493: Build an Online Business Through Content, Marketplaces, Feedback and Customer Education with Bernie Thompson

Robert Plank 0:00 marketer of the day number 493. Build an online business through content marketplaces, feedback and customer education with Bernie Thompson. Hey, everyone, we're so glad that you made your way back to us. You're listening right now to the marketer of the day podcast, and we're talking with Bernie Thompson. And Bernie has founded five companies, including the global electronics brand pluggable. And he's also the founder of efficient era, which is a company that helps other companies sell on Amazon. He's an engineer and an inventor with four patents, and he considers marketing his greatest weakness. So we're gonna hear all kinds of interesting stories and lessons. So Bernie, glad to be talking to you. Yeah. Glad to be talking to you. What am I doing on your shows? Since I'm no good at marketing? I don't know. I mean, I mean, you tell me right. I mean, I guess. I mean, at least you your market in some way. But you could be better, I guess, right.

Bernie Thompson 0:49 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So there's there's both counter market again, just then a lot of stuff that we could do better. But yeah, we can talk about all that. Well, yeah.

Robert Plank 0:57 And I mean, even despite your your marketing, weakness, as you say, even despite that, you still find all the success, right.

Bernie Thompson 1:04 Yeah, yeah. And so you know, and I think one of the things about being, you're not being a professional marketer is we've done it in a lot of non traditional ways. And so those are somewhat interesting to talk about.

Robert Plank 1:15 Well, great. Well, I mean, where I mean, where do you feel like starting? Do you feel like starting as far as like, your your origin story, or where you have gone now, like, I'm open to anything?

Bernie Thompson 1:24 Yeah, you know, just a little bit of background on us. So, you know, I yeah, I'm a software engineer by background, I've worked at a bunch of big companies, IBM, Microsoft, actually, in operating system development, which is, you know, kind of the lowest level kind of tech stuff. But I've also built a few companies. And so pluggable, which is, like you said, a, you know, a global electronics brand, we have 120 products, right now we sell them in North America, Europe, Japan, it kind of is a combination of a lot of that. And one of the you know, interesting things is, you know, we did not have a marketing specialist, a full time marketing specialist working on the company at all, for the first seven years of, of its existence, we really did marketing in a different way, with content marketing, and trying to reach an somewhat narrower but more interested audience, in more direct ways through YouTube and through content. So we really, if you were to summarize that we really had a content marketing strategy.

Robert Plank 2:31 Okay, great. And I think that a lot of people can relate to that, right? Like a lot of people out there are just doing it by themselves, or they have a little bit of a team, but they don't think and they don't have like this huge budget, they don't have this huge team. They're just figuring out as they go along. And they make it work without having everything so called official, I think,

Bernie Thompson 2:51 yeah, that's right. And I think that, you know, a lot of us are forced anymore with certainly for selling physical products, but even for other things, to work through marketplaces, and lists. You know, if you're, you know, if you're selling a product right now, in the United States, you've got to be on Amazon. And that's a big part of what we do. You know, but even if you're selling a service or something like that, you know, there's a lot of, you know, kind of service lists that you want to be on and review sites. And, you know, the good thing about that, though, is that, you know, you they do allow you to somewhat just kind of focus on your business, focus on your product, focus on your service. And they'll do a bit of that kind of basic marketing for you. If you're doing you know, your job well. But of course, you can really accelerate that with some good marketing strategies layered on top of that,

Robert Plank 3:44 yeah, I have the best of both worlds, it sounds like so like a lot of people are maybe missing out on just being listed in whatever that high traffic marketplace is, whether it's YouTube, or Amazon or something like a lot of people just miss out on even being there and being there consistently. And so when you said that you for the first seven years, you and your team did a lot of content marketing on YouTube, can you kind of explain what you did, because I know that I looked at plugable for about like 30 seconds this morning. And it looks like it's somewhat of like a USB hub, a docking station. So can you explain kind of like, what that is? And what kind of fun things you did as far as YouTube videos.

Bernie Thompson 4:22 Yeah, so YouTube has been our best marketing channel. We have about 10,000 YouTube subscribers at this point, they're all organic, that 10,000 has grown real slowly over the over the life of the company, and several million video views. And, you know, one of the things when you have some products are relatively simple, but you might want to, you know, kind of see them in context. Our products tend to be kind of complicated, they're, they're interesting, they allow they enable you to do some exciting things that aren't obvious. So kind of showing that in video form, you know, saying okay, I can connect a docking station With that USB port that I, you know, I used to only think that USB port was for mice, you know, that's pretty much all I used it for. And here, you know, I can connect a docking station and get a bunch of extra monitors and connect up my hard drives and kind of have a really nice clean desk setup with this amazing set of functionality. And it's all connecting in through this single USB port. Well, that's something people have to see to believe, right? And they want to see, you know, what works with what and how exactly do I do that. And so, you know, with our type of USB products, which are basically the the kind of more interesting high function, docking station, adaptor type USB products, we really need to show our potential customers what we can do. And then once they see it, they go, Wow, that's great. I didn't realize I could do that. I want that.

Robert Plank 5:50 Super cool. And what I like about that is that it You're so you're focusing on specific solutions, whereas maybe other companies might be tempted to put out the laundry list of all the various features. And you know, with with me if I'm thinking about, okay, there's this piece of technology, and maybe me personally, I'll only have one or two uses for that, or there's something specific I want to know that if it does, but then if you go and list 30 things like isn't it nice that we let you do this and this and this, I'm like, Well, I'm just hunting around for the one or two things that I needed. So by having those short videos that just show the uses, that seems a lot a lot more valuable for people if they're looking for that solution.

Bernie Thompson 6:31 Yeah, you're so right. And it's surprising how hard it is, you know, I coming as a technologist, it's so easy for me to tick off the features. And it's actually really hard for me to translate that into specific audiences. And the specific benefits that those audiences one, you know, because I've got to go out and do what I'm not good at, which is some, you know, solid marketing, right, and do my customer analysis and try to break things down in ways that make sense and, and try to articulate benefits that I might not even care about or see. Yeah, so so it's surprisingly hard to do it well.

Robert Plank 7:10 So was was that difficult for you to make that leap? make that transition a little bit from focusing on the features to focusing on the benefits? Did that? Did you like suddenly, like realize it? Or did it take all those seven years? Or like, how did you sort of make that transition?

Bernie Thompson 7:26 Yeah, no, I think we've been aware of that as a challenge all along, and we're still struggling with it. I mean, we actually almost talk about it every day, how can we better, you know, break this down into audiences and benefits, you know, rather than, you know, products and features, you know, and especially as we you know, head into then beyond the video into now marketing the video, or, you know, Mario or doing any sort of keyword advertising to our products, you know, we can be way more effective. If we've actually nailed that breakdown, we have correctly identified an audience that has a similar worldview about something, or similar, call it a similar problem. You know, and then, you know, we correctly articulate how that that audience would think about how to describe that problem and the benefit they're looking for, you know, therefore, the words they're searching on, you know, and, you know, I think that we have gotten better at it over the years, but I still feel like we're really bad at it, it's, it's, it's surprisingly hard. And I think it's so hard that you almost can't do it without, you know, having basically a strategy where you try to do it, and then you look at the data and you refine, and you just keep refining, you know, your audiences and your messages.

Robert Plank 8:47 And that makes perfect sense that number one, if your video is a dud, so to speak, where, you know, maybe, maybe you are excited about it, but if it doesn't use that, that language that makes people resonate, or if it doesn't talk about something people are excited about, then you can throw all the paid traffic or all the extra stuff at it, and it's still not going to be very good. And so there's that aspect of it. But then also there's the aspect of it, where there's like the feedback loop, right? Where like you put out a video and kind of based on your research, do your best stab at it and then look at the data and see okay, is that on the right track? Or is that not and so, I'm curious about so you you've been putting out these videos on YouTube and do you do any sort of like how do you basically get the traffic to those YouTube videos? Do you do anything besides just posting it and sharing on social media?

Bernie Thompson 9:37 Yeah, you know, our strategy so far has been the kind of post it look for an organic response and then double down where we see traction. So and doubling down means spending ad dollars. So so well, basically, you know, a it comes to the root of that is we don't know which of the videos are going to catch fire. You know, we'll post a video and we think Oh, that's so informative, or that's so clever. And you know, it just is a dud and no one reacts to it, and then we try to push traffic to it, and there's no reaction. And then there'll be another video where, you know, we just think it's one of our normal ones. Oh, that's okay. And you know, something about, it really kind of catches people's attention, and they want to share it. And so what we have been tending to do in recent years is we have enough of an audience where we get a good sampling of viewership just simply by posting it. And so we'll see what the reaction is of that set, you know, they're probably our fans, call them our fans, we'll see how our fans react. And then if our fans like it, then we'll start spending ad dollars on it.

Robert Plank 10:42 That's a really great strategy. And that's reassuring, because sometimes I'll make posts on a fan page or things like that. And I'll feel bad that I'm not at least throwing some ad money into every single post, but your way makes a lot more sense where you put it out there. And then you wait and see if organically it gets a lot of traction. Because if it got a lot of traction, just from that, then adding are pouring some gasoline on the fire will really help there. So that Yeah, a lot of sense. And then also the aspect of going to looking at, like you're making me think about the times I've looked back at my stats, like when, when article marketing was a thing. And I'd look at what gets the most clicks, or even with the YouTube stuff, if I had sort by the, the highest or the most viewed videos on my channel, or if it looked by what had the most watch time that month, it was I was always surprised. It's always the really basic simple stuff that I thought this is too simple. And I would kind of just make it just because I'm like, Well, I don't have a video on something really, really, really, really, you know, fundamental and something for beginners. But then I just make it just because like I needed that. But then it was a it was always funny how those beginner videos, something that maybe someone who knew nothing about what I did or knew nothing about a concept always seem to be the most popular ones. And I'm like, I'm glad, like, by looking at it, that data, I'm surprised by it. So that's why your strategy makes a lot of sense where you might have done the opposite, right? If you just double down on those that content that excited you, you'd be putting ad money into things that people don't care about. And the things people do care about aren't getting the ad money. So I mean, yeah, like your strategy. Yeah, that's, that's so true. What you're describing there. Yep, yep. Well, and so I mean, when we're talking about you and your team, you know, crank out the YouTube videos, how often are we talking here?

Bernie Thompson 12:32 Well, you know, when we've been been at our best, we have been doing about one to two videos per week, you know, and there's definitely a lot of chatter about kind of what kind of pace of video output you need to kind of get rewards from the algorithms and to, you know, kind of keep your fans engaged. We think that's probably the minimum. And you know, it's hard. We actually, in recent months, we've fallen way behind that pace. And and so, you know, there's been this awareness again, that we're failing to take full advantage of, you know, the opportunity we have, especially once you've kind of built an audience. So I don't know, what would your advice be in terms of, you know, the pacing and the consequences of different pacings with audience and with algorithms?

Robert Plank 13:23 Well, I'm not sure that I'm the the great person asked, because when I what I, I always forget to update my YouTube channel, to be honest, like, I'm good about being consistent with emailing every day. But as far as the social media that sometimes falls behind, and I'll sometimes get kind of back in the groove, and I'll be, I'll make a video like every couple of days, but for me, it's definitely a, there's a there's like, the the time when I'm in the groove, and I'm cranking stuff out for a couple of weeks, but then I'll fall off for a couple of months. So, um, but I guess, like, sort of, since you flipped things around me a little bit here, I guess what's helped me is to sometimes put things on the calendar and like, block out time to do it and have that swipe file in there. But I mean, your guess is as good as mine as far as how to remain consistent how to stay on top of those things.

Bernie Thompson 14:12 Yeah, yeah. It's, it's hard from just, you know, process point of view. In terms of the algorithm side, I mean, we definitely see a kind of a snowball effect. And what, what we see happening is, as we've built up a catalogue of YouTube videos, we think some things are going on with Google's algorithms with YouTube search and stuff, where if we're posting regularly, we seem to have more activity in our whole catalogue of videos like people commenting and liking, even going back in time, whereas we let our new videos trail off the overall activity level with our whole catalog drops off that may have to do with, you know, we try to at the end of each video, kind of point at a few other of our videos and also, you know, Google Doing that within the YouTube interface, you know that they're showing other similar videos, which are often yours. But whatever it is cumulatively kind of from an algorithm perspective, definitely feels like a bit of a snowball effect where you know, if you can keep adding to that snowball, it's just going to keep rolling faster.

Robert Plank 15:19 Yeah, that's a good insight that makes perfect sense. And especially, I mean, you could consider, like, you know, as far as the algorithm that that can get changed every, you know, every week or every month, who knows about what their exact algorithm is. But if you figure that things are more crowded than ever, things are going to continue to be more crowded than ever, then it's an all our best interest no matter what algorithm changes to keep pumping out some good stuff. So that way we can rise above the noise I'm really curious about. So if you guys put out all this content, how do you keep yourself from putting out some some really bad stuff, because I'm sure that it would be tempting to kind of like a half assed every video and just put out, you know, two or three videos a day, but they'd all be garbage. So how do you how do you find that balance between between, you know, being on top of things, but also putting out some great stuff?

Bernie Thompson 16:07 Yeah, it's interesting, we often actually have kind of almost conflict internally about, you know, do you know, do we have a quality bar, what is our quality bar, for videos, I've actually been a bit more of an advocate, you know, and I've got a team working for me, but you know, of just putting the videos out and actually allowing ourselves to have, you know, different bars, one of the strategies we use is, we try to have different employees of the company are all empowered to do videos, and we don't put a lot of gatekeepers in front of them, you know, if they have, you know, a topic that relates to our products that they want to do a video on, you know, that's their ball to run with. And, you know, we don't put a lot of gatekeepers in the way that have to approve or disapprove things, you know, we pretty much just say, Hey, you know, go ahead and put that out. So we'll have some of our customer service team, that will put out videos that are really focused around showing a problem that is a common problem that they are seeing among our customer base, and how to solve it, then we'll have you know, some other people put out videos that are, you know, kind of very marketing II, and then I try to do very kind of mostly very educational videos, often, when a new because we again, it's USB devices. So the the, one of the most effective types of videos we do is one of the big guys will come out with some new laptop like apple, you know, we'll come out with a new MacBook. And so, you know, we'll show all of our latest stuff with all of Apple's latest stuff. So we've got a lot of different kinds of videos done by different people done to different quality levels. And I think it's I think it's worked for us. I mean, there's an argument that we're not, you know, maintaining a very controlled brand image by letting that diversity occur. But, uh, you know, I think that it's worked for us. And I think, for what ends up happening in the end is, our fans will see these videos coming. And you know, some of our fans will go, Okay, well, that's one of those support videos, I'll I'll pass on that it's not what I'm looking for. Oh, that's one of those videos, kind of showing how to make the most of the new MacBook, I'll watch that, you know, that they they get familiar with some of the different styles that we have. And they just kind of pick and choose, you know, what resonates with them?

Robert Plank 18:37 Yeah, that's really great. So So three different types of videos, the troubleshooting common problem sort of stuff, the the more marketing stuff, and then the educational videos where maybe you show how to use it with certain things. And that's really, it sounds like a really great keyword strategy there. Because when the iPhone 10 comes out, or the you know, MacBook Air pro or whatever, then you can't, when you make a video specific for that thing, then now you're capturing that traffic of someone who's looking for a great USB hub to go with a MacBook Air. So I mean, that's, that's really a kind of, it solves two problems at once, right? solve the problem of getting people to you, and the problem of what sort of content to pump out there. And it's great that that you kind of just let your employees do their thing. So that way, they're like motivated to, you know, put out stuff on their own So, so that that's pluggable, and then I really want to make sure that we have time in these last few minutes to talk about efficient error. And first of all, so did this the efficient era, which is the company that helps others get on Amazon did this come about because of what you learn with pluggable or was it in parallel or how did that get developed?

Bernie Thompson 19:45 Yeah, it totally came out of pluggable. So when pluggable started as an electronics company in 2009, we made a bet on Amazon because we wanted to focus just on products and education about the products and support of the products and We didn't want to have to do marketing, sales logistics. And so we kind of, you know, bet on Amazon. And at the time, it wasn't clear who was gonna win Amazon or eBay well turned out to be a really good bet, because Amazon has eaten everybody's lunch in the years since 2009. And part of what we did in betting on Amazon is we developed a lot of software to help us sell on Amazon, a lot of it has to do with that focus on the customer and customer feedback. So we're grabbing data from all of Amazon's systems, the API's and the website, to make sure that we as a seller of products knows everything that's happening with our products. For example, when somebody submits a positive or negative review on our products, we want to know about that right away. So that we can act on it, either try to help the customer, if it's something negative, or if it's something positive, you know, potentially, you know that this is something we want to tweet about or publicize. And so we initially did this all as internal software for ourselves. And then it got to be that Amazon was so big and important and complicated, that doing that software for just one company wasn't going to be cost effective in the long term, we really needed to offer that to other sellers, so that we can all, you know, kind of afford, together amortize the cost of having a really great system to help sell on Amazon. And that's efficient era, which is this software as a service, if you're an Amazon seller, you can just sign up, we offer a really long trial more a month or more to have all of these different features where we basically take everything that Amazon offers you as a seller, and we go beyond that. And kind of each area, whether it's reviews, or E, email communication with customers, or looking at your listings or doing ads, or handling some of the nitty gritty customer service, things like doing invoicing in Europe, and other kind of very detailed things. So we try to help with all of that. And yeah, all of it, you know, came from things, problems that we originally solved for ourselves. And that's fantastic in a number of ways. First, that,

Robert Plank 22:14 that you and your software tool, it seems like it does almost everything. And I mean, I think that a lot I have heard of and a lot of people listening, I've heard of some of these tools that may be Do one thing, like just focus on the feedback stuff, or they just focus on the listing stuff. But this is great because it handles everything. And then also just that aspect of you and your company, develop something in house to scratch your own itch, and you're like, well, we put all this money and time and energy into making this solution. It's already created. So now it's like, we spent the time to make it, why not market it some more. And you're making me think about, you know, like, like Yahoo, they they can't, they had to solve all these problems have had a store tons and tons of data for their search engine. And then after they developed all that, then they kind of released that. And they didn't sell it. But they released it as the thing that you know, they spent all this time making so other people can use it. And same with Facebook, they had to figure out how to create basically the biggest database ever made in the world. So because they did all this, they had to solve their own problem. They developed the this product, the software tools, it's like, well, now that we already made it, it would be sort of a real missed opportunity if we didn't market it. So that's one of those things where it's a really simple lesson that maybe we heard a long time ago, but easy to forget. Because maybe sometimes it's like, well, I get sometimes you fall in love with some sort of idea that sounds good to you. But if it's if it's a problem that you solved, where you looked around, you couldn't find any other solutions, you created the solution for yourself. Well, that now it's like you tested it, you got the bugs out, it has all the right features for someone who need this, you were basically your your first customer. So I mean, that's a really great story. They're in a really great lesson, I think, in anyone's business, right? If there's a problem that you're looking to solve in your own company, and nothing out there exist and you create the solution. And maybe people should be looking into selling that solution they themselves created.

Bernie Thompson 24:11 Yeah, absolutely. And we've been really happy with efficient era, you know, it started out as just us and you know, we're at over 200 other Amazon sellers who are now using the software. And yeah, and like you say it's it's a it's an extra work, it's complexity. But you know, well we live in Amazon's echo system, what does Amazon do all day long? Well, they solve problems often first for themselves, and then they break them down into services that they offer to to other people. So in some ways, we're actually mirroring the the Jeff Bezos model of of, you know, going out and just you know, finding unsolved problems often ones that you're are in your own way and turning each one into its own micro business. Now, not everybody can do that and you can't do it. You know, you've got to wait for the right opportunity, but Now we've got two different revenue sources that are diversified. And it can, you know, help make the overall company more stable.

Robert Plank 25:08 Yeah. And and it evolved over time. And yeah, and that stability thing is so important, right? Because if the, if you know, one side of it sort of falls to the wayside a little bit, the other part of it can can pick up a slack. And I mean, yeah, you're so right, Amazon s3, and all those sorts of things were developed because Amazon needed to store all kinds of data, and they solve that problem, and why not have everyone else use it? And you know, like, Amazon provides those services for email deliverability, and for creating servers and virtual machines and things like that. And yeah, all develop because they needed it first. And then it's created. And now Yeah, now now marketed to the masses. So I mean, you're making a lot of sense here. And you're getting giving me a lot of great ideas and insights and stuff. And I want to make sure that after everyone has listened to our conversation today that they know all about pluggable, and they go there, and they buy a bunch of cool gadgets from you guys. And they know about efficient era if they have an Amazon business. So can you drop some links for us for anything that you think people need to know about after listening to our conversation today?

Bernie Thompson 26:13 Yeah, yeah, just head to pluggable comm it's spelled with one G. And that's all of our USB and Bluetooth devices, and then head to efficient erra.com, which we sometimes joke is a secret club for success for Amazon sellers, you have to be able to spell the word efficient, but it's efficient erra.com. And you can sign up there for a really easy free trial.

Robert Plank 26:38 So you can prove to yourself whether or not the tools will help you or not. Fantastic. So yeah, so that way you can say, Well, if I if I don't use it, no harm done, because now I can just sort of not go through with the payment after the free trial. But you jump on that free trial, you get a lot of use for it. And you can say okay, now I can justify the cost of that. I use this a couple of times. And it made me a lot more sales in my Amazon business, it got me further than I was before. So it's a no brainer to continue one and move on to the month be free just to keep that going to unlock all the all the features and use it again and again. So those are two great places that everyone should go right now number one pluggable with one g so that's p LUGABL. E to check out some fancy schmancy USB and Bluetooth devices there if and I mean we always need some some sort of USB hub to control all the wires or something else to make things cooler for us. So check out those USB and Bluetooth devices at pluggable Comm. And if you're in the Amazon business, if you have products that you're selling, if you're even thinking about creating an Amazon store or becoming an Amazon seller, then you owe it to yourself to go to efficient erra.com that's efficintera.com so I hope that qualifies me in the secret club I can hear in your ears. Oh, didn't take that much work either efficient erra.com. And we'll see you there pluggable, calm and efficient erra.com. And thanks so much burning for stopping by and being super honest with us and for sharing some of these great stories about how YouTube marketing has worked for you how you and your company have evolved. I think that it's really inspiring gives us lots of lessons and reminders to get us to where we need to and want to go. So I really appreciate that. I appreciate you. asked me to talk with you today. Robert, thank you. Do you want a podcast like this one? Well, what's been holding you back one if it was easy, and you had someone to help you get it going, check out done for you podcasting.com where we'll handle some or all of your podcast setup, production, marketing and more. See you soon at done for you podcasting.com