Join host Matt Edmundson on the Ecommerce Podcast as he explores AI search strategies with Farzad Rashidi from Respona. Discover how to leverage AI like ChatGPT to boost your product recommendations and enhance your ecommerce presence. Don't miss insights on optimising your brand's visibility in the evolving digital landscape.

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Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

2:40 Guest Introduction

5:14 AI Search Discussion

7:06 Personal AI Experience

10:09 Understanding AI Models

14:43 AI Search Strategy

17:37 Starting with SEO

22:04 Email Outreach Tips

28:27 Listicle Strategy

34:12 Follow-up Strategy

40:30 Resource Allocation

44:15 Question for Matt

46:40 Closing Remarks

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Key Takeaways:

1. Focus on Content Promotion Over Creation: Farzad emphasises the importance of dedicating more resources to promoting content rather than just creating it. He suggests an 80/20 rule, where 20% of resources should be spent on content creation and 80% on promotion. This approach ensures that the content reaches a wider audience and has a greater impact.

2. Utilise Listicle and Product Review Strategies: Farzad recommends using listicle strategies to get products featured in articles that list the best products in a category. He also suggests reaching out to websites that review similar products, even if they are not direct competitors, to get your product reviewed. This increases the frequency of mentions, which is crucial for AI-driven search engines.

3. Personalised and Incentivised Outreach: When reaching out to potential partners or websites for product placement, Farzad advises keeping emails short, personalised, and offering a clear incentive. This could be free samples, affiliate opportunities, or other benefits that make it worthwhile for the recipient to engage with your brand.

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If this episode of the eCommerce Podcast piqued your interest make sure to check out everything that gets done over here on the eCommerce Podcast, a space dedicated to eCommerce Wow!

Well, hello and welcome to the Ecommerce Podcast

with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. Now this is a

show all about helping you deliver E commerce.

Wow. And to help us do just that, I'm chatting

with today's guest all the way from Washington

D.C. Farzad Rashidi from Respona about strategies

for AI search. Or let's put it another way, how

do you get ChatGPT to recommend you and your

products? That's what we're going to be talking

about in today's show, which I'm very excited

about because we've talked a lot about AI. We

have never talked about how to conquer AI search.

So I have got my notebook, I have got my pen and

I am ready to take a lot of notes. So I hope you

are as well. Of course, if you are subscribed to

a very friendly, well presented, highly formatted

newsletter, then these notes will be coming

straight to your inbox automatically. If you

haven't yet signed up to the newsletter, you can

do that at ecommercepodcast.net just follow the

links, you'll figure it out, I'm sure, if you're

in E commerce and if you can't, maybe my UI is

all kinds of crazy or maybe you shouldn't be in E

commerce. Either way, you should probably get in

touch. But a very warm welcome to you. If you are

new to the show. Love to know your thoughts, love

to know your comments. You can reach out to me on

social media, either on Instagram or on LinkedIn

in just drop me a line, let's know what you

think. Send me a link to your website. I would

love, love, love to see it. And if you are

regular to the show and you've been coming back,

all power to you my friend. Thank you so much.

Like I said last time, it enables us to get some

great guests on the show. The more people listen

to it, the bigger the show gets, the bigger the

guest gets. Like Farzad. I mean you can't get

much bigger, can you? You just can't. So we are

going to get into all that. But like I say, big

thank you to those of you who subscribe. Now

let's talk about Foz. He is the lead innovator at

Respona, a link building outreach platform

designed to boost businesses organic traffic.

From Google. Before Respona, he led marketing at

Visme, driving the platform to over 27 million

users. Yes, you heard that right. 27 million

users and achieving 2.5 million monthly organic

visitors. If only my website had such beautiful

numbers. But Farzad welcome to the show, man.

Great to have you. How are we doing today, good

sir.

I'm doing very well. Thank you so much for having

me.

Matt, it's great that you're on here. Great that

you're on here. 27 million users. I mean, that's

just. That's a lot of people, right?

They're actually. They're just past 30. I think

that number is a little outdated, but, yes,

they're doing well. Right.

Wow. Wow. That's incredible. So tell me a little

bit about Respona. What's going on there?

100%. So Respona, in a nutshell, is a platform

that connects you to other websites, companies

that are writing content about topics that are

similar to yours. So, for example, if you run an

E commerce brand and you want to promote your

product a lot of ways, where customers will find

a product like yours or Googling, and they're

looking for products like X, Y and Z, best X, Y

and Z tools for that and this. And so

essentially, Respona helps you identify some of

these opportunities that are getting a lot of

traffic, puts you in touch and connects you with

the website owner and helps you get more product

placements. Get other websites to link back to

your website, per se.

Fantastic. And in fact, it's fair to say you are

a user of your own medicine, because how we got

connected was in fact through your platform.

That's right, yes, absolutely. So one of our

cousins actually was. Yeah, yes. So you found

your podcast through Respona and reached out. And

so since you guys were connected, he was so kind

to put us in touch, and I'm glad that he did.

Yeah. Yeah. So Alex was on the show a couple of

months ago. Alex Beck from couch.com.

That'S right.

And he's such a legend, that guy. I really like

that guy. We had a fun time. If you've not heard

the episode, then definitely check that out.

You'll find it in the archive.

Amazing.

But, yeah, amazing.

I didn't know it was released yet, so I'll

definitely check it out.

Well, that's a good point. I'm assuming it's been

released. I definitely did the conversation a

couple of weeks ago and A couple of weeks. A

couple of months ago, I think it's been released

because we've been joking back and forth about

some of the video that's been released on

LinkedIn.

Okay, great. Yeah, yeah.

So now we've been having a good time. So let's

get into this then, because originally we had it

down to talk about SEO and you came up and you

said, matt, listen, I've got an idea. What do you

think about what? I opened up with AI Search and

I thought this was utter genius. So let's just

explain the reason why we're talking about it.

Explain to me why you thought this was a good

idea.

100%. So we've, we onboard, obviously I'm still

involved with our customer onboardings. Every

single customer comes on board, I have a

conversation with them. And recently a lot of the

conversations were sent around AI Search and you

know, it's a buzzword and people are like,

everybody's talking about it. And I tend to

personally be more skeptic towards these. I'm

like, oh, it's a fad, you know. But recently I've

gotten into tennis and I was researching tennis

rackets. So I noticed instead, usually I would

just pull up Google and just go and Google, hey,

what are some of the best tennis rackets? But

then I caught myself, literally, I was on

ChatGPT, we use it quite extensively. And I was

like, hey, I was just explaining some background.

It's like, hey, I'm a beginner, but I've been

playing for a few weeks, I've been playing with

this racket and now I'm looking to upgrade and

I'm. And I'm looking for these qualities in the

racket that has some power and like you still

control and so the stuff that is a little bit

tough to communicate to Google in a way. And I

was like, wow, hold on a second. All of these

rackets are E commerce brands and as a consumer,

you know, that's looking to purchase, like

somewhat of a significant purchase. I'm literally

going on ChatGPT first, so. And I was like, wow.

And this was literally a few days ago. So I was

like, this would be a perfect conversation to

have with Matt because since it's so new and

novel, most people won't have the slightest idea

how to get their product to get recommended up

there. And this is something that obviously is

not as well talked about. A lot of people are

just still trying to figure it out. So I thought

this would be a great conversation for us to have.

And I think it is, because I'm laughing at, not

at you. I'm remembering an event that happened

just like on Monday. I think it was. I was sat

in. In fact, it was Monday. Today is Thursday. So

three days ago I was sat in a. I was sat in a

coffee shop, one of the local coffee shops. It

was Monday morning, I walked through the park,

sat down, you know, got A cup of tea and I took

my journal and was just thinking about a few

things and one of the things that's been in the

back of my mind recently was I wonder if I needed

to drinking electrolytes, because I do. Like,

I've got a. People might judge me. That's fine. I

recently acquired a Peloton bike and so I use

that three times a week. I didn't pay full price.

I just want to clarify. I use Facebook

Marketplace and got a really good price. Anyway,

I love the bike, I genuinely do. I think it's

great. But you obviously sweat a lot. So I'm

like, do I need electrolytes? Because I can feel

it during the day that I'm a little bit more

tired. And so I'm like, I. The reason I'm

laughing is because I just sat there talking to.

It wasn't chatgpt, it was Perplexity, which I

absolutely love. But Perplexity is powered by

ChatGPT. Right. So. And I, I just sat there and

went, should I take these electrolytes? And it

came back and basically said, well, let me ask

you some questions. We went back and forth and

yes, you should. And now I understand it and

you're having this little conversation and it was

like, great. Or to be fair, I did have that

conversation with ChatGPT. Then I was in

perplexity and said, what is the best electrolyte

brand that I should get? And it came back with

three options for me. So I think you should get

this, this, this and this. And it's not until

we've just been talking that I thought, where in

the world did it get that information from? And

what actually happened was I went and bought one

of those. I bought the top brand AI recommended

to me after asking me a bunch of questions.

Because you're right, I just, I look, I looked on

Amazon, I looked on Google, I thought, I don't

know what I'm getting. I don't know. Too many

options. Yeah, too many options. And I just

didn't understand it at all. And so I thought,

this is absolutely fascinating. So I'm so happy.

Why did I do that? Why did. Why did. Why did I go

to AI? And it's becoming easier, isn't it?

Because now you can just. The Chat GPT app on

your phone. I was having a conversation with it

earlier. I didn't even have to type anything. It

was just asking me questions and I was answering

and it was asking me more questions.

Yeah.

And it's just the most. In fact, I was asking it

about intermittent fasting. Should I intermittent

fast if I'm not feeling great? And it's like,

well, how do you feel? Blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah. And it's like, maybe, maybe today you

should eat a little bit earlier. And I was like,

this is just the most extraordinary thing. And so

how do we do it then? Because you're right, more

and more of us are starting to do this thing.

Yeah, 100%. So first, it's important to

understand the distinction between these AI

models. So OpenAI is a company, they're not a

search engine, they're a technology company that

builds these large language models. To LLMs, it's

that tech, the powers, essentially, language

generation. The reason why a lot of people still

use tools like Perplexity is that they use the

LLM to generate the answer, but based on

essentially information that's already public on

the web. So it makes the search results more

reliable. So when you use Perplexity, you can

understand, okay, where is that data coming from?

Like, who's actually recommending me to

Intermittent Fast? And the search results are

actually at the top. So essentially what it does,

it kind of acts like a Google search. So they

actually have their own search engine that they

built and it will go and just take a look at the

first 10 results on Google, essentially, and then

dig through each one of the websites and it pulls

bits and pieces from all of them and it

understands overlapping. So in this case, if

you're asking, hey, what are some of the best

electrolyte brands, the three that are

recommended is most likely the one that's been

more frequent and overlaps essentially in all

those 10 search results that it went through.

Now, ChatGPT is a little bit different. They have

added the web search functionality because

Microsoft owns half of it. So they essentially

are powered by Bing. What they're working on is a

product similar to Perplexity. Oh my God, I

cannot pronounce that word.

How we say perplexity?

Exactly. Yes. I wonder if their founder can say

Perplexity like five times. Like.

I'll get on the show and find out.

There's a chat 100%. Right. Anyways, so they're

actually working on a new product, OpenAI, called

Search GPT, which is essentially similar to

Perplexity. So where you can actually see the

search result and the answers are cited so you

can go and actually explore more. Which has been

sort of incorporated into ChatGPT, but since you

can't see it as visibly, they're working as

separate product. So a lot of the search all I'm

trying. And also Google itself. So they had their

sge, the search engine or excuse me, the search

generative experience. It's tough to catch up

with all these terms. And so what we're doing

essentially is like feature snippets on steroids.

So you ask Google something, sometimes it has a

little feature snippet. So those AI generated

ones were, were sort of pulled back a little and

now I'm sure they're working on in the background

because they get a lot of backlash since they're

huge. So they can't, you know, they're not like a

startup like Perplexity. If they give wrong

information it would be okay.

Yeah.

And people are going to go through them. So

that's why it's, it's a little bit more difficult

for them and slower for them as it is for larger

companies in general. But anyway, long story

short, what I'm trying to say is that we are

moving towards that direction just because the

general experience of search is changing. You can

give it more context, it understands you a lot

better and gives you more concise answers that

you don't have to dig through. Like the 10 blue

links on Google. So all that to say as e commerce

brands you need to start showing up on those

search results and that this AI models generate

regardless of where they are. And the question

is, okay, where are they getting that

information? And we want to be mentioned because

they're not. I mean chatgpt hallucinates a lot,

but as I said with their new products, Search GPT

and Perplexity, all these tools and Google's sge,

they're all grounded in search results that's

already public on the web. So they're essentially

just summarizing the answers for you. So the

question is how do you get yourself on those

search results? So it's no longer enough. So

traditional SEO is essentially you getting your

own web pages up in the search results as much as

possible for your target keywords. But now it's

no longer that because it's what we're heading

towards. Again it's majority still that

experience. But within the next couple of years

my assumption is that more and more people are

going to start utilizing these chatbots and this

chat interface. And so it's no longer enough to

get your, your own website up in the search

results. Now you also have to be on other

people's websites that are talking about topics

that are related to yours in order to have enough

frequency for it to pick up and be included in

the answers.

Right.

And that requires you to leave your cave. And you

know, people like to just sit behind a computer

and type to actually go and start reaching out to

other people, other websites, other websites that

are ranking for your target keywords and

incentivize them to work with you to place your

products and talk about your products so that now

you have a much higher chance of landing in one

of the answers that they generate.

This is interesting. So frequency then. I mean,

we used to call it backlinks, didn't we? In a lot

of ways. Or guest content and all that sort of

stuff. Right. But frequency is becoming more and

more important because this is how the AI finds

information out. It's all based on frequency, not

just the fact what was number one on Google, but.

And actually one of the things I've also noticed

with perplexity because I've got this pro mode

thing, I don't know, you put it in pro and it you

putting your information and it writes four or

five search terms. So it searches for what you

want, but then it tries to figure out what you

really want and it writes four or five search

terms around what it thinks you really want. And

it goes and searches those as well. And that I

thought was really, really fascinating that

actually I've not just got to get my website up,

I've not just got a rank for terms which I think

I need to rank for. I've now got to think about

frequency and I've also got to think about the

search terms that AI is going to use around those

search terms to try and make sure that I'm also

ranking for those as well. Strikes me like

there's a lot going on here.

Yeah. And that also adds a level of credibility.

So the nice thing about the reason why we rely on

a lot of these AI engines is that it's a

culmination of research that they've done, this

model has done at the point of search. It's not

just an individual website's opinion, obviously.

If five websites are mentioning one specific

brand, it's much more likely that that's an

actual good brand that you want to buy versus

them just placing themselves at the top of the

search results somehow. It could be an affiliate

agreement, it could be, you know, a sponsored

link a lot of the time. So that sort of adds a

level of credibility to the search results. The

more up, the more different websites are talking

about your brand and talking about your product.

Yeah, that's really, really powerful. I'm kind of

curious, where do you, where do you start? Like

if you're for example, if you're just starting

out in E commerce, you kind of going, well I'm

kind of new to this game. It sounds like a lot

dude.

Yeah.

Where do they start? You know, where's a good

place to begin?

That's an excellent question. So I actually have

some strategies that I'm happy to share. Step by

step.

That's a beautiful thing. That's what I was

hoping you would say. So let's go through the

strategies.

Absolutely. So first and foremost, one of the

simplest strategies I always recommend is what I

call the listicle strategy. So think of it. Just

put yourself in shoes of a customer. So let's say

Matt, when you wanted to buy electrolytes, what

did you search on wherever the search engine was?

I didn't actually search on the search engine.

What did I write? I think I went to Amazon. I

just put in electrolyte drinks.

Right. But when you are searching for it as in

like usually research terms like best electrolyte

brands or something like that.

Yeah I would have put in something like best

electrolyte brands.

Right.

Or something like that. Certainly that's why I

put into Perplexity. What's the best brand?

Yeah, exactly.

For this, for this product.

Right.

Most reputable. I think I might have said most.

Reputable topic best, you know, essentially

different variations of that topic. So anything

that implies to the search engine that this is a

list of I want to, I want to purchase, I want to

evaluate a variety of brands. So what, what are

the ones that I should look into? So the first

thing we do is I use this, what I call this

Google Advanced. Well I don't call them, they're

called Google Advanced operators. So Google is

very flexible when it comes to the search

strings. You can type in order to find

opportunities. And what I like to is essentially

just pull up Google and utilize these advanced

operators. One of them is called intitle. So

essentially or you know, if you're just starting

out, you're a novice, like you don't have to

worry about that. You can just type literally

best electrolyte brands, best CBD gummies, best

tennis rackets, whatever and then just go through

the search results. Using this advanced operation

can get them a little bit more targeted. So

that's they're more likely to be listicles than

there are other things. Right. But you know

you'll be able to essentially go through the

search results and then find non competing

articles. So some of them may be your

competitors. Like a lot of electrolyte brands

themselves have an article on best electrolyte

brands and surprise, their brand happens to be.

Oh, they're always going to be number one. Yeah,

yeah, yeah, Right.

So. Well, there are some of those, but there are

some independent publications, lots of them, I

would say the argument, majority of them that

are, they're not electrolyte brands, but they're

writing content about that. So it could be a news

channel, it could be a blog, it could be a health

website. So now collecting those first. So

essentially finding, okay, what specific article

from what website is step one. Now step two is

who's the right person to contact for that

website. So a lot of people just intuitively will

go and find a contact Us page or something on the

website and then reach out to that and again,

surprise, not going to get much of a reply. I

mean, unless it's a very small blog, that's the

only email they have. Like if someone reaches out

to your support channel or support email. Hello,

unless it's a sales query, then you're probably

not going to pay much attention to it. So usually

the research starts in LinkedIn, so instead of

the website itself. So once you find a website,

we usually find either their LinkedIn link or I

Google the website's domain and site LinkedIn.com

yeah, and then you can easily spot their LinkedIn

page and go through the employees. And I usually

try to see if we can find like a content manager

or editorial person or some, some person in their

partnerships or marketing or somewhere relevant.

And sometimes they don't have anyone like that.

If it's a smaller publication, maybe just the

owner or the founder. And usually at last reserve

if you couldn't find the LinkedIn page that they

don't have any sort of presence there, then rely

on the generic email. So there's that tiered

system of finding the right person. A lot of the

times, if you can find the author of the article

and check and see if that person works at the

company, that also would be a great contact. So a

lot of times they're not actual staff writers.

There might be contributors or freelancers. So

you wouldn't want to reach out to those because

they won't have any sort of editorial access to

the publication. So finding someone actually

works there. So if it's the writer of the article

and that person works there, that'd be the best

person. If not, okay, let's go to the content

manager. So then once you have that person's

LinkedIn found that you want to find their email

address. And so we actually have a free tool, you

can Google like respond to email finder. And it's

like a ungated thing that you can put in

anybody's name and domain. It will help you find

the email address. There's a bunch of tools out

there to help you do that once you have

identified the right person. And then there you

go. So that's your person. Now the question is

the pitch, right? And so how do you actually get.

So now we, we've identified a blog post or

webpage that we really want to mention on we

found the right person, got their email. So now

the question is how do we, what do we say to

them? Whatever you do, do not go on ChatGPT and

say what do I say to this person? Because please,

please don't. Not at least at the current stage

of these LLMs. So they're just going to write a

very rewarded email. Even if you give it like

some instructions, it still wouldn't sound

natural. Write that email yourself, at least the

template, the basic template of it yourself. And

there's a few things you want to hit in that

email. Just general rules of thumb that I'm sure

Matt, you get your fair share of bad cold email

since you have a popular podcast. So hopefully

these will resonate. So first thing, don't make

it too long. Keep it super short and sweet. So we

see a significant drop in reply rates once we

exceed a hundred words. So seventy, eighty words

max. That's literally like three or four

sentences.

Yeah.

So keep it short and sweet. The goal of the first

email is not to get your product place is not to

build a partnership. Goal of the first email is

to get them to reply. And if you're sending a

long list of emails and long email with a list

of, you know, five benefits of your product,

nobody's going to read that. Even so keep it

short and sweet. Two is personalization. So you

want to imply to that person that, hey, you've

done some research and usually mentioning

something interesting I talked about in the

article would, given that first line would give

that indication that hey, this is at least a

halfway decent email. Even if it's nowadays with

these AI tools it's easier to generate those. But

it's still, and it's an indication, it still puts

at that top 1% of people, 99% of people don't,

don't bother changing their templates. So

customization second and three is incentive.

Which in my opinion is actually most important of

all, but goes without saying that people aren't

just doing things out of the goodness of the

heart. Yeah, in Business most of the time. Right.

Not. There are exceptions, of course, but put

yourself in shoes of the recipient. That's.

You'll be surprised how many people I onboard

into respond. And then I take a look at their

template. I'm like, would you reply to an email

that you're sending to other people? And they're

like, no, absolutely not. I'm like, then why are

you sending it to other people? So you can't just

reach out to someone and say, hey, can you pick

up my grandmother from the airport? No, nobody's

gonna just do something for you. This is not how

the world works.

It's funny how we know that intuitively, but we

just seem to take our br of the box and just,

just go, well, this will be fine. Surely that'll

work.

Yeah.

And it's always intrigued me because you go,

you've gone to all the effort up until this

point, but you just, it's at this point

everything sort of, sort of fails.

Mm, exactly. Yeah. It's a puzzle and if you mess

on either one of them, it's just not going to

work.

Yeah.

So, so, and the thing is, because of the

abstraction technology, you're not actually

looking at a person, you're just looking at a

computer screen typing something. So you don't

really understand the fact that it's actually

going to go to a human who's sitting there with

their.

That's very true. Yeah.

So we got to hit those three things. What's the

incentive? What's in it for them? It's got to be

short and sweet and it's going to be

customizable, like customized person,

personalized email. Now you might be saying, hey,

that's a lot of work. And you know, that's what

we have, we built a tool around that. But again,

it's not to say that we're doing any magic.

Everything you can do manually yourself. And so

once we have an email crafted, send it and last

but not least, follow up. So about a month, about

a week in, so give a few days to a person and if

you're sending it manually, just snooze and

follow up once and make sure in that follow up

email you're saying that it's a one time follow

up. Right. So do not pester people. Right. That's

aren't interested. If you send two emails to

someone that haven't replied to, you're more

likely not interested. You might get some advice

other than that, but it's going to ruin your

email domain reputation because if you make

people angry they don't like your emails, they're

going to market as spam. It's going to harm your

domain or reputation. So don't do that. Be nice

to people. Just hey, it's a one time follow up. I

don't hear back. Just assume you're not

interested to remain respectful of your email.

That's it. We have done it. That's one strategy.

Listicles and now rinse and repeat, which are

keywords you could come up with. And I guarantee

you, if you've played this right, means it's a

strong enough incentive. So what's the strong

enough incentive that we should elaborate on

that. Just a few examples. So if you have a

decent product that everybody can use, sending

them free samples is good. People love free

stuff. If you have an affiliate program, that's a

great one. So if they have Listicle, you know,

they would love some monetization if they

generate some sales so you can do some revenue

share with them. So if you use share Sale or

something like that, CJ Network, whatever, that

would be a great way to also add them in. Third

one would be obviously monetary compensation.

That's the least, my least favorite because

usually legitimate publications, stuff like that

aren't interested and monetary comp. But there

are sometimes some editorial fees, stuff like

that, if it's a legitimate publication, gets a

lot of traffic. That might be something you may

want to consider. These are just examples. As I

said, there's different ways to skin a cat. So

different motivations work in different niches

depending on the industry you're in. But yeah, so

that's the Listicle strategy. That's a simple

one, that's very intuitive. Hopefully that covers

it. I have a few more, but I'm going to pause

here real quick, Matt, give you a chance to.

Yeah, no, it's really great. I, I like the, I

like the simplicity of it. So I like the

listicles. I get that. I get that. I can figure

out who wrote the article, I can figure out who

contacted them. I can do the legwork. I can go to

LinkedIn, I can figure out who it was, get their

email address and so on and so forth. I can then

reach out to them. I'm going to make an

assumption here, Farzad, and correct me if I'm

wrong, but I'm assuming that what you guys do at

Respona can do most of that legwork for me, which

is how you've sort of come to where you are on

the software. Would that be correct?

Yeah, absolutely. So the background is Vismoon

we're doing all these manually, even though it's

a software product, still a product. So we want

to get on all the best presentation software,

best design tools, yada, yada yada. So we still

had to do all that manually. So we built an

internal tool to help us streamline that flow so

we can feed it with a keyword and it will do all

the work for you. So we developed as a standalone

product and released it as a standalone product.

So that's kind of the backstory of how respondent

came to be.

Fantastic. But obviously you can do this

manually. You can go figure it all out. Yeah.

Let's talk about this pitch a little bit more. So

just because I can hear all the questions people

are asking, because the questions, some questions

are in my head, I think. So we're looking for

something that's 100 words or less, so something

about 70, 80 words in length. And I'm going to

go, hey, Fuzzad, just want to say that was an

awesome article, man. On the 10 best tennis

rackets to buy. If you're a beginner, I think

that'll really help whoever. I'd love to send you

our racket, which is also great for beginners,

would love to get your feedback on it. Can I do

that? Love and hugs, Matt. Maybe not love and

hugs, but you know what I mean, it's as simple as

that. Right? Is what you're saying is the actual

email, I'm sending that out, I've not heard from

you. A week later I'm going, hey, just check in.

This is just a one time follow up from me. Just

check in on this. If it's of interest, I'd love

to hear from you. If it's not, don't panic. I'm

not going to screw up your inbox by Matt kind of

thing. And that's in essence what you're saying,

right?

Exactly. And a lot of commerce owners already are

doing this, but they only do it within the

context of social influencers for some reason. So

they're doing this to Instagram people and TikTok

influencers. And in my opinion it doesn't make

much sense. It's not to say social influencers

don't work. They actually work very well for

ecommerce. But if you get a TikTok influencer to

post something once, yes, you're going to get

some sales and then two days later it's going to

go down to zero because they've produced new

content, there's new things getting published all

the time. So it's a constant rat race of you

paying for influencers and then their influence

dies. That post dies within I would argue 20

minutes. But when you get a reputable website

that's already getting ranking in traffic, you

get your product there, it's there forever. I

mean not forever, but you get the idea.

Yeah.

Now this not only gets sends referral traffic to

your site, now these AI tools are going to pick

them up. And so the ROI on that is insane. Even

if you have to pay for that placement, I would

argue that's a lot more valuable, not a little

bit more. A lot more valuable in the long run

compared to social influencers. So I would at

least dedicate, you know, a portion of those

influencer marketing budget to work and put it

towards these because these to me make a lot more

sense in terms of distribution. That's evergreen.

That's really fascinating. I'm curious also what

you've discovered about the one time follow up.

Now the reason I'm asking this is we have a

couple of sequences which we send out to on

colder outreach for some of the companies that we

have and we have a three email sequence. The

number one is the hello. The number two is just

checking in and the number three is this is the

last time I'm going to be in touch. You know the

hello and goodbye email, we do that in a three

email sequence. What your suggestion is actually

to bring that down to two.

What I'm suggesting is to experiment with it.

It's not and science is more of an art at that

point. One, two follow up is okay. If you go in

three follow ups, four email total, that's too

much. Cut that. So one or two follow ups. Two

follow ups is the absolute maximum. Wouldn't go

any more than what you're doing. I personally

like it when people are respectful and just say

hey, it's a one time follow up. Yeah, but again,

is that gonna make that much of a difference? No,

it's probably not going to make any dent in your

reply rates and open rates overall. But in the

long run, I think after years of doing cold

outreach, it does reduce the likelihood

intuitively. Again, this is something I don't

have concrete data on. It's my intuition that

less people mark your emails as spam, so it will

help maintain your domain repetition higher. But

two follow ups, you're doing okay. Yeah, just

don't send five.

Yeah, no, no, no, not at all. But we kind of

captured it. 3. It just sort of felt right. But

what I've not done, ironically given the Podcast

that I have is we've never tested two. And so I

like the idea of testing it. And I think we will.

We'll.

We'll try your strategy and if it.

It might make it worse. Yeah, and then you go

back.

Yeah, but we'll find out when. We will find out

from there if it makes it better. I owe you a

pint, brother. So next time you're over here,

we'll. I'll take you to the pub and we'll. I'll

pay my debt.

Sounds like a plan.

Absolutely. So what's another strategy? I mean,

that's one is the listicle. Yeah. What's your

second best strategy?

Yeah, so another one I like to do is product

review. And it's a little bit different. So

instead of you going after direct competitors,

any tool that's in your space. So for example, we

just literally brought on a customer that's in

sporting equipment. And I think they sell like

pickleball equipment, stuff like that. Well,

reach out to ones that are reviewing tennis

rackets. Like, yes, it's a different sport, but a

type of website that's writing a review. Certain

type of. That's probably not the best example.

Let's say you run, you. You have a healthy

product. Let's say you sell CBD gummies to help

you help your customers get more. Get better,

sleep. All right, well, there are only so many

CBD gummies that you can find reviews on. So you

would look up like X, Y and Z. I don't take CBD

gummies. I don't know any good brands. But one

idea, one idea you could do. So like AG1, that's

like very popular now. It's like a powder

supplement. Again, I don't take it either, but

it's like some sort of health drink now it's

within the same space. So if a website is writing

a review on AG1, they are most likely would be

interested in your CBD gummies too, because

within the realm of what you do, AG1 has nothing

to do with your product. Right. So we sell CBD

gummies there prowler that does different things.

So I would like you to sort of keep an open mind

and you should never run out of opportunities

that way. So now you take a popular brand or take

a popular product and look up. So as I said, I

sell CBD gummies, I go on Google and I look up

AG1 reviews. And yes, there are some review

sites, whatever. And then there's actual

websites, blogs that are people that are writing

reviews on, and a lot of those also have a

YouTube channel. They have other ways of

distributing their content. But it's a great way

to also find opportunities for you to get people

that are interested in writing reviews and then

essentially getting them incentivizing them to

write a review for yours. And that's another, I

would say channel that you can find opportunities

for you to do outreach. Another one is competitor

mentions. So stuff that's not directly product

reviews, but They've just mentioned AG1 in

passing. Like hey, like the title article is how

to get better sleep at night. And or. And then

one of the paragraphs is written, oh, you should,

you know, take some supplements. Maybe you're

lacking iron or whatever and then take AG1. I'm

completely butchering this because I'm not

familiar with these products. But you get the

idea.

You get to get AG1 reaching out to you going can

we just send you some so you understand what it

is you're talking about? Which is fine. They

should send me some as well. Yeah, actually no

they shouldn't because I.

Take is available publicly.

So find me on LinkedIn. I'll send you the

details. Not from.

That sounds great. But anyhow. Yeah. So basically

the art ton of the articles that you find don't

necessarily have to be a listicle or a review. It

could just be a mention. And so the way you find

them is a little bit more difficult because if

you just type ag1 there's a lot of essentially

websites or a lot of articles on AG1 website that

will show up. So you want to filter those. So for

that we actually have a. We use these Google

advancements, advanced operators that sort of

respond and builds automatically but you can

build them yourself. And that is using basically

saying. So they're trying to see if folks that

are listening how they're going to visualize

this. So there's this advanced operator called

Intext. Like Intext and then you can type in AG1.

So Indertext I mentioned AG1 but within their

text I also mentioned another keyword because

sometimes the name of a company could be like

purple.

Yeah.

What is purple? They know that's going to bring

up the color purple and it's going to bring up

the mattress. So yeah, then we'd look up like for

example health supplement. So in tax. AG1 in tax

health supplement or whatever. Yeah. And then

minus ag1.com or whatever the website is. So it's

a negative website. And you know, and then you

can decide if you want in URL Bl. So we'll

essentially just help you find blog posts. So

what that will do is that will help you find blog

posts that have been written that mention AG1 in

their content within the context of health

supplement that are not from ag1.com right. So

that will just help you by filtered out by bulk.

In bulk. So Google essentially does it work for

you? So now all of the search results now are

going to be AG1 related products or excuse me,

Agent 1 related content pieces. You could reach

out to those side owners and then instead of buys

them and then we can get more and more into the

weeds and go into more advanced and like you say,

you.

Just keep going and going and going, don't you?

Then once you enter the rabbit hole, you can just

keep going down there for as long as it goes on

for. But that's super clever. I like because

you're using some very simple instructions in

Google search, aren't you? In text. And yeah,

it's pulling up the results. You're going through

those you're connecting with, you're doing it

just got old fashioned legwork, aren't you?

Connecting with people who are already writing

this kind of stuff and going hey, can I. Same

thing, incentive. Can we maybe connect over this?

Exactly.

I mean if you were, if you. I guess my question

here for is that if you were a startup and if you

were also an established E Com business because

the budgets are very different, aren't they for

these two companies, how much time would you be

devoting to this?

That's an excellent question. So there is not an

absolute numerical number that I could share.

What I would share is in terms of resource

delegation. So how much of your resources you

should be spending. And that's usually a function

of content creation. So I like to follow the 8020

rule there. So if you're spending essentially you

should be spending 20% of your resources on

content creation. 80% of promotion to get optimal

results. That's usually people do it backwards.

They spend 80% creating content and then 20%

promoting it. And so if you flip that ratio and

again it's not to say you need to have more

resources to promote. No, produce less frequent

content and then use the excess resources you

have to spend more on promotion. So if you're

writing blog articles, write less blog articles

and have the person that's writing the content

pieces to actually go promote your product. And

it's not just product placements also for

individual blog posts that would write, we try to

get links to them and get folks to mention it.

Similar process. And so that is something that I

think a lot of people sort of mistake is that,

oh, I'm a one person show and I don't have a

whole lot of time. Well, brother, if you have one

or two of those sites, say yes, that's going to

bring an Evergreen floor customer ecommerce

store. Now as painful sound comfortable people

don't want to do it. Yeah, that's your

competitive advantage. If it was easy, then it

would have been a channel in the first place.

Right. So the fact that it's difficult is good.

Yeah. So no, I totally agree. Yeah, totally

agree. I think I remember when I saw the power of

this when I owned a beauty company and we were

checking. This is going back several, you know, a

decade at least. I remember we looked at the

analytics and we looked at the data and we were

making £6,000 profit every single month because

of one blogger in Sweden. I mean Sweden is not a

massive country. And this lady just wrote this

article was really sweet and it generated six

grand. In fact, no, it generated way more than

£6,000 because I said, we contacted her and said,

would you like to do some kind of an affiliate

link? And she says, oh no, it's fine. And I'm

like, but you would, she would in fact have

earned six grand a month off the affiliate

scheme. That's how much it was bringing in. And

it did all of these links just to get them in.

And you only need a few of those and your quids

in really. But I really, I really like this

because it's such an opposite message to what we

hear with AI. With AI, you can create a thousand

articles this week. You know, I can take your

long form video and give you 50 short form videos

in a second. But I love what you're saying,

actually create less content, create really good

content and then focus on promoting that content.

It's, it's a wonderful message because so, so

much of our time we create content but nobody

reads it. It's like if we build it, they will

come. It's not quite what. It's not the field of

dreams anymore, is it? It's not working that way

anymore, unfortunately. Yeah, so no, love that,

love that. Far as I'd. Let me ask you a question.

This is the time of the show where I say to you,

what's your question for me? This is where I ask

you for a question. I will take your question and

I will answer it on social media and then I will

spend a lot of time promoting said answer.

Sounds great. Brilliant.

Okay, what's your question?

All right, well I think then the topic that we

discussed today, I think a good question would be

how can E commerce stores. Let me reword that and

say it more coherently so you can actually

utilize this clip. How can E commerce stores

tweak and adjust and adapt their strategy in the

age of AI very customer promotion or customer

acquisition?

Okay, if you want to know how I'm gonna answer

that question, come follow me on social media, on

Instagram and just look for me on LinkedIn. Matt

Edmundson it's the same thing and I will do my

level best to give a very good answer to said

question. But Farzad, listen, how do people reach

you? How do they connect with you? How do they

find out more about your site? If they're

thinking, man, this is a good idea, I definitely

want to check out your software because it sounds

like it's going to save me hours in this

strategy. What's the best way to do that?

Absolutely. My LinkedIn is Farsad Rashidi There

aren't a ton of us out there, so fairly easy to

spot. But our website is respona.com R E S P O N

A dot com and we have a ton of free educational,

ungated resources like the strategies I talked

about. We have them publicly available on our

website. So you don't need any of these fancy

tools. If you're just starting out or you're a

small business, you can do a lot of it yourself

manually. And if you are a larger brand and you

have some resources and don't want to do this

manually, then a tool like respondent would be a

no brainer because it helps you save a ton of

time with building some of these campaigns out

for you.

Fantastic. Fantastic. We will of course link to

Farzad's information in the show notes as well,

which you will either have come into your inbox

if you're in the newsletter you can see them on

the website at ecommercepodcast.net or of course

if you just scroll down in podcast app they will

be there as well. But Farzad, listen man,

genuinely great to meet you. Thanks Alex for

connecting us. Really appreciate that and love

the conversation man. Lots of food for thought.

Love the strategies. Super helpful for some of

the other stuff we're doing in the business. So

I've got a conversation with the marketing team

tomorrow where I get them to listen to the

episodes early. They're like oh great. More but

genuinely loved it man. Really appreciate you

taking the time and coming on and sharing those

insights with us.

Of course it's My pleasure, and thank you so much

for having me, Matt.

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. There

you have it. What a great conversation. Huge

thanks again to Farzad for joining me today. Now,

be sure to follow the Ecommerce Podcast wherever

you get your podcasts from, because we've got yet

more great conversations lined up and I don't

want you to miss any of them. I never do. Hence

the reason I say it every week. Now, in case no

one has told you yet today, let me be the first.

You are awesome. Yes. You are created awesome.

It's just a burden you have to bear. Farzad got

to bear it. I've got to bear it. You've got to

bear it as well. Now, the Ecommerce Podcast is

produced by Podjunction. You can find our entire

archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app.

The team that makes this show possible includes

the legend Sadaf Baynon and Josh Edmundson, who

wrote the theme music. As I mentioned, if you

would like to read the notes, the transcript, all

that sort of stuff, you can find them on our

website, which is ecommercepodcast.net that's all

one word, ecommercepodcast.net but that's it from

me. That's it from Farzad. Thank you so much for

joining us. Have a fantastic week wherever you

are in the world. I'll see you next time. Bye for

now.

Sa.