Succeeding With Multiple Brands: Winning Marketing Strategies with Sunga Life & Boomn| EP. #92

Finding converting marketing strategies specific to your business can be challenging, but even more so if you have multiple brands that are all so different from one another. Warren Lee, CMO & Strategist for Sunga Life & Boomn, has spent much of his career developing converting marketing strategies for companies that range from beauty to swimwear to food successfully.

On this 92nd episode of The E-Comm Show, Warren shares his entrepreneurial experience with these brands, marketing initiatives that have succeeded, and the current status of these companies. Tune in as Andrew and Warren discuss marketing highlights, challenges, and tips for tailoring a marketing strategy specific to your company and niche.

If you enjoyed the show, please rate, review, and SUBSCRIBE!

Have an e-commerce marketing question you'd like Andrew to cover in an upcoming episode? Email: hello@theecommshow.com

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Succeeding With Multiple Brands: Winning Marketing Strategies with Sunga Life & Boomn

SPEAKER

Andrew Maff and Warren

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST: AndrewMaff.com  |  Twitter: @AndrewMaff | LinkedIn: @AndrewMaff 

Transcript: 

00:03

You know, it's not always about time management is about energy management, you never feel good about the work that you do when you're tired.

00:09

Hey Everyone, this is Nezaar Akeel of Max Pro, Hi I'm Linda and I'm Paul, and we're Love and Pebbles. Hi, this is Lopa Van Der Merch from RASA and you're listening to and you're listening and you are listening to The E-Comm Show

00:30

Welcome to The E-Comm Show, presented by BlueTuskr, the number one place to hear the inside scoop from other e-commerce experts, where they share their secrets on how they scaled their businesses and are now living the dream. Now, here's your host, Andrew Maff. Hello,

00:50

Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of The E-Comm. Show. I'm your host, as usual, Andrew Maff. And today I'm joined by the amazing Warren Lee, who is overseeing many different things. Boom, who's overseeing Glimmer and was Flavored PV brand, right? PB CO, PB CO, and Sungha Life, there are so many different brands. And so I'm going to pretend that I know nothing at all. And I'm gonna let you give us a little bit of an intro here, tell us a little bit about yourself. And then obviously the many different brands that you're overseeing right now.

01:22

Sure, so I came into the E-commerce world after a decade of running a company doing events, I saw that you were in the event space for a little bit doing some artist's bookings. And for anybody who's ever lived that life and get out, it's really nice to be on the other side. Did 500 parties in 2019, and was in school, doing an MBA program because I wanted a lot of people to get their MBAs for a few different reasons, I got mine because I want to switch careers and get out. So that worked out really well because I met my business partner who was getting his MBA, he was a Navy SEAL. And he started this apparel brand called single life. And we use that all through UCLA as like group projects, and actually other master thesis and a ton of other things. So we grew that brand through school, and then upon graduation, and did that for the past couple of years. And after a few years of working with him, I wanted to try to work with marketers and other people on a higher level. So I for the first time in over a decade went on the job search and found Boomin through the CEO spoke at a conference I was at and so we connected. They joined, and they let me join their team, which was super exciting a few months ago. And so now I'm working with them on Glimmer, which is a functional beauty products brand, specializing in hair masks and flavored PB CO which makes flavored peanut butter powders where you just take the powder, add water, and then boom, you've got peanut butter. And they've got a really great model that I think a lot of E-commerce companies end up at, which is they were running some brands of their own. And they just get so good at the marketing side of it, which is most of the game that we're playing, that they're like, oh, we should have an agency we should like, you know, like, have clients, like do this for other people and make money. And then they started doing that. And they're like, we should, we should maybe get equity in these companies. And they're like, we should just buy companies. So they're like a little bit of a holding company. A few of the brands that they own, I run two of them. And then they have a few clients as well. And, you know, have different deals in like different levels worked out with them, basically.

03:46

Gotcha. So when you say you run two of them, what is your role for those two brands? So it's labor PV,

03:53

it's fun because it's a little bit of what I've done my whole career, which is, you know, just solving a lot of like the entrepreneurial problems, like I do a lot of the marketing, which is a big part, but then dabble a little bit in like the product development. dabble a little bit and like the customer service dabble, like a little bit and some of the depth stuff, but mainly, like, getting people on the right path for those things. But the thing that I'm really focused on lately is just building new creative, getting more creative, made testing creative. The more the better, basically.

04:29

Beautiful. So very much heavy on the marketing side, correct?

04:34

Yeah, I mean, it's heavy on the marketing side, because at the end of the day, like as long as you're not running out of stock, and you have a good product, like the marketing is all that matters, right? Like you could even have kind of a mediocre product and you know, still do pretty well with this if your margins are good.

04:51

So you're also doing Sangha life, what's your role there?

04:56

So with Sangha's life, I've taken steps back from Doing a lot of the operational stuff that I had helped spin up. And with them, I basically just advise on like the marketing campaigns that they're running, we've heard a lot of other people to help us with, like the email side, the ad side everything side. So I just, I just check in with them here and there and make sure that, you know, the wheels haven't totally fallen off and, and then like on the finance side, which is like something that I've been, the finance side is something that I'm like more literate in. And I think maybe some other people just like going through school and like having run a business for a long time doing all the finances myself for the first few years. And I just one of the things in life is to make sure we're not going to like to have a cash problem, you know, especially is like it's most mostly a swimwear brand. So we'll make sure that we don't wake up in September with like, too much inventory, not enough dollars.

05:50

Yeah, makes sense. So with glimmer and flavored VP, two very different brands, two very different companies, how are you managing going from one brand to another, if the marketing strategies are obviously going to be pretty different,

06:05

they are different. And there is like, the thing that I've noticed lately is there's so much switching costs when it's like you're trying to be creative and like manage creative people and come up with original ideas, and then also like filter through some of the best ideas that are already out there. So how do I mean managing them both, I'm doing my best with it, but it's hard to switch back and forth. But I'm getting better at it as I go along. And I tried to, you know, like focus more on one, one or the other each day. I do a lot of time blocking, which helps like, like, keep those times separate. But for the most part, it's like the strategy, at the very, very highest level is the same in the sense where it's like, how many ads creatives can we be testing this week? what's working, what's not working? And how can we iterate on the ones that have been done? Well, you know, what's next, you know, maybe certain, like big campaigns, like new flavors for flavor. Pico, like, you know, those take up a lot of bandwidth. But switching back and forth, I feel like I mean, you probably are used to this anyway, since you've got an agency like you're switching between clients, and all of a sudden you're thinking like, you know, like, we're doing apparel, and then we're doing, you know, CPG things? And you know, so you get kind of used to it, I think.

07:29

So you mentioned time blocking, which I think is a very underutilized aspect for any business owner, and definitely, any marketer because you kind of want to set time aside for the creative aspect, right? Because you're always looking at the data, what's working, what's not working, is everyone doing their job, that kind of stuff. But what is your process for time blocking and setting time aside for being able to get creative with everything?

07:55

The one thing that I definitely do is I set aside time, every week to do just original creative work on both brands, at least 90 minutes per brand per week. So that's just dedicated time I'm not taking meetings in the morning when I'm the most focused, that's like, you know, it's not always about time management is about energy management. Like if you're a morning person in like your your best self, when it's like 7 am, like, trying to like schedule, the harder things to do then. And I think the creative work, just really, you never feel good about the work that you do when you're tired, and you're trying to make like a new creative or come up with a new copy or put together, you know, like a new script or whatever. So I do a little bit of that. But then one thing that I've been doing lately, because I just have so much going on is if I'm talking with somebody, I'm meeting with somebody, and it's like, Okay, I'll do that, I will put it in the calendar, like while we're talking usually on Zoom. So I can just like put it in the calendar, like immediately, even if it's like right after the meeting or later this afternoon. And then what you'll notice, when you do a lot of time blocking is certain things don't get done, that's just part of life. And you end up dragging them to the next day or dragging them to the next week. And they like they follow you around like this, this task that like you really need to get done. And it's usually you can never find the time. And then eventually, like, you know, you in that block of time get to hang out and meet and like finally, like the deed and it's a beautiful thing and things get done and you move the football forward. But yeah, I tried to put almost everything like that in my calendar when I can. I used to do hand-handwritten lists. I know a lot of people like that. But, um, I feel like the list is infinite. Whereas like my calendar is not.

09:46

Yeah. So between these two brands, you know, you're setting time aside to be creative, but because they're two very different brands. Imagine the creativity is yellow but different. And then of course, I'm imagining private Believe the channels that they're doing the best on at least from a digital perspective are different. Is that the correct assumption? Or is there one specific channel where like, no, both brands actually do really well with x?

10:11

Well, we definitely specialize in metal ads. So we're pushing on those really hard but like, the difference is like, people are searching for the search for flavored peanut butter is like not so competitive. So like we do well on Google there, with glimmer, not so much. We also do, flavored PB CO on Amazon, Glamour doesn't really belong there at this stage, and maybe ever, like beauty products on Amazon is sort of a tricky spot to be depending on what it is. So, yeah, and I think the, like, when I'm trying to wrap my head around, like building these new, like creatives and you know, trying to get into the flow, like, you know, like to take a lot of notes into notion. And, you know, I'll try to find like, one or two angles to hit, right? So with, like, flavored PB so it's like, are we targeting? You know, parents that are buying this for them? For their kids? Are we buying there retargeting parents who are buying it for themselves? Right? Like, two different angles. So it's like, Okay, pick one of those angles. And then. Okay, great. So we're targeting parents who are buying it for themselves? Like, are we trying to, like, get them to buy it? Because it's, like, good for them. And it's healthy? Are we trying to get them to buy it? Because it's quick to make? Are we trying to get them by it? Because it's, like, tasty. It's like, okay, well, why don't we go like tasty for this next creative, it's like, okay, cool parents who want something tasty. And then that's like, the initial like, like, a little bit of a little bit constrict, a little bit of constraint really helps with creativity. So like, put those two constraints together, and then figure out like, what's your hook? You know, how are you going to agitate the problem? Like, what are the steps that need to come together? I try not to get too far into the weeds on like, like, you know, what are the shots we need? Like, what should the talent look like? Like, you know, which influencer content creators we use this time, like, I try to leave that up to the creative team, but trying to get the ideas together. And the script, you know, that usually comes from me, or at least, like, it's directed by me for a little bit.

12:22

How large is the team that you have helping you execute all this?

12:25

There's a team of about 25 people plus some other vendors that, you know, like, work on, like, different different channels. And then of course, there's like, like, on the glimmer side, you know, there are manufacturers that, you know, obviously we do not do things like

12:47

okay, what aspects are you keeping in-house versus what you're outsourcing?

12:52

The things we're keeping in-house are the video editing, and video editing, although a little bit of that gets outsourced when the editing team gets overwhelmed, which happens like consistently because we make so much creative. And they're, they're rockstars, there's just a lot to keep up with. And then we also, we also keep in-house, we have a staff copywriter, we have on staff, videographers, photographers so that for some of the product shots that we need, we can just work with them directly. You know, one of the videographers, and he's an editor on the team, he'll actually like to make recipes. He loves it, they'll make like really cool recipes, and we'll be able to put that together. We do outsource some of that too. We have an in-house customer service team. I think the sort of the big one's customer service teams a huge one too because it's like they're always communicating with us. I know a lot of other people have theirs outsourced, Sangha life our customer service team has outsourced. But it's, it's nice to have those people on the team full time, you know, talking with us, like every day about every little thing.

14:12

You mentioned that flavored PB COEs got a decent search volume and that they're able to get some traction out of Amazon. Are you doing anything from an omnichannel approach of you know, kind of leveraging both platforms simultaneously? Are you kind of choosing to keep them very separate between the website and Amazon? We

14:31

do keep them separate. But we're about to go. Do the thing where you start advertising on Google your Amazon channel. Apparently, word on the street. And maybe this is an old word on the street, but it's new to me. Amazon likes it when you send them traffic from Google. So you know that's like it. What's interesting is like one of the more searched one of the better search results that we get for favorite PB COVID is peanut butter on Amazon. So someone will search for that and then click our ads, which is kind of funny. But it just goes to show like, you know, with Amazon-like, yeah, biggest search engine in the world, or, I don't know, maybe third after YouTube, you know, I mean,

15:18

yeah, so I've actually done a good amount of that kind of stuff, right driving traffic from off Amazon to Amazon, there's a lot of pros and cons with it, you get, there is a benefit, you can get the organic improvement. But you also think if you're driving a ton of traffic, and it's not converting as well as you'd like, it actually can hurt you. So you have to be kind of wary of who you're sending and what terms you're going after, and make sure they're going to convert otherwise, it makes your conversion rate fall, which actually hurts your organic ranking. So it can be very beneficial. I've seen it do great, but I've also seen it go the other direction, which is why Amazon started doing that with the prime option that they've gotten now and started implementing that so that you're not benefiting from the organic side. But you can still benefit from using FBA and all that. But I digress. What uh, so Okay, so obviously we talked about the medicine we've talked about the Amazon side, the two are very different elbow, I would say to probably both benefit from like an influencer marketing side, have you gone in that direction at all?

16:18

Yeah, we do quite a bit of influencer marketing with Glimmer, that's gone super well, with some of the influencers, it's gone. You know, just like everything you experiment. And, you know, like, it's, it's interesting to see, like, it's interesting to manage those campaigns. Because, you know, you care a lot about your brand. And you want other people to care too, especially when you're like writing, writing big checks for, you know, just a few few posts. So communicating exactly what you want, while still like, you know, giving an influencer-like room to breathe and not being too overwhelming is, is where we've landed with that. And we have found some absolute Rockstar influencers, that we that have been like a game changer for the business. But the thing that I'm going to try to focus on going forward is like, you know, let them do their thing. Also, like really hope that Instagram actually does let us do links and reels, which is a feature they're supposed to be rolling out soon, would be nice. So but let them do their thing. But then every, like, in every contract going forward, what I really do need from them is like the day after results on their side, because we could give them an affiliate code, or we could, you know, do things through like a ShareASale affiliate thing, whatever. But it's nice to see like, how many clicks they actually got through on Instagram, and then compare that with the results. And, I think that that alone will be like an Instagram is weird, right? Because like sometimes they'll post something and look at like a that, like 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of, you know, like engagement. But sometimes they'll post something and they won't. So you know, maybe we got unlucky, but I want to see the numbers on their side before we decide to work with people again. Because if not, it's you know, it's hard enough to get the metrics on our side, you know, I mean,

18:21

yeah, are you it sounds like you're pretty much consistently paying influencers, you're not doing anything from a seeding direction, where you're just sending a product for free.

18:30

We're trying to do a mix. So like, that's one thing that like, so that's one thing that after seeing people do this a few different ways. It's like, yeah, there's been some, like, people who are influencers, one of the influencers we found was somebody who's just a customer, and she's been amazing, right? So, yeah, yeah, it is genuine too. And I swear, it's like a, like, online energy thing, where like, if somebody genuinely loves your product, and they do because they're a customer, and they actually love it, and they actually want to tell their audience and they actually, like believe in it as much as you do like, like, their post is just going to do better because of like, the magic of like humanity or something. Yeah, you know, it's just like, I think that there's a lot of opportunities there. But it's like if somebody tagged you in a post and you look like oh my gosh, this person has like a million followers like we should get in touch with them like, like that process. Like you know, that's where like the that's where like being a good manager comes in like building that process like every little step like we've got a built out an air table with like a lot of different ways to like to follow up with people and rank people in like, you know, make sure that like conversations are being had and I can take a look and like from the top level and make sure that people that I said that we should connect with are getting connected with and And, you know, just like moving forward that like kind of seating thing. And then also like people who we think are interesting, like, you know, they're in our caught like an influencer CRM highly recommend air table for this if you want to go beyond Google Sheets, which is totally fine, but just, it's just better. It's just better. I mean, like, once you do use air table much in your life in your world, yeah. It's like, once you use an air table,

20:32

what do you say? It's basically a requirement at this point.

20:35

Yeah, I mean, it's like, like, I've done air table for a few projects on like other things like a volunteer for, like this political Oregon, I tried to get them to use air table, and they are using it a little bit. But like, someone gave me so much pushback, she's like, this would be so much better as a Google sheet. And I was like, but it wouldn't for like, all these reasons. And anyway, I digress. I air table is not paying me to say any of this. But like, if people haven't spent time in airtable, that's like, the next best tool you can learn, like, change your life anyways. So um, we have like a, we have an influencer CRM, that is all in air table. It's nice because it's customizable. The whole team can work in it, the customer service team and work in it, or content. She's like, our, like Content Curator, she works with a lot of influencers. She's in it, I'm in it. And then it's like, you know, like, someone will like to find somebody and be like, hey, like, this person would be great for glamour. It's like, awesome, like, that's in a group chat, like on Slack, like, how do you actually like, take that idea? And like, do something with it. So, like, building the process for that has been, has been something that I really like to see come together. And it's, it's doing pretty well. And so that's the longest way possible to answer your question. Are you doing organic seeding?

22:01

Sponsored by air table? So, alright, so you're involved in Sangha life, you obviously are obviously in two brands, and boom, and you've owned your brand before? What? What is it that is motivating you? Like? What is what's kind of thing that gets you up every morning and keeps you moving?

22:21

I you know, when you end up at like, parties, and you don't you introduce yourself, or you know, people like what do you do? Or what do you like to do, depending on where you're at, like, when you're not how like artsy the crowd is like, you give them different answers. But my favorite answer to some of that is, I like to build things, I feel like in another life, I probably would have been an engineer. In some ways, I guess I am. But it's like, like, II getting to do this work is really interesting, because you're building something like just from you come up with ideas, and they actually, like, get to be, you know, put out there in the world. And, you know, it's a game that you play, where if you put it out there, like dollars come back, and then jobs get made. And then people are able to do interesting things with their lives, like outside of work. And I just love seeing stuff get built. I love seeing processes get better. I love I love seeing people work together, in a way that everybody feels better about it than it was before. You know, like those things like those things I think are more exciting than the money the money has been great. And it's nice when you can get like a high ro eyes on things. And it's like, you feel like you're it's like when you're like doing well in the stock market or something you're like, it's like too easy. It's just, it's just working. It's going up, that is neat. But at the end of the day, like I don't know, I think I think almost everybody like feels a sense of fulfillment when they build something new in the world. Whether it's art, whether it's a business, whether it's you know, whether it's a family, whether it's you know, naming a thing. I think a lot of people like I think that's what makes everybody tick at the end of the day, and it's important. Yeah.

24:22

Beautiful. definitely agree with that. Warren, thank you so much for being on the show. I don't want to take up too much more of your time, but obviously really appreciate it. I'd love to give you an opportunity to let everyone know where they can find out more about you and more about everything you got going on.

24:36

Nice. Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn under Warren Ryan Lee. Single Life is Sungha Life, Glimmer, Flavored PB CO, on all the socials, mostly Instagram, and then of course, all their websites too. If you use the code, "IknowWarren you get discounts. So there you go.

24:59

Nice. There you go. There you go listeners born really appreciate it. Thanks so much for being on the show. Obviously, everyone else who tuned in thank you as well. Please make sure you do the usual where you rate review, subscribe all that fun stuff on whatever podcast platform you prefer, or head over to theecommshow.com to check out all of our previous episodes, or to check out our 100th episode that's going to be airing live on August 30, which is gonna be super fun. We're gonna hope to see you there. Everyone. Thank you so much for joining us per usual. Thank you, Oren. Thank you.

25:31

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