In this episode of Perpetual Traffic, Ralph and Kasim talk with Lauren Petrullo about various topics related to digital marketing and e-commerce. They cover the benefits of user-generated content for affiliate marketing and the potential of an in-app affiliate network for monetization. They also emphasize the importance of integrating SEO, copywriting, and AI tools in blog production, developing an SEO content plan through keyword research and collaboration, and content-rich websites for URL expansion in digital marketing. The episode concludes with a reminder for e-commerce owners to not leave money on the table and to check out the resources and links in the show notes.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• 00:00:00 - The Shocking Blog SOP Guaranteed to 40X Your Traffic With Lauren Petrullo
• 00:04:13 - Introducing Lauren Petrullo and discussing e-commerce and digital marketing
• 00:07:32 - Surprising benefits of Facebook Shops and its underutilization
• 00:10:14 - Importance of user-generated content in affiliate marketing
• 00:12:14 - Potential of in-app affiliate networks for monetization
• 00:14:27 - Changing e-commerce landscape: everyone is a marketer and influencer now
• 00:16:04 - The role of AI in creating content with human intervention
• 00:18:48 - Why an intermediary is necessary in building AI like a Lego castle
• 00:21:57 - Creating a successful shopping blog with AI-generated content
• 00:26:57 - Using Google Doc with Chrome extension for SEO to determine SEO score for Korean skincare brands
• 00:31:45 - Conversions through organic traffic to blogs with Google Performance Max expansion
• 00:36:18 - Importance of content in marketing and the new ecosystem
• 00:39:37 - Customizable replacement product feed for out-of-stock items
• 00:44:13 - Targeting the US Spanish-speaking population online: benefits and challenges

Tools Mentioned:

• Shops on Facebook
• PT Episode 416
• Mongoose Media
• Cosmo Headlines
• SurferSEO
• Performance Max Expansion
• Florida Man Birthday

LINKS AND RESOURCES:

• Lauren Petrullo on LinkedIn
• Tiereleven.com
• Solutions 8 
• Perpetual Traffic Survey
• Perpetual Traffic Website
• Follow Perpetual Traffic on Twitter
• Connect with Kasim on Twitter and Connect with Ralph on LinkedIn

Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic? Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review!

Mentioned in this episode:

AdCritter for Agencies

New Ecommerce Strategies Webinar

Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic Podcast.

This is your host Ralph Burns and this is the show where we share cutting edge strategies and acquiring leads and sales to acquire more customers for your business through paid traffic.

That's our new intro.

Cos what do you think?

Even though I sort of messed it up a little bit, but it's better than it was just all about paid traffic because we're talking authentic.

Well, yeah, we try to be authentic here as much as possible.

And in our little banter time, I will say this, that I am a little bit intimidated by today's guest because she gives us a lot to live up to because I think hands down, she gave the best Perpetual Traffic review in history.

It might be the best podcast review ever written in my opinion ever written.

You know, what's funny is we didn't know she'd given us that review until today when she showed up to record and reminded us Ralph, I think you should read it.

It's so self serving cos it's like one of your humble brags really.

It, it really is.

It is.

But now that you've brought it up.

There's no other option.

Yeah.

Right.

I'll read it really quickly and this is where people tune out.

This is where people pause and go back to their app and then no, they go to like Masters of Scale or how I made this something like, oh, hold on.

Let's reframe this.

This is a copy writing lesson is what it is.

You're about to get a lesson in copy.

It's phenomenally well written.

It's very engaging, very entertaining guy.

So it's a copy lesson.

All right, I got you.

And it wasn't a I written because it predates a I no sort of kind of.

But if you write a review like this, maybe a year and a half later, you'll actually get onto the show, you get on perpetual, which is exactly what happened to our guest here today.

So, all right, here it is the trashy romance novel equivalent for tactical digital marketing knowledge.

This podcast is both the slow burn of how to grow your campaigns, but more importantly, how to lay a foundation for the successful climax to your bottom line.

Wow, it's like a trashy romance because you just can't put it down.

Hopefully, my wife isn't listening to this.

She was just here.

As a matter of fact, Kassam Ralph takes the theoretical improvement strategies down to digestible bites for actionable items.

Small business owners need Kasam Aslam or Kasim Islam deconstructs his agency's complex strategies for solos willing to put in the work for long term growth, you get both the heart fluttering quick wins in the raunchy raw data with honest insights and actionable tips, entrepreneurs need right now.

I think she's actually blushing because she's in the virtual green room on mute.

I've dropped big money on big names in this space in this podcast is a realistic way to skill up your digital marketing without the Kumbaya fluff or stupid expensive investments.

I never knew how to spell Kumbaya until right now it's with a K U, by the way, not like K O M like kombucha.

This podcast value is in the breakdown of specific areas.

They don't drive by a topic, they get down and dirty in the details.

I'm an agency owner in the e-commerce space and this is my arsenal of continuous learning and that is a great damn review.

That's how you write copy right there.

Yeah, that's great copy writing.

But you also read that at one point, Ralph in an English accent.

I don't know if you caught yourself.

I don't know.

But you started.

That's how good the copy is.

When it changes the reader, I will be irreparably changed.

I don't even know what irreparably means.

I guess that means I won't be the same person that I was before, but I'm changed now that I've read it.

So I think that's what good copywriter does.

So today is a little bit about copyright.

A little bit about A I a little bit about all kinds of things and we're pretty excited to have Lauren Petru here on today's perpetual traffic episode for the first time.

Even though she somehow got into the feed, the digital marketer like spun her in from the other like crappy show that digital marketer does.

Now, I can say that now that Ryan dice is no longer our boss.

I don't love Ryan.

Anyway, welcome to the show.

Lauren Petru.

Hello.

I'm just gonna be here.

Blushing and blushing.

She's beat red, blushing, beat red costume.

I know you guys have known each other.

Well, Lauren and I have known each other for many, many years but didn't really know that we knew each other.

We sort of knew each other virtually.

You guys actually have known each other.

So, tell us a little bit about today's guest, maybe a little intro before she drops her tasty nugget here.

Yeah.

Well, here's what I'll say to our listeners is Lauren is worth following.

I think she's one of the most promising up and comers that I know personally as evidence of that, she joined the virtual green room an hour and we just now started recording because we couldn't stop talk.

Like every conversation yielded two new conversations.

She's brilliant.

She knows a lot about a lot.

She's wildly, wildly funny and she produces amazing content.

I asked her to be on perpetual traffic because I kept stealing her shit.

So she posts a lot on linkedin and Twitter.

Go follow her on both and you've got a lot to learn.

I actually envy where you are in your career right now.

Lauren because you truly are on the cutting edge.

I see you playing with stuff that like I know is gonna be absolute game changing.

But I'm too old and decrepit to even start trying anymore, like to go figure out new things and reinvent myself.

So I follow and steal from people like you, which is the luxury of being in my position.

But I'm glad that you exist so that I can do that.

So thanks for being here.

You're welcome for existing.

I'm glad you exist so I can steal your shit.

Is that what you're basically saying?

It's so much more than that.

Yeah.

Well, not even shy about it, so not to build it all up too much.

But I guess we probably have at least in the 1st 57 minutes since we've started recording here and only you.

The perpetual traffic listener gets to listen in the last five.

Tell us your nugget and this is a cool one.

This is all about shops as I understand it on the meta platforms.

Yeah.

So if you have an Ecommerce store and you are selling online and especially to the US audience, you can spend anywhere between 40 seconds and four hours putting together an Instagram and Facebook shop.

It is the most real estate of a button on an Instagram mobile app for I G the shop and it allows you to get in front of new customers.

You get data like who liked your stuff, new organic exposure.

And there's such a supply and demand deficit right now of shops that aren't setting up even at the 42nd integration level for Facebook and Instagram shops that the supply of massive amount of organic exposure is still for me uncomfortably easy.

We spent four hours on multiple accounts and have set up revenue streams on shops that are over $50,000 of new business annually.

You set it up once you can spend as little as 40 seconds of integrating the app and then you can see lots of organic exposure.

And the best part is all of that data because it's first party meta is then retarget in your Facebook ads.

So you can retarget anyone that's been to your shop and didn't buy, provide exclusive coupons.

It's really easy to set up.

I don't think you've ever really talked about shops here.

Like, I don't know why I've never heard anybody bring up shops.

I mean, we've talked about it maybe with Angela and Kobe a couple of times just sort of in passing.

But why is it so underutilized?

And I guess that's the first question.

But the second thing is we talk to Facebook every two weeks, they never talk about it.

I don't know why they don't talk about it.

We always thought it was gonna be like this big thing, especially staying within platform.

Remember that I L S 14 update thing like this was one of those big solutions.

Why don't people do it?

I mean, the obvious answer is it takes time to set up but not really that much time.

But why is it?

I think people assume that it means creating another website.

So like having to manage new listings like an Amazon kind of thing.

So, a lot of e-commerce brands don't enter the Amazon space because it's overwhelming and keywords.

And do I have the product descriptions and it's a lot too much?

So I'm just gonna focus on my dot com versus just connecting the feed.

And I think it's underutilized because the e-commerce store owners or the marketers themselves are not actively buying on Facebook and Instagram.

It's not full adoption yet.

Like Ariana Grande from an Instagram app.

I see it.

I want, I like it.

I buy it and not have to leave.

It's not taken to the global market as much as I check GP T has even though A I had existed primarily before, why they're not talking about it.

I don't know.

That's really interesting because we've gotten lots of free money from Facebook to push ads to the shop place.

The amount of U G C. Like the best part is for people that have really sucky websites, really slow websites what the shops do is you don't have to be reliant on a website page that you coded that is slow to load.

That isn't mobile optimized matt has done all of that for you and you don't even have to worry too much about pictures because you can connect U G C. So if someone uses your hashtag or tags, you specifically, you can do a one click request to use their U G C in your shop.

Really?

That alone is huge.

I feel like the, yeah, the ability to pull in the U G C in an easy way.

I mean, that's the biggest needle mover in e-commerce.

In my opinion, you all remember Ezra Firestone's Firestone Footer.

You know what I'm talking about Ezra in his eco training had this, I don't even know if he still uses it anymore, but he had this construct where on every page of his website, he had what he called the Firestone Footer and it was just a gallery or a collage of U G C. It was testimonial videos, images, screenshots, selfies, people using your product.

Here's what's interesting.

I've never had a bigger lift on conversions than I have when we started using the Firestone Footer for clients.

That one thing, you know, it could double conversions in some instances.

And so having a quick and easy way to do that in app, I think that alone is huge.

That's massive.

Well, the greater applications is the connection of the creator because they're gonna eventually get a benefit and then you'll be able to do affiliate marketing because you'll say yes, you can use your U G C and then set up a quick, hey, I'm gonna tag your my products in your story and then I'm gonna get a little bit of affiliate commission.

Tag the store.

So if I'm wearing this jacket, you really like it.

I'll tag the jacket instead of the brand, the brand will like it because I'm getting exposed to my product, the creator will like it because then they'll be able to eventually have commission based on that affiliate purchase without having to do the crazy codes and all the stuff that currently exists.

Well, so that's interesting in order to do that, the creator would need to already be an affiliate and be using their affiliate link, right?

That's not on the merchant, that's on the user in the current marketplace.

Yeah, the affiliate has to have that negotiated agreement, but where everything is so obviously laid out, you say cos you don't want to try out new fancy things.

I would say I'm not trying out new fancy things.

I'm literally just looking at what China had been doing five years ago because we're behind on them.

So like predicting the future is looking in their past and so ways that they've done this with their Ecommerce apps is instead of tagging the brand, you tag the product and then just through osmosis of the app, you agree to that relationship at large.

So meta handles the creator relationship at a very base level, you can always engage at a higher engagement level of how many deliverables.

But if you're just saying, hey, yeah, if I tag it, I'll get an affiliate commission.

The way Amazon does, you sign up for an affiliate commission and you get your like 30 cents, that stuff is being so clearly paved out with the advancement of shops.

So if the Facebook teams aren't talking to your team, Ralph about it, it's probably because it's just different departments.

Well, it's just a question Lauren.

Do you think meta is gonna begin brokering affiliate relationships or do you know for that for a fact?

There are betas out there with specific influencers and?

Oh, wow.

Ok.

Yeah.

Again, it's not widely adopted.

I think the biggest reason why people aren't using it because they themselves aren't buying directly on platform, they're buying by going to an outside site.

But the groundwork is so obvious in the betas that they've made available.

Why wouldn't I just tag the product specifically?

Because if I'm going to a store that has 6000 skews, I'm never gonna find the exact one I want and then I'm gonna have too many friction points versus the, see it click by.

You are blowing my mind right now.

Y'all.

Can you think about the implications of an in app?

Affiliate network that didn't have all of the preamble that affiliate networks do now.

So I just bought a sauna and if I wanted to post a picture of me and the sauna and instantly without any other context, just say like, oh, anybody who clicks and buys a sauna, I'm gonna get a percentage of that sauna purchase, no matter how small it is.

Why wouldn't I do that?

You just turned every human on the planet into an advertising node and you could do that across every network.

I think about youtube, youtube is where people go to.

So every software I've ever mentioned instead of youtube, I could suddenly monetize.

Holy crap.

This is huge.

How long do you think they roll it out globally?

Oh, I think the biggest push is gonna be always around Black Friday.

So they're gonna push everything they can to be q four ready globally.

I think it'll be next year where it's like regularly adopted.

So pre pandemic shops was only available to a very exclusive number of scores like Sephora was one of the early ones and if you are super interested in spending 40 seconds to four hours max on creating a shop like Creep Sephora because they're very integrated with meta and are always testing new stuff.

But it was with the pandemic that meta accelerated global acceptance of e-commerce stores to have shops.

So this was two plus years ago, that shops became openly available and we still have brands that aren't incorporating it.

I will say one thing is I know it was put on hold from meta's road map because they focus more on e-commerce physical deliverables.

What was supposed to come out in early 2021 was the digital products selling those in a commerce fashion on Meta but that all got put on pause because of the pandemic and focusing on getting people access to tangible goods when they couldn't go to the store themselves.

The digital product scares me too because that's gonna be an absolute shit show.

Every coach and co creator and consultant all of a sudden like you're just gonna have nothing but an exploded feed of like garbage info products.

How is that different from today?

It's not at all still the same.

It's just now every info can say, oh I have an Ecommerce store and their e-commerce is just a digital product and it will help again facilitate the relationship because you'll be able to engage at a deeper level and it's just first party data that then meta can use for their advertising.

People use, everyone becomes a marketer.

Everyone becomes an influencer regardless of how influential you are.

How big your network is.

You're still an influencer.

So you don't have to be big to be influential.

That's a quotable, Ralph, you don't have to be big to be influential.

Hashtag Lauren a 100%.

Well, we will get into the heart of today's episode, talking about how to get 2000 organic visitors to your blog post to well over 80,000 organic visitors to your blog, not using A I, but maybe using A I custom, not sure which it's gonna be, but tune in after the break to find out you're listening to Perpetual Traffic.

And we're back with Lauren Petru NBA dog, Mom Yogi Shakespearean actress, agency owner and podcast guest.

And Lauren's gonna share how she went 2008 and friend, friend.

Yeah, bibliophile, you have to be careful with words that end in file because it just people assume things.

Lauren, you have a case study to share with us 2000 to 80,000 organic visitors in less than 12 months.

How did you do that?

Too long?

Don't listen.

Is that the T L D L too long?

Don't read equivalent for a podcast.

Yeah.

We had used like three software tools for us to create content with A I, not by A I. And if you tell me, you write content by A I for your blogs.

Like, don't, don't tell me I won't be nice in my.

What would you say?

Hypothetically speaking, let's try this out.

Lauren, I write content exclusively with A I, no human intervention and then I post it.

You're a garbage monster.

He's going to destroy all of your credibility in Google and choke on your insignificance because you suck so bad at life.

Awesome.

It's terrible.

It's the worst in the world I think you've ever gotten.

And don't forget all your Twitter threads too are, are written by Chat GB, a unqualified plot.

Please do not continue.

We're definitely getting that bad rating on podcasts this week.

Yeah.

So let's now that we're getting the bad rating, let's just go completely off the rails and just, you know, let's go all the way, go all the way.

Exactly.

So, Lauren, how did you do it?

You've got a proprietary process, right?

What's the gold, the skinny, the secret sauce.

The secret sauce is that it's not one person.

I think what's been really helpful for us is the adoption of A I as a tool and not as a replacement by any means, but something that our team can run with and check in on base to make sure it's not going out of control in any capacity.

We do the same handoff and deliverable that you'd expect from most blog production incidences.

But in the past, we did a lot of tests comparing if a copywriter who knew the top subject matter really well created content without the S E O P s, if we did just S E O focus content and then if we did blogs with A I only content and we were spanked three times back and forth with how poorly they all failed.

When in comparison of this like integration of we have an S E O manager that does the keyword research.

We bring in the copywriter, we use Jasper as our main A I tool, but we also use chat GP tape.

Um They'll bring in this A I tool to enhance their content, not start their content from scratch.

So it's almost like getting a box of legos and creating what our end vision looks like for the blogs versus what we see a lot of people doing now, which is, well, I mean, it's OK.

There's gonna be like a reckoning soon and I will be there to say I told you so, but they're instead of like buying the legos and building the project, they're stealing a completed set that's already glued together and then making it fit on their website and they'll get fined for it.

I just, I'm gonna pause you there because that is the best analogy I've ever heard in my entire life on what we're doing wrong with A I, if what we're trying to build the output is a lego project, what we used to have is, you know, you just bought a whole box completely separate pieces and you got a piece, 5000 pieces together all by yourself.

What we are trying to do is just hit the print button and have the Lego Castle.

And what you're saying is like, hey, you can build the parapet, you can build the moat, you can build the, I don't know other castle pieces, but you know, what I mean?

Like, you can build up and then a human comes and pieces them together.

But you have to have that intermediary.

Am I getting that right?

Yeah.

Otherwise you'll look like every other castle and you'll become genericized.

Like you want to have the castle.

That makes sense for your audience because maybe they're deathly afraid of alligators and don't want the moat or maybe they want to build a draw bid to a secret chamber that really floats their kids' wildest dreams.

Yeah.

First of all, castle without a moat is not a castle.

You need a dungeon.

It's funny.

I posted a Twitter thread that was a I generated one time and instantly got called out on it instantly.

One of my Twitter followers.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was like a weird social experiment.

I posted Twitter thread and then I was gonna follow up and say, hey, just so you know that Twitter throws a I generated, but I didn't have to follow up because some dude like responds and basically asks chat GP t the exact same prompt.

I used to get my thread and got something very, very, very similar.

And you can see it in my Twitter thread.

If you want to go hunting, it was right around New Year's.

But I love the Lego analogy because I feel like you can extrapolate that like in three dimensions.

And the more granular you want to get maybe the draw bridge is the most important part of your Lego Castle.

And so that's where there's more human intervention.

But the other pieces really can be copy and paste and every business is going to be different with their, copy, their media creation, their content, their product imagery.

So I think that that's a really good way to look at and approach this.

Lauren.

Thank you for that.

I'm gonna see.

I'm gonna steal that from you.

This is why you're here.

You're welcome, steal, steal away.

Do you have full permission?

I'll just be here to be like the secret man behind the curtain wizard of Oz of all of cos really good ideas.

So whether they were stolen from me or not, I'm gonna start taking credit for all of us.

You know, I just got uno reversed.

You see how that should give her, give her credit no matter what another piece that I would just be like hyper aware of with regards to like blogs of what I think allowed us to see replicable success because we're seeing the same type of track and grow on websites that have zero brand new websites.

Getting this just massive visibility ranking for keywords really, really fast is ways to ensure that there is human element to it.

We use A I 40 up to 60% of the article is written with A I but it's guided by someone who knows and understands what our end goal is for the article But I think what really was the catalyst of success.

We started making our blog shopping.

So we used the time that we save from A I, right?

It could take our copywriter 1 to 3 days at times to write content about subject matter that they're not experts in.

And now we can go from idea to upload in under two hours all that free time we saved.

We were then able to understand or look at what can we do to make this blog better?

And we made our blog shopping.

So we had this blog that in 2020 one generated $250 of sales.

And then in Q 4, 2022 after we implemented shop ability to our blogs that were written with A I in October generated $3300 in sales.

And then in February, last time I looked was $3400 in sales just for the month alone.

So adding these touch points that send the algorithms signals that I'm engaging with the content.

I'm not reading it seeing, oh, this is clearly A I, I'm dipping.

I'm taking actionable items like buying from the blog itself.

Adding to cart directly versus clicking on a link to go elsewhere has just avalanched our organic traffic to where I'm fairly certain we'll hit 100,000 organic views within 13 months or organic visitors per month within 13 months of launching this whole process.

That's amazing.

So the tools are jasper A I and then obviously the human element, you said there was three tools.

If I'm not mistaken, it's a trip of success because you don't want to use three because you'd have to pay, I think Phil Jackson or somebody like a couple of bucks.

I don't know.

Exactly.

Well, so any content written for blogs with A I, if you're just writing with A I, again, you're losing out the S E O P. We use surfer S E O. It's been a game like it's the easiest tool and it's embarrassing how much it guides our work.

You literally have this gas gauge from zero to 100 you can see what your score is of S E O likelihood of success.

So our bare minimum is 70 but really, it's a demand of 80 and we'll write blogs that score 78 to 94.

And then we'll get thousands of visitors to that website to that blog within a few months and it tells you which keywords to implement.

So it's like giving you the instructions for a castle that you want to build with a Lego set.

If you want to make it 1/13 century version.

That's brilliant.

Can I show y'all something super embarrassing for our listeners?

I'm about to share my screen and I'm going to lab a grenade at surfer S E O because, yeah, when you try to and, and these poor people, this has happened to me before but when I Google Surfer S E O, the organic results, their sight link extensions are all entitled.

So surfer S E OS website is not S E O optimized.

I'm just such a malicious do that.

That makes me so happy.

I misspelled it.

No, actually I m it is.

They're being outranked on the paid side though, for like two other tools.

But they gotta come hire solutions.

eight oh and look, they have the Firestone footer.

You go to Surfer E O and you scroll down and it's just like this insane collage of reviews.

Sorry, Lauren, I interrupted you.

So there's Jasper Surf o what's number three?

Click up, click up is the project management tool because it touches five or six people.

So because it's not just a copywriter that's writing the blog with Jasper with an A I tool.

There's multiple steps.

So we need to know like where is the keyword research done so that it can progress along otherwise it becomes a mess and you're like which ones?

And there's post it notes everywhere and but click up is not an A I tool or does it have A I features that I'm not aware of?

No, it doesn't have any A I tools.

So it's the quintessential element of organizing because now in this quarter, we're finishing up 78 blogs to add to this website for someone who is a part time copywriter that would not be possible without the A I part time copywriter produces 78 blogs for this account.

Yes.

Oh, gosh.

And what's our average length of the blogs, like word, word wise?

1500 to 3500.

Well, well, I mean, that's almost a pillar post.

Yeah.

So our S E O manager will do like we do glue maps and build out like what is our content plan?

And then the first step is the S E O manager will find keywords for that topic.

Then pass the keywords to the copywriter.

The copywriter will use the main keyword and surfer.

Create a Google doc.

I can show you what that doc looks like if you want where it tells you here's how you do this article.

Well, for S E O, I'm gonna be stealing that doc.

Yes, I'll show my right now.

We are on youtube.

These episodes will be on youtube.

Just look for this article is generating right here.

So this is tens of thousands plus visitors per month and we insert this keyword and then it tells us which keywords to use and to get our score to be this high.

It gives you this recipe on the right hand side.

So it's dummy, I proof for our copywriters who know not thing about S E O. But yeah, the copywriter gives the seed keywords and then the copywriter uses content editor with surfer creates this doc starts writing the blog, then it gets reviewed and the team then goes in and adds interlining out linking and shop ability to it.

So all those pieces come together, the developer makes it shop.

Do you understand what I mean by shop?

I was gonna ask you that, but for those of you who are listening and not actually going on the youtube channel, but we just showed was a Google doc if I'm not mistaken with a chrome extension for surf S E O. Is that what that was?

And on the right hand side, we actually sort of see all the keyword prompts and then the score at the top if I'm not mistaken because we're not looking at it right now.

But yeah, and so it was an 87 out of 100.

So we knew that at 80% chance of being an S E O success for that article for which particular aim at 80%.

But which that's the traction rule, y'all know that, right?

Which keyword was that for though?

What is it trying to rank for?

I know that there was sort of a word cloud on the right hand side.

But what was it that you were trying to rank for Korean skincare brands?

Korean skincare brands?

OK.

Got it.

So it's that good.

That's pretty good.

Like a real time tool, surfer S E O. So obviously, you know, we'll get an affiliate link for that and, and put it in the show notes of course.

No, but that's, that's the thing is really, we should be getting paid for surf for S C O and per Lauren's point.

The whole world is going to become an affiliate ecosystem soon.

That's true.

Why not start the waterfall here?

That's I'm gonna show you that and show you what the stop is.

So it's this, we made it where you can add to cart directly from the article so that you don't have to interrupt and leave.

This is how we had previously done it where you click on this and then you have to go to a different product page.

But if you're on the article like no, I want to keep reading instead, you don't have to.

This is what we're talking about.

So just click and add to your cart right now.

So making it all shop is how do you create a plug in?

Right?

Yeah.

What is the plug and what's the capability to be able to plug in?

No, we custom coded it.

So we built a formula and then we just have a PDF.

I'll give you, I'll give it to you.

So you can see what that PDF is but we have VA S that know nothing about coding that just insert like OK, at name of product at URL of product.

So you build this formula inside a meta field and you're done.

So as we're reading in the article, so I just want to explain this to people who are listening.

So as you're reading the article, the product is mentioned and then you have a field below that product mention that actually shows visually the two products in this particular case which they can click to and then it opens up in a window on that page.

I assume the same happens in mobile assuming.

Well, that's just the cart function of Shopify theme, but it has a button for add to Cart directly without you having to go to the product page to add to Cart.

Got it.

OK.

It's very cool.

That is what we mean by shop.

The whole point is don't just write blogs by A I just to have content on your website like prompts don't matter as much as purchases at the end of the day.

Purchases over prompts.

Yes.

But at the end of the day, like why are you blogging?

Are you blogging for your health?

Well, you're blogging to sell stuff, right?

Isn't that kind of the reason at the end of the day?

Right?

I mean, blue underlying links, which is what we always used to say way back when in the old days, obviously, if you're gonna be mentioning something along the way, why wouldn't you prompt in your copy itself?

What are the, do we still talk about the Johnson boxes?

Johnson boxes are like opt in forms in the middle of a blog post.

I don't think there's even a word plus plug in for any of that.

But literally, it's embedded calls to action within the content itself, make it as easy as possible for people to take that next step.

Whatever it is, whether you're in a Johnson box for an opt in or whether you, you know, writing an article on Korean skincare products, make it as easy as possible for them and combining that with A I with this surfer S C O tool.

That's pretty damn cool.

You have the ingredients of how to make the article rank for success.

And then you have enhanced elements to show Google that this isn't just written by A I. It's written with A I and it's made for the human because at the end of the day, they want to make sure the content shows expertise, authority and trust.

And if you're doing these types of actions, it's engagement on the blog, the way that you like I was telling you earlier about the Twitter engagement, any social media platform will reward you for engaging directly on platform.

And so Google is gonna, this is my conspiracy theory that those signals on the page are going to show the algorithm that this content is highly viable for the next person doing that same search query because they actually took action versus leaving the page, going to another interior page doing the same behavior that they do on most other websites.

I find that bringing this back to paid advertising as well.

I mean, obviously we're talking about a lot of organic stuff here.

What we've found is that we have a lot of customers that do a really good job with their blog.

And there are calls to action in a lot of cases, probably not as good as what we're talking about here, especially on the e-commerce side.

But when we use Performance Max, sending it to an e-commerce store and then we use Google Performance Max expansion, URL expansion.

What we find often times is like 80 to 90% of the traffic that converts goes to a block and it's not even using some of the stuff that you're using, right?

Like really shopping, it's like blue underline links or maybe a side bar, that kind of thing.

But think about the journey, whether you want to say it's the customer journey, the customer acquisition path, whatever it happens to be, people need to consume content before they actually make a purchase.

There's a fair amount of consideration that goes on here.

So the end of the day, if you're doing content marketing, you're not doing it just to do content marketing, you're doing it to sell something.

But that part of that process is consumption of content, whether it's podcasts, whether it's youtube videos, whether it's blog posts and all you're doing is just facilitating that and allowing people in a very frictionless way to be able to take that next step.

But I don't know if you see that too much with URL expansion like taking it over to the paid side cost, but we see it huge right now.

Dude, URL expansion is one of the miracles of digital marketing that can convinced me that I'd be out of a job soon.

The fact that Google is gonna send you to the page on the website that it thinks is most relevant and that page is not always a commercialized page and Google is more often than not.

Right?

Blows my mind.

So somebody who's not ready to convert Google sends them to a case study or testimonial or product or info or you know how to or whatever.

And the more content rich, your website, the better equipped you are to accept that traffic because nobody clicks and buys.

Think about your own browsing experience.

When was the last time you clicked on an ad and bought the thing?

Never, never.

If you did your lemming, right?

Like you click and you watch and you research and you ask and you post and like nobody clicks and buys and so arming yourself with content rich user serving content.

Lauren's talking about is an absolute complete total prerequisite for organic, for paid for social, for affiliates.

We live in the age of the educated consumer and if you're not willing to educate your consumer, somebody else will, maybe if you're really good one in 100 people will buy from you.

That's a 1% conversion rate.

Like you're really, really, really good e-commerce.

The conversion rate on e-commerce stores is anywhere between, well, depending on which metric you use, let's just say for the sake of argument, it's anywhere between 1% and 5%.

Well, maybe that 1% is people who have consumed single digit pieces of content or videos or whatever it happens to be.

But the people who are on the 5% or 10% side have probably been to your social channels, probably visited your site before, probably shopped your competition, probably read some articles.

Everything is a precursor to that journey to that ultimate conversion.

So when people see the average conversion rate for an e-commerce store is 5 to 10% depending on which study you look at.

We just did a massive study on this and like numbers are all over the map.

It's not because people are seeing and buying unless like we always say if you have the cure to cancer.

But still if you, even if you have the cure to cancer, you're still gonna have to educate people on why it is the cure for cancer.

So the point is, is like what Lauren is talking about here is like an integrated strategy, whether it's organic, whether it's paid, it doesn't matter, just making it really easy for people to take that next step is the bottom line here.

I love it.

It's the person that identifies and defines their value proposition is gonna be the one that benefits from that value proposition.

Here's what's crazy.

Even if everybody has the same value proposition I mentioned, I just bought a sauna.

The company I bought the sauna from, made a huge deal about low E M F like, oh we're low E M F and here I think I'm using the right acronym but electromagnetic frequency.

And so they had this chart on like here's what a hair dryer is.

Here's what a microwave, here's a computer, here's a cellphone, here's our sauna, super low E M F. We're not gonna microwave you, you're not gonna get cancer, you're gonna be OK.

And I'm like, oh man, that low E M F thing.

I need that.

The sauna is three times as expensive as any other Sonic.

Here's the funniest part.

I get the sauna.

I'm set so up and then I'm talking to a buddy who knows he used to run fitness studios around the country and he goes, oh dude, all saunas, all infrared red light.

So are E M F they, by virtue of the way that infrared works.

I wasn't even MADD.

I was like, good for those folks, you know, brilliant.

You need mechanism.

Yeah, they built up this value prop that in my mind.

I'm like all of the things equal.

You're low E M F. I'm buying your sauna and God bless them, man.

So, but they needed to have that content and they did, they had downloadable PDF s the chart, the video, the explainer, the whatever.

And so when I did my research, that's how they got their hooks into me.

And what Lauren is doing now with one part time employee to be able to produce almost 80 blogs is insane.

But that's where we are.

That's the new ecosystem either play or die, right?

You downloaded like the infographic on what is low E M F they say is the marketers are the easiest to market to.

But you just sort of prove my point, right?

Fabulous.

Yeah.

Like what else can you add to?

What we've already talked about if you want?

The way we've taken the blogs is when they were.

So again, the biggest is because we're writing with A I, we've saved time and with that time, we found ways to make a better user experience and once we've gotten all this blog traffic, then we started doing with A I Pinterest posts.

And so then we're just creating pins with a click of the button of the Pinterest comics browser.

The content we generate with A I really quickly under two hours, creates an automatic pin on Pinterest and then that pin is generating outbound clicks back to the blog.

So it's just all the time that we saved allowed us to 10 X the impact which is embedding shop ability to the blog, letting us do the other pieces.

I don't know if that's helpful or useful.

The embedding shop is pretty cool.

You got, you've got in there.

Do you have a plug in or anything like that?

Like a candy bar at a grocery store aisle?

But that's something that you guys do on your own.

It's not a plug in that you sell or, you know?

No, no, we coded it.

Custom, did it all ourselves?

Made it look like Amazon.

We actually stole the idea from Cosmopolitan articles because I think Cosmopolitan is the best resource for headlines.

Like again at that grocery store aisle 17 ways to make your o last longer.

Oh, everyone's gonna buy that 17 ways to me, that's a great article.

Best Cosmo headlines ever, I think by copy blogger, we'll leave links in the show notes and it's one that's still on my favorites to this day, the cosmo headline technique for content inspiration.

And we will leave that in the show notes because if you've ever been in the grocery aisle, oh my God.

It's a copywriter's dream.

It's not quite as good as your review, but it's right up there.

Just look at any cosmo the next time you're in the grocery store.

For those of you who actually still go to the grocery store, check it out and People Magazine's pretty good.

The National Enquirer used to be this way, but Cosmo is just the king and it's usually it's right there.

So if you stole it from there.

That's a pretty darn good source.

So as far as folks doing that on their own, like what would be your recommendation if they don't have a programming team to do it for them?

Yeah, we have specific Shopify developers so you can obviously hire as we could do it for you or just get a coder, get a coder that no Shopify and then you build a formula and you want to make sure that it's a formula that you then get your explanations.

Because again, it's va s that don't have any coding experience that will copy and paste.

Here's what the formula is.

So every time you use this formula inside the blog and you put the different pieces, it's gonna pull that data to display it on the blog and like another level we did because that's hundreds of skews on that site.

We even did a few extra hours of coding in a replacement product.

So the store will read.

Is that stock, is that product out of stock?

OK.

Replace it with this product instead because we were finding that we sold out of everything from that blog in two months without looking like that is so cool.

So it's almost like it's tied into the product feed to a certain degree or, or categories within the feed itself.

Well, it's pulling the product itself.

OK?

Because in the formula, we do like dash dash at name product dash dash at URL of the product dash dash, what you want to have said above the product and you write it out, dash dash, what you want to say below dash dash, what you want the button to say.

So it's totally customizable to say whatever you want.

It's gonna pull that product from the data.

You give it based on the URL and then it has a reader at least how we've coded it to make sure if this product is out of stock, then show the backup product that we've added to this formula.

That's brilliant.

Laura, you just gave me an idea for a K P I to track its conversions for content.

You take a look at the amount of content available on your website, benchmark it against conversions that are taking place and bet money that the more content you create on specific products, the more conversions are catalyzed over time.

The question becomes, how long does it take from point of publish to point of purchase?

And my expectation obviously being product and category dependent, it's longer than people think.

And everybody views all data in 30 day timelines and I don't know why marketers do this because it's stupid.

But I think if you publish a blog like nine months later, you start seeing an uptick in sauna sales for instance, which is a larger purchase.

And so it's gonna take a longer time.

But I'd be curious as to your just gut reaction to that, how long do you think it takes between publish and purchase impact?

I think publish and purchase impact is a longer like that article was written and published.

November 20 29th, 2022.

And it has generated thousands of dollars of sales from it.

Now, it catalyzed because other smaller articles have been published in May and June.

My gut reaction is, it takes at least six months for visibility, but then there's compound pounding.

Once you start getting some, there's a halo lift for all the next uploaded articles that carries weight because you've proven already to the algorithms of the world that this is a more viable piece of content.

That's my conspiracy theory assumption.

Gut reaction.

Yeah, it's hard to tell though because if you're creating a lot of content on one topic, you don't necessarily know which content is attributed to the lift.

The user journey isn't adequately tracked at the top of the funnel.

And so a lot of this is just going with your gut.

You know, it's like media efficiency ratio with paid traffic you just have to produce and then get a sense as to where the wind is blowing.

Well, where the wind is blowing for us has been the more content we develop, the higher our average order value and frequency of sales has correlated to where we're at.

Because we're doing 78 blogs Q two, we did 40 blogs Q one and we did like 25 blogs Q four last year.

So now we can see that the more we content, we create the velocity of sales and again, the average order value, which it is really interesting because that keeps going up.

But I will say in this other conspiracy theory, if you will, only because we've cleaned up so much time that would have previously been devoted to these tactics is we started doing in September once we started seeing this pick up content in Spanish and now we're seeing the content in Spanish rank significantly faster and start doing sales before because we're looking at analytics and track where sales came from that blog specifically.

That's where my next assumption and hurdle or exploration goes.

So if you're too old or too bored to not do it, you can steal all that.

I'm just gonna need you to come bring me the quick and easy version later.

Let me know how it all goes be like, hey, we started doing content in Spanish and this is what it was.

Yeah, for people listening, if you haven't explored expansion through translation, it's such a missed opportunity.

I've got a buddy.

He's in our mastermind and all he does is he takes North American products and he translates them into Spanish and Portuguese and he brings it to Latin America and he doesn't, by his own admission, he doesn't do it.

Well, he's like, dude, you do 60% of the way there.

And because nobody's producing.

It does phenomenally.

Well, the bar is so low and if you're already doing all the hard work physical products or info products, you might as well.

There's no reason not to do that.

The one thing that you're doing it with a I though, oh, go ahead.

It's trash.

The language translations are awful.

Yeah.

And when it does it's gonna be unfair because that market is so underserved.

Especially in the US.

There's like 50 million Spanish speakers in the US.

That's the 26th largest population in the world.

If it were its own country, just the US Spanish speakers is the 26th largest population in the world.

Wow.

Yes, I believe it's 53 million.

I'm going to fact check myself.

This is the question that I've always sort of had in the back of my mind.

If you have a US based product and you're selling it obviously on your English language based website, landing pages, sales pages, et cetera.

If you translate to Spanish and then set up your targeting.

So you're targeting people in the US who speak Spanish.

Does that get the same lift or are we talking separate countries specifically?

Which sometimes you do have to watch out separate?

Ok.

Well, what we found is that when you do go to separate countries because of, OK, he'll actually come to you and say, hey, I don't want to touch North America.

I don't want to compete with you.

At all.

License your thing to me and I'll go sell it to Latin America and he's doing that because he doesn't want them to feel like he's gonna bleed into their, you know, be a competitor.

But I think our customers ralph, everybody should be translating onshore too.

Like, why wouldn't you do that to the point that I think you're making?

Yeah.

No, that's my question because I mean, going to the other countries obviously makes a whole lot of sense and not even just Spanish speaking other countries like Eastern Europe, Western Europe as well.

There's expansion there.

Potential.

One of the things you do have to watch out for is price point, especially like in the Eastern European countries to a lesser degree or a greater degree depending on what your product is.

But the point is, yeah, this is a big deal.

I would not say that A I is the tool to necessarily use.

Sometimes it goes the other way.

There's stuff in my father's from Pakistan, there's stuff in Pakistan.

It's actually more expensive, more expensive to get iphones in Pakistan than it is in the US because of import and electronics can be more expensive vehicles, vehicle parts can be more expensive.

So there's like arbitrage to be done if you can get it here and ship it there.

I think it might have been before we actually started recording.

But Lauren, you were mentioning things in Brazil are more expensive.

People buy it in the US and then bring it to Brazil, which is counterintuitive to say the least.

So I'm in Orlando, Florida.

And if you go to a Target near Disney, you will see Brazilians guaranteed every day buying carts worth of stuff because what they can fill in a suitcase that they can resell in Brazil will pay for their entire family's vacation.

So they'll bring as many family members as they can because they all get 2 to 4 suitcases each.

So each suitcase pays for an entire vacation.

And it's just this like mass exodus of product.

So we're creating content in Spanish for the US market.

So we use keywords specifically like our youtube channel as small as it is still has over 200 subscribers.

And that content that we're doing specifically for the Spanish market in the US.

Our Spanish speakers that buy from the Spanish content will spend over 100 and $50 when compared to other average order values of different markets.

But this is also from what we did at Disney, which was having the Portuguese content in the US targeted towards people that spoke Portuguese because if they had gotten here, that price point discrepancy didn't matter because they had already arrived into this economy, whether they were vacationing or staying with friends and family.

So they knew the cost of admission in US dollars and it wasn't a consideration.

Fascinating.

We could continue to talk here for quite some time here.

Lauren, just when we thought we were ending the show, we go on this translation to Spanish.

Rant.

Rave Fabulous to have you on the show finally.

Really?

For the first time, even though it's been sort of your second or third time be because of reposting from digital marketer.

Where can people find you where you mentioned something about them being able to hire you, which is an option for people here.

But also where can they connect with you on the socials, et cetera?

Sure.

So it's Lauren E Petrillo because some great monkey doctor in Colorado stole all the Lauren Petrillo socials first.

Oh gosh, grab your name, especially if you're married or considering getting married steal that handle first.

So Lauren E Petrillo and then my website is Mongoose media dot us.

If you go to Mongoose media dot us slash P T, you can get my entire blog S O P. It's 10 pages with pictures that walk through all the steps to hand off all the different pieces.

That is Mongoose media dot us, correct forward slash P T. Yeah.

So for those of you who are looking to uh some of the blog like, will they actually have examples of some of the blog posts that we've talked about here with URL S et cetera?

So people can look at that or is it I can add them to it?

That would be fabulous as well.

And I'll send you over the pieces too, of how we made our embed at least showing you like our PDF explainer for how our VA S make our blog shop.

Damn.

That's value right there.

You know, it's amazing that we don't charge for this podcast.

Really.

I think we should wait.

We don't.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, everybody's listening.

Should have been Venmo me this entire time.

There is so much money embedded in the last 50 minutes or so.

It's crazy.

Especially if you're an e-commerce owner.

Oh my God, you're leaving a lot of money on the table.

So listen back to this again for crying out loud and go over to perpetual traffic dot com for all the resources and links that we talked about here in the show notes to make sure that you do check out Lauren E Petru.

Not the monkey doctor.

Is that what you said?

Monkey doctor?

The monkey doctor is Lauren Petru.

She's super smart and she's also blonde, but she's like uncomfortably beautiful and has a phd so impostor syndrome all the time.

Yeah, you make people money.

That means nothing.

I don't believe in education as a pre quer for intelligence whatsoever.

I think people who are doing their career with the School of youtube are much smarter because they didn't pay for a University of youtube.

She is she really a monkey doctor or was that mean her posts were all about researching monkeys?

And then I stopped looking because I was getting so jealous and I was like, I don't want that in my life.

It's great success to her also cos I'm on Venmo trying to send you a joke of money and you don't wanna show up like I couldn't find anyone.

Ralph H burns by the way.

Just if anyone wants to Venmo me anything.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for coming on perpetual traffic.

Make sure that you subscribe and leave a rating and a review.

Now, if you leave a review like Lauren left her review, you might get a shot at coming on the show might take a little while.

But my point is is that it really does help increase our listenership and help marketers like yourself as well as CEO CMO S and people have all kinds of backgrounds to scale and grow their business here at perpetual traffic.

So certainly leave a rating and a review much appreciated there.

Let us know what we can do better over at perpetual traffic dot com forward slash better and follow myself.

Ralph Burns on linkedin and Kassam, I suppose over at, at Kamala on Twitter, even though all his threads are A I generated.

Apparently it's not true, not true.

Just giving him a hard time, go back and listen to previous episodes and check out our youtube channel new plug at the end.

There's like two or three perpetual Traffic youtube channels.

We're trying to consolidate them all.

But go to the one with Kassim and Ralph's smiling faces looking right at you and not many subscribers.

But we are putting these shows on our youtube channel, which is very helpful, especially with a guest like Lauren who did a fair amount of screen sharing here today.

So check that out, like I said, all resources and show notes over at perpetual traffic dot com on behalf of my awesome co-host Kasam Aslam.

Peace.

Until next show.

See ya.