This Could BREAK Your Brand

Jared Ward: 0:07

hey guys, welcome to this episode of OPS Unfiltered. Today we have a awesome, amazing guest. This was referred to us by zek this is zek's friend and also the resident marketing expert of utah yes, for sure, tana cofer.

Tana Cofer: 0:23

What's up t? How's it going? Hey, it's going good. I've had a great day today.

Jared Ward: 0:28

That's good. What was so good about it?

Tana Cofer: 0:30

I got to spend an hour painting pumpkins with my girls at like noon. What a nice life I live After having three meetings, of course, but that was really fun to spend time with them.

Jared Ward: 0:39

Yep, when you're not driving great ROAS, you're smashing pumpkins.

Tana Cofer: 0:43

Yeah, when I'm not helping brands grow, I'm spending time with my girls, so that's made it really great.

Jared Ward: 0:49

I'm really excited to have you today because you bring a really unique perspective, I think, to the Unfiltered Podcast. We try to have difficult conversations about the operations of a company. Obviously operations for small e-commerce companies they intersect with marketing.

Tana Cofer: 1:06

Yeah, absolutely.

Jared Ward: 1:08

So, to start off, I do want to go over what you're doing right now. So you've got two things. Yeah, rosie Ray, which is your agency, right?

Tana Cofer: 1:17

Yeah, I have an agency that accidentally started. I'll talk about that real quick. So I left a company in 2022. I left Pattern, which is a very large Amazon seller, and I decided I'm just going to freelance, spend time at home. I needed to make it official, so I made an LLC, named it after my two girls it's their middle names. That's awesome. Rosie Ray, similar names is super cute. And then brands just came flooding to me. Why was that? I think a piece of it was the fact that I left. I was the first advertiser marketing hire at Pattern and so when I left, there were a lot of brands that were like that's great talent that left, and so a lot of people were like, yeah, this brand referred me because I'm not ready for pattern, but they said that you are the best freelancer. Oh, that's cool. So think like referrals a little bit. I went on upwork and made a profile and it's probably perfect timing.

Jared Ward: 2:18

Like the brands that are going to pattern that aren't quite a good fit, it's like perfect timing for agency to come in.

Tana Cofer: 2:23

Yeah, exactly because at the time, pattern then got to the point where they were like we can't take smaller sellers and I was like, well, I can't take big ones, that would take me way too much time. So it kind of was a natural fit no partnership is there if, if pattern says no to you, you have to come to me organically. They're not going to refer you, but that was a way for me to get clients, and so when I tell like kind of that story, I'm like well, within 10 days literally January 12th of 2023, I'd already replaced my income when I left because, of the brands that I had.

Tana Cofer: 2:52

That's how fast it was. And then I rethought my business name but was like we're just going to go with it. It doesn't really make sense, but it's fine. Maybe later we'll rebrand Patter. But it's fine, Maybe later we'll rebrand Pattern. Was called iServe at first People thought I worked for BYU. So it's fine, We'll go with it. And it's been doing really well and I'm really happy.

Jared Ward: 3:12

I should have said entrepreneur in the introduction. Marketing, yeah. Vigilante, that's okay too, yeah, and then also Glitterface. So you have your own brand that you started and you're scaling.

Tana Cofer: 3:23

Yes, I launched that brand in February with my friend Zek, another X Pattern employee, and we really I just saw this demand for more fun way to drink mocktails and it also spans into cocktails. But we're here in Utah and so it was just like, wow, what a fun way to lean into this. It was a trend on TikTok for a little bit last year and then I went to find it myself and there was not a good option. It was all these baking jars and you would open it and glitter went everywhere and I was like this seems like something I can solve and so I built a brand around it called glitter faced um, new product launching in two weeks in october nice yeah.

Tana Cofer: 3:59

so we, we learned, we reiterated which we'll talk about a lot of ops problems there. I learned from oh and yeah and now we're to a point where we feel better about cruising and pushing some marketing dollars.

Jared Ward: 4:11

Okay, well, let's go back a little bit to Pattern for a little bit. So, for those who don't know, give like two sentences who is Pattern? Yeah, why? I mean they're massive.

Tana Cofer: 4:19

Now, yes, pattern is the largest that I know of Amazon seller in the US the largest seller. Essentially, what they do is they buy inventory from brands. They sign partnerships, of course. They buy inventory and then resell it on Amazon. They do this to manage the entire ecosystem for them, so that the brand doesn't even have to worry. All they have to do is fulfill our POs to us. We'll label, we'll ship, we'll do the marketing, we'll do everything else within our account. And that's what makes a pattern different than a typical agency like Rosie Ray. I'd go into your account, you'd fulfill inventory, I would just manage things in their Seller Central account.

Jared Ward: 5:00

Honestly, by the same token though this was, I mean, this was perfect training ground for you to. Honestly, by the same token, though this was perfect training ground for you, I mean you got an MBA in e-commerce operations, because you're talking like massive brands.

Tana Cofer: 5:10

Yeah. Like Thorne and Uh-huh, I mean, who else? Pandora.

Jared Ward: 5:14

Yeah, what other brands have you helped manage? Part? Of the ops and marketing for.

Tana Cofer: 5:18

Yeah, so because of the fact that I was the first hire and I rose quickly into leadership, of the fact that I was the first hire and I rose quickly into leadership, ended up managing the entire team of 25 in-house 30 overseas employees for advertising. Because I ended there, I worked with just about every single brand we had worked with in some capacity. There's a problem. Tana's got to fix it right. I was always in the weeds. I would say the biggest brands you'll know is Pure Encapsulations, thorne Research those are the supplement brands that are massive Olympics right. And then we have Pandora. Jewelers Say we have Skullcandy If you're here in Utah, skullcandy Headphones. I did that brand. Gosh, it's been a while. Capri, blue Candles they do Times Candles, there's just so many things Paint the picture here.

Tana Cofer: 6:06

How old were you at the time?

Jared Ward: 6:07

22. 22.

Tana Cofer: 6:09

So 22 year old, biggest Amazon account in Utah and they're just like you got it Tana. Yeah, yeah, I had no experience. Super grateful, I guess. Let me go a little bit back to how I got to Pattern. I worked at an MLM company called Jambary.

Tana Cofer: 6:20

I was at headquarters I was not like a mom at home trying to sell product and I was in charge of all their digital marketing and within that, one of my roles was actually to kick off Amazon sellers. That was my job. So I would go in and I would make a list of the sellers and hand it to the boss and say, okay, all these people are selling and they shouldn't be. And then we would send cease and desist. So that's what we did. We discouraged people at the MLM from selling and I kept asking my boss, like why it's a good channel and it's just the MLM way, like we don't want to sell that way. We want this to sell from the distributors.

Tana Cofer: 6:55

And I just realized that's when I was learning this is back in 2017, like what an opportunity for brands like Amazon is and why are we doing this? So then I decided I wanted to learn Amazon and iServe was the company here that was trying to figure it out, and they were small at the time, worked in a warehouse. The warehouse was 90 degrees with a swamp cooler, and they were like Tana, you've had a lot of ad experience, because I had years of ad experience, just not on Amazon. And so they were like, okay, let's throw Tana in, she can figure it out for us. And that's what I did.

Jared Ward: 7:31

After so much experience and seeing so many excellent brands, if you could sum up your time at Pattern and sort of what you're obviously bringing into your agency what is a good brand Like? What is an excellent brand? What are indicators that you look for to be like oh, this one's good, I can help them yeah, I'll tell you a couple things.

Tana Cofer: 7:49

First, I focus on the small to medium-sized brands. If they're are ready for a company like pattern, I'll be honest and tell them I just don't have the resources to and I'm not interested, honestly, in building out the tech needed for those large brands. So I'll let them know hey, you're in a great spot, but with what I'm trying to build here, this isn't going to work for me. But if you're a small to medium-sized brand, I would say things I look for are your category. Is your category growing? Has it historically been growing or is it a category that's dying? And I look at that from my personal experience on Amazon as well as cost per click.

Tana Cofer: 8:32

Changes over the years which you can see helium 10. I'll look at like the cost per click changes over time. Yeah, so the cost to advertise in the supplement category, for example, is significantly higher now than it was in 2019. Right, covid changed, changed that. But it's also just a category that's been extremely established and so I know, for example, if you are like a gut health product, you are about to throw some serious ad dollars unless you have the most unique proposition, the best UGC, the best influencers that we can kind of work with. Unless you have that, so you're possibly going to have the best conversion rate we've ever seen you're going to have to pay probably more than $2, if not more than $3 per click. And so I just know from the get-go like okay, I'm going to be honest, for you to grow, a lot of these things need to change or you need to increase your price point significantly so you can actually be profitable. So that's why I look at cost per click. And then we just want to look at search volume in general.

Tana Cofer: 9:25

Are you a very seasonal product Like if you only really sell in November and December? It makes me nervous to partner with you, especially just because of time of year when we sign, it's like how much time do I have to then help you with Q4? And then what are you doing January through October? Because I work with smaller brands. Some of them aren't really working on the brand that part of the year. So it's like okay, then how can I assist you? How long is this partnership going to be? There's some of those things I have to think through.

Jared Ward: 9:52

What does a bad brand look like?

Tana Cofer: 9:54

You don't have to name any names, but sometimes when you dive in and you analyze what's, going on in their market.

Jared Ward: 10:00

What are the indicators for a bad brand Like?

Tana Cofer: 10:02

oh yeah, let's say they're already on Amazon. I would say a bad brand is one with fairly immediate bad reviews and bad ratings Tells me there's something wrong.

Jared Ward: 10:11

Less than what star.

Tana Cofer: 10:14

I would say less than a 3.5. Okay, I can work with a 3.5. Less than a 3.5. With even a couple reviews. It makes me wonder. I go read them, like what's going on? And sometimes it's as simple as manufacturing product All of the product was unsealed or something. So, okay, we need to delete this listing, if we can. Depending on where we're at, we can restart it after you fixed your inventory issue, operations issue.

Tana Cofer: 10:39

That has nothing to do with really like your product. Your end result right, it's just the packaging. So things like that we can work through. But if it's clearly not going up, then I'd say that's a big indicator. And then price point for your product in comparison to others in the market, it's pretty big. A lot of brands have come to me saying we're luxury. But then I'm like well, your manufacturer to make your blanket is the same as X manufacturer. Like I understand the cost. Your competitors selling you for 25, you're selling yours for 85. Help me understand the gap. So I know how to differentiate your product. And when a seller or, like you know, a brand owner can't tell me why their product's better than their competitors and they don't seem passionate, I just know it's not a partnership I'm interested in.

Jared Ward: 11:24

Interesting.

Tana Cofer: 11:26

So I would say those are two big ones that I see immediately.

Jared Ward: 11:29

Why is that passion so important? Because I've kind of noticed the same thing about this.

Tana Cofer: 11:39

Why is that so important? Working at Pattern, we called our clients partners. We never called them clients, and that was very valuable to learn early in my career. Because now I refer to my clients, I will just say partners, because it's just the way that we worked there. Because of that, I took that into my agency and have just really felt like I want to be as passionate as you are. If I am more passionate than you are, there is a disconnect and that's what happens pretty quickly with me is I get very passionate for the brand, I'll buy the product, I'll start using it, and if you don't seem as passionate, it just doesn't feel like we're going to grow.

Jared Ward: 12:12

Yeah, I really like that. All right, pivoting a little bit to specific strategies. Ok, so talk about marketing changes over the past like three or four years. You have the changes with Apple, you have COVID. If you had to summarize your learnings in 2024 for brands, how would you summarize that? How is marketing and working with brands in 2024?

Tana Cofer: 12:31

That's a great question. My focus with brands is mostly Amazon, but I do have clients on other channels as well and I would say the growth potential in other marketplaces cannot be ignored and I would say that's one thing I would recommend is really focus on how you can grow and how you could establish yourself on, you know, wayfair, on Macy's, like wherever else. Your product is valuable.

Tana Cofer: 13:00

I would say this is the time omni-channel omninichannel is huge and so it's a service that I offer. A lot of agencies offer is helping you grow Omnichannel and I would say this is the time because I believe 2025 is the year for that. From an advertising perspective, based on the amount of money and resources I have seen put into those channels, from being at Pattern and working with them for two years and seeing how bad Walmart was and to see how maybe not great it is now but how much better it is and how many more people are trying to work on it, I just really feel Omnichannel is Fair.

Jared Ward: 13:38

fair is another one, oh, huge absolutely.

Tana Cofer: 13:42

And then all the other ad techs that are coming out to try and service these tools Criteo, exmars, packview they all now have areas specific for Walmart or Criteo specific to Macy's and Target. Like, these channels are not going away, you can't ignore them, so why not be one of the leaders on them? That's kind of how I view this.

Jared Ward: 14:02

Is there ever a reason to not go omnichannel the leaders on them, that's kind of how I view this.

Tana Cofer: 14:06

Is there ever a reason to not go omni-channel? In my opinion, no. From working with brands, for example, there was one brand I'm not going to name the name, but a pattern that I was constantly trying to get to focus more on Walmart, and they were just like we're not a Walmart brand, we're not a Walmart brand, but I'm like your sales on Walmart are crushing it and you're doing nothing. What if we just spent like a hundred dollars this week, like what? Let's see what could happen? No, absolutely not. And it was just one of those things where I'm like there's an opportunity here where some people truly only only shop walmart. There are some people who, or more frequently, shop walmart or target or wayfair, like or any channel.

Jared Ward: 14:43

He has a really good stance on this. I follow the ceo, the founder of dude wipes. If you go to their website, it's not even like a shopify website like, so. He has a strong belief in just being omnipresent everywhere, yes, like you just have to be anywhere yeah and they are crushing it. I tend to agree with that too.

Tana Cofer: 15:03

That's what I think. You just never know. And one thing that's really important is and I love Amazon. However, my younger sister, five years younger, she's of that more Gen Z generation there's a whole movement to not shop Amazon and it's getting bigger and bigger. I didn't know that it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger and it's just like. I don't know if it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger and it's just like I don't know if it's a spite against the man. I'm not really sure if it's a bezos thing, but like, for example, for christmas last year, I would send her links of what I wanted and she was like can you send it to me on a different platform? Wow, and I'm like I can try, like it's just what I do and that and it's not just my sister being unique, it's a common thing. So you have to also think about your audience, where they may be shopping, and try and be in as many places as possible.

Jared Ward: 15:49

Trends going into 2025.

Tana Cofer: 15:51

Yeah.

Jared Ward: 15:51

Any trends that you're seeing right now that brands capitalize on?

Tana Cofer: 15:55

Yeah, I mean, obviously, go omni-channel. I would say a big trend is focusing on the UGC content as opposed to the AI. I would say ignore, but the more studio looking content, it just doesn't feel as authentic and at one point there was a view of but it's so professional so it seems elegant and I would say now that almost doesn't feel real and authentic and authenticity matters. It really does matter, especially to the 2024, 2025 consumer. It's very important and so I would say moving content forward, which is huge right being on TikTok, being everywhere and making sure your Amazon presence, your Walmart presence, reflects that.

Jared Ward: 16:36

It seems like there's a big movement happening right now. Like you said, the public is really aligning with more authentic brands and instead of, I feel like, e-commerce. There was a time in the 2010s and then early 2020s where it was just a Facebook arbitrage. It's like do ad spend on Facebook, get them to here. They transact. We've got 35% margin. Like we're good, just rinse and repeat, but nobody really built a brand that way. Yeah, I agree, we're kind of seeing the same thing as well.

Tana Cofer: 17:10

I would say another thing is building community is becoming big, whether that's you know a TikTok community, instagram, like, it's not just building a following.

Tana Cofer: 17:21

Now, the terms are building a community. Trying to make sure the right people are buying your product is really big and just really explaining your message behind everything. So like, for example, glitter faced our goal end of 2024, 2025 is really focusing on why we built the product in the first place, why we decided on glitter right, and then talking about how we how we sourced the glitter, what, why we decided that and how it's impacted our lives, and just so people can connect and say, wow, tana's story is very similar to mine, so I want to buy her edible glitter, not that there's a lot of other options, but like, but even if maybe another competitors is cheaper, it's just I want to be authentic to tana and support tana and her journey and that's huge. So that's why you also see ceos and founders taking more of a forefront into the content, because people do care about who's behind this. Is this a Chinese brand? Is this somehow AI? Should we be scared of this? No, this is a real person who designed and built a product that they care about.

Jared Ward: 18:25

Yeah, I think more than ever, people are maybe for the first time in e-commerce. Maybe for the first time in e-commerce, people would rather go with the authentic brand that has a story and there's a person behind it than the random Chinese brand, that's just sending things direct to Amazon and making money. I want to pivot a little bit to intersection of marketing and ops.

Tana Cofer: 18:47

Absolutely.

Jared Ward: 18:49

Obviously, it's critical that marketing and operations work together. What happens? What are some symptoms for brands listening? Symptoms that come up when marketing and ops aren't aligned. What happens?

Tana Cofer: 19:05

Yeah. So I'm going to talk specifically about Amazon. Sure, when this happens and we run out of inventory, all the work that you put into your awesome new vitamin D product for the most part all goes away Because, from a ranking perspective, you lose it. Like Amazon's not going to serve you if you're not available and so your ranking drops. And every 24 hours it gets worse and worse and worse. So your ranking drops and every 24 hours it gets worse and worse and worse.

Tana Cofer: 19:34

And so if Ops wasn't aware, if there was no communication showcasing, hey, this item's running out of stock. You know, we ran an ad campaign so we tripled the unit sell through the past couple of days. We need to get on this. If there's no communication and maybe Ops just looks at it every week and just says, hey, it's just really common, right, they just check every Monday, whatever. How, it's really common, right, they just check every monday, whatever. How did we do over the weekend where we at with stock? If they don't, we run out of stock. They then have to order and there could be weeks that we lost all of the work that we did. We have to restart. So from an amazon perspective, it's pretty crucial that we don't run out of stock and that we communicate what have you done in your different positions to solve that communication problem?

Jared Ward: 20:12

Is it just a Google Sheet or like meeting?

Tana Cofer: 20:15

I would say it's a problem that I would say, even when I left, pattern wasn't fully solved because there were so many people involved within a brand and by the time I left, there was a specific inventory manager that was assigned to a brand. That's how important it was. And I mean, at Patter that pattern, we were dealing with like millions of SKUs, right, and so we were missing things all the time, and so they had specific inventory people in charge. They were even building tools to like give us alerts as advertisers and brand managers, like account managers, giving us alerts, so I would say a pattern. They worked really hard for that. For my agency, we have a tool that we use and we run it twice a week. Probably we don't work with super large brands We'll run it twice a week and just see are we low? What are we low in? And when I say low, it's less than 10 weeks.

Jared Ward: 21:05

I think everyone should be what tool do you use for Amazon?

Tana Cofer: 21:14

So yeah, so I inventory, yeah. So I just use a pretty basic. I use seller board for my main data and then we use a pretty basic macro to calculate the past couple days and if it's changed over, big times have you heard of so stocked? I have not heard of that.

Jared Ward: 21:21

You should check it out so so stock um. By the way, luminous is in the inventory management erp space um but amazon specific tools, so stocked is. I look at a bunch of tools so. So stocked is really cool. They essentially have a flow for that. I think you'd actually really like it. Huh, she's also the founder of that. She was a female founder. She got acquired by Carbon 6. Oh awesome, you should check it out, yeah.

Tana Cofer: 21:48

That's really cool to know and luckily the brands that I have for the most part, I have very few with larger than 100 SKUs, so it's pretty common for us to see, for us to know. But basically, if it's less than 10 weeks, I get an alert and it's an immediate. Hey, how fast can you get this to me? I know you don't want to have you know 8 to 10 weeks at Amazon, but I think it's important to know early, especially because sometimes we'll get down to six weeks and I'm like, hey, are we coming? Is it coming? And then they said, oh, I just alerted the manufacturer and we're now we're out of that ingredient. It'll take four weeks for us to get that ingredient, but if they knew what was happening a couple weeks ago, right early, they could have alerted the manufacturer. Hey, we need this in about four weeks. What's the lead time? We we're running out of this ingredient. I can only give you 200. Okay, let's order. Right, there's more information.

Jared Ward: 22:37

Yeah, I mean, this is, the cost of going out of stock is higher than a lot of people think. You just, I mean, you went over a couple different scenarios. Yeah, when you go out of stock on Amazon, you lose your ranking. It's like so, it's not just, you're missing out on sales, it's like no you got to restart all of that again.

Tana Cofer: 22:53

Yeah, I think people think it's just sales Like you're almost like it's okay to run out of stock, like on your Shopify. And you're right, it would be okay on your Shopify because it's not that big of a deal. You can choose to put the product at the very top of the page later, right, when you come back in stock. We're back in stock. Amazon, they're not going to just serve me number one because we're back in stock. No, I have to re-earn that spot. And the way that Amazon decides it is based on an algorithm of the last 30 days, specifically the last seven. So if I've been out of stock every day, I'm out of stock. My average conversion rate, everything is dropping. And so Amazon, looking back the last 30 days, if I've been out of stock 14 days of that, it's going to take me at least 14 days, if not longer, to get back to even close to where I was.

Jared Ward: 23:38

Does it make sense? It's interesting. So many brands. We've seen so many founders. Sometimes it'll take them years to finally learn the lesson that like no, you need an operator to be looking at inventory and sort of manage that thing it's actually very important. It's very important.

Tana Cofer: 23:54

I only have five people on my team right now for the agency, just because the way we've scaled and run things really lean, which has been awesome. However, the thing that I'm looking for and I constantly am outsourcing and freelancing, you know, with Zach and other people is essentially, you know, is there a better tool out there? Is there, you know, a better person who can run these reports for me? Um, to better understand, because that's a piece that is so important to these brands. It's the biggest thing I'm constantly talking to brands about is not budget, marketing, spend strategy, like we talk about that and then it's okay, inventory, what are you going to have in time?

Jared Ward: 24:29

Yeah.

Tana Cofer: 24:30

Right, especially going into holiday, right. I'm like, ok, well, what are you going to have in time? What do you have in Amazon's warehouse? Right now it's too late to send it, so what do you got?

Jared Ward: 24:40

You need all people, need all the operators and the brand owners where they need to hear to start prioritizing inventory. Is somebody competent, like a competent voice like you explaining why this is why it's really important? Competent voice like you explaining why this?

Tana Cofer: 24:53

is why it's really important.

Tana Cofer: 24:54

Yeah, don't ignore it for sure, and then continue to look and I one of the things that I would say people focus on is they focus on their top sellers. I don't want to say beauty, but the only benefit that I have seen from top sellers going out of stock is that you then have the time and the mind share to focus on all the other items and then, realizing I made a really good collection of items, I finally was able to advertise on some of these products and now I've doubled and tripled. Now I'm in another inventory bind because I didn't realize that. But that's one of the again beauties it's not really a beauty of going out of stock is it has allowed brands to recognize the value and focusing on their full catalog, which is very important to me and my agency is I don't want you to have one, two or three products. That makes me scared for you and for me if those are your items. So, full catalog growth. If one of your products is not growing clean that assortment out, it's gone. My personal opinion.

Jared Ward: 25:49

There are so many female marketers sitting in an e-commerce company with a founder who's expecting them to work miracles, and they don't prioritize inventory. They don't really give them budget. What advice would you give to those marketers?

Tana Cofer: 26:05

My biggest advice is listen to this podcast, recommend it to all your friends, but I would really say to look at your whole assortment of product and find the benefits of all of them. One of the things that I think changes the game is when I go into a call with a brand and they recognize how much I care, how much I care about their products, what they're trying to do, and I care so much that I even looked at items that we haven't even talked about in the past six months. But I've been looking and seeing growth and I come to them with a new plan or new strategy for all of their you know bottom 20% sellers that I see potential with. And here's why I would say, when you do that which seems like it's above and beyond, but really you should be doing it at least every quarter, if not every month. Anyways, you, you show your, you reshow your value, you showcase what you know and you gained that trust from you, gained that trust from the brand, and I think that whenever I did things like that and like my higher ups would see, it was definitely like OK, we do need to fight more for budget. You're right, because you just did all this research to showcase why we shouldn't just spend money on their top seller. We should spend on all of these. So I would say that's one thing that I would recommend for sure and just like that, that empathize Like I just think it's really important to not feel like a robot marketer, and I'm a very analytical marketer.

Tana Cofer: 27:37

I wouldn't say I'm on the creative side, I'm more analytical. Data says this go in this direction, which I would say is less common for females to be. But that's just who I am. And so when I come on a call and they want to talk creative marketing, like that's great. But let's first talk about why we decided to redo the creative for here. It's because the data set X.

Tana Cofer: 27:59

So, that is why Just like to make some context around it, you know.

Jared Ward: 28:03

Yeah, I love it, so that's what I would recommend, having been so close to brands that have had explosive growth. Yeah brands that have had explosive growth. Yeah, is there like a formula, or are there specific unit economics that you look for or a brand to to blow up? So like? Is it like cogs to price margin?

Tana Cofer: 28:24

is it?

Jared Ward: 28:24

roas like what do you look for in the unit of economics of a product that's really good?

Tana Cofer: 28:30

I mean roas. I'm going to just ignore. Let's throw it over the fence. I just never talk about it. I just think it's a waste of time. Um, what way? That's why? Just because, if I like, for example, uh brand I was just finishing a call with um if I focused on the roas for our walmart sales last week, I would have brought our spend down because our ROAS was like a 3.5 and they're not profitable and that's their out of four, and so I would have started bringing it down. They had their best sales last week because the total sales were crushing it. So I didn't even look at the ROAS. I was like we're going to ignore that. Let's look at how I'm spending more and my total sales are increasing because I just increased the rank of one of their products from page two to page one.

Tana Cofer: 29:12

So I'm going to ignore that ROAS because it doesn't matter, because their total sales went up, so their tacos is what people would call that. Their tacos decreased, so their actual ratio of ad spend to total sales increased. That's all that really matters. So the ROAS is just arbitrary. It's based on a click, so it's directional. You should look at it. If yesterday was a one row as and today's a seven, you should look at it. What keyword was that? Did it drive total sales? You absolutely should. However, when it's dropping, look at total sales and see if total sales are dropping that's really good.

Jared Ward: 29:46

I I was ceo of a e-com company back in 2019, 2020, and we were owned by a private equity firm and they were oh my god, this is a yes 3x row, as it should be five yeah and it's like, um, I don't know it was. It was just such a hot type of conversation. It was really nice to hear somebody give like a really good explanation.

Tana Cofer: 30:11

Oh, I could talk hours of better metrics, but I would say the main thing that I look at for a kind of explosive growth and what's working is if the spend, if the effort, the creative, whatever it is I'm putting into marketing, if that is equating to a total sales increase and the conversion rate is staying the same, that's a winner, right? So every time I'm spending, the total sales are same, that's a winner, right? So every time I'm spending, the total sales are growing, it's a winner. The speed at which I can move a product from page three to page one, glitter-faced, within three weeks of launching.

Tana Cofer: 30:41

I was already Amazon's choice in number one, and it's because I did the right research. I looked at opportunity. I didn't even spend on advertising. I didn't need to, because I looked at opportunity. I knew what I needed to have organically. I knew how important the reviews were in this category. Like I did all that research. I did that first, I put that forward and then immediately got Amazon's choice because I did all that work first. So that's why I know you asked the question a while ago. One of the things I think is most important especially going in 2025, is looking at your conversion rate and making sure your listing is actually telling the story of your brand or converting the person to the product. I think people focus so much on ROAS and blah, blah blah, but at the end of the day, all of that it doesn't matter because as an advertiser's job, it's to get people to the listing and the listing and the product should convert itself.

Tana Cofer: 31:34

All you want to do is get them there, and if you're getting them there and your conversion's at 0.09, the product somehow isn't selling. Well, it's not selling itself. Your content's not selling or it's not good, so it doesn't matter. Your ads are never going to get better by changing the keyword, so organic is just so important.

Jared Ward: 31:53

E-commerce companies are notorious for doing fractional everything fractional bookkeeper, fractional coo, fractional blah, blah blah. They outsource freaking fulfillment, they outsource everything. Yeah, um, that's why you have an agency. And then there's a reason for it, like yeah because e-commerce, I mean, your margins are thin. You got to find product market fit and even then, like you have to anyways, when is it a good time to hire a full-time cmo for a brand? Is it a revenue or is it like health of the business? What do you? What do you think?

Tana Cofer: 32:21

I think there's two pieces to it. One of it is how much time is the founder like putting into the growth of the business? Or are they just on social media all the time, just chatting like right, like, like how is their, how is their time spent and is it spent in the best way possible into the growth of the business? Or are they just on social media all the time, just chatting Like right, like how is their time spent and is it spent in the best way possible? And if they have plenty of time, then let's keep it going right. We don't need a full-time CMO, maybe not even a fractional, so that'd be one thing. And then I would say too, the brand community, like we talked about, like a strategy for building the brand. That's why you hire a marketer.

Tana Cofer: 33:00

You don't just hire a marketer to sell product say it louder you hire a marketer to actually build a brand, for example for glitter faced I. I am a marketer, so I will hire a marketer when I can't fulfill that role. For sure and that will come pretty quickly I'm sure I will hire someone else to help me with all those things. But I have decided I will still be one of the faces of the company. My story matters. I have a story, I'm going to share it and I think it's valuable to both of my companies, especially my brand, my Glitterface brand, and why I designed it. So I will always look like I'm the face of marketing, but I will actually not be.

Tana Cofer: 33:47

A great example of this is the brand Poppy. I don't know if you're familiar with that brand. It's assumed that the woman founder is the CMO. She is not. She's on the board, of course, but she is the face of the company, which is why she's always at the thing. She's in the social media content. That's exactly how it should go. I think that's a great example we have a customer, dori, there.

Jared Ward: 34:02

She's just like that kelsey from dori. She's. She's the face of the brand. But yeah, people think she's like the marketer, but she's not, she's not the marketers tell her what to do.

Tana Cofer: 34:12

They give her the script. She goes which is exactly how it should be. That that's that's how it should be, how it should run. So I would say you need a a fractional CMO, or actually you need to move into a full-time CMO. Is a question right? You need to move to a full-time CMO when you need support in building that brand, that foundation, and so you need to hire someone, and when the founder no longer has the time to do that themselves.

Jared Ward: 34:35

Okay, awesome, great answer. Let's play a little game, let's make this a little bit fun. So we're going to and this might take us down to different rabbit holes for final conversations, but I'm going to play a little game of over under so I'm going to say something and I just want you to say whether you think it's overrated or underrated. So I'll say it. You say overrated, underrated.

Tana Cofer: 34:58

Can we start with real ass? Yeah, exactly Overrated, say overrated, underrated. Can we start with ROAS? Yeah, exactly Overrated.

Jared Ward: 35:02

Overrated, underrated, glitter-faced.

Tana Cofer: 35:06

Underrated.

Jared Ward: 35:08

SEO.

Tana Cofer: 35:09

Underrated.

Jared Ward: 35:11

PPC.

Tana Cofer: 35:13

That's hard, I would say, underrated.

Jared Ward: 35:16

ROAS.

Tana Cofer: 35:17

Overrated.

Jared Ward: 35:19

Overrated, overrated Tacos. Underrated, overrated, overrated Tacos.

Tana Cofer: 35:22

Underrated.

Jared Ward: 35:23

FBA.

Tana Cofer: 35:25

I'm going to say underrated.

Jared Ward: 35:27

FBM.

Tana Cofer: 35:28

I'm going to say underrated, because some brands choose not to go on Amazon because they can't do FBA and they just don't even think about FBM. That's why I'm going to say that, okay, walmart, walmart, sfs, I'm going to say that, okay, walmart SFS, and so it's overfilled, and WFS yeah, underrated, underrated. Okay, I'm so omni-channel, I'm going to keep saying underrated.

Jared Ward: 35:51

Fair.

Tana Cofer: 35:52

Underrated absolutely.

Jared Ward: 35:55

Three PLs.

Tana Cofer: 35:57

I don't have enough knowledge to give the best answer on that.

Jared Ward: 36:01

to be honest, Okay, Big ERPs like NetSuite.

Tana Cofer: 36:06

Mm-hmm, I would say overrated.

Jared Ward: 36:09

Klaviyo.

Tana Cofer: 36:12

I think it's overrated.

Jared Ward: 36:14

Ticometrics.

Tana Cofer: 36:15

Overrated.

Jared Ward: 36:16

Inventory management.

Tana Cofer: 36:18

Underrated.

Jared Ward: 36:19

A big product catalog Tons of oh overrated Inventory management Underrated A big product catalog Tons of school.

Tana Cofer: 36:25

Oh, overrated, uh-huh Overrated.

Jared Ward: 36:27

Being an agency owner.

Tana Cofer: 36:29

Underrated. It's the best life.

Jared Ward: 36:32

Being a brand owner.

Tana Cofer: 36:33

Underrated.

Jared Ward: 36:34

Okay, and being a mom, that's the last one.

Tana Cofer: 36:37

Underrated.

Jared Ward: 36:38

That's the best. That's the only answer.

Tana Cofer: 36:40

Was anything overrated? Ticketmetrics ROAS, roas.

Jared Ward: 36:44

I'm in the right category. Clearly, I like what I do.

Tana Cofer: 36:47

But basically almost any ad tech, I think is overrated. Really, uh-huh, yeah, absolutely I pattern. We built our own ad tech. I spent countless hours lots of yelling in meetings over ad tech, just because there's always going to be a human element and when you're building ad tech, unfortunately, from what I've seen, so many people want to eliminate the human aspect of ad tech, so they're trying to build it and I think, the completely wrong way. So I haven't even leveraged ad tech with the brands that I work with. I don't think it's necessary until you're hitting maybe $200,000 and spend a month. Oh wow. Personally, my experience Maybe it's because I've been doing it for 10 years, so I know when you should move a bit up or down.

Jared Ward: 37:36

I feel like you're bringing up such a good point and I see this in operations and inventory management all the time. You said something before like your partners that you work with in your agency, you want to get a vibe from them real fast that they care as much as you do. Yeah, to be like oh, once I get tika metrics or once I go to this channel, then everything will be good. It's like no dude, you just don't really care that much. Actually, like yeah, I find that's more often than not, that's normally. The problem is like, honestly, just caring will will take your brand to the like you said. Caring about like, how good is my list, how good is my product? Continually making it better yeah, they'll take you a long way.

Tana Cofer: 38:22

I think telling the story correctly is so important. It doesn't matter how much money you spend on ads, if they get to your listing and the story is not clear, they're bouncing. They just are. That may not have been true five years ago, but it is definitely true today. So I think that that's really important and that's why, when people think I just need an ad tech, because I just need a row as of a seven, yeah and because then it'll all work out.

Tana Cofer: 38:47

And it's like okay, I can get your rows of a seven tomorrow. I'm just gonna spend on keywords. I know you're gonna win because you're already ranked on. That's what ad tech does defensive placements, the like page five, where no one really clicks, like you're gonna have a great return, but your total sales are gonna stay the same. And you want to know why? Because because you're not doing the right work, you're not doing the heavy lifting, and that's what I want to do. So a lot of times, brands I'm with me and I'm like okay, yours is a five and I'm gonna tell you why and why I think it should be a 3.5. Are you comfortable with that change? And some brands say no, some brands say no, and I'm like okay, I told you exactly why this is gonna happen. You're happily signed with someone else who's gonna keep you with that five. I'll talk to you in six months, though I love that tana, thanks for coming today.

Jared Ward: 39:35

That was an awesome conversation yeah, I learned a lot I I hope we have a bunch of brand owners watching To close out, where can we find you? And I guess, tell her about what are you offering right now? Yeah, agency and glitter.

Tana Cofer: 39:49

Absolutely Well. My name is unique Tana Cofer. You type it in anywhere, you'll find me, but you can, you know, reach me on LinkedIn or rosieraycom To hear more about my agency. I'm offering free audits to any account, live or not live. If you're not live, I'll give you a whole strategy of how to go live and when you should, on any channel you want. That's what I'm offering right now for Rosieray and then for Glitter Faced. If you message me, I'll give you a discount on our new product, but you have to send me a video of your experience.

Jared Ward: 40:18

Well, thanks for.