. So what will be one bit of advice, I know you've given me a lot of bits of advice there, focusing on the challenge you've got and going in deep on those. But if you could give just one final takeaway to the listeners, what would be one thing they should focus on?

Gabe Kovacs:
The one thing I think you need to focus on is knowing your audience. Really understanding who your audience is and not just by their buying behavior, but really get to know who that person is. Think about what do they watch on Netflix at night? What are they listening to in their playlist? What are other brands that they associate with? Where do they live? What do they aspire to be? Really understanding your customer is going to unlock a lot of opportunities in how you communicate to them, what do you communicate to them? And just price point on your products and really everything. But I think that it really all stems from really understanding your audience and what gets them to move.

Richard:
Brilliant. Well, that's a whole machine gun of tips there. Absolute brilliant episode. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I like to finish every episode with a book recommendation. Do you have a book that you'd recommend to our listeners?

Gabe Kovacs:
I do. And I also love that you do this question because this is a question I always ask people in interviews, because I think it's important to get an idea of what people read. This book I'm going to recommend right now is actually recommended as a read for all managers on our team, and it's called Radical Candor and it's by Kim Scott and I highly recommend it. It's about, it's really, they call it how to be a kick boss, but it's about how to really communicate with people internally. And I really think that being a good leader unlocks a lot of capabilities in your career and it unlocks a lot about being a marketer too, but being really able to communicate to people and tell people, did you do a good job or did you fail to meet the mark, and actually tell them and tell them and give them feedback to help them propel themselves. So this book is an absolute must, I love it and I really recommend it for anybody who is a manager or a boss of any sort.

Richard:
We will get that ordered. It's not one I've got. It's not on the shelf. I have not heard.

Gabe Kovacs:
Great.

Richard:
After a hundred and... I think we've done 134 of these now and we've not had that one. So that's brilliant. I will get that ordered. That sounds absolutely brilliant. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. For the guys that want to find out more about you Gabe, more about Annmarie, what's the best way to do that?

Gabe Kovacs:
You can find out about me on my LinkedIn, which is linkedin.com/in/gabekovacsmarketing. Or you can learn about Annmarie Skin Care by going to annmariegianni.com.

Richard:
Brilliant. Well, thank you for coming on the show. I look forward to seeing how those video ads and videos are working out in a few months time. I'll catch you soon.

Gabe Kovacs:
Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.

Richard:
Bye.