Marketing Experts Reveal Top Strategies To

Arlen:
Welcome to the eCommerce Marketing Podcast, everyone. My name is Arlen and I am your host. And today we have a very special guest, Brandon Moskwa, who has been working with creative e-commerce leaders and founders who love what they do but hate the parts they need to do. He has been a sought-after futurist and thought leader by IBM, SAP and Oracle. He writes for Hackernoon, where he recently won a contributor of the year award, for his insights and interviews with DTC-focused Inc 5000 companies. Welcome to the podcast, Brandon.

Branden Moskwa:
Well, thanks again, Arlen. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’ve been looking forward to it today.

Arlen:
Yes, and thank you for joining us. I’m really excited to talk to you today. We’re going to be kind of talking about an interesting topic that you’re going to enlighten us on. And that’s going to be the concept of CPR, customer profit ratio. We’re also going to be talking about one of the single most missed opportunities of affiliate program offerings that many businesses and specifically e-commerce businesses miss With regards to you know, the leverage of that they have and so I’m really excited to get into it Both those topics I think are gonna be fresh for our listeners and viewers But before we do get into that, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about your background and specifically how you got into? What you’re doing today?

Branden Moskwa:
All right, well, I mean, it could go way back if I wanted to and why not? Actually, I’ve been involved in the tech space since I was like old enough to read because

Arlen:
Okay.

Branden Moskwa:
my dad used to lug home computers and that sort of thing from work so that I could learn and basically made me learn how to code my own games because we didn’t have games on it. So, you know, I have a tech background on that side but I was never really a tech person. I was more of a business. like always into business and that showed when I started selling my toys at toy sales instead of garage sales and renting to my brother way back in the day. Now,

Arlen:
Okay.

Branden Moskwa:
Now, let’s advance about 40 years almost to where we are today, but irregardless, I also did similar background to you where I started in the web development space and then moved into e-commerce site development and did a lot of that sort of thing and then. And then IBM kind of reached out to me as a futurist for them and did, so I started doing a lot more of the thought leadership type work and the advisory type work for various e-commerce companies from that point forward. And I’ve just been enjoying working with people and what you said there about not doing the things that they, not enjoying the things they need to do. I was talking a lot about the processes that people need to put in place and things that aren’t necessarily fun but

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
are required and some of which we might even talk about here today which is you know like the customer profitability ratio and that sort of thing. So yeah I’d love to chat about that end of things and kind of educate maybe educate some people and that sort of thing. I think everybody should hear about it.

Arlen:
Okay. Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that. It will, it sounds like you’ve kind of been involved, like you said, in the tech entrepreneurial space, since you knew how to read, so definitely sounds like you’re in an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur. So, uh, you can not only advise, um, as a consultant, but you know, you can advise as a person that was, uh, I guess you could say kind of knee deep in the weeds of it. Um, so that’s always good to know. Um, your, your advisement and consultation comes from a lot of experience, which is what we love to hear. Um, well, you know, what I want to kind of start off with is if you can just give us a brief overview of really what the customer profit ratio is and why do you believe it’s so crucial for an e-commerce business to understand what that is.

Branden Moskwa:
Sure, well, one of the things that I do know, well, a lot of people rely on specific metrics, right? I mean, ROAS is one of the terms that’s thrown around so much these days while it’s been thrown around for a long time in the marketing space, which is the return on ad spend. And I’ll be honest, I hate it. I think it’s a misleading number in many ways. It’s in some ways, it’s a number that’s been created. by the marketers of the world to show you, hey, look, I just spent this much money and got this much back, but they don’t show, it doesn’t show a lot of the details underlying what’s going on in your business. So that kind of led me down a whole wicked path of, I guess down a rabbit hole of, well, how can we make this better? And what can we look at? What are the important metrics that people need to look at? And so I looked at, you know, average order value. And that’s important in some ways, but there’s other ways to look at it too. And so then I really started looking at, okay, it’s important in all business, regardless of it’s just e-commerce or outside of that, that you look at the lifetime value of your customer. Because if you sell once to them, those are the people that are easiest to sell to again, because they’ve already gotten your trust, you’ve already built the trust, and you’re able to sell. And basically in the sales world, they call it farming as opposed to hunting, right? So, One of the biggest pieces there for me was, okay, the lifetime value of your customer is very important because that speaks to your customer service, the marketing efforts you’re doing, all of the operations side, all of those pieces it really speaks to. But so does your cost of acquisition, the cost to acquire your customer, which is similar to your ROAS, but it goes a little deeper. It includes your marketing costs and those types of things. And then there’s one, a third one. to me, which is important, which is your profit margin. Right? And so those three together combined with a little mathematical formulas, which we won’t necessarily bore people with on the show, but we can get into if you want. Irregardless, it creates what’s called the customer profitability ratio, which allows you to see how much is my average customer profitability. Like how much am I profiting per customer? And so what that does is it really takes in, so if you’re seeing that number on a daily, a weekly, whatever monthly basis, depending on your sales and how often things change, if for example, that number changes in a bad way, a negative way, then you know that one of those three things is out of alignment. Okay, we haven’t, our profitability shouldn’t have changed because nothing, our costs haven’t gone up or changed in any way, so we know it’s not that. our cost of acquisition seems to be the same. Okay, what’s our lifetime value? Did that drop? So it gives you a quicker way to see the overall diagnostics of your company and then dive into what the specific issues are from there. So it’s like the other ones to me, like the ROAS and those types of things, those are important numbers because as you drill down, you can figure out what specifically the problem is.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
from a higher level, people need to have an early alert system, so to speak, which is why I call it CPR. 

Arlen:
Hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
It also went well with customer profitability ratio. So, you know, but it’s an early alert, right? It allows you to keep the, you know, get the pulse back in your company and keep it going.

Arlen:
Yep.

Branden Moskwa:
So that’s where the concept of it came from. There’s different ways of looking at it, but that’s really how I’ve. ultimately looked at it and work with some of my clients on. And you know, if it’s, you know, it’s one of those things that you can quickly plug in and just

Arlen:
Hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
just right into your, you know, your, your tracking methodologies and that sort of thing. And it’s a really key indicator to, to enlighten you that there’s other things going on.

Arlen:
Yeah, that’s good to know. And, um, you know, as you had mentioned, there’s a lot of these types of statistical formulas and ratios that you said ROAS and all types of things that get thrown around in our whole marketing space and, you know, a lot of it. Um, and like you said, it’s been just created by some of these marketing platforms and a lot of it is just to. help them increase their profitability. But yeah, what you’re saying is CPR specifically is more kind of an early alert type of system. And how would you say it could help in business in making operational, you know, business decisions? And if you could share some just real world examples of how this really worked for some businesses.

Branden Moskwa:
Absolutely, So I was working with a client of mine named Tammy, and one of the examples that we ran into there was, and not so much as an early alert system in this situation, but more of a, well, how do we price this new product we have? So we looked at, well, what is your cost of acquiring a customer now? Because it’s probably not gonna change a whole lot necessarily for this given product now. And so we were able to plug in these numbers to figure out where she had to be on a pricing point, because then she could look at it. And we actually worked it out to the point where we could figure out, okay, if you raised your price of this product, just $10. And it’s, I mean, we’re talking about like a nearly, a near $100 product price range. So, I mean, $10 may or may not make or break the sales. But what we realized from doing that is just a $10 sales price increase would almost double the profitability in your sales. So what that would mean is she could sell one third of the number of products and still make more money in profits than if she sold it at $10 less. So it’s just like, it’s one of those things that number helps you figure out some of these types of things in the pricing side and allows you to make better decisions from that perspective. And so that really helped her in that situation. And then in another situation with another client of mine, he was wondering, you know, what’s going on here? Something’s not right. My ROAS is great, you know, but what’s going on? So we plugged in this number and yeah, okay, it had to do. It actually turned out that his AOV, which is his average, average order value was the same as his lifetime value. So we figured out that, okay, you’re not reselling. You’re not selling additional products to people any longer. You’re a one sale wonder basically, right?

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
So we need to figure out, it’s you had it, he had an awesome, awesome first sale because he had all the pieces in place to increase the sale, right? He has selling up, selling throughout the process. All those little things were great, but he wasn’t getting them back. Well, it turns out we implemented a few things like, you know, a better or tweaked. email outreach sequence after the purchase, getting them re-engaged and keeping the customers that you have engaged with your business and really start telling more of your business story as well to really create and nurture a community around it which was really important and that community is just so important in the marketing side of things and the sales, resales side of things. And so those are two specific incidents where just plugging in this number helped us drill down to where the specific problems were from the profit margin and the lifetime value.

Arlen:
Hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
And in those cases, it was nice because we knew what the cost of acquisition was to acquire their given customers. So then you just plug in these two other numbers and it starts to lead you down the path really well.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
And I’ll bet you, you know, I’ll bet you if I sat down with any one of your listeners for just 15 minutes, I could easily help them diagnose anywhere very quickly where the problems are specifically. And it’s funny because a lot of people, we all believe we know what the problem is. And in many cases we’re right, but we don’t know necessarily how to address it. 

Arlen:
Yep.

Branden Moskwa:
But in other cases, we might actually be wrong. And it’s just being open to hearing what those, what the possibilities are that make… that is open a whole new world to people.

Arlen:
Yep.

Branden Moskwa:
Um, and, uh, and I’ve used this formula specifically for kind of that initial dive and it really works well.

Arlen:
Okay, great. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that and breaking that down with those examples of your, of those different customers. And with specifically that first example, like you were saying, this was kind of more used as, um, kind of a predictive almost analysis of what particular product to, to really get out there and push. Um, so yeah, it seems like it’s pretty diverse and you can use it for a number of ways.

Branden Moskwa:
Well, that’s what I like about it is it’s more predictive as opposed to reactive.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
And, you know, numbers are great. Metrics are important to monitor and forget what his name was, but there’s this quote out there along the lines of, you know, that’s that which we track, we can improve.

Arlen:
Yep.

Branden Moskwa:
I’ve forgotten who said it, but it’s important and be able to track the data. But it’s not only that, but if you can take it one step further and be able to somewhat predict. I mean, nothing’s completely predictable. We live in a world that’s organic, right? It’s not, nothing is completely predictable or robotic. I mean, we’re moving more robotic and AI driven as we every day, but it doesn’t mean that it’s predictive, right?

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
So, but it’s a great indicator to help you predict what you need to do and make moves, decisions that are important.

Arlen:
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, speaking of decisions, if we’re looking at this as a kind of a predictive analysis tool, um, and then trying to compare or just relate to create a connection between the CPR and the marketing overall, how would this help a brand when they’re trying to shape their marketing strategies, you know, currently for their business and in the future.

Branden Moskwa:
Well, it really hones in on the two aspects of the marketing side, from my opinion, are the cost of acquisition and the lifetime value. Those marketing numbers are very important and they’re interweaved very closely with this. And that’s the one thing is like, I think numbers are really important to marketers. They’re also important to operations and they help you decide what processes need to be put in place. Now that said, this specific CPR can help you with that because profit margin is the only one that not necessarily gets looked at by the marketing team. But the cost of acquisition and lifetime value, those two are very key indicators, especially when you could cross compare again, everything comes down to cross comparing these two other metrics, right?

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
So we dive in and you’re like, okay, let’s look at the LTV versus the AOV. okay, we’re not getting repeat customers. So that was the example I was giving you there earlier. So then you know, okay, we have to build a process out for getting repeat customers now or the cost of acquisition has gone up. Why is that? Is that just because cost of advertising’s gone up? Can we just increase our ad spend and still recoup because maybe you’re a ROAS, maybe I’ve seen this too where the ROAS in a client was actually has been increasing lately and it’s been great. But the growth, the actual profitability of the companies hasn’t been. 

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
So we’re like, well, what’s going on? And so we dig deeper and we realize, okay, it’s the cost, you know, your ROAS is going up, but your cost to acquire the customers is also going up.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
And so we have to address that and look at those and what can we do to change, you know, to do… fix that issue, right? So it helps you identify those specific issues.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
Now I don’t know if I answered your question now that 

Arlen:
Yeah,

Branden Moskwa:
I think about it.

Arlen:
no, yeah, definitely. I mean, I can see how, you know, with this, you know, there’s a lot of things you can do with it as far as being able to predict when we’re thinking about different specific marketing strategies, you know, looking at this, it can allow you to focus on, you know, which particular products that you want to push, um, as opposed to others, um, you know, which are more profitable over certain periods of time. You know, there’s a whole lot you can do from just getting that, um, you know, particular, um, formula down and then the results of that. So yeah, it’s that totally makes sense. Now, um, just shifting gears here a little bit. When I got your notes for this conversation in the topic, you’d mentioned, um, also affiliate program offers as being a kind of a missed opportunity in an e-commerce marketing. So I want to see if you can explain. why you think this is the case and how can a business better capitalize on this opportunity through affiliate programs.

Branden Moskwa:
Absolutely. I’ve been preaching affiliate programs for years, probably since the time that you kind of pivoted off with your business into, I think it’s OSI affiliate software.

Arlen:
Yep.

Branden Moskwa:
But the reason I said that is because, and it’s kind of, there’s a marriage here that I’m thinking of really, and that is that… Affiliate marketing is awesome because you can get people talking about your product and then they’re recouping, they’re getting paid so to speak to do so because they’re making sales. Now the flip side of that is a lot of people out there are now finally, and in some ways almost incorrectly at times, jumping on the bandwagon of getting influencers.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
And so what they’re, and that’s a great strategy. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen amazing success from it if it’s done correctly. And when I say done correctly, there’s a lot of things like I said, people are doing incorrectly. That’s a whole other topic. But anyway, what I’m getting at here is one of the ways that you can incentivize those influencers is through an affiliate program offer. So that gives them even more motivation to get engaged in your brand and talk about your brand. and do even more than maybe what they were initially paid to do, or maybe they got some free product, whatever you do, your specific, that’s your specific influencer program. If you add on that layer of an affiliate program to it, you’ll see amazingly amazing extra results. And a lot of the time it’s just that small little incentivization that allows for that. and that’s one of the pieces to it. And the other side of, like I said, it’s a really missed opportunity is because it’s, I mean, there’s a cost involved to setting it all up and getting it in place and working properly. And you know, to have, you should dedicate somebody to that for a little while to get it up and running and running right. But the nice thing is, is once it’s running, it’s essentially a sales team out there spreading your word for you.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
And you’re not, paying them, you’re paying them based on sales. So it’s not, it’s a little less risk involved than

Arlen:
Yep.

Branden Moskwa:
maybe going out and putting a bunch of ads on Google. And then your ROAS tanks because, well, I just put a whole bunch of money in and it didn’t, I made a sale, but that sale cost me, you know, it cost me more from a Google ad to make the sale. And I’ve seen that a lot of the time with, especially with the younger companies, but. even the more established ones, a slight algorithm change or something changes in the marketing platform they’re using like Facebook a couple of years ago, there was the iOS thing. Like any changes like that can impact you huge. Whereas with established affiliate program, all of a sudden some of those issues disappear because it’s kind of like, and then the more people you have in it, the better as well

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
because one of the things is, if you have, If you think of it this way, you’ve got a, you know, you have five people out there spreading your word.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
Um, that’s all good. You have 50 spreading your word. That’s even better. But even if you think about it as 50 people spreading your word, but they’re maybe not reaching out to as many as those key five, well, what if one of those five stops,

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
right? But you have 50 people and one of those 50 people stops. Well,

Arlen:
Right.

Branden Moskwa:
you’re barely going to feel an impact with the one in

Arlen:
Sure.

Branden Moskwa:
50 versus the one in five. Um, even if they were all in total reaching the same total, uh, the total base of people and that same principle applies not just to affiliate, but to the influencer marketing side of things too. Um,

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
but there’s different takes on that. Like I said, I’m not going to get into influencer marketing cause that’s a whole nother beast, but in the same way it’s very comparable. And that’s why I think. Everybody’s looking at, oh, influencer marketing, influencer marketing, influencer marketing. That’s fantastic. Look at affiliate marketing from the same

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
perspective and the same viewpoints, and you’ll start to see why it can be such a valuable, and it’s such a missed opportunity. 

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
I mean, I know lots of people are starting to do it,

Arlen:
Yep.

Branden Moskwa:

but honestly, a lot of them put it on their site affiliate program, and they don’t push it. And you can push it to your customers too. Like that’s one of the missed opportunities as well is, hey, Did you know you can get, you know, earn this much by telling people about us? And guess what? They’ve already bought your product. So they’re more likely to tell people about it too. Um, so there’s all kinds of ways to build an affiliate program. You probably know more, you know more about that than I do, but I just see it as such a missed opportunity for

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
so many people and I’ve been talking about it for years and I think

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
like, just open, open it up and look, look towards that as well. or instead of the influencer side of things, I think there’s opportunities to join the two and all that sort of thing. And that’s the biggest missed opportunity I’m talking about for sure.

Arlen:
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I totally agree. You know, of course, me being in the, this, this affiliate software space for as long as I’ve been, everything you said is totally on point. You know, you mentioned it as being it’s a separate channel sales channel and you have to think of it as these affiliates are almost like an outsourced sales team for your brand where, you know, you’re only paying them a commission. So it’s little risk and you know, it’s just pay for performance. You have, they were going to perform. You give them. the commission and you can also accelerate and increase their commission to those that are high performers, those top affiliates. And, um, that’s how you get them motivated to continue to, um, to promote. And another good thing about the affiliate program is specifically for new and startup brands. It’s something that you can launch just kind of fresh out of the gate. I mean, if you, even if you have no CUS absolutely no customers, you can launch that affiliate program. I’ll reach out to affiliates and just immediately kind of start spreading your, the brand awareness through these affiliates that are going to be, you know, sharing on social media, creating videos about your brand, all of this. So it made, it’s really something that you should do day one where a lot of businesses be like, or, you know, may shy away from that. Cause like, Hey, you know, I don’t have any sales yet. Does it even make sense? It does. You know, for sure. I think it’s a great way to start off.

Branden Moskwa:
Well, I mean, I’ve seen some people, I was talking to someone the other day who was actually afraid, at this point she’s afraid to post on TikTok. I mean,

Arlen:
Hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
yeah, it was TikTok. And

Arlen:
Yep.

Branden Moskwa:
the reason for that was because when she first started her business, she did some posts on TikTok and it took off and it blew up her business like 10, more than 10-fold, like she went from, I forget what it was, but it jumped up to $300,000 a month in sales. Like it was just a huge, blow up in her business. I think she was maybe doing 10,000 before that. So it just like blew up for her. Now that’s not everybody’s case. I can’t just go on TikTok, post a video, hope that everybody’s gonna go ahead and boom, my site’s gonna take off. That’s what everybody dreams of. 

Arlen:
Right.

Branden Moskwa:
It’s not the case, right?

Arlen:
Sure.

Branden Moskwa:
With an affiliate program, even when you’re starting out, you reach out to some of these people on TikTok, you offer them an affiliate program. guess what, you hit the right person and then all of a sudden it takes off, right? Because it’s a matter, in that case, it’s more of a numbers game and then you hit that right person or that person puts out the right kind of video and that goes

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
viral and all you’re paying for is the results. And so all of a sudden you’ve got a growing, very quickly growing business. So when you say, well, I don’t even have any sales, is it worth doing that? The answer is absolutely yes because it will generate sales for you.

Arlen:
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah. That is just, couldn’t be further from the truth for sure. I’d say brands definitely don’t want to sleep on the, you know, the affiliate program.

Branden Moskwa:
One thing I just wanna add to actually is that goes directly in correlation with what we talked about earlier with the customer profitability ratio, because you have direct control over your cost of acquisition. You have complete control over it with an affiliate program.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
That is a nice piece as well.

Arlen:
Yeah, that’s true. Very true. Um, well, Brandon, as we get ready to wrap things up, I wanted to see, you know, speaking of CPR, I wanted to see what strategies you could recommend for e-commerce businesses to track and optimize their CPR while implementing their own affiliate marketing program.

Branden Moskwa:
Hmm. Well, if you’re implementing your own affiliate marketing program, like I said, you can control the COA, the cost of acquisition very, very well. So the other two pieces you need to monitor and watch are gonna be your profitability, your profit margins. So make sure your pricing is in line with your profit margins. 

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
That’s one of the biggest keys. A lot of people think they have to sell their product for less. That is not the case. And in all honesty, it will… It will. it will slowly kill your business 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
if you’re undercutting your on your prices. So you’re almost better off to charge more and then stand behind your product and put out quality products. When you feel like that’s really what I always recommend people do is put out quality products.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
Um, but you know, charge more have a and have a good solid healthy profit margin. Um, and then, and then the nice thing there too is then if you’ve sold them a good quality product, they’re more likely to come back.

Arlen:
Hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
And so the first piece in my opinion is with affiliates is you’re controlling your cost of acquisition Then you focus on your profit margin making sure that is good and healthy And then the others then the next piece of the of the pie for the strategy There is then you focus on the lifetime value getting those reoccurring purchases happening which is extremely important, especially in like, subscription-based companies can nail that down because that’s how they live and die, right? But I’m saying there’s other ways to increase that lifetime value. And so those are my key takeaways as far as a specific process and strategy that come from that number and that data. But I mean, really it’s, yeah. So that’s, I guess, my biggest takeaway on what to do with regards to the CPR formula monitors like wobbling away. So anyway.

Arlen:
No problem. Well, yeah, I totally get it. That makes sense. And, you know, I think when you’re thinking of the profit margin, and then you’re looking at your affiliate program, I guess also, of course, they have to keep a bread has to keep in mind the potential commission that they’re going to possibly have to give away with that sale, you know, of course, it’s not going to be every sale that comes to them is going to be from an affiliate, of course, not. So I mean, they have to kind of figure out, you know, an average that they’re going to be, you know, it may take a few months for them to kind of pin down the right pricing so they get their margins right. But yeah, they do have to be, I’d say, you know, initially a little bit conservative on the commission that they’re giving out. Because like you said, you never know. You never know if one of these affiliates is going to put out something that’s going to go viral. That’s going to be a good thing.

Branden Moskwa:
Yeah.

Arlen:
But of course, you know, that commission is going to go toward, you know, cut away a little bit at your profit margin, but.

Branden Moskwa:
Well, and that’s the thing too. Like that’s why I try and keep it separate with

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
that number because the point there too is that you have your profit margin and if you keep that somewhat separate in regards to your actual marketing expenses,

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
then you can break that down a little easier with this number. But regardless of this formula or not, the one thing that you just mentioned is you don’t have to keep in mind what you wanna pay your affiliates. You just have to do the same with paper. click advertising or any of those types of advertising that you’re doing out there, you have to keep in mind that it’s gonna cost you money to acquire customers,

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
right? So no matter what formula, well, no matter what you’re doing, you have a cost to acquire customers.

Arlen:
Sure.

Branden Moskwa:
And so if, for example, you do that as a percentage base or a flat rate or however that works for your affiliate program, keep in mind that you’re gonna be doing the same. in the pay-per-click world, you just have a little less control over it.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
So, you know, if you have a pay-per-click program already running, look at what you’re paying out on that per customer. 

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
What’s that costing you per customer to make a sale? And maybe that’s how you start, your starting point for your affiliate program.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
Maybe you can offer more in the affiliate program than that because you do know that it will generate other sales. It’ll actually generate sales that aren’t directly correlated to that affiliate as well,

Arlen:
Yep.

Branden Moskwa:
especially with your lifetime value as well,

Arlen:
Yeah,

Branden Moskwa:
right?

Arlen:
yeah,

Branden Moskwa:
So.

Arlen:
very, very true. Yeah, that, that makes sense. You, I mean, you’re totally right about that. It’s the, there’s always a cost to acquire a customer, whether it’s the commission you’re going to pay or, um, you know, the pay per click, um, fees or things like that, that are coming from your advertising that you’re going to do. Yeah. There’s, there’s going to always be a cost. So I, I totally agree with that. Um, well, Brendan, this has been an awesome conversation. Um, I know it’s going to go a long way with our listeners and viewers. I’ve definitely learned a lot. Um, So I’m definitely excited, you know, to see how this can benefit everyone that’s listening. But I always like to close things out at the end of the conversation here, just so our audience can get to know you a little bit better. If you don’t mind sharing one closing fun fact about yourself that you think we’d be interested to know.

Branden Moskwa:
Hmm, a fun fact about myself. Well, I’ll tell you, actually, I’ll tell you a fun fact. I once put a message on a balloon, tied it on the balloon, and it let it go. And I lived in Calgary, Alberta at the time, which is about 2,000 miles or 3,000 miles actually from where it landed. And so as a kid, when I was seven years old, I made the front page of the newspaper. And the reason I tell you this interesting fact is because that inside me started realizing that anything is possible. And I felt that, you know what, if once you believe that anything is possible, then everything becomes possible.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
And so it’s the story of the red balloon. I love to tell it because it’s a very important story for people to hear, to remind themselves that, you know what, if you go out there and you work hard and you do things, in this case I didn’t work hard. I just type this. drink to a balloon, but it still made it. 

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
It’s just the idea of everything, anything is possible and really encourage people to go out and take risks. But take it wisely, right? Which is where I come in and yes, the part of your business that you don’t enjoy doing, that’s the part that I can help with. 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
But regardless, that’s my story. I really, I like to tell it. It’s an interesting one.

Arlen:
Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Branden Moskwa:
Ha!

Arlen:
Message tied to a balloon. And so you saying it drifted over, you said about 2000 miles from

Branden Moskwa:
If

Arlen:
where you let.

Branden Moskwa:
yeah, it flew from Calgary, Alberta to a farmer’s field in Kansas city or Kansas somewhere.

Arlen:
Wow.

Branden Moskwa:
And actually

Arlen:
Okay.

Branden Moskwa:
we all became friends with them. They came up to watch the Calgary stampede.

Arlen:
Okay.

Branden Moskwa:
He thought it was absolutely crazy that he found it in the first place because it was in the middle of his field where the cows

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
were grazing and he just saw this little red thing sitting there and he’s like, what the heck is that? So,

Arlen:
Yeah, right.

Branden Moskwa:
you know, If you can tie

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
the message to a balloon and it can travel 3000 miles, then

Arlen:
Yeah.

Branden Moskwa:
I’m pretty sure if you put your head down and work hard on something you’ve dedicated to, you can make it happen.

Arlen:
Yeah, for sure. That’s definitely a testimonial to the fact that yeah, anything is possible. Because I mean, just imagine what could have happened, you know, the balloon could have went through storms and it, you know, could have been totally disintegrated. 

Branden Moskwa:
Yeah.

Arlen:
It could have ended up in a lake, a river, you never know. But it actually got to someone who was able to read it and then contact you. So yeah, that’s quite a story. Yeah. Now, I appreciate you sharing that. Thank you.

Branden Moskwa:
No problem.

Arlen:
Lastly, before we do let you go, you know, if our listeners want to reach out to you and pick your brain anymore about that CPR ratio and formula or affiliate marketing, what would be the best way for them to get in contact with you?

Branden Moskwa:
Well, the best way, I mean you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. Just look me up Brandon Moskva and I’ll come up pretty quick. I’m like, I think I’m the only one. But irregardless, the best way like if what I’ll do is for your listeners, if there’s anybody listening here today that wants to get some airtime with me, I am more than happy to take a 15-minute call with anyone. I could probably help them in a very short order with this formula or not. help them diagnose and you know if nothing else in 15 minutes you can’t fix a problem but you can help diagnose it or you can help put a band-aid fix in place and I’d be more than happy to meet with Pete with any one of your listeners for 15 minutes and just give them give them some you know let them tell me what they think their problem is I’ll agree disagree or otherwise and I’ll help them get on the right track so they can do that actually sorry to answer that They can do

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Branden Moskwa:
that by going to NoSalesBS. So it’s

Arlen:
Okay.

Branden Moskwa:
N-O-Sales-B-S.com. And I say that because the call is not for a sales call. It’s for me to actually hammer out some issues and help you out. 

Arlen:
Okay, great.

Branden Moskwa:
So go to NoSalesBS.com and book directly there. It’s actually my calendar link. So that’s probably the best way for them to get a hold of me. And

Arlen:
Okay.

Branden Moskwa:
otherwise go to LinkedIn. You can find all my information there as well.

Arlen:
All right. That’s awesome. Well, well, thank you, Brandon, for, for offering that. We’ll definitely have the link to that, um, page in our show notes. So people can actually get to that and, uh, and book that call with you. And yeah, we appreciate that offering. Well, uh, once again, Brandon, it’s been awesome talking to you again. I’ve learned a lot, um, and, uh, citing talking to you and, uh, we really appreciate you coming on today on the e-commerce marketing podcast.

Branden Moskwa:
Thanks for having me.

Podcast Guest Info

Branden Moskwa
eCommerce Expert and Podcast Host