Episode 011
On today’s episode we are joined by Emma Schermer Tamir. Emma transforms her insatiable curiosity into conversion-spiking copy. As co-founder of Marketing by Emma, she’s helped over 650 businesses from around the world boost their sales and build their brands. Topics covered include listing optimization, keyword research, enhanced brand content, and pro-tips on creating professional titles, bullets, and descriptions. This is an episode you will not want to miss!
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Emma (00:00):
So if you aren’t making that connection between the problem and the customer that’s going to be making that purchase, then you’re missing out on an opportunity to capture more of those sales.
David (00:13):
Right? Do you want to convert That’s the name of the game.
Emma (00:17):
and that actually can really help you build trust.
Intro (00:21):
Welcome everyone to the www.firingtheman.com Podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and to know you were capable of more than join us, this show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your host serial entrepreneurs, David Schomer and Ken Wilson.
David (00:46):
All right, welcome everyone to the www.firingtheman.com podcast. Today’s episode, we have an exciting guest, Emma Schermer Tamir. Emma has worked with over 650 businesses from around the world to boost their sales and build their brands. I met Emma at sellercon 2019 in a sense, worked with Emma most recently, Emma presented at the st Louis e-commerce meetup and blew away the audience. And so after that presentation I said, Emma, we got to get you onto the podcast. So, Emma, welcome.
Emma (01:16):
Thank you, David. I’m so happy to be here with you today.
David (01:20):
Absolutely. Absolutely. So to get things started off, can you tell me a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your company and how you got to a finding or founding a company called marketing by Emma?
Emma (01:31):
Sure. So it was actually, I feel like my entrepreneurial journey is a little bit different than those tales where everybody, you know, they say, Oh, I knew since I was a kid I was going to own my business. And it was just a matter of figuring out what that was. Uh, I was a little bit reluctant actually with, with this particular business, I’ve, I have a long history of marketing and writing and it’s actually my husband Eyras who’s also my business partner that really saw an opportunity and also eventually convinced me after a lot of persistence that this was something worth exploring. So I had, I had been away at a conference doing marketing and sales and I got home and he said, okay, well there are a lot of companies that are really interested in having you help them with their Amazon listings and you need to call all these people and email all these people on Monday. And I really didn’t know what to say about that. And he kept pushing and pushing and I never would have imagined that it’s become what it is. But I think what I love so much about it is the ability to work with so many different businesses, helping them achieve their goals. And also I am a total nerd and I love learning and I love words. And so this just gives me an opportunity to spend my days thinking and engaging about new topics that excite and interest me.
David (02:58):
Absolutely. So one thing I hear quite a bit is, uh, the landscape of Amazon is changing, you know, more, uh, more, uh, focus being placed on branding. Uh, can you talk a little bit about that? What’s, what, what has changed in, in what’s different?
Emma (03:12):
Sure. I think the Amazon space just continues to mature. You know, it’s not that it is suddenly changing more than it was in the past. It’s just that everything is constantly changing. And so if you started a few years ago, then number one, there was way less competition. And number two, uh, Amazon had a different reputation with customers than it does now. So unfortunately there have been quite a few stories that have come out in the last year or so showing some of the darker sides of people doing business on Amazon. So selling counterfeit goods, selling products that don’t meet safety standards. And so all of those things have eroded some of the trust that sellers were automatically granted by selling on the Amazon platform. And so combining that with higher competition, it really is not forcing, but it, it makes it even more important to consider your brand and how you can work to build that trust independently and how you can make yourself stand out. Because if you’re selling something that there are 50 other seemingly identical products, if you’re not really thinking about how you can differentiate yourself, then you’re just going to lose out to the person with the most reviews or the lowest price or whatever that might be.
David (04:36):
Okay. So you had, you had talked about a point of differentiation and I think one thing that I definitely wanted to talk to you about was differentiating yourself through having awesome copy. Now I’ll share a recent story. I have had you guys write one of my recent listings. Uh, the package was called the baddest brand on the block. And one thing that really stood out to me was, uh, the attention to detail. It was keyword rich. I’d never felt like when I was reading it, there were stuffed keywords in there. It flowed really well. The product I was selling was fun and the language reflected that. I thought I was a decent copywriter until I got a listing written by you. And I realized that I have a lot of improvements. So can you talk about in the title, in the bullets, in the search terms, how can people differentiate themselves and really stand out from the pack?
Emma (05:25):
Sure. So I think before you ever get into actually sitting down to write your listing, it’s worthwhile to do some thinking, ask some questions, do some research, and, and identify where you can differentiate yourself and what it is that you’re trying to communicate as a brand and about your product. So by doing that research and thinking, okay, well what does make my product different? Or even if my product is nearly identical, what are my businesses values that I want to really shine through in my product listing? And so by being really clear about that, it will make it much easier to then sit down and write and capture those ideas. It can also be very helpful to think about who you’re actually writing to. I think that we make the common mistake of sitting down to write and you look at a blank screen. So it’s just you and your computer and you’re not really remembering that it’s you and your computer now, but you’re really trying to actually communicate with another person. And so by having a clear image of who that person is, you’re going to be able to direct the whatever it is that you’re putting on the page to their concerns, to their interests, to the points that they would want to know, and really putting them at the center. Because ultimately people are shopping for products to solve problems. So if you aren’t making that connection between the problem and the customer that’s going to be making that purchase, then you’re missing out on an opportunity to capture more of those sales.
David (07:09):
So in terms of bullets, keywords, et cetera, one thing that I had learned when I first got into this was more as better, right? If there’s 250 characters allowed, then you want to use 250 characters. Uh, one thing I noted during your presentation was that sometimes less is more. Can you go into a little more detail on that?
Emma (07:28):
Less is more on multiple counts. Uh, number one, there’s more and more research coming out to suggest that just maximizing your characters doesn’t necessarily impact how you’re indexing as it did in the past. And so Amazon seems to be starting to discourage against this maximize every space possible. But also, again, if you’re thinking about rank isn’t just having the right keywords in your listing rank is also impacted by whether people are actually making a purchase from the search terms that they’re, that they’re searching that takes them to your page. So if your page isn’t optimized to appeal to the customer, and it doesn’t matter how many keywords you have on there because you’re not going to be making as many sales as you could be because you know, like let’s just talk about bullets for a moment. A lot of people have in their categories, they can use up to 500 characters per bullet.
Emma (08:27):
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen what that looks like on a listing in particular. It’s sometimes hard to really envision what 500 characters looks like. It is a huge paragraph. And if you have five gigantic paragraphs of bullets, it’s going to be totally overwhelming and you’re probably going to make most customers lose interest and not have the patience or energy to even diving in, defining the information that’s there. So even if you have great information there, there’s a high likelihood that they’re not going to find it. So thinking about what information does somebody need to know to be able to competently make a purchase, and maybe what information you can include elsewhere or it’s information that would be better presented in an insert or a free download. Because if it’s a lot of information about how to use the product afterwards when I’m making that initial purchase, I might not be thinking about all of those things.
Emma (09:27):
So instead you’re just clouding my mind and distracting me away from the core details that I need to know. Similarly, like one of the things that we talked about at the meetup a few weeks ago is imagery. And it’s really popular to think, okay, I’m just going to put tons and tons of information into these images. But whether somebody’s on a computer, and especially if somebody’s on a mobile, which I believe anywhere between 50 to 60% of searches are actually hap, I think 50% or so of Google searches happen on mobile. And that’s not Amazon, but that’s still probably reflected very similarly with Amazon’s numbers. And so if so many, uh, searches are on a phone, then you really need to think about how to optimize for the people that are on their phones. And so if you have these images that are really text heavy or just trying to communicate too much, it’s not going to translate well on mobile.
Emma (10:26):
So if I’m needing to zoom in to read every single little block of text, and the same goes for desktop. As a matter of fact, I’m probably not going to do that. And I’m most likely also not going to be able to fully absorb and comprehend all of that information. So thinking about how can you separate that out or just being a little bit ruthless and saying, what is the main concept that somebody must know from this image or from this bullet or from this section in my EBC, whatever the case may be.
David (11:01):
You know, when you presented at the meetup, uh, I had a list of key takeaways and one key takeaway was less is more on, on photos. And uh, as our audience knows, I split test everything and uh, on one of my higher performing listings, uh, my first picture had an infographic with, I’m a very analytical person so it had everything you could want to know. So it, it has a breaking strength of 2000 pounds. It remains flexible and under 20 degrees Fahrenheit it cleans with a, uh, a damp cloth. I had all of this a paragraph and I took that image, I split test, that was my split test one and split test two cause I deleted all of that and I put durable in big bold letters and that performed better. And that was something, you know, I uh, that’s something I really liked about your presentation was, you know, you gave us ideas. I went home and practiced it and in the split testing the results showed that that just having durable converted a lot, a lot better.
Emma (12:03):
I love that you were able to just go and directly implement that. You know, the images create a really fantastic opportunity to either help push the sale to completion or to peak interest. Some people, they’re going to look at your listing from top to bottom. They’re going to go through tons of your reviews and they’re going to look at everything with a magnifying glass. Some people are a lot more casual with their shopping, so they might sort of glance and if something catches their eye, they’ll dig a little bit deeper. And then others are somewhere in between. And with imagery, I see a lot of times either overdoing it, like in the case that you’ve just mentioned or not taking advantage of an opportunity to really take control of the message. So if you have some great lifestyle images and you’re not using a little bit of text to help clarify what it is that you’re trying to communicate, then there’s a high likelihood that your customers aren’t even into interpreting those images and the way that you’re intending them to be interpreted.
Emma (13:04):
So if you have a, a picture of somebody that’s standing on a mountain top and you see just out of the corner that they’re holding something in their hand. But really the main focus of the image is this viewpoint of these beautiful mountains and this beautiful landscape. But then you look a little bit closer and with the text to help direct your attention, you see that that person is holding a protein bar and then suddenly that text that saying, you know, fuel your adventure or what have you helps to ensure that no matter who is looking at that picture, they understand that message that otherwise very likely wouldn’t have been communicated in that way if if that text wasn’t there.
David (14:02):
when I sit down to write a listing, one thing that really helps me is to see an example of someone that’s doing it right. And uh, during your presentation you had mentioned a couple brands of, of examples of here’s, here’s a really solid picture, here’s a real really good copy. Can you point out a couple of brands that are doing it right?
Emma (14:21):
So the example that I just gave actually is one of the better examples I’ve seen of infographic use. And that’s a cliff bar. I’m specifically thinking about their blueberry flavored bars. So that’s sort of the one that whenever people want to see a great example that I send them to you.
David (14:38):
So cliff bars, a great example of what it looks like when someone has this good copy. In terms of bad copy, you know, what mistakes are people making? A co in particular, you had pointed out a couple bullet points that were very technical. They use very technical language language that people probably aren’t searching. Can you go into that a little more? What mistakes are people making?
Emma (15:00):
Sure. So there are quite a few mistakes that people make. I think first things first, you want to be clear about what keywords are really meant for the front end. So you don’t just want to take your keyword research and immediately say, okay, well the top 15 most trafficked terms are the ones that I’m going to focus on. For one thing, those might be far too vague and competitive, but there there’s another aspect that they just might not fully relate to your product or they might be awkwardly phrased a different language, a competitor’s name. There’s so many different things. So starting off with a really solid keyword list that is accurate to your product and keywords that are going to flow naturally in the copy of the listing because this is something that customers are going to be seen. So even if a misspelling is a great opportunity, if you’re misspelling your own product, that’s not going to do much to help you build trust with your customers.
Emma (16:01):
So that’s, that’s the first thing from there, thinking about how much your customers know about a particular topic. So if you’re selling something that’s very technical, let’s say you’re selling an electrical tool that only electricians use. In that case they would be expecting to see some technical language, but they would also be bringing in a lot of their own knowledge. Whereas let’s say your selling a beginning yoga product. In that case, a lot of the people are curious about yoga or they’ve taken a few classes and they think that it might be something that they like. But if you start to get overly technical about the types of poses or this that and the other, you might make them feel like this is not a product for them. This is something for more advanced yoga practitioners than where they are and you’re closing the door.
Emma (16:54):
So being very clear about is this something that’s making me think that I sound very innovative or is this something that’s maybe going to potentially alienate customers that wouldn’t understand what it is that I’m trying to stay so good at getting a clear idea of that information. And sometimes it can be helpful to even go and talk to people that fall into that particular category. So I know that with e-commerce in particular, we do so much of our work at home by ourselves and getting out and being able to engage with real people will give you a lot of those cues that you may not be getting if you’re just sitting at your computer by yourself. So if somebody gets an a, an expression that makes them look a little bit confused or they start to be bored by what you’re saying, you’ll be able to get that immediate feedback, which you can then take note of to better address with your listings.
Emma (17:50):
And then I think probably when it comes to bullets, the other main thing that you want to be really clear about is to have one central theme for every bullet. It can be really tempting to just pack a lot of information into every single bullet. But the problem is one, it’s making it difficult for people to find that important information, two you have other places to provide additional information. So the bullets aren’t the only place. You know when you’re searching on mobile, the description is actually appearing before the bullets. So it’s not that the bullets are the only thing that most people are seeing when they’re looking at your product listing. So having a really clear focus with every single bullet, and I like to use a little all caps header for every bullet to also help customers be able to say, okay, this is the bullet about dimensions and materials. This is the bullet about the ingredients. This is the bullet about. So if they’re having those particular needs that they’re needing to address with the product, they’ll be able to zoom in directly to that bullet. That’s, that is addressing those concerns.
David (19:20):
One thing you’ve talked about quite a bit is keywords. And uh, Ken and I are, are both, uh, we have a number of monthly subscriptions to various services. One of our last episodes, we did a draft, we picked tools, uh, kind of like, you know, picking a football team. And so for instance, I really liked the jungle scout Chrome extension. I’m a helium 10 fan and I like Splitly. So anyway, what are some tools that you’re using, uh, as you’re writing your, your professional copy?
Emma (19:47):
So the tools that you’ve mentioned are great. I would say it’s good to diversify and not rely on one tool. So whatever your preferred tool is, try to see if you can find some others. Um, a great one is, and it’s a free, is the Amazon, I think it’s AMZ suggestion expander. I’m, I’m blanking on the exact name, but it’s, it’s sort of a step up from, you’ve probably heard the trick to go into Amazon and see the autocomplete of different terms. So this just expands that and gives a lot more information. So rather than the few, the few, uh, results that auto complete, uh, you, you get a whole box worth. So that can be really great, especially when you’re feeling stuck about on some very specific terms. And trying to think a little bit outside the box. I think it’s also worth understanding what sorts of terms people are searching off of Amazon because that may help you again to just expand your horizons of better understanding your customers better, understanding their interests, and potentially even discovering some new words that you can then plug into those more Amazon specific tools to get some additional data.
David (21:09):
Okay. That free tool that you mentioned at the, at the beginning, can you send me a link to that and we’ll post it in the show notes? I am a big fan of anything that’s free. You know, that’s one downside to the these tools is oftentimes they come with a monthly subscription. And uh, when you’re ordering new inventory and trying to grow your business, it can kind of be a cashflow suck on your business. And so any free tools that can help with the identifying keywords are great.
David (21:46):
kind of switching gears, one thing that I hear quite a bit, especially from new sellers is you say outsource everything, you know, outsource photography, outsource your listing, outsource this, outsource that. That sounds expensive to me. I can barely afford my first order. And so can you talk about some of the pros and cons of outsourcing your listing copy and maybe some, some tips for people that are doing it themselves.
Emma (22:11):
So I would say one thing to consider is when you’re launching a new product, you get a little bit of a grace period where you’re going to have some more favorable traction that you can use to build upon as your, uh, as you’re trying to elevate your product into the search results that you want and the rankings and all of that. So it’s worthwhile to do it correctly the first time. Uh, if you don’t feel confident in being able to do that, then it’s worth it to get the help of somebody that can help you achieve that. Because not only are you potentially passing over that opportunity, but you also put yourself into a risky situation. For example, I think a lot of people that haven’t done much marketing writing, they have an idea of what marketing writing should sound like. And it’s sort of infomercially where it’s big, bold claims and maybe aggressive or just over the top and cheesy and all these things.
Emma (23:24):
And there are times still when that type of marketing might be effective, but I don’t think that it has the same impact that it did in the past, particularly as so many people make a majority of their purchases online and are just more savvy and sophisticated shoppers. So those over the top tactics don’t resonate with them and can in fact push them away. But another issue that you might run into, let’s say that you’re just talking about how great your product is and you’re failing to mention any of the things that are downsides or if your, let’s say that you’re, you’re selling a product that is consumed and you’re not really calling attention to the fact that this product has wheat in it, which means that it’s not gluten free. And it could be very problematic for people that have more serious diseases like celiac or just trying to follow a paleo diet or a gluten free diet.
Emma (24:26):
So if you’re, if you’re just brushing that over, you’re creating a problem for yourself because then people might be receiving their product, assuming that it fits their needs, they open it up and then they look at the label and they realize, Oh gosh, this isn’t, this doesn’t work with what I’m trying to do. So then they’re going to send it back. Well, that’s going to cost you money and it could potentially impact the health of your account on Amazon. So it’s better to be upfront and honest about who your product isn’t right for so that the right people can be purchasing your product and that actually can really help you build trust. Another thing is, let’s say that your, in your launching strategy, you’re going to be trying to drive a bunch of traffic. That traffic is going to cost you money, whether it’s in the form of PPC campaigns, whether that’s in the form of traffic from places like Facebook, if you’re using chatbots or what have you.
Emma (25:25):
So if you’re paying to generate all of this traffic and then your listing isn’t optimized to fully capture that traffic, then you’re not taking advantage of all of the sales that you could be making. So I don’t think that you necessarily have to work with a professional, but at the very least you should make sure everything is spelled properly. I know that sounds like a, like obvious, but you would be surprised at how often I see spelling mistakes and simple grammatical mistakes and that just shows a lack of attention to detail, which then in a lot of people’s minds might make them feel like, okay, well is this product what it really says it is? Or is it somebody that’s trying to win one over on me? Uh, are they really going to be there if I have a problem? So you don’t want to create an opportunity for that. That’s just very basic. And then from there, the better job that you can do with connecting the features of your products to the benefits that they’re going to bring your customers, the more success you’ll have with the listings that you’re creating.
David (26:38):
Okay. As a beginning of that, you had mentioned the, uh, grace period when you launch a product. And one thing that I do is I measure my first 90 days and I write down everything that I’m doing, all my marketing strategy, uh, my inventory. And then at 90 days I like to look back and see how that product launch went. And then I like to compare that to other product launches. And one thing that I’ll mention is that the copy that you guys did for me, um, that has been my highest converting, uh, highest 90 day performance, uh, on a launch. And you know, if I, if I’m honest, I often am in a hurry. You know, I’ve sourced the product, I’ve got my pictures done, I’m in a hurry to get my listing done. So I just kind of, I do a little bit of keyword research and I’ll put something up and I say, you know what, this will get me started, but, and I can always go back to it.
David (27:32):
And oftentimes I don’t. And so I think there’s really something to be said about doing it right from the get go. And especially on your product launches, if you are spending money right, you want to convert, that’s the name of the game. And so, uh, put it, putting your best foot forward there I think makes a lot of sense. So, uh, you’ve certainly made me a believer in, uh, it in your process and uh, just wanted to share that with you that, uh, you know, from a data standpoint, from a math standpoint, um, it’s been a successful strategy in my business.
Emma (28:04):
That’s awesome. And I think that people should really take note of what you’re talking about. And it’s so important to be tracking things and to be not just making decisions based purely on emotion because your business has so much rich data that it can provide to you to help make the best decisions possible. But if you’re not creating an opportunity and, and putting, uh, a focus on that, it’s really easy to allow your business to lead you rather than you leading your business. So I think that it’s really common, particularly in the Amazon space for people to forget that and to think that, okay, well this doesn’t really matter because people don’t read. But okay, it’s true. People don’t read as much as they used to, but it doesn’t mean that people don’t read. And furthermore, who are the people that are actually reading? So they’re probably going to be the most critical of something that’s written poorly or uh, not addressing their concerns.
Emma (29:22):
There have been multiple times just in my personal life that I’ll go to shop for something and I have a specific need, let’s say compatibility with my Apple computer. So if it doesn’t explicitly say that it’s compatible with Apple, I’m not going to buy it. Even if it seems like it is. And even if the reviews might say that it is, I want to actually see them say this is compatible with Apple. And that’s very simple to think about, but to actually implement, sometimes we forget those things. And so again, it all just goes back to the customer and what are their main concerns? What are those things that they absolutely have to know? What are the problems that you’re solving and how can you communicate that in an exciting way, in a powerful way, and in a way that’s not just getting caught up in how great that sentence sounded or thinking that you need to stuff as much as you possibly can into the copy.
David (30:35):
So Emma, we’ve talked a lot about photos, we’ve talked a lot about listings, specifically bullets in a title, but we haven’t talked a lot about a description or enhanced brand content. So can you go into how do those fit into the overall strategy of creating a high converting listing?
Emma (30:51):
Sure. So let’s start off with the description itself. We’ll save the EBC and A + and then discuss that a bit afterwards. But I think it’s been common practice for a long time to disregard the description, assuming that people don’t look at it, that you know, it’s all, it’s hidden down there in between a bunch of things. And so people will normally just zoom pass it on their way to the reviews. But as I mentioned earlier, when you’re on mobile, the description is actually appearing front and center before the bullets. So that’s very important to consider. But also if we’re talking about wanting to make more compact bullets, then it means that there’s going to be some other information that may not make the cut, but it’s still important to be able to communicate. And then lastly, there are some details that just are difficult to communicate in a clear way.
Emma (31:46):
In bold in the bullets. The bullets are regimented, you know, it’s if you’re wanting to talk, for example about the ingredients to try to explain a few of your star ingredients and one bullet looks kind of messy. Whereas in your description, since you can use a few basic HTML tags, you can create a short bulleted list and then highlight those star ingredients and give a short little description about why they’re so special. So you can really format it in a way that makes the information very digestible and accessible. And it also allows you to engage in a little bit of storytelling. So not just these are the five main things you need to know, but this is the situation that you might find yourself in and this is how we can help. Or if you have a great origin story as a brand, sharing a little bit of that and helping to begin to create a relationship with your customers so that they’re going to want to go and find you online, whether that’s Facebook or a website and they want to know about the other products that you might be launching in the future.
Emma (32:56):
So the description can actually provide a really rich opportunity to do some of those things that the bullets aren’t as great at just by the nature of the formatting itself. So the description is definitely something worth giving attention to, but please don’t make the mistake of that. I see very often of just copying and pasting the exact same information in both. There’s no reason to do that. And again, if you’re thinking of the people that are going to be dissecting your listing from top to bottom, it’s sort of insulting to read a bunch of things, look for more information and realize that it’s the exact same thing. So again, that’s creating a negative emotion and anything from boredom to frustration to offense to concern, any of those things are creating an opportunity for all of those competitors that are advertising on your page to win the customer’s attention. And that means you likely losing that sale. So really looking for those points and trying to avoid them to the best of your ability.
David (34:17):
Well, to wrap up the show, we ask every guest the same three questions. I’ll start off with our first question. What is your favorite book?
Emma (34:26):
You know, you, you had asked me to prepare for this ahead of time and I feel like that’s one of the hardest questions that you could ask me. I don’t know that I have an all time favorite book, but I do know that I have a current favorite that I just finished recently called Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. And it is a psychology book about all of the ways that our brains sort of trick us into thinking things that are not necessarily true. And I loved it for multiple reasons. One is I just find the human brain fascinating and I think that it, knowing these things can help us make better decisions with greater clarity, whether it’s about our businesses or our personal lives. But I also really enjoyed the book because the author takes such joy in what he’s doing and I just really get excited and respect people that love something that much. And so he, it wasn’t a boring textbook. It was this, uh, engaging conversation about how strange our brains are and I just really enjoyed it.
David (35:42):
Awesome. Awesome. Well, I have a counter suggestion if you like that style of book I’m going to have, I’m going to read that. I’m going to put it on my reading list, but if you like that style of book a, there’s another one called nonviolent communication. It’s a psychology based book and uh, it has been a great book for me. It’s helped me in my business. I think it’s helped in the way I communicate with my spouse, with my friends, with coworkers. And so, uh, yeah, thank you for that, that recommendation and uh, check out nonviolent communication. Uh, similar type topic.
Emma (36:13):
Anytime you have book recommendations, please send them my way. Cause I, I think that there are few, uh, feelings that are as exciting to me as all of the books that I want to read. And I just like, sometimes I feel like I can’t get the information into my brain fast enough, which makes me sound really nerdy, but I don’t even care.
David (36:35):
Yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about. All right, onto our second question. What are your hobbies?
Emma (36:42):
My hobbies, I love reading. That’s probably my favorite hobby. I also love writing. Uh, not just marketing writing. I really enjoy, uh, creative nonfiction writing. I love hiking and walking with my husband, with our dog. Uh, I love eating different foods. I love traveling. I actually, I’ve lived on four different continents and so I would say more than travel, I really love living in new places. There’s something invigorating about having this blank slate and almost being like a child and having to figure out an entirely different system of how everything works. So that I don’t know that that qualifies as a hobby, but it is a big interest of mine that I’ve neglected a bit in more recent years. But I kind of feel like owning the businesses has a lot of similarities to that.
David (37:42):
Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, and our final question, what do you think sets apart successful eCommerce entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail, or never get started?
Emma (37:55):
I think the main thing is really thinking about your business as a business. I think that a lot of people, they get very excited by these success stories and if they’re not there in six months or a year or two years, then they give up and it is a churn and everybody has their own timeline for when things happen and it, owning a business is difficult. It is a roller coaster. You know, you can have the highest tie where you have your best sales day ever, and then you wake up in the morning. What feels like total disaster. And so getting as comfortable as you can with the fact that that is just the nature of things and understanding that it’s a business. And so the things that you don’t know how to do well, find people that can help you do them. The things that you do know how to do well.
Emma (38:55):
Continue to educate yourself so that you can make even better decisions and really thinking about if something goes wrong, you can either sink into that or you can get really analytical and say, why did this go wrong? And what can I do to learn from this? And so just the push and, and really thinking about it as a business. So you need to understand your finances. You need to be able to, um, make all different decisions, some with more information and some with less. Uh, and so just continuing to learn and to push. And, and it’s also okay if it’s not the right fit for you. You know, it’s, I don’t think that everybody has to, to be a business owner. It’s not as glamorous of a life as a lot of people would make it out to be. And there’s nothing wrong with identifying if something isn’t right for you. And especially if that decision saves you a lot of grief, a lot of stress, a lot of money that you might be sinking into something that isn’t right is also I think something that people don’t talk about but worth considering. And it’s better to identify that then to just try to continue pushing something that isn’t the right fit for you.
David (40:36):
so Emma, to wrap up the show, uh, how can people get a hold of you? And you had mentioned a special offer for our listeners. Can you talk about that?
Emma (40:43):
Definitely. So you can get ahold of us through our website www.marketingbyemma.com. Uh, we also have a form on that website for a free listing analysis. So if you’re not sure how to even look critically at your listing, feel free to fill that form out. And we’re happy to get back to you with some free feedback about things that you might want to consider, whether you’d like to try to optimize your listing yourself or you’d like help with it, whether that’s us or somebody else, hopefully us. You can also find us on Facebook at marketing by Emma. And then as far as the offer, we are happy to offer the www.firingtheman.com Listeners to free photo texts with em, any Amazon listing optimization purchase. So that is essentially what we were talking about at the beginning where you have those lifestyle images, for example, that’s creating some texts to make those images more compelling than simply living, leaving their interpretation up to your customers. So by using “Firing The Man” at checkout, you’ll be able to redeem those two free photo text.