Bee-High 如何通過在 Tumblr 上建立受眾來重新定義大麻文化
已發表: 2016-06-30Travis Lachner 是 Bee-High 的創始人，這是一家引領新一代大麻文化的社會盈利公司。
在這個播客中，您將了解他如何經營大麻配件的副業，以及為什麼他選擇將時間投入到 Tumblr 而不是 Facebook 上進行營銷。
在這一集中，我們討論：
- 在開展業務之前如何以及為什麼要深入參與社區。
- 如何應對日常工作和副業創業時缺乏活力和動力。
- 什麼是“自有品牌”直銷以及為什麼它可能比傳統直銷更好。
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顯示註釋：
- 商店：蜜蜂高
- 社會概況： 推特| 棒棒噠
轉錄
Felix ：今天我加入了來自 Bee-High.com 的 Travis Lachner，擔任 Bee-High.com。 Bee-High 是一家引領新一代大麻文化的社會性、盈利性公司，成立於 2015 年，總部位於科羅拉多州丹佛市。 歡迎特拉維斯。
特拉維斯：你好菲利克斯，很高興來到這裡。
菲利克斯：很高興有你。 告訴我們更多關於您的故事，因為我知道您銷售幾種不同的產品，您銷售的最受歡迎的產品有哪些？
Travis ：我們基本上已經將自己定位為新一代大麻文化的電子商務市場。 我們的很多主要產品是配件和煙槍、水管、大麻文化中稱為 dab rigs 的設備，很多配件基本上是大麻行業的輔助產品。 本質上不接觸植物的一切。
特拉維斯：我來自科羅拉多州，土生土長。 我有幸看到大麻產業在我面前發展壯大。 很多人都取得了巨大的成功並探索了該地區； 我是一個非常善於探索的人，自然很難抗拒這個機會。 然後中學水平只是在個人層面上對大麻有普遍的興趣。 我真的很喜歡大麻，因為它被用作一種健康產品，真正改善了人們的生活，而不是不幸地困擾著許多行業的老派心態。 我真的很高興能在這裡跳槽，成為第一個上船的人，並能夠真正為正在興起的新一代大麻文化定下基調。
菲利克斯：非常酷。 您正在了解這個行業如何仍然存在恥辱感，因為它變化如此之快，尤其是在美國。 你有沒有擔心過這個問題，或者你是否認為這是一個機會？
特拉維斯：當然，這是一把雙刃劍。 機會就在那裡，但這個機會的缺點是你必須克服很多繁文縟節和規定。 我們可以稍後再談，但這絕對是我們真正關注品牌的領域之一，它打破了那種老派、懶惰的刻板印象。 業內的每個人都明白，這實際上並不是所有使用大麻的人。
我相信你知道經典的刻板印像或 Tommy Chong，70 歲的秀風格，“哇，伙計，哇。我們完全忘了點披薩兄弟。” 不就是不。 是的，這些人是存在的，但我們必須意識到這只是社區的一小部分。 我們對品牌的很多關注只是打破了懶散的刻板印象，並主要針對負責任、受人尊敬的普通用戶，而且他們有很多。
Felix ：我猜你是怎麼認識到有這些類型的用戶，有市場的？ 因為你一直在說這種刻板印象......再次像你所說的'斯托納文化'......你怎麼知道除了大麻使用者的那種刻板印象之外還有更多？
特拉維斯：我在科羅拉多州丹佛市的戰壕里看到了這個行業的興起。 我真的有兩件事讓我產生了這種心態：第一件事真的只是我在家庭、周圍環境和成長過程中對大麻的個人經歷。 沒有一個真正符合大多數人聯想到的懶惰的刻板印象。 我個人一直對懶惰的斯托納刻板印像不感興趣。 然後第二手是大麻實際上合法化的時候，科羅拉多州的人們正在失去理智，在想，“哦，伙計，所有這些人都會在街上吸食大麻。” “天啊，世界末日了。”
最後它合法化了，老實說，從那以後事情真的變得更好了。 我有機會真正與這些高風險人士交談，無論是大麻藥房所有者還是普通用戶。 真的只是普通人在使用這種植物。 他們如何使用它以及為什麼要使用它的範圍很廣。 只是親眼看到這一點，並註意到與我們正在談論的一般假設以及行業中實際發生的事情的不一致，很明顯將並非每個人都屬於該類別的點聯繫起來。
費利克斯：有道理。 不是每個人都在聽大麻行業，但他們可能在向我們推銷產品，或者他們的整個品牌可能在 [聽不清 00:06:59] 更敏感，或者再次成為一個帶有污名的行業。 在那種情況下，當談到如何繞過這種恥辱時，你能提供什麼樣的提示，因為我可以想像......也許這不是真的......我可以想像它可能更難推銷或建立聯繫或甚至可能會做一些諸如投放廣告之類的事情，因為這又是一個被污名化的行業。 你經歷過嗎？ 您發現哪些方法可以很好地幫助您解決這個問題？
特拉維斯：是的。 我會給你兩個重點關注的領域：第一個是社區。 您需要了解您將加入的社區，並且您需要考慮自己是該社區的一部分。 你絕對不想進入你向社區推銷的心態。 你真正想做的是進入這個社區，無論是數字的還是現實的世界，並與這些人交談，了解他們想要什麼，了解他們需要什麼，了解他們不想要什麼，了解他們不需要什麼。 從很多方面來看，它基本上為您提供了很多拼圖和開發它的結構。 這個問題的第二部分，我要補充的是你的語言和你的品牌是非常關鍵的。
您可能已經註意到的一件事是，每次我提到這種美妙的植物時，我都稱它為大麻，因為它就是這樣，這就是我們給它打上烙印的方式。 你使用的語言有很多力量，當你使用人們尊重和理解的語言時，它會吸引那些使用相同語言的人。 我使用大麻這個詞而不是說“吸大麻”。 或者，“你想抽點雜草嗎？” 之所以這樣，是因為它確實在更高層次上與我們的社區產生了共鳴。 真正準確地使用您的語言並真正參與到您的社區中將是實現這一目標的兩個很好的起點。
Felix ：讓我們開始討論這個問題，這同樣適用於任何地方的任何人，無論行業如何。 當您考慮創業，考慮在特定行業創建業務時，您是在說首先要參與社區。 你有什麼方法做到這一點？ 或者您建議人們通過哪些方式參與社區以盡可能多地了解目標市場，以便您可以開發正確的產品並以正確的方式進行營銷？
特拉維斯：我們做了什麼……你可能聽說過水坑的概念。 你想找到你的觀眾在哪裡閒逛以及他們和誰一起閒逛。 值得慶幸的是，大麻是如此廣泛的產品，幾乎任何市場上的幾乎任何人都可以在技術上成為準確的受眾。 我們真正的最佳點是利用特定渠道的社會營銷，這些渠道在大麻社區中有很好的大麻主題參與。 其中之一是 Tumblr，如果你曾經在 Facebook 上過，你可能會意識到這可能不是分享你抽著煙槍的照片或分享一些你會在傳統 Facebook 上發布的東西的最佳場所狀態。
在 Tumblr 上，匿名化程度更高，人們全力以赴，他們在該社區中感到更加安全，並且該部門正在進行更多的活動和參與。 您會注意到，我們不會因此而主動針對 Facebook 上的任何事物或任何人，直到這種恥辱感有所降低。 作為一個個體經營者，我真的必須把所有的精力都集中在能給我們帶來最高回報的市場和渠道上。 現在，我們的秘密來源實際上是 Tumblr，它有一個非常棒的大麻社區，他們非常活躍和參與，對這項運動和推動事情充滿熱情。
Felix ：當然，我想稍微談談你的 Tumblr 策略，因為我認為這個播客上沒有任何人使用 Tumblr 來推銷他們的業務。 你之前所說的很有意義，因為大麻仍然存在這種恥辱感。 使用大麻的人仍然“在壁櫥裡”； 這不是你可以出來對你的朋友、家人或 Facebook 說的話。 我可以想像，這至少在 Facebook 等某些平台上會降低可分享性或病毒式傳播。 毫無疑問，我馬上要談談你是如何在 Tumblr 上解決這個問題的。
在我們到達那里之前，讓我們談談您的業務的開始。 你知道它有市場，因為你在科羅拉多州的丹佛，你就被線下世界所包圍。 對於那些不是來自……不熟悉或不來自美國的人來說，這是最早將娛樂性使用大麻合法化的州之一。 你知道它有市場，你知道它周圍有大企業。 第一步是什麼？ 你知道有市場，你是如何從知道有市場到真正創業的？
特拉維斯：我進入這個市場的方式是非傳統的。 很多人真的直接潛入水中。我沒有那種奢侈，我真的很年輕，錄製這個時我已經 25 歲了。 實際上這個週末剛滿二十五歲，當所有這些都發生時，他剛從大學畢業。 我看到所有這些都發生在我身邊，當然你想成為其中的一部分，但同時你必須對眼前的事情保持現實。 我認為會真正引起你的聽眾 Felix 共鳴的一件事是，也許我們可以放棄我們正在進行的所有事情，然後跳進去嘗試一下，看看效果如何。 並非我們所有人都有這樣做的奢侈。
實際上，我一直在全職工作，週一到週五，朝九晚五，在一家非營利組織做一份常規工作。 其中很多給了我每個人都在努力爭取的總體穩定性，也給了我很多充滿激情的工作。 感覺就像我在做一些不同的事情，我在做一些有意義的事情。 我並不完全有這個，“好吧，把所有東西都扔掉，走吧，我們走吧。搖滾的時間到了。” 像很多人一樣跳進去。 在進入這個行業時，我有更多的戰略方法。 這更像是把你的腳趾浸入水中，我實際上是在我全職工作的時候開始了這項業務，這個網站，這個社區的百分百。
正如我們現在所說的那樣，實際上我幾個小時前剛剛從我的正常工作中下班，並轉變為這種獨行者模式。 我認為你的聽眾真正能從中領悟到的是，你不需要全力以赴。 您可以用最少的資源隨時開始任何事情。 我進入這個市場是一個非常漸進、緩慢但穩定的增長。 我真的只是創建了網站，創建了我們的 Tumblr，並準備從那裡開箱即用。 幾乎是緩慢的、有機的參與建立了社區，建立了最終融入我們營銷策略和一切的受眾。
其中很多是我知道我想做的事情，但因為我必須對你生活中的平衡保持現實，意識到你可以從一邊開始做一些事情，然後讓它成長。 看看什麼有效，看看什麼無效，這不一定是你的世界末日。 如果出現問題，您仍然會擁有這個……無論您傳統上的退路是什麼。 有些人會認為這會讓你得到庇護或避免冒險。 這真的讓我可以對我們的觀眾和我發布的內容進行非常實驗，看看哪些有效，哪些無效。
它不必像很多人認為的那樣壓力很大。 我對那些正在考慮做某事的人的建議，如果他們有想法，他們對內里外外都瞭如指掌，他們真的很熱衷，只是給它一點機會，看看它是如何進行的，給它一點牽引力。 你會發現有效的想法，你會發現無效的想法，並與你的聽眾產生共鳴，那些有效的想法並消除任何無效的想法。 這真的只是一場緩慢而穩定的比賽，菲利克斯從這裡獲勝。
菲利克斯：我肯定想多談這個，因為我對這個特定的話題感覺非常強烈，因為它的代表性真的很低，你有這種觀點是因為它不那麼有趣，或者當故事是“二十五歲”時它不會成為頭條新聞一歲的人一邊做生意一邊做生意。” 這並不像“一個 25 歲的人辭掉了六位數的工作，一頭扎進並開辦了一百萬美元的生意”那麼有趣。 它沒有那麼有趣，但我認為對很多人來說這是一種更現實的方法。 我會爭辯說，現在聽的大多數人都處於這樣的情況，他們正在從事日常工作或諮詢或做某事來支付大部分賬單，然後試圖開始做一些事情。
我認為這是一個非常重要的話題，因為如果你確實同意你必須辭職並全職工作的想法是：第一，這可能很危險，你可能非常危險，它可能會破壞你所說的很多穩定性都是你扔出窗外的。 第二件事是，有時人們覺得他們必須等到完美的時機，“我還不能這樣做，因為我還沒有辭職，我不能全職專注於它。” 它使人們等待的時間比他們需要的要長，我認為這就是你的意思。
特拉維斯：正是菲利克斯。
菲利克斯：當然。 讓我們談談桌子另一邊的共同點。 我認為你提出的一件事是，如果你有 B 計劃，我猜你總是會最終回到你的 B 計劃，你的備用計劃。 你對此有何看法？ 你覺得這曾經出現在你身上嗎？ 我猜當有人說“如果你有一個備用計劃，你總是會遵從它”之類的話時，你的一般想法是什麼。
特拉維斯：是的。 實際上，我對那個有點心煩意亂，因為我確實聽說過您所做的完全相同的事情。 我聽各種播客、自我發展、專業發展、創業建議。 其中很多都導致了全力以赴的方向，而沒有後退。 實際上，我在這個確切的問題上也為 Felix 感到痛苦，因為我想知道我在技術上阻礙了自己多少。 同時，我也想非常尊重我的社區和我們正在培養的觀眾。 我認為，當您全力以赴時，您可以了解的另一點是，當您本週絕對需要出售食物以備不時之需或本月支付租金時，您的意圖可能會略有改變。
你的態度、你的語言和你的語氣將與培養與這個社區的有機關係大不相同。 我認為我可以為另一支起步緩慢的球隊扮演一個小惡魔的代言人，其中一個權衡是你可以在你的人際關係中保持更加真誠和有機，從長遠來看，我相信這會比你試圖推動的單一銷售更有價值。 我更傾向於培養一種長期的關係來增加客戶的終身價值，而不是強迫他們走一條短而窄的道路，這樣我本週就可以從他們那裡得到快速的銷售。 這是我在那個部門的意見。
菲利克斯：我認為你的理解是有道理的，當你不需要把食物放在桌子上或支付房租因為你已經有其他東西可以幫助你支付所有這些費用時，你開始思考並且做出長期決策，而不是今天、本週、本月的銷售。 另一點是你是否覺得你可能會失去動力，因為還有一個想法是你有一些事情正在推進，但你只有一半的時間，甚至不到一半的時間專注於它，因為你有八個小時的時間一天致力於別的事情。 你有沒有覺得你正在失去動力或者可能沒有那麼多......顯然你可能沒有那麼多能量但是你如何處理這些缺點？
Travis ：這是我一直關注的事情之一，從個人發展的角度來看，就是避免比較和絕望，這真的會害死你。 如果你在創業區、運動區、藝術區，總會有人做得更好，有人做得更快，有人全力以赴。這是我真正陷入困境的事情之一一整年都在看著我們的競爭對手，然後說，“哦，廢話，他們的成長好多了。他們在這個部門和所有方面看起來都好多了。” 然後我必須坐下來意識到，“好吧，我是一個創建這個社區的人。”
我會研究我們的一些競爭對手，他們有二十、三十、五十多人的團隊。 我真的必須讓自己紮根並意識到，“好吧，這是你需要為自己做的事情。” 我認為，當您將這些指標轉移到這樣的外部標準時，從長遠來看，這對您確實不利。 它肯定會影響到我，我覺得我顯然希望每天多花八到十個小時來放大這一點，但現在投資回報率的平衡無法彌補它。 這就是我對菲利克斯這個問題的看法。
菲利克斯：我認為這是有道理的。 有趣的是，我還與其他一些企業家交談過......沒有時間，但因為他們每天有 8 小時、12 小時、10 小時的工作時間，這往往會花時間分散自己的注意力或專注於錯誤的事情，有時這些限制肯定會迫使你發揮創造力有時。 還迫使您考慮真正迫切需要完成的事情，而不是將時間花在實際上不是業務核心的事情上。 這對缺乏時間來說是一個積極的方面，它只會迫使你真正節省時間和精力。
特拉維斯：完全正確。
Felix ：這引出了我的下一個問題，因為你有一份日常工作，因為你通過薪水獲得報酬，你一天中的時間顯然更少，因為你要花八個小時左右的時間工作。 與 [音頻不清晰 00:23:52] 只是辭職並從頭開始創業的人相比，您確實擁有更多的現金和穩定性。 在您時間貧乏但現金/穩定性豐富的情況下，您如何利用這一優勢？
特拉維斯：你之前剛剛發表的評論完全導致了這一點，我真的認為每晚做兩個小時的企業家可以在兩個小時內完成相同數量的工作，而相同數量的工作為有他們一整天的人可能需要四個小時，五個小時。 鑑於您正在分心和充實時間，我真的認為如果您將時間和精力集中在特定領域，它將放大您的結果。 你需要注意的是一直在尋找那八十個。 尋找你百分之二十的努力帶來了百分之八十的結果。 如果你能找到有效的方法和需要關注的東西，我相當有信心，一個真正聰明和聰明的人可以在更短的時間內完成同樣數量的工作。
我親眼目睹了這一點……在我住在丹佛之前，我實際上是在通勤到丹佛。 我剛通勤一次，早上兩個小時，兩個小時前，我只是播客大師。 每一天，進進出出，我意識到我會回到家，大約八點到十點是我的蜜蜂高功率時段。 從八點到十點，我從第一分鐘到最後一分鐘都知道，我處於野獸模式，完成任務。 我確切地知道我將要做什麼，我在開車回家的路上一直在考慮它，我知道接下來會發生什麼。 我覺得如果我在相反的情況下，那天早上我剛醒來，就像，“我可能需要完成這件事，也許我也可以跳進去。”
我只是在周末注意到了這一點，因為這是我開始進入的模式，當你有所有這些額外的時間時，我想把它奉獻給公司並建立品牌。 我真正注意到的一件事是帕金森定律的概念正在發生。 該聲明的真正含義是一項任務將填補您給它的時間。 很多時候你會在截止日期前註意到記者； 您可以將截止日期提前三天，項目將在這段時間內完成。 你可以給他們額外的一周時間，他們很可能會在大約一周內完成完全相同的項目。 我非常相信利用帕金森定律為您帶來優勢的概念。
菲利克斯：我喜歡這樣。 說到這一點並說出你所說的關於 820 的內容，你如何定位或識別那些活動，那些將為你的業務帶來 80% 價值的任務？
特拉維斯：一直在聽。 始終傾聽您的客戶，閱讀您所在行業的所有內容，閱讀其他人在做什麼。 這就是我們的許多策略的用武之地，那就是進行競爭對手研究，看看什麼對其他人有用，他們錯過了什麼。 我對自己查看大量細節和信息以及各種市場研究的能力非常有信心，並將其歸結為戰略性的、有意義的東西，找到模式，找到結果的來源。 很多時候你會發現它來自你關注的一兩個或三個不同的領域，對我們來說，它肯定是在社交營銷和電子郵件營銷的混合領域。
費利克斯：有道理。 最後一個問題是你在做這方面的工作，你有一份全職工作，我假設在某個時候你會想要全職專注於 Bee-High。 你什麼時候知道是時候辭掉日常工作並專注於你的副業了？
特拉維斯：我有一個數字，基本上是指我的薪水。 我希望能夠通過 Bee-High.com 將我目前的薪水翻倍，當我達到那個點時，我想我可以自信地跳起來全力以赴。這只是個人的戰略決定，爭取一個數字。 我有一個教練或導師建議設置一個日期，看看你的日曆是兩年後，三年後，找到你什麼時候想擺脫這個，或者你想開始這個.. . 無論你想從哪個角度來，你都可以做相反的事情並啟動倒計時。 那將是另一種方式，但對我來說，我有一個收入數字可以帶回家，一旦我達到這個數字，我就會安全，跳入並全力以赴。這對我有用，也許是基於時間的目標對其他人來說會更好，但這就是我的遊戲計劃。
菲利克斯：有道理。 對於可能還沒有業務或仍在從事全職工作的人，他們可能會想：“我想辭職，全職專注於我的業務，如果我能與我的薪水相匹配，我將開始創業。” 為什麼說工資翻倍？
Travis ：因為我很清楚我正在創造的生活方式設計，而我實際上只是對其進行逆向工程。 我不只是過著我現在正在做的生活，而是從我想要過的生活方式開始倒退。
費利克斯：另一件要考慮的事情是，當你工作時......我只能代表美國的人說，僅僅因為你的薪水與你的工資相匹配，並不意味著所有的福利、健康保險，稅收，通常有時由您的雇主承保的所有其他東西將不再承保。
特拉維斯：沒錯。 真正的工作或我們認為真正的職業有很多次要價值，是的，也許我有非常好的同事和偉大的老闆，我們在非營利組織做得很好，這不像很多故事中很多這樣其他人，你會聽到很多這些人的經典故事，比如，“哦，我想走進我老闆的辦公室，拿著獵槍走進去。” 你就像，“哦，天哪，天哪。” 比如，“我喜歡和我一起工作的人，我喜歡我正在做的工作。” 如果沒有必要，真的沒有必要去攪動馬蜂窩。
費利克斯：有道理。 現在讓我們談談您建立的業務。 我們知道你賣的價格，它是如何運作的？ 你如何採購它們？ 你的供應鍊是什麼？ 它是什麼樣子的？
特拉維斯：這實際上是我今天非常高興談論菲利克斯的事情。 我們完全運作......我意識到這可能會令人困惑，我用我們這個詞來形容我在 Bee-High 所做的幾乎所有事情。 我使用皇家我們作為協作我們只是因為它是一個社區。 有這麼多熱情的人一直在幫助我，感覺就像我們一樣。 只是為了澄清，目前這是一個單獨的項目。 我沒有員工，但我經常使用我們這個詞，但這只是因為它是一個如此強大的社區，而且我們有很多人都參與其中，無論他們是否是員工。
我非常高興分享的一件事是我們的整個模型基於私人合作夥伴的直接運輸設置。 這基本上意味著我不必接觸任何庫存，這讓我非常高興。 我不必處理倉儲、包裝、運輸以及您傳統上在電子商務商店中設想的所有行政工作。 實際上我不需要做任何這些，這讓我有最大的精力和精力專注於前端和培育品牌、建立受眾並與我們的消費者建立這些關係。 私人合作夥伴代發貨模式是我去年偶然發現的一個非常棒的概念，它對我的發現非常有幫助，它幾乎是我們整個公司的確切模式。
代發貨我相信大多數人都知道，但這是當另一個人或公司代表您向客戶發送產品時。 Drop shipping 已經存在，這已經是一件事了，並且有在線資源，您可以註冊它。 我注意到很多現有的只是註冊並進行直接運輸的問題是這些行業的競爭性質，而這些產品很難與之競爭。 當有十、十五、二十、三十個其他人可以訪問該網站並單擊註冊時，“我想放棄發貨”。 他們可以在一天、兩天、三天內建立並運行他們的網站，這真的是低效的，它把競爭帶到了一個荒謬的水平。
我實際上採用了直接運輸模式並聯繫了私人產品合作夥伴。 實際上，我沒有去擁有所有這些不同類型產品的單一倉庫或託運人，而是與將要發送的實際產品建立個人關係。 舉個例子，我們可以在這裡學習，比如我想開始銷售研磨機，這是一種非常常見的大麻配件，我想要最好的研磨機。 我開始研究不同的公司，哪些是最好的，哪些評價好，哪些評價差，然後我選擇一個品牌，一個產品。 在這種情況下，我選擇了來自亞利桑那州的 Phoenician Engineering，他們真的是一家了不起的公司。 他們專注於豪華、高端、優質的醫療級研磨機。
他們就是我所說的產品合作夥伴。 我與他們聯繫並建立了積極的關係，最終我在 Bee-High.com 上銷售他們的產品，每次我們從觀眾那裡收到訂單時，我可以以零售價繼續以批發價購買該產品直接運送給消費者。 我正在收集從批發到轉售的利潤，他們像往常一樣履行訂單。 這確實是一個很棒的概念，它顯然有它的權衡，但主要的事實是我不託管任何庫存、任何倉儲、任何運輸或履行，這讓我有能力培養我們的內容營銷、我們的社交營銷、我們的電子郵件營銷並專注於前端的一切。 我真正注意到的是，在這個行業的綠色熱潮中，最終出現的是擁有出色產品的人； 很棒的東西出來與它無關，沒有觀眾可以賣給它。
他們沒有動力，我進來填補這個空白。 我基本上做完全相反的事情，我正在培養這個志趣相投的人社區並收集我們的觀眾，我會伸出援手，這就是我的價值提議是，“我有十萬人可以讓你的產品擺在面前。” 我可以帶來的價值對很多人來說都是必要的。 如果您知道某個特定的產品或特定的品牌或公司正在扼殺牠，並且您知道這一點，但他們無法吸引觀眾或進入市場，那麼您可以成為 Segway，您可以填補這一空白。 這確實是我們的許多商業模式蓬勃發展的地方，就是這種私人合作夥伴直接運輸模式，它與每個產品合作夥伴都是一對一的。 一旦你讓它運行起來，它實際上是一個非凡的設置，你不必專注於庫存以及隨之而來的所有惡作劇。
菲利克斯：讓我稍微分解一下——
特拉維斯：做吧。
費利克斯：你顯然想成為一種直銷模式，因為它可以節省你很多時間，因為你沒有那麼多時間開始，但現在你也可以更多地專注於營銷和社區建設它的一個方面。 您不想只是去尋找任何其他公共直接托運人，因為競爭會如此激烈。 他們將向如此多不同的零售商銷售產品，以至於你進入沒有意義，因為再次存在如此多的競爭，而這一切都是因為當時的商品。 您會發現這些製造商，這些公司已經在創造出色的產品，然後您正在與他們建立關係，最終目標是與他們達成協議，以便您可以在有人從您的網站購買時以批發價從他們那裡購買他們完成訂單並將其直接運送給您的客戶，對嗎？
特拉維斯：當場。 這正是菲利克斯。
菲利克斯：讓我們再談一點。 這絕對是我個人以前從未聽說過的模型，但是當您談論它時，它會很有意義。 For anyone out there that wants to do something like this, let's say they find a product, find a company and they feel like they can fill that void that you're talking about and be the marketing and the sales, the community building arm of that company, how do you begin this conversation with those partners? What are you saying to them to even get them interested in you in the first place?
Travis : The most critical elements of this entire process is the audience and the community that you own. You need to have something of value to offer to these product partners, that's what I call them in the model is a product partner because that's exactly what they are. What you really want to be doing is offering as much value as you can to them to even have them be interested. All of your leverage comes on that front-end of the market. You need to be able to show or tell them how much you would be able to affect this community, your audience, your anything that you own and you have an influence over, that has value to other individuals. I would really focus on cultivating a highly targeted community and that's going to be where a lot of your leverage comes in.
I'll jump on a call or go through the old school emailing back and forth but really come to them with an offer of, "Hey, I have a hundred thousand responsible, respectable, regular cannabis users in my community. Your product fits the exact type of products that we're trying to put in front of this audience." Really coming at it from this angle of giving them value and producing results. Because a lot of the time you're going to be competing with massive ... They might be fulfilling orders for a thousand products at a time. This might just get blown off, you have to be able to understand and demonstrate the value that you can bring to the table.
Felix : In your case you had built this audience of a hundred thousand people and definitely want to talk in a second about how you did this, but you built this up first before you ever approached any of these partners that you found?
Travis : Slowly. I was able to have a basic first partner, right out the gates just because it actually worked perfectly like that. They weren't too concerned and they provided the products that we needed and it gave me just a little bit of a structure to start with. When you really start expanding and getting into a little bit of the higher end products, you definitely are going to need the actual audience and a targeted audience is where the value comes in. We are very clear that we are shooting for a little bit above the traditional market and shooting for the affordable, luxury category. We're not competing on price, a lot of the things that I consider when looking for partners is the value and the perception of their products and how well that's going to match the audience that I'm serving.
In the case of Phoenician, they have luxury premium grinders; this guy he's obsessed with engineering, he knows like, "Oh, if you move this tooth to this side then it won't get stuck on this." A whole another level of detail that I didn't even know existed but it gives the user a premium experience. It made it very clear that we had a product audience match whereas if I went and saw somebody with the exact same thing and they had some cheap aluminium alloy grinder that was manufactured ten thousand at a time and they sell three thousand at a time to wholesale distributors throughout the country, it's very unlikely that we would have a product market match there. Being really focused and really considerate of the audience that you have and the audience you're serving and the product that you're reaching out to attempt to connect with that audience.
Having that match is very critical and I've been very concise and considerate about the selection of our products which has been really part of our success model. Instead of giving the whole warehouse style of websites, I'm sure you've been in a website where you literally just feel like you're in a warehouse and you're just clicking through pages and pages and categories and we offer the polar opposite of that. If you would imagine a traditional warehouse Walmart style store, we are the polar opposite of that. We would be like a man's designer boutique around the corner. I'm very concise about the products selections that I put in front of our audience. Instead of just overwhelming everybody with anything and everything, that's been another little detail of creating really positive relationships with these individuals because of our marketing and our branding a lot more product partners that fit that category are all about it.
費利克斯：有道理。 Let's talk about this audience that you built. A hundred thousand people, heard you say it a couple of times, is that just all in one platform and how is that spread out amongst all your profiles?
Travis : The primary metric I'm trying to get away from using but I use it right now just for tracking general metrics is cumulative social reach. That's pretty much our reach across all of our networks. That actually has been trimmed down significantly after our most recent Instagram shutdown got chopped down at a 50-55k which was heartbreaking but still recovering from the sting on that one. What that basically is is across all of our networks, we have access to about a hundred thousand followers and a large majority is Tumblr, another chunk of that is from MassRoots which is a mobile app targeted only for cannabis consumers. That was definitely again we mentioned that watering pool earlier. You want to be at the exactly where your audience is and it was dumb not to be there. MassRoots was another very excellent area for us to cultivate a little more traction then the classic Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest is the other ones.
Felix : I don't want to get stuck on this point for too long but you said fifty thousand followers on Instagram, that profile got shutdown. Man, that definitely sounds devastating, what happened?
Travis : As you mentioned earlier what are the trade-offs of being cannabis related and cannabis company. One of the things that we've done as a strategic decision is be very clear with our language and the terms that we use. A lot of the times I'm sure you've been into maybe a head shop or heard the people that use the phrase, "This is for tobacco use only." You're like, "Okay, sure." Everybody knows that's not actually for tobacco use only. A lot of the other companies they just roll with that because that's what you're supposed to do and everybody just thinks that's how it's supposed to go. We've done the exact opposite again mentioning being really precise with your language. We're very open and transparent about using cannabis terms, cannabis language and saying, "Yes, this bong is for cannabis. This is not going to be for tobacco use only."
Felix : That was against Instagram's policies or something?
Travis : Yes. 確切地。 If you're in the category for tobacco use only that means you're safe technically and we are actually very clear about, "This is for cannabis, this is a cannabis product. This is a cannabis accessory." That violates a lot of terms for anything on the national level. The Instagram was actually just a small dose of the ... I call it cannabis bigotry in the industry. It's really a professional, industrial level of cannabis bigotry and it's anything affecting a national retailer or a national company will almost a hundred percent of the time cut out anything cannabis related. Our PayPal account has been shut down and our funds frozen multiple times, the Instagram shut down still recovering from that one. Just this morning actually recovering from Payment Gateway just got shut down as well.
That one wasn't even our fault, we had a previous high risk retailer or a high risk underwriter that was acquired by a different company, that new company came in and reviewed the policies and everything and cut anything and everything cannabis related or cannabis accessory related. Literally, as we speak I just opened my email this morning to see that our Payment Gateway has been shut down. I've got a stack of papers to sign up for a new Payment Gateways, get all of that figured out later. It's really a frustrating point but it's also really a moral stand from my perspective as well that I'm not going to play the for tobacco use only games. I'm in this again for the long run, I'm in this for the long haul and we're open about being heavy cannabis supporters.
It has some trade-offs and quickly I'm quickly realizing what those trade-offs are one at a time but as you've probably noticed in every entrepreneurial story, every theme, it's about re-routing your navigation to get to where you need to. I know where I need to get and it's going to be a leading cannabis brand and you're not going to get there plastering for tobacco use only on all of your products. It has its trade-offs but I think we're going to stick with our moral stand of remaining very transparent that our products are for cannabis.
費利克斯：有道理。 Let's talk about Tumblr then. You're mentioning that MassRoots is one platform, Instagram at a certain point and you guys are recovering from that but Tumblr is also a big one for you guys. What is the strategy on there? How have you used Tumblr to cultivate following?
Travis : This was again another little sweet spot that I was able to find in the realm of social marketing and content marketing. As I mentioned earlier, I'm always looking for that eighty-twenty and Tumblr gives you an opportunity to create a platform. It's basically a microblog and unlike most other platforms, you have to post your own content, post your own image. Tumblr, you can create a completely curated blog of other people's existing content and let me be clear for a second, this is an image that somebody else has posted or uploaded and you re-blog it on your page. It basically creates a curated content blog and that is not stealing images, downloading them and uploading them as your own, that is a completely different category and that's a big no, no.
Felix : You still get credit?
Travis : Yeah. This is where it's originally sourced and you do what is called a re-blog on Tumblr. It's basically the same concept of a share on every other network. Instead of creating original content when I was first starting, I was able to build a platform curating really great content of smoking pictures and great glass, really that heavily visual communication with the audience. With that now that we do have an audience to leverage and cultivate, I've been sprinkling in a lot of micrographic content marketing, we can just into content and email marketing a little bit after this. It's a little trifecta that they all feed into one another but really focusing on visual content and creating an environment and a community that people want to be a part of and that's what I have found in Tumblr.
Felix : How do you find the content to re-blog? 你在尋找什麼？ What's the best ways for someone who wants to start a new Tumblr profile to build a community, what are the first steps they should take to find the best content to curate?
Travis : I'll give the forewarning it is definitely a slow and steady growth. If this is something you're going to want to jump into be weary that this isn't like a paper [inaudible 00:53:49] campaign that you're just going to amplify. It's really a long game strategy and it feels really empty and slow at the beginning but once it picks up, it starts taking off. One of the areas that I really started off with was just general hashtags as with every other social channel you can go and scour and explore all the existing hashtags. Anything cannabis related I was going ahead and jumping in there as my starting point. Then once you get into this community you start seeing who the regular influencers are, whose stuff gets re-blogged the most, what type of content gets shared all the time, what type of stuff just completely flops.
From there you can start targeting specific influencers to connect with. Once you break out of the surface level hashtag environment you can start jumping into seeing, "Okay, well who are the people that are dominating these hashtags? Who are the people that are really resonating?" These people have their own little mini audiences. Really tapping into an influencer marketing model with tons of smaller individuals. If you would imagine a traditional influencer marketing with authors and really big shots in traditional marketing, this is really the same concept but boiled down to more of a micro level. Connecting with these micro influencers, re-blogging a lot of their content and in turn that starts creating this self-sustaining cycle of value once you start creating these audiences.
Felix : Once you've built this community, once you've built a bunch of followers on Tumblr, how do you drive them to your store?
Travis : Actually, I have a couple of different things that we do: one of my areas of focus is actually not driving social traffic directly to our store. I actually attempt to drive a lot of our traffic to our email list which we can jump into content marketing, social marketing and email marketing to me are a holy, little trifecta and they're all interconnected. What I basically do is create really engaging visual content to share on the platform. A quick example, I'll give you an example of how it would work out and I'll create a micrographic that compares the death statistics of alcohol versus the death statistics of cannabis and I'll have an entire article ready, sitting on the site, nothing sells the ... Just educational informative community content and that's where I'll drive a lot of our traffic from social areas and all the time I'm always trying to feed people into your mailing list.
That's what you need to be doing if you want to own an audience, it needs to be on your email list or regularly coming back to your site but most of the time you want to be driving your traffic to an email list of some sort. That's really a lot of the focus that we do is I'm all about the soft sale, I'm sure I would probably make some marketing funnel experts cringe. I'm all about cultivating a long-term relationship over a short-term sale. We actually drive a lot of our traffic to the website for sharing content, sharing articles and educational pieces instead of jumping directly to the sale but we definitely do have ... I sprinkle in probably maybe about five or ten percent of our posts that just link directly to products and those do tend to do pretty well as well.
Felix : You're creating some original content that is related to your brand, related to your industry, then people are clicking on a link to go to some landing page somewhere from the site for email listing. How do they actually get from Tumblr to your email list?
Travis : One of the things that we really focus on funneling traffic to our mailing list is through our content sign up. We have a bunch of ... It's basically a legalization campaign called #Mission420. A lot of that content is very viral focused on stirring up opinions, getting people really passionate, getting them involved with cannabis legalization and exposing the details of cannabis versus other things. Getting people as passionate as possible before they get to the end of that article, the technical details would be email subscriber pop-ups.
Felix : You got some content that you've created on your site then you're sharing that on Tumblr and then they click over to it, then there's a pop-up basically from the sign up for your newsletter?
Travis : Yeah. Every article is going to be slightly different, I'm trying to really custom tailor every offer but you need to either ... There's two keys that you need somebody to sign up for your email list: they need to either be passionately in love with what you're doing or sharing or writing or you need to have something really cool or really awesome on the other end of that subscriber list. I've taken two different strategies for that: one is a traditional giveaway platform where we just straight up, "Give us your email address, your entry to the giveaway and you could win anything you want from the site for free." Stuff like that very simple model.
The other model is a little more complex, a little deeper and that's where it taps into the heartstrings and the emotions of our audience and that's where more of our campaign comes in like the Mission 420 campaign. Our cannabis education articles revealing all the different benefits of CBD oils and cancer treatments and just really a wide spectrum of passionate content that gets people going. A lot of it is either I email subscriber pop-up box or even just a simple link at the bottom of every article. It's keeping it simple and making sure that when somebody jumps on your page, there's really only one thing to do and you want to be funneling everybody towards a single call to action.
A lot of times you'll see so much content that just sends people, "Follow us on this and share it over there." "Oh, don't forget to sign up on our thing at the bottom of the footer, you can sign up for an email newsletter too. Don't forget to check this on your way out." Then people just leave and close the page. Any content that you're producing and you're driving social traffic to, I would recommend having one single call to action for that page and just make it very clear from top to bottom what that call to action is and eventually it pays off.
Felix : I totally agree that you want to keep it simple and then also give them a good reason to sign up and not just, "Hey, sign up for our newsletter." I don't want to be too dense about this myself because I don't have much experience with Tumblr, are you posting the link to the content on Tumblr? What exactly are you posting to get them to your site?
Travis : Thankfully one of the cool things about Tumblr is there's a wide variety of content posting types whereas Twitter you just have your a hundred and forty characters, you're good, you go upload something if you want then it's done. Tumblr has a really wide variety of post types, they have photo sets, they have single photos, audio, all kinds of different strategies. In general the most successful strategy is a single micrographic image and it's basically a mini infographic that can be absorbed in five, ten, fifteen seconds. Don't overdo it and that's where a lot of our traffic comes from, is I'll post a single micrographic that's part of a larger article and just create a link to that article within the post. The micrographic will be explaining, "Ninety percent of users that overdosed on prescription painkillers could have potentially been saved from cannabis." A little quick snippet of information, a little quick fact, it's heavy on visuals then in the text under that image is just a quick link to the actual article or anything that you want to create.
If you want to actually create a call to action directly from within Tumblr, you can link up to it as well, it gives you a lot of flexibility in controlling hyperlinks, bolding this and what not whereas a lot of other platforms you're really just restricted to what they give you. That is one of the areas where I can create custom links and that's also one of the areas I've been experimenting too, is to see what types of links are working? Is it better to send people directly to the mailing list or is it better to send them to content first then the mailing list? Just always testing, always optimizing but thankfully the flexibility of Tumblr allows for a very wide spectrum. The sweet spot that I would emphasize is a single image that tells them a small story in five to ten, fifteen seconds and I think you'll see a lot of success with that.
費利克斯：有道理。 You're creating some kind of custom graphic, custom infographic that then links to your content page or you also said that you might link to your email sign up directly and that makes sense. Can I close it down by talking about email marketing? What are you doing once you actually get their email address? What are you sending them?
Travis : I have basically two different routes that are set up here: there's the traditional automation and autoresponders that are set up. Right now if you were to sign up and subscribe to our list on Bee-High.com, you would get emails for the next I believe sixteen weeks is how long I've got it set up now. Again, maximizing that eighty-twenty, email automation sequence is really where you can maximize a lot of your efforts because once it's set up, you can keep building and keep building off of that. Right now we have a sixteen week automated email sequence that goes out when you sign up. It's about once per week, not over doing it then I do traditional broadcast style what most people would just call a blast in email marketing.
That's when anything that comes up that is super topical, we'll jump in the news if there's anything really big happening in the world of cannabis, we'll jump in there. Then anytime we upload new products is also when I'll utilize the more of a blast style of email marketing instead of the automation. We've got a little bit of a hybrid model of automation that kicks in as soon as you sign up then over time depending on topical events, new products et cetera then that's when we leverage more of the traditional blast style of email marketing that everybody is more used to.
Felix : I like that, that you have basically sixteen weeks of communicating with the customers that are actually having to type up these emails yourself. This ties all together email marketing, Tumblr with the social marketing, the content marketing you're doing. All of these on the side, how successful has the business been since you've started it?
Travis : It has been excellent. Of course everybody has a different definition of success but I am in a great spot. We're in a steady growth of about ten, twenty percent per month and that's all I could ask for. I'm really satisfied with that. Jumping into more of a revenue side of things the first year I ever started jumping into this we hit 25k revenue and now this year we're projected to double that and possibly more. We're going to be hitting around 50-55k this year.
Felix : This is all done on a part time. How many hours a day are you spending on this obviously in the week?
Travis : It varies on a spectrum but I pretty much have this 8 to 10p.m blocked out every single day and that's pretty much my Bee-High focus zone that I get almost everything done in that 8 to 10p.m, Monday through Friday. I try to invest as much as I can on the weekends really doing a lot of the sacrificing of social hours and going out on Friday's and Saturday's nights, a lot of the times they're spent right here in front of this keyboard but it's really worth it in the long run I believe.
Felix : Thanks so much Travis of Bee-High.com, Bee-High.com is the website. Anywhere else you recommend the listeners check out for them to follow along with what you're up to, what your company is up to?
Travis : Yeah. Bee-High.com, sign up for our mailing list, you'll definitely be interested in a lot of the content that we promote and put out. On more of a personal level for anybody that's just wanting to connect for a business relationship, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, that's actually been one of my sweet spots for connecting with business to business partners and all kinds of individuals. Feel free to find me on LinkedIn @Travislachner. That's Lachner.
Felix : Thanks so much Travis.
Travis : Thanks so much Felix, I appreciate your time.
Felix : Thanks for listening to Shopify Masters the e-commerce marketing podcast for ambitious entrepreneurs. To start your store today visit shopify.com/masters to claim your extended thirty day free trial.