In our recent episode of Stimulus Tech Talk, Nathan Whittacre discusses all things marketing with Emma Schermer Tamir, the CEO of Marketing by Emma. Join us as we delve into the world of e-commerce, marketing, and the power of storytelling in building brands.
Elevating E-Commerce: Unraveling Marketing Mastery with Nathan Whittacre and Special Guest Emma Schermer Tamir
The Power of Keywords and SEO in E-commerce
Emma emphasizes the importance keywords and SEO in the e-commerce landscape. Extensive research is often required to identify the right keywords, strategically driving traffic and optimizing product pages. She illustrates the impact of effective SEO by citing a case study where updating product page copy led to a remarkable 200% increase in conversion rates.
Differentiating Your Product from the Rest of the Pack
An important aspect of marketing a product is distinguishing features from benefits. While features are the factual aspects of a product, benefits focus on why those features matter to the customer. Emma emphasizes the need to ask, "Why does this matter?" multiple times to uncover the emotional drivers behind a customer's purchasing decision. Customers typically make a decision based on emotion, but also want to make the logical choice for their needs.
How to Craft Copy That Draws the Right Customer
There is an art to crafting compelling copy that resonates with the target audience. Emma highlights the importance of understanding the customer avatar and tailoring language that speaks directly to them. She shares insights on avoiding keyword stuffing and striking a balance between SEO optimization and reader-focused content. She also emphasizes the importance being relatable to the potential customer. The key is to draw in the person who is looking for your product, not force your product on everyone.
How Blogs Can Help Marketing Efforts
Blogs emerge as a powerful tool for businesses, not only for SEO but also for engaging with customers in the upper funnel. Emma discusses how providing valuable content through blogs positions a brand as an authority, fostering trust and connections with potential customers.
AI's Impact on Marketing
The impact of AI in business touches every aspect, including marketing. While AI is transformative and democratizes content creation, Emma emphasizes its limitations in generating truly unique and personalized content. Human experiences and nuanced storytelling, she argues, remain irreplaceable in building authentic connections with customers.
Marketing is always evolving. Whether it comes to E-commerce, traditional marketing, digital marketing, or copywriting, there is always something new to discover about connecting with your potential customers.
Be sure to subscribe to Stimulus Tech Talk to keep up with all of new episodes.
Elevating E-Commerce: Unraveling Marketing Mastery with Nathan Whittacre and Special Guest Emma Schermer Tamir - transcipt
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
customer, keywords, emma, selling, product, ai, business, create, marketing, seo, conversation, amazon, brands, benefits, commerce, traffic, features, nathan, competitors, stimulus
SPEAKERS
Nathan Whittacre, Emma Schermer Tamir
Intro 00:00
You're listening to Stimulus Tech Talk, a conversation based podcast created by Stimulus Technologies that covers a range of topics related to business and technology.
Nathan Whittacre 00:15
Hello, and welcome to stimulus Tech Talk. I'm Nathan Whittaker, CEO of Stimulus Technologies. And I'm very excited this week to introduce you all to Emma Schermer Tamir, who's joining me welcome, Emma.
Emma Schermer Tamir 00:28
Hello, Nathan, thank you so much for inviting me on.
Nathan Whittacre 00:31
It's my pleasure. So I'll read a little bit of bio round about you and then we'll get going with our conversation. Emma transforms her insatiable curiosity into conversation-spiking copy. Through her thoughtful approach proven copywriting tactics and winning strategies me Emma has led her team by at marketing by Emma to help over 1500 businesses from around the world to boost their sales and build their brands online. As a thought leader and trusted consultant in the e-commerce and Amazon space, Emma demystifies, complex topics like marketing, e commerce, and branding to make them accessible for all backgrounds. She helps audiences to think deeper, get curious and find unique solutions to complex problems. Whether she's speaking on stage across the globe, leading your team or guiding clients or goal is to empower everyone to tap into their curiosity to create stronger conversations, loyal fans, and killer brands. So lots of stuff you do there, Emma, I'm excited to dive into it. So
Emma Schermer Tamir 01:36
Is there ever anything more awkward than having to listen to somebody read your bio? I think not.
Nathan Whittacre 01:43
It is always a little awkward. So. So I met Emma recently, we both joined a speaker academy through the National Speakers Association. And so we're both working on becoming better public speakers. But I was very excited to hear a little bit about her and her background. And I think it's, you know, what you do is very helpful for a lot of businesses. So just to start out, how did you get into e-commerce, e commerce marketing? What's your, what's your background? And how did you get started?
Emma Schermer Tamir 02:14
Yeah, so I kind of fell into it, I had a background in marketing, I worked, I worked for a variety of different types of companies in different types of industries. So everything from software to fine dining, and when I met my now husband, he had a lot of friends that were in the e-commerce space. And they kept telling him how much they really needed a skillful writing to be able to help sell their products. And there just weren't a lot of options out there at the time. Aside from either something like Fiverr, or alternatively really big, expensive advertising agencies, and so through some loving nudging on my husband and business partner Erez's part we sort of just slowly started to enter that space by taking on a few clients. And then it pretty quickly started to grow into something that I realized I couldn't actually manage all of this independently. So we could either intentionally stay very small, or we could grow a team and we decided to grow a team.
Nathan Whittacre 02:17
Excellent. So so when you talk about e-commerce marketing, is it is it Amazon? Is it Shopify? Is it different websites, what kind of e-commerce do you work with?
Emma Schermer Tamir 03:39
So we have a big specialization in helping brands navigate the world of Amazon, but a lot of the same principles apply to really anywhere that you're selling, and anything that you're selling. So I talk a lot through the lens of e-commerce, but the basic principles also apply to how to write a great email, or how to engage with your team in a way to get them on board and aligned with your new objectives or partnerships. You know, it's really basic skills and being able to forge connection and motivate people to want to be on board with whatever it is that you're trying to get them to do. And you just have a lot of external things that are happening when you take it into e-c ommerce because there's a lot more competition, especially when you're talking about Amazon, you're not just in a controlled environment where you're selling just your business. Once somebody gets onto your website, you're going head to head with all of your top competitors. And not only is that within the search results, but you also get that even within the product pages themselves. There's all sorts of of ad placements where your competitors can try to steal away your potential customers and so you have to have a really strong sense of how you fit into the competitive land. landscape, and how to communicate around that so that you give people a reason to choose you compared to all of the other categories out there.
Nathan Whittacre 05:09
So I'm sure that how you write it and how you present it really makes a difference. Can you give us an example of, you know, some copy that you've done or, you know, maybe how you've been able to transform somebody's product to really stand out among those competitors, like you said, that are always on on the site, what what kind of things do you do to make it stand out?
Emma Schermer Tamir 05:30
Yeah, so it really starts before we even put any pen to paper or, you know, fingers to keyboard, if you will, since not necessarily handwriting anything, but there are a few basic components that you kind of have to have clarity around in order to be able to then do an effective job with the writing. So part of that is, is really doing extensive research, not only in understanding who your competitors are and where your competitive advantages might be, how you can differentiate yourself. But even getting down into the SEO side of things and being really strategic with using and choosing the right keywords that you're going to be able to be competitive on, and that you're going to be driving the right kind of traffic with. And so the keywords sort of are laying the foundation, they're forming the skeleton of what you are writing. And then you have this all of this research that you're going to be taking to inform, then the choices that you're using to to really target your copy in a way that's going to convert that traffic that you're driving, because, for example, if you are wanting to sell, let's say a dog sleeping bag, I realized that sounds weird, but that is in fact a product category. So if you're trying to sell if you're trying to sell a dog sleeping bag, if you're going after just broader keywords like sleeping bag, or warm sleeping bag, or camping sleeping bag, there's most of that traffic is not going to be relevant for you, because most of that traffic is going to be looking for sleeping bags for humans, not for dogs. And so you want to make sure that you're finding those keywords and positioning yourself around the right strategy so that you're attracting people that are in fact looking for sleeping bags for dogs, or maybe you know, unique gifts for dog owners or what have you, I would need to actually dig into the research to do that. So that is very, very important. But it's pretty astounding, just with the power of words, both from that SEO level as well as from the copywriting, which you know, combines everything from psychology and how you actually word things to sort of basic understanding of of your category and customer and market, you can achieve really phenomenal thing, we did a case study back in the spring with a software tool, and we were able to increase the conversion rate by over 200% Just by updating the copy on the product page on Amazon. So that was through. Yeah. Like, that's huge. And that's, I think it's easy to get caught up in most of the time, I think we think about how can we drive more traffic. But it's also really important to make sure before you're putting a lot of money into advertising, and paying for that traffic, that you're making sure to be optimized so that you can convert that traffic and it will make your ROI on every single ad dollar spent that much better.
Nathan Whittacre 08:48
Interesting. So I watched a YouTube video on you, once they find you or that you did once they find you or your product. I really liked what you talked about about the difference between features and benefits. And I think a lot of businesses often talk about their product or service features, you know, kind of litany of lists. But a lot of people don't necessarily buy on features they buy, you know, maybe overcoming pain or or trying to get some type of benefit for them out of that. So maybe talk to us a little bit about what the differences in how you go about really defining those benefits. And what that does, yeah, so
Emma Schermer Tamir 09:24
I think it's probably helpful first, just to define what both of those are. So features, I consider those to be the immutable facts of the product. So that could be everything from dimensions to the materials that it's made of, to the functions that it serves. It's not really something that you can dispute. It's not really, you know, it's just this is this is where it's manufactured, it can be a wide range of things. But then the reason why somebody would care about that is really what the benefit is. So why would the material Have the sleeping bag, for my dog matter to me, well, it could matter because I'm going into really cold conditions. And I want to make sure that my dog is going to stay safe. So I'm caring actually about something more than just a superficial keeping my dog warm. But I want to really protect my dog and make sure that he's going to stay safe in extreme conditions. So that's just one example of what a benefit could look like. And the way that you can find those is you just take whatever feature it is that you're wanting to talk about. And you ask, why does this matter? And what you'll find is that you might actually have to ask that question a few times, until you get down to the real emotional driver behind why someone would care about that. And there's also not necessarily just one right answer, it's very possible that a single feature could carry a wide range of different benefits. And then it becomes your job to figure out what benefits are going to be most compelling to the customers that you are trying to engage with. And then how can you present that in a way that's going to really make them feel seen and as the center of what it is, because at the end of the day, everybody is cares about themselves. And it's not, I don't mean that in like a negative sense, it's just the reality of when you're selling something, to me, I'm receptive to that, because I have a problem that I need to solve, or I have something that I'm looking to improve in my life. And so if you can make me feel like you understand the situation that I'm in, and that you understand how to help me get to where I'm trying to go, then I'm going to trust you more, I'm going to be more excited to do business with you more. And so then that you know, how we actually get the results that we're looking for. So
Nathan Whittacre 12:01
I guess it ends up going back to a lot of definition of what your target clients building that avatar of what, who you want to sell to and who's going to be looking for that product. And that really defines what those benefits are to them.
Emma Schermer Tamir 12:15
Absolutely. And that's you make such a important point, Nathan, which is that, you have to have a lot of clarity of who you're selling to. And you want to get super specific, because if you are just, and this is a very common trap that I see businesses of all sizes, and ages making, which is that they fall into this belief, understandably, that Well, everybody could be my customer, you know, I'm selling something amazing. And so as long as you're between the ages of 18 and 100, or what have you, you would be a primary candidate for the thing that I am selling. And the problem with that is that an 18 year old is going to have very different concerns than a 40 year old, that is going to have very different concerns than a 90 year old, and then an 18 year old in Las Vegas, where we are is going to have a different set of concerns than an 18 year old in, you know, rural Kansas, or New York City. And then you know, we can keep drilling down. And so if you want to really have targeted language that's going to resonate with your customers, that's going to make them feel like you get them, then you have to have that precision of your customer. And that avatar, as you mentioned, which is essentially a profile that you build out that has a lot of specificity of this imaginary customer that then allows you to be able to speak directly to them, instead of this hazy blob of people all the all across the United States. And there's not going to be any of that.
Nathan Whittacre 14:06
So, in this, you know, we talk a lot about in marketing about SEO for websites, a search engine optimization, you know, each you know, Amazon has their own search engine to you know, how it identifies products, Google, you know, for websites and things like that. So what advice do you have to small businesses when they're developing their their plan to be found their SEO plan?
Emma Schermer Tamir 14:28
Yeah, so that's a great question. The first thing that you want to be considering is where are your customers? So going again, back to that customer avatar that might give you a lot of insight into the best places to focus your efforts. And so, you know, if you are selling something that is more in the business to business space than places like Google, it's going to be really important that you are optimizing your or your website SEO, that you have a blog strategy, etc. Versus perhaps if you're selling, you know a product, then it could be Amazon, it could be your Shopify site, it could be a number of things. So you need to understand what algorithm that you're going to be working with based on what platform you're choosing. And then from there, finding a tool that's going to help you identify what keywords you should be going after, because what the keywords that somebody is searching on Amazon are not necessarily the same keywords that they would be searching on Google, which are not necessarily the same keywords that they would be searching on Tik Tok. And you know, believe it or not, tick tock is actually becoming a very popular search engine for Gen Z. And so if that's who your customers are, you really want to be considering that when you're thinking of ways to be organically or in, you know, paid placement visible to your target customers.
Nathan Whittacre 16:01
Gotcha. So, when you're when you're developing this, I'm sure there's a lot of analytical data that you have to look at. But there's probably some creative stuff, you could talk a little bit about that on your website, that there's a lot of creativity to this, too. So how do you kind of balance the two? Or how does that both? How do they both go into designing good copy?
Emma Schermer Tamir 16:21
Yeah, so the SEO component that we're talking about, it's, I like to equate it with a skeleton because it shouldn't be visible to the customer, you know, if you can see my the bone in my arm, then we have a problem. And I need to be going to the emergency room. And so the the one of the things that allows you to be able to do what you need to do from an SEO perspective, while still keeping things very customer facing and, and reader focused, is avoiding the temptation to want to keyword stuff, which that just means creating a long string of keywords, we've probably all come across that from time to time, you know, like, an example would be great gift for birthdays gift for Hanukkah gift for Christmas gift for anniversary. And it's like, okay, nobody actually writes that way. There's something that's off here, and it doesn't read well. And it's weird. So that, you know, we also regardless of what platform you have, most of them have a back end fields where you can incorporate more keywords. And so thinking about how how you can be very selective with the phrases that you're using, but that they're never getting in the way or driving the decisions that you're making when it comes to content creation. Because if they are taking the wheel, and if they're determining all of the choices that you're making, then you're probably going to have very stunted and awkward content that is going to fail to really connect with the customers. On the flip side, if you're just writing something that sounds amazing, and you're not at all considering SEO, then you are going to have this great looking landing page or website that nobody's ever going to see because you're not giving it the opportunity to index and rank properly. So it really is that fine balance. But always, if you're keeping the customer front and center and really thinking about creating a conversation with them, then that that's a way of being able to make sure that you are just choosing what to include and not to include, you know, so if a customer is not going to care about that, then don't mention it. Or if the customer is going to get confused by that, then how can you explain it in a simpler way. And so really putting yourself into the mind of the customer and the experience that they have? You know, that's kind of going back to the conversation about features and benefits. One of the other reasons why that's really important is I'm not always the most knowledgeable or informed about something that I need to purchase. And so it becomes the responsibility of the company, to help me understand why certain things matter. And so that's actually a way of being able to simultaneously educate me and sell me on things because you're you're explaining to me Well, it's very important that you choose a camera that has this style, this amount of resolution on it or these types of abilities because if you don't have a professional ability at focus, I don't know where I'm going with this example. I'm far too technical, and I don't have enough knowledge. But I guess that's exactly the point right? I was just looking at my camera. And then I started talking about cameras.
Nathan Whittacre 20:03
So, you mentioned earlier, just like the blogs, for example, how does that fit into this, like, you know, for businesses looking to get more information out there, how does their blog associated with all this?
Emma Schermer Tamir 20:18
A blog is a fantastic tool at improving your SEO. But it's also a great tool for being able to engage in sort of that more upper funnel marketing. So more about, you know, someone's not necessarily ready to make a purchase, they're more in the stages of educating themselves on something and learning about something. And so if you can actually be the resource that they go to, to learn about that particular thing, then you're already in the running when it comes time for them to want to make a decision to hire a service or buy a product, because now you're that authority that they trust that that they've learned from. And so it's, it's, it's almost a natural step in the sales process, instead of you know, cold calling, which that can be effective as well. But you're taking people that don't know who you are, and that aren't necessarily ready to buy and trying to convince them why you're selling. So it's great for that it's great for reputation management, it can be great for it can be, I mean, for us, it they they generate a lot of leads. So we have quite a number of of leads that reach out that say, Oh, I found you researching this topic on Google, and I want your help with this. And so
Nathan Whittacre 21:46
Yeah, I builds you as the authority, the person that they're looking for, and and you're just providing more information than than just trying to sell them something. It's a different process. Yes. So I am sure AI is really affecting your business how, you know, some people might say, well, I could just throw my product in ChatGPT. And it's gonna spit out some material for me, how is that different than what you guys do?
Emma Schermer Tamir 22:11
Yeah, it's a great question. And I'm sure whatever my answer is, today, in six months, or two months, or next week, it'll be different, because things are just changing so rapidly. And I was actually just having a conversation with a friend who she works at Microsoft. And she's working with a lot of this AI stuff. And so we were having this dialogue about all of the great things that AI can do. But then what does that really mean when it comes to brands finding ways to be able to kind of stand out. And so it's simultaneously democratizing things and allowing people that may not have a big budget, or may not have the time, or may not have the bandwidth, to create something that's far better than what they would have been able to do in the past, either, because they just wouldn't have been able to do it at all, or because they would have only been able to afford something that was fairly low quality. So it's leveling the playing field in that way. But simultaneously, it isn't really capable of super unique content. So things at least right now, and this obviously will change as, as all of this gets more intelligent and skillful at things like content creation, but things still sort of have an air of AI generation, they don't have that personal experience, they don't have that nuance, they don't have that creative way of combining ideas. Because this is pattern recognition so that they're using versus human experience, which might combine two very disparate things together to create a really fantastic example that the AI just would never be capable of, of considering. And so AI is fantastic for idea generation, even for when we were talking about customer avatars, it can do some really good legwork for things like that. It's it, it should really minimize challenges like writer's block. But we find that brands that are wanting to be able to really create a long term relationship with their customers relying purely on AI is going to really hinder their ability. I've been able to kind of maintain that competitive edge that they need even more now because that playing field has been leveled. So I don't know if I got a little bit to kind of high level with that. If you'd like some more concrete examples I can give.
Nathan Whittacre 24:55
I think that's perfect because I you know what you were saying? Maybe think about what I was writing my book, you know, I incorporated a lot of personal stories for my life outside of it to better explain the IT concepts. And AI is never going to do that they don't know my stories, they don't know my history. And so, you know, you could ask ChatGPT to write a book on cybersecurity, and it will spit out a bunch of stuff that is going to be just, you know, like a textbook, it's not going to be intriguing. And I think that's a really good point that, you know, that personalized content is so important when we're, when we're writing or when we're talking or whatever we're doing AI is just not there yet. Maybe someday it will replace us in that, but I don't think it is today. So yeah,
Emma Schermer Tamir 25:41
I feel the same way. So yeah, it's exciting to see where it's going. And it really is changing so rapidly. But I think, you know, understanding that as humans, one of the things that we all crave is to feel connected with other people and feel like we're seen and understood and we belong. And so that's where that personal story and those personal experiences are so important. And they can really be even stronger tools that you actually have, in this attempt to try to stand out and hold the tension. Because AI is also not just leveling the playing field, but it's allowing for a proliferation of content. And so there if there's more and more content, people are more and more overwhelmed. And so that story is actually a way of of being able to cut through that noise.
Nathan Whittacre 26:43
Where you stand out, you know, it's out, yeah, how you differentiate from everybody else, and, and, you know, connect with people that have similar interests as you outside. So,
Emma Schermer Tamir 26:52
Exactly.
Nathan Whittacre 26:53
So what is the future for you? Where are you going with your company, Marketing by Emma, and with yourself work? Where does this take you?
Emma Schermer Tamir 27:00
Wow, great question. I'm still figuring that out. No, so I continue to run Marketing by Emma. So we, you know, take on clients that are looking to create product pages, or trying to figure out how to be successful navigating the world of e-commerce, but I'm also taking on new clients and consulting. I also do workshops and lunch-and-learns, and lectures. And so that's really where a lot of my passions lie. That's why I joined the speaking academy, that you're also participating in, Nathan. And so that's, I think, just educating and having a lot of conversation around these different topics is what gets me really excited right now and where I'm putting a lot of my time and energy.
Nathan Whittacre 27:48
Excellent. So if somebody wants to connect with you, how do they find you?
Emma Schermer Tamir 27:52
You can go to MarketingbyEmma.com. And we have the contact forums, we have the phone numbers, we have the WhatsApp, we have the Facebook, it's all centralized there. But essentially, whatever your preferred form of communication is, we're available most likely, through there. We also offer a free audit of a product page or a landing page, if you'd like us to take a look at something and give you our feedback on some of the ways that we think you might be able to improve the copy, we do that free of charge. And then it's something that you can take and apply yourself or if you would like to work with us, we're also healthy, happy to help and take it off your plate.
Nathan Whittacre 28:35
Excellent. And we'll be sure to include some links in the text content of this podcast. So you know, feel free to reach out to Emma and again, thank you so much for being here and talking about marketing and and you know how to better bring your mark your products and services to the marketplace.
Emma Schermer Tamir 28:53
Thank you, Nathan, I've loved geeking out with you today about marketing and branding and storytelling. And thank you so much for having me.
Nathan Whittacre 29:04
Thank you and thanks everybody for being here today. And I putting up with my little bit of a cold today. I've been under the weather last couple of days. So I think we survived this. And thank you everybody for being here. This is Stimulus Tech Talk, Tech Talk. And have a great day
