In this episode, we talk to Dave Gerhardt, the CMO of Privy, and the host of the “Ecommerce Marketing Show” podcast. Privy wants to give small and growing ecommerce brands a leg-up against competition that’s growing by the day. Dave wants to grow Privy into a leader in e-commerce marketing and education for small businesses.
During his extensive career, Dave has created not one, not two, but three successful podcasts. When he was working at HubSpot, he produced, hosted, and marketed The Growth Show with HubSpot CMO Mike Volpe. Over at Drift, he created and hosted "Seeking Wisdom," and currently at Privy, he has the "Ecommerce Marketing Show."
Roger 00:03
Welcome to the DTC growth show by #paid. Every episode we talk to founders and leaders at some of the most exciting direct to consumer brands on the planet. And today we're talking to Dave Gearhart, who's the CMO at privy, the host of the e-commerce Marketing Show and the man at the top of my LinkedIn feed every single day. How's it going, Dave? What's up, Roger,
Dave 00:25
thanks for having me. Even though I'm in my car right now, I appreciate you having me on.
Roger 00:30
I'm going to start on the topic of copywriting because it's, it's something you've been real vocal about? How are you and the team thinking about it?
Dave 00:39
Well, copywriting is like, to me, it's the most important skill in marketing, you could probably make a case that it's the most important skill in business. Because if you can, if you can write great copy, you can do anything, not just sell but book guests for your show, get a referral from a friend, cold email of an investor, advisor, or mentor, write a killer title that's going to get your post read, you know, read a great email that's going to make you money. And I think copywriting is the most important skill but for whatever reason, a lot of marketers today just tend to ignore it. Because we like to get obsessed with the tools and technology and the spreadsheets and the funnels and Google Analytics that we're not always thinking about copywriting. The other reason I love copywriting is that copywriting is rooted in the principles of human behavior and social psychology. And so it's all about teaching you about, you know, how to appeal to people's wants and desires and emotions and, and figure out persuasion and write with empathy. And so I think it's like, it's the perfect training for for for marketing. And so I think that that was like, number one from a content perspective is like, if we can get our if we can get everybody on the team to be able to write great copy, like, we can figure anything else out and be able to tell stories on top of that. So it's been a big focus.
Roger 01:53
What have been some of the biggest influences for you, when you think of marketing and thinking about it from the psychological perspective, people books,
Dave 02:02
so so my last boss is a guy named David cancel. He's the CEO of a company called drift. And he was a huge influence in getting me into some of these classic books. But for me, Ogilvy on advertising was probably the number one book that got me interested in it, because I was reading a book that was written, you know, 40 5060 years ago, and the principles of that book are still more relevant than ever today. And what's interesting, I think, if you're like a DTC brand, just go copy, Ogilvy ads from the 60s and 70s. And like, you would probably be doing a great job with advertising today, because I think we overthink it a lot. And some of them, you know, swipe the examples that have already worked. So Ogilvy was one scientific advertising by Claude Claude Hopkins, which was actually written in 1924. So even older, that one blew my mind because this book is almost 100. It's 100 years old. And the principles still apply today. Then from there, I read, influenced by Robert Cialdini, which is not a copywriting book. It's a book about psychology. But Cialdini has these six principles of influence he calls them. And this book is written in 1985, I think. And these are basically like all the things that subconsciously guide our behavior, and then you can understand how to use them in your marketing things like social proof, right? Like, why do we like to see, you know, you go on Yelp, you want to go to a restaurant, you're going to go to the restaurant that has, you know, four and a half star reviews and 500 ratings, right, you're going to go buy a hoodie, you're going to buy the hoodie that has all the ratings, there's everything is baked, every lesson in marketing, you can actually go back and apply to child Dinis principles. So those are three I could honestly I could talk about books forever with you and marketing but um, I'm trying to think of one other that everybody has to read that a lot of people don't read is a book called cash for tithing. And the reason they don't read it is that the cover looks like a piece of trash. And it looks like a joke. And it very clickbaity, but he basically read all the copywriting books, and then like put all the lessons into one 200 page book for you. So you can just go read that book.
Roger 04:00
You've said it quite a bit in interviews and posts, people buy with emotion and then justify it with logic. Do you feel like marketers appeal too much to logic and measurement and not enough on the things that drive emotion?
Dave 04:14
I mean, that that's a good example of a lesson that I got from one of those copywriting books, right, where we like to think that people are these rats. And that's why if you're in marketing, studying human behavior and social psychology, psychology is so important because we'd like to think on paper that we're these rational, super analytical people. But like we all have these, you know, there's a great book called Thinking Fast and thinking, thinking slow, which is all about this. And we basically all have two systems, right? One is that automated response, that's your that's your lizard brain. That's your reptile brain. Then the other one is like the real human brain. as a marketer, you have to learn how to appeal to the reptilian brain, the one that thinks they're thinking, but it's really just making Snap, snap judgments. And so like I think if you can, if you can understand if you can understand those things, then you can easily go and figure out all the tools and technology behind them.
Roger 05:06
If you had to offer advice to a marketer right now of the first things they're going to go do, you know focus on brand focus on measurement? How are you advising them to kick off the function? What should they focus on?
Dave 05:18
I think number one thing is, you probably number one is like get get the funnel, you have to get the funnel setup, right. And I think before you think about content before you think about brand, and, and I think I've changed my opinion on this, I think a couple years ago, I'd be like, brand brand matters. First brand matters. First, brand does matter. But until you have the funnel for your business setup, nothing is going to matter. So very first thing has to be like, you know, how are people? What is our website? How are people going to sign up? What happens after they sign up? Like, are we can we track that? Can we measure sales, because there's a whole different strategy for like, if you're trying to get your first sale, or your second sale, your fifth sale, like you're just gonna have, you're gonna, those sales come from hustle, just like literally cold emailing people one off, right. But once you get to a certain scale, and things start happening a little bit, then I think the shift has to be in the early days brand. Because today, anything in any industry is a commodity, like, there's just so much access to information and technology and products today and 2020 that no matter what industry you're in, people are going to think that your product is a commodity, even if it's not. And so like the way that you can combat that is by building a brand. A brand is what gets people to know, like and trust you. And in a world where everything is a commodity, you're going to buy from the brands that you know, like and trust. And I think that is a huge opportunity that you have in the early days. But a brand doesn't mean okay Dave, that means I'm going to go spend six figures and build and hire a creative agency. Know, a brand is how people feel about you. It doesn't mean you need you need these crazy, like crazy, sexy website and go spend 100 grand on an explainer video for your homepage, a brand is how you feel about you. And so how people feel about you. And so if you're a great copywriter, and you're building, you're building up an email list or great copywriting, you have a brand people are starting to feel you and I think you have to have, more importantly, you have to have a point of view, right? You have to have a point of view who who is your company? Why are you different? If you're not different? Why should somebody choose from you? Right? Like you have to, you have to have a point of view on the world that's going to differentiate yourself. And you have to think about where what's your position in the market? Are you first in the category, if you're first in the category than great, your whole strategy should be to go on that category. If you're not first in the category, then you have to be thinking about like how can I either go reposition the leader in this category, or find like a niche of this main category that I can go be first in?
Roger 07:37
In areas where there's multiple competitors, you've said that investing in brands is important. We just talked about it. But there's something else that you advise brands to do. And that's poke holes at the competition. Can you explain that?
Dave 07:51
Yeah, so so like, you don't necessarily have to talk bad about somebody and throw rocks at them. But if you and I are in the same industry, but you're the bigger competitor, like the thing that I'm going to do is try to find your weaknesses and show we're we're better, right? Hey, like, you know, you're using this SimpleCast thing to record this podcast right now. Right? Let's say, let's say that I'm using Zoom, I got it, I gotta tell you that, like, you know, my whole play would be like, Well, hey, SimpleCast is great, but I'm using Zoom, Zoom, the 200 million people in the world are using Zoom right now they must really know what they're doing that products probably a little bit more legit, don't you think so? Right, like, that's a way that I can poke holes in the competition, to try to get you to think differently. And so I think it just starts with doing like a basic analysis of who are the competitors and other companies in your space. And before you think about marketing, you're gonna, you're gonna lay them up, we're gonna lay them out together and say, Okay, what are the opportunities here? This company is really good at that this company is really good at that. We're better at that. Okay, maybe that's an option. That's the thing that you need to exploit and talk about from from a marketing perspective. And that could be Hey, we're to like, I used to software products, for example, right? Two very, very similar software products, but one of them doesn't have an integration with that key thing that I know you're using every day, right? That's the message that you're going to try to lead with first. Like, we're just like everybody else like this, this is your opportunity to try to like to try to gracefully poke holes in the competition. The other strategy is like you could also just go like the fear uncertainty doubt route and completely try to trash a competitor, but I don't think that that's the right play given, like, how people want to feel about brands today.
Roger 09:32
Let's see. Let's say your budget got wiped out cut, revenues decreasing. What would you focus on as a marketer?
Dave 09:41
Um, I would probably, I would probably create like a podcast, I would probably create, definitely create a podcast or a vlog and publish just like micro content every single day as me as the marketing person trying to navigate that thing, because I think that's the realest conversation you can have. That's someone that's going to get people to know me and like me, and trust me Like, if everything I proved you went to zero, and it was just me and I had to build up the company, I would that day, start a blog that's like, wow, it's me, now we have nothing, I'm going to tell you my story, and just go and go and use that as a way to build brand. And through that channel, you also end up getting a ton of other content because you're filming everything and recording everything up front. But from there, it would be like start to build an email list. So now I'm publishing content daily, but you got to have you got to own your audience. And I think, you know, depending on what type of business you're in right now, with how things aren't advertising, like you might be learning that lesson, again, that the most important thing you can have as a business is really the to own your audience. Like even if you have a podcast, that's great, but you don't own that audience like Apple podcasts owns that audience, you have your RSS feed, you don't own your audience. So like, you got to be building it building an email list. So I would go back to content, and back to email. Because even if everything dries up, and people aren't buying from you, people always want education and entertainment. And I think you can always find a way to provide that and use that as like your Trojan horse as a way to like, build up relationships people with people get them to know you like you and trust you. And then you can ask for the sale. Like when, when you can down the road and they're gonna already know you and be like, yeah, I've seen that that that shiny bald man on LinkedIn every day, like I do trust him like, Okay, cool. Yeah, maybe I'll sign up for his thing.
Roger 11:22
You said there's a lot of good things happening on Instagram with artists and musicians. And a lot of brands should be paying attention to that. What What is it about that channel and artists and musicians specifically that marketers should pay attention to and replicate?
Dave 11:39
I think what what they should they should try to replicate is the fact that those people are not marketers. And I think that a lot of times we just default to the to the playbook and marketing like, what is everybody else doing? What is the marketing playbook, where oftentimes, like the best marketing is done by people who like aren't actually marketers, they're just, they're artists like, trying to try to do something ridiculous on on Instagram Live, right. And they're just thinking about what's entertaining, right? Go back goes back to what I just said before. They're they're just trying to be entertaining. And I think a lot of times, we're in the marketing mode. And it's like, all right, everyone's online right now. And so we want to create some type of content that we can that we can give to people. Okay, so we're gonna start like a webinar series. And maybe, maybe that's not that maybe that's not that interesting, where like, if you're an artist, you're just trying to be you and be entertaining and promote your craft to everybody else. And so I use that as an example. Because that's, like, that's what you should study, don't don't study what other brands are doing. study what like, the most popular entertainers are doing. And those are the understand focus on like, who has the attention of people? And then think about what are they doing to do that? And how can you apply that to your brand? Not necessarily what are what is every other brand in my space? Do?
Roger 12:50
Empathy is something marketers bring up all the time. A lot of people use the word, but I wonder if we forgotten what it actually means? I love for you to unpack that word. What does it mean? What does it look like to you today?
Dave 13:03
I mean, I get that it's important now. But it's always been, it's always been important, right? And I'm realizing like, I think I shared something that was like empathy is the most is the most important skill. Now, it's always been that way. Because empathy is what puts you in the shoes of the person that you're trying to sell to. And so what that means if I'm trying to sell to Roger, I'm not just gonna I love this email that I'm going to send them I'm going to try to get him to buy this thing right now. No, no. Empathy is like, what was Roger, he's a, he's a dad. He's a podcast host. He's busy. He lives here, he probably has 40 other emails he just got from other people just like me in his inbox right now. So what am I going to do to get him to open it that's going to be different, and how we're going to talk to him, it's going to be different. That's empathy, right? Like, he's really understanding what what's happening, I think a lot of people don't do marketing with empathy, because they're not, they don't, they don't put themselves in the shoes of the customer. And think about the hundreds of other brands that are trying to sell to the same person right now. And they just get lost in the noise of that, where the opportunity is to acknowledge that and stand out and be different. That's normally how it is in marketing. But today, because of what's happening in the world, empathy is all of that, plus the fact that under a plus understanding that people might not be healthy right now, they might have loved ones that are not healthy, they might be scared, they might be you know, depressed, they might be inside, they might be tired, you know, like all these other all these other emotions and things that are happening right now that that put buying your product, secondary, you have to be able to acknowledge those.
Roger 14:29
You spoke earlier about preparing your funnel things you do sort of at the start, at some point you begin developing your brand narrative, your story, how do you develop a good story that's that's empathetic that resonates with customers. How do you do that?
Dave 14:45
I think a story is the most important part because a story is actually gonna create a connection right? Where if you just have messaging and you just stick it out in the market there's there's no stories or what what have been the thread for, for people for you know, who knows? Who knows how long the way that the way that I like to think about a story is like I stole this from from a guy named Andy Raskin who's amazing at positioning and storytelling, but basically like you always want to show there's some undeniable change that's happening in the world right now. So, so like, there's a big undeniable change that's happening the world right now. And what are the stakes like what's at stake because of this undeniable change? And usually, like, it's that the there's going to be winners, and there's going to be losers. And ultimately, you want to tell that story. So it leads to your product, right? So so I'll give you like the preview the preview pitch using that framework, for example, right? The undeniable change in the world right now is that like, there's more, there's more ecommerce brands than ever, it's easier than ever to build a store on Shopify. However, because everybody's on Shopify, there's so much competition, like, it's harder than ever to grow a business. And that's why you need to figure out marketing. And that's where privee comes in. privee helps you understand what right, like, you have to help get somebody there by telling them a story versus coming in and dropping some like Product Marketing facts on people, and go back to entertainment, right? Like every, you know, there's something authentic about about telling the story to hook readers and entertain them. And so like, we always try to think about what's the framework of the story under the undeniable change framework. But also, like, even just simple before and after, right, what, what, what's possible, what somebody's doing, what's the before state of using your product, and what's the after state,
Roger 16:25
I'd like to get your perspective on one more thing. And that's, it's a bit polarizing. And that's on giveaways and contests. A lot of people will argue that they bring in the wrong crowd, the sort of dilute your brand. Should marketers avoid them? Is there a place for them? I'd love to get your thoughts.
Dave 16:42
Well, well, it depends on it depends on what the goal is. Right? Like and and when you say wrong crowd like, what would that what would that mean, because you could use a giveaway to bring in an audience of maybe a giveaway isn't the best way to incentivize people to to, you know, talk to a salesperson or do something that they might not want to do and manufacturer reason to buy, because that person might ultimately cancel or just not be a very profitable customer in the long run, because they bought because of that offer. However, if you're going to do it to generate interest from the right audience, like you want to, you're going to run a giveaway, because you know that, like, I'm going to do a book giveaway, because I know that the people that are going to be interested in a book giveaway are going to be readers. And that's an audience that I'll be able to like launch something too in the future. And I think it's a great way to build an audience. It just depends on what on what the goal is, I think giveaways and review campaigns can can work really well just depending on what you're trying to do, I would definitely test.
Roger 17:44
I came across the story of when you launch tech in Boston, when I think it was your first podcast, you went out looking for sponsorships and you had no idea what you were looking for how to do it, no benchmarks. But it's such a great example of learning on the go. And then I'd love to hear more about that experience.
Dave 18:03
So basically, what happened was I launched this podcast and is the first thing that I really did on my own on the side. And it kind of grew. And I had like 353 to 5000 people that were listening every month, I had a nice sized email list. And I was like, wow, I wonder if this could be like a revenue channel. For me. I've always wanted to have some type of like side income stream like that would Wouldn't that be nice? And so so maybe this is an opportunity to do that. So I just, I sent out an email. And I had an email newsletter that would go out every week. And I just said, You know what, I'm just going to see what happens if people respond to this. And this is actually an important marketing lesson that I learned from that. I'm not realizing this for the first time. So I sent out that email and I said, Hey, I'm thinking about, I'm thinking about opening up tech in Boston for one or two sponsors. I'm not sure yet, but let me know. And I just said, You know what, if people respond back and they're interested, then shoot, I got my first leads to do this. And if nobody responds, and I don't look like an idiot, and I have nothing to lose. And so sure enough, I sent out the email and I had five people respond, say like, Hey, we might be interested in sponsoring and I was like, whoa, whoa, okay, cool. And so then I came up with like, a little perspective, I was like, Well, what, what would I even charge somebody for this? Like, how would this even work and came up with like, you know, I looked around and saw how other people did it. So you got to go find role models and patterns that you can steal from other people like, okay, who has great podcasts? How do they do how they do they do they do this? And so I made up a little perspective. Then I then I reached out to all those five companies and I said, Okay, cool. He like let's get on a call. Great. Here are the terms of sponsorship let me know and so I had to sell that but I think the lesson that I learned was to pre it's okay to pre announce something now I almost did like that was like crowdfunding Kickstarter, right? Like, I announced it before it even existed. And if enough people were interested in it, then I was going to go do it where I think a lot of times we like to wait until things are perfect or until we have this this perfect. idea, or like, it's, it's perfectly laid out, to go out and do it. And that That to me was like, I want to sell sponsorships. So I'm just going to tell people, that's what I want to do. And like, I've done this a lot now, like, I'll post something on LinkedIn. It's like, Hey, I'm thinking about starting this group for blah, like, I did it the other day, hey, I'm thinking of adding a book club to my ageless group on Patreon. Would that be interesting to people? And a ton of people commented on it. And I was like, cool. Now I know that I should go do that. And I already have demand built in for it. It's basically like, a way to, like backup, any idea that you want to go out? And
Roger 20:33
what's the direct to consumer brand that you're pretty excited about right now?
Dave 20:36
I okay, I use I use Athletic Greens like I do. I'm, uh, I take Athletic Greens supplement every day. I'm not excited about that, like, it's just a good, it's a good, it's a it's a necessity, it's a necessity. For me. I'm a customer of Dollar Shave Club, I like I try not to shave that off. And then I just buzz my head. So
20:59
I don't know.
Roger 21:01
Any final words to to encourage marketers,
Dave 21:04
final words, to encourage marketers to stop thinking about that thing that you were going to go do and just go do it, test it, send out an email to your list and say, I'm thinking about launching a podcast, would you like instead of saying I'm going to launch a podcast and take eight weeks to do it, email your list tonight? And say, I'm thinking about launching a podcast? Would you be interested? Because when 75 people email you back, you're gonna feel this excitement of like, Whoa, my audience wants this, I'm gonna go do it, and you're gonna be more motivated to do it. If people don't email me back, then maybe it's not the right thing to do. So like, have a bias for action. And don't be afraid to go out and test ideas with your audience, like, so many people that I talked to a marketing like, hey, Dave, you know, I've been wanting to launch my email list for six months now. But like I can't, that's always an excuse. Like, it's such an eat, like, you have to create momentum for yourself, right. And one of the things that we'd like as people this is from influences, commitment and consistency, right. And so what that means is, once I have told you, I'm going to do something, I'm going to go do it. So there's like an example of like a weight loss study on Facebook, and that people who posted that they were going to start a weight loss challenge, were more likely to actually go finish it because now they've made that statement to the world that hey, I am a person who's doing this weight loss challenge. So when you see me in two months, I better look like I've lost weight right? And so I think like the same is true in marketing where like commitment and consistency if I tell you hey, I'm thinking about launching a podcast and now put that out to the world. I feel some I'm gonna feel some type of like response when people get back to me with I'm gonna see all those responses and want to go out and do it. And love that.
Roger 22:34
If you haven't already. Go to privy.com to learn more about pretty good pretty calm slash ecommerce dash marketing dash show to hear Dave and his CEO Ben talk about marketing and e-commerce. You can learn directly from Dave on Twitter at Dave Gearhart and join his private Patreon community@patreon.com slash Dave Gearhart. Dave, thanks so much for being on the show today.
Dave 22:58
Thanks, Roger. Appreciate it. I'm gonna head out of my car now. That's okay.
Roger 23:01
That's okay. Yeah. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for listening. This is the DTC girls show by #paid