Landing Pages and A/B Testing to Win at Media Buying

Links:

• Website: Obvi
• Ash's Twitter

‍

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Welcome to the Minds of Ecommerce podcast, where you'll learn one key strategy that made leading ecommerce companies grow exponentially. We cut the bullshit and keep the meat. In a 15-20 minutes episode, founders and executives take us through a deep dive of a strategy so you get to learn and grow your online sales.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
In the last episode, you heard from Ben Sale of Cotton, and we discussed how he's grown the brand by targeting specific markets through brick and mortar. Today on episode number 25. Get ready. Ash Milwani is the co founder and CMO of Avi, which is a supplement brand that's been quite successful and one that's emerged quite successfully of the iOS and Facebook ad crisis that most brands had to go through or that some are still going through in the past year or so. We discuss landing pages, site optimization, a B testing, and how Avi has been able to reduce customer acquisition cost by 57% through these methods. I'm your host, Raphael, Paulin Dagle. And I'm the founder of Splitbase, a conversion optimization and landing page agency for DTC ecommerce brand. This is minds of ecommerce.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
All right, Ash, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.

Ashvin Melwani:
Thanks for having me, man.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Yeah, well, I'm super glad that we're talking because as you know, this podcast is really about looking at one growth strategy that you guys did, and we're going to dissect it and try to learn as much as possible so our listeners can take away as many pieces of actionable information. As you know, I've been following you on Twitter for a little while. You're sharing a lot of great things, super interesting content. So anybody listening, go follow Ash on Twitter. But Ash, I know that one of the things that you guys have done very well is emerge out of the iOS chaos, let's put it that way. And you guys have grown over $30 million in what was it, 30 months?

Ashvin Melwani:
Yes.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Pretty amazing. So tell us maybe a bit more about that, just to give context to the listeners. How is the brand doing now and how did you guys emerge from that iOS crisis?

Ashvin Melwani:
Yeah, it's a painful story to talk about, but we made it out alive, right? So I think prior to the update, a lot of things that we were doing were pretty much what everybody was know, running ads on Facebook, Instagram, utilizing influencers. Facebook at the time was so much easier to use. It was almost like, all right, Facebook, get me customers. And that was the game, right? Yeah. There were days where it's like up and down, but it was a lot easier than it is today. The biggest thing that we kind of saw post update was a lot of volatility, a lot of days where it's like up and then really down. So it's like, all right, you're netting out on this downward trend. We were working with some pretty big influencers at the time, we were doing a lot of whitelisting.

Ashvin Melwani:
When it comes to influencers, getting content on a monthly or even like a weekly cadence is very difficult, especially when you're working with a little bit on the larger end. So our testing capabilities in general weren't that great.

Speaker A:
Right.

Ashvin Melwani:
So when you're spending, like, prior to the update, we were spending $600,000 a month. So $20,000 a day, you tend to go through creative very quickly. So not being able to yeah, just.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Before I keep going. So when you say your testing capabilities, are you talking just on the ad side or were you guys pre iOS still doing a lot of landing page testing or offer testing and things like that?

Ashvin Melwani:
Yeah, so the thing is that we built one landing page since the inception of the company and didn't touch it for like 18 months. We weren't running any offers because we were really utilizing influencers.

Ashvin Melwani:
So when you're kind of utilizing the influencer space, the conversion rate is a little bit higher because you don't have to sell the product on the website and the brand end, the Influencer is selling it for you. So the people that are coming to the website already kind of got their credit card in hand.

Ashvin Melwani:
So when we kind of saw that as we were growing, our spend was a lot more to the point where we needed to kind of replace some of this content a little bit more frequently, especially after the whole update. Before, we were using some of this content for months on end. Some pieces of content lasted us a whole year because Facebook was able to yeah, like Facebook could find the customers that you wanted. So now the game has completely changed. I think creatives are lasting a lot less than they were prior to the update. And with that being said, we couldn't get enough content from Influencers at a higher rate. So we decided, okay, listen, we're going to kind of slow down on the influencers. Let's bring things a little bit back into house. Let's start coming up with the funnel for the brand. And how does the brand sell itself rather than getting other people to sell it for you? Right, so like I said, probably prior to the update, we were testing like four creatives a week, looking at August onwards. Up until October, things were just on this downward spiral because all the content we were running was just like running out of juice.

Ashvin Melwani:
And to think to myself, I'm like, what's going on? The last 18 months have been amazing. It can't be the content, it can't be the landing page. Things like, we grew this company so quickly, utilizing what we had. There's no way this is the reason.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle

It's got to be Facebook.

Ashvin Melwani:
Facebook's messing up this and that. And I'm talking to some other brands that are a little bit bigger than us and they're like, yeah, well, yeah, we're seeing a lower acquisition rate, but we're not doing as bad as others say they are, right? And we were in that boat where we're like, we're on this downward trend as a growth company. We have to keep growing, right? So we took a step back. We're like, all right, what do we have to do? And the answer was pretty obvious. And it's like, you have to be a marketer, right? You have to figure out your funnel from start to finish. What is going on? Where is a drop off? And so I think it took me a couple of months to realize what we needed to do. I myself, I've been media buying for the last six years. I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that I wasn't doing enough, right? I always thought I was doing more than I needed to until I was talking to some other people, or they're like, we're testing ten creatives a week.

Ashvin Melwani:
Have you tested offers? We're testing so many landing pages. And I'm like, I'm not. So I said, all right, let me take a step back. Let me look at things from a holistic level. Let me hire some media buying agencies to take kind of the pressure off of me so I can focus on the processes. The one thing that I realized is that everybody's doing the same stuff, right? There's no media buying strategy or hack that's going to get you out of this or lower your CPAs. It's all about content, creative landing pages. And it's you're utilizing all these channels like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, to just get in front of an audience, right? Your creative has to sell that audience, and it's selling the click.

Ashvin Melwani:
That's basically it. That's all that you can expect out of these platforms. Sell the click and make sure you're selling the click to somebody who's somewhat qualified to be on your website.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle
That's it. Right?

Ashvin Melwani:
Now, you take it a step further and you have to create this journey through landing pages, right?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Yes.

Ashvin Melwani:
A lot of people have been like, oh, I'm sending my traffic to product pages or collection pages. And it may work for some brands, but for brands like ours, where it's a supplement company, you need to kind of educate why you are the choice versus all these other supplement companies, right? We're not the first collagen company out there, and we're definitely not going to be the last. So how are we better than everyone else?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Right?

Ashvin Melwani:
So this industry is kind of growing very quickly, so the education part of it is less and less of why you need collagen, but it's more so, like, why am I choosing you over X, Y and Z company, right?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Oh, yeah, you're speaking my language. I think it's funny because when I got started in optimization and landing pages.

Ashvin Melwani:
Which was like seven, eight years ago.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Or whatever, landing pages was a thing for software companies and lead gen people. And it was very rare that you'd see an ecommerce company use a landing page. And for years and years, we're like, hey, you guys should try landing pages. And just like, nobody cares or nothing happens. And all of a sudden, I guess we're at this moment where landing pages are making I don't want to say a comeback, but I mean, in a yes, but in a different way now. It's not about SaaS landing pages. We're really talking about, hey, how do we sell these products without thinking about the infomercial type landing page? Super ridiculous long form, scammy looking thing. Right.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
So it's super fascinating based off of.

Ashvin Melwani:
What you just said.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Right.

Ashvin Melwani:
SaaS companies are using landing pages.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Right.

Ashvin Melwani:
I think the reason why they had to is because so many of these companies are like, they're new concepts, they're new ideas that technically aren't in the market yet. It's that education phase that you have to get somebody to go through.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Right.

Ashvin Melwani:
And it works beautifully for certain brands.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Right.

Ashvin Melwani:
And I mean, there are certain niches where you may not need one. Like apparel companies. You may not need a landing page. It's, hey, here's what the T shirt looks like. Do you want it or not?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Right?

Ashvin Melwani:
Absolutely.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Yeah. We work with some apparel brands, like sunglasses, for example, and having an entire advertorial landing page about just sunglasses. People know what sunglasses are.

Ashvin Melwani:
Exactly.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
So there it's all about how do we make sure that the page they're seeing has the most relevant options to that customer, right? So it's more like a collection landing page. But I'm with you. That education aspect, like, for you guys, that must be huge. You really need to educate why you guys, why this type of collagen? Why collagen? Things like that.

Ashvin Melwani:
Yeah.

Ashvin Melwani:
I think the biggest thing and I'll kind of get into this, is when we upped our creative testing, right? The biggest thing that I had to change with my mentality was I have to do the targeting for Facebook, right? And when I say that, I don't mean like literally picking out interest, targeting or lookalikes or this and that. We go fully broad on all of our targeting. Excluding customers? Not excluding customers. Depends on how we want to approach things. The creative, as somebody is scrolling, I need to use that space to attract the right user that is going to convert on my website. So when I started thinking about content creation and creative strategy with this mentality, things shifted, right. October through January, our NCPA was double what it was the rest of the earlier the year. And we were unprofitable, right? We were just bleeding money.

Ashvin Melwani:
We were focusing on keeping retention up. And the thing is that once you blow through retention, it's a finite number of customers that are going to come back, right. So it really screws you over in the long run because you're not acquiring enough customers to refill the tank, right? So when we, I guess, rethought the entire strategy, it's like, how do we use creative to do the targeting, right? So we're talking about specific benefits for collagen. Like, hey, collagen is for hair, skin, and nails. But I can't attract somebody who's going through all three issues, right? Because it's just not optimal, right? Let me pick one benefit. Like hair, right? So maybe receding hairline or just thinning hair or dry damaged hair. Let's figure and just narrow in on those benefits and really call out the user who's going through these issues, right? If I'm suffering from my receding hairline, hey, if I see an ad that's saying, stop your receding hairline, like, hey, that's super personal to me, I need to go check that out. What is that?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Right?

Ashvin Melwani:
So I'm doing the targeting myself through my creative, and I have to make sure my creative is on point, right? If somebody's scrolling through, like people on Facebook, they're there to just be to be completely honest with you, I don't know why people are on Facebook in general anymore. It's just like they're either on groups or they're just kind of scrolling and seeing news, whatever it is. Oh, there's an ad for receding hairline. Let me check it out.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Right?

Ashvin Melwani:
So I'm selling the click now. The landing page is what's going to take them through. Like, hey, if you're suffering from this, let me give you a solution, which is collagen protein. Why do you need collagen protein?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
X, Y, and Z?

Ashvin Melwani:
Why are we better than company ABC, right? Who's using it? Where's the social proof? Hey, we have like 50,000 people in our community. We have 300,000 plus customers, 5000 plus five star reviews here's, testimonies here's, before and afters. Oh, by the way, we have a 60 day money back guarantee. If you don't like it, send it back, right? And then here's the offer. Hey, get 20% off. Get a free Shaker cup, free drawstring, backpack, whatever it is. And that is just you have to take them through that journey because you sold them on this dream of fixing a problem that they have.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Here's the solution to it.

Ashvin Melwani:
Here's why you should buy right now and then sell them, right? So when we adapted this mentality and methodology, our CPA dropped by 55%. Like I said, we were testing like four to five different types of landing pages, listicles advertorials, product, sales pages, you name it, we've tested it. And we found one that was converting better than the rest, and we just started creating iterations on it, a, B testing to just keep bumping up that conversion rate. And even till this day, I feel like we still need to test more landing pages because you never know that another big win could happen. Like, what if you double conversion rate or even increase it by like 50%? That could even further drop your NCPA. So those things. We started implementing the beginning of Q One this year, and literally, we're kind of scaling back up. Prior to the update, we were spending like, 600,000 at our lowest, we were spending 300,000 a month.

Ashvin Melwani:
And now we're back up to where we were before.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
That's amazing. Walk us through. How long did it take for you to find those winners? Because I think one of the misconceptions or preconceptions about landing pages really is, hey, you build a landing page and instantly things are going to be better, which obviously is not the case. Like, a landing page by itself doesn't necessarily mean you're making a boatload of money. So how long did it take for you guys to figure out what worked when it comes to landing pages? I'm sure it wasn't overnight.

Ashvin Melwani:
No, it's a tough journey to go through because it does take time. One, if you're spending a ton of money, it's a lot quicker, but if you're not, then it can take even longer.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Right.

Ashvin Melwani:
So for brands that are currently using, like, a single landing page right now, what I would say is split testing is key. Don't just automatically switch to the new thing in the hopes that it's going to do better, because it could do worse. So always a b testing these variables. Be scientific with it, be methodical with it. Don't just make changes because you feel this is going to do better. That's never the case.

Ashvin Melwani:
If I feel like if I remove this section for the landing page, it probably does worse. So let me a B test, right? We're using tools that are at our disposal, like Google Optimize, where, hey, people are landing on this landing page. Let me set up a redirect to send half of the traffic to our new one and then look at the data. After seven days as a conversion rate higher, as a revenue per session higher. Great. Let's move all the traffic to the next one. Right now we have a new control. Let's repeat it the next week.

Ashvin Melwani:
Let's split half the traffic this week to a listicle. Is the listicle doing better? No. All right, let's go back and focus on this landing page, because it's probably the winner. So we did that four to five times until we found our actual winner, and it took us about a month to 45, 60 days to really narrow it down. And from February until now, we've been using this single landing page. Now it's like summertime for supplements. It's a little bit of a slower time, and macroeconomic factors kind of.

Ashvin Melwani:
In everyone's face right now. So it's tough to kind of get things going while all these issues are happening. But what we need to do is now even test even more, right? So you can't be complacent. Every week, we're testing 20 to 40 creatives on the Ads end. Why aren't we testing more landing pages, too?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Right.

Ashvin Melwani:
So trying to keep bumping that conversion rate up, bumping the AOV up, what are certain things we can get people to come back or buy more.

Ashvin Melwani:
So as you scale, you have to figure out ways to increase your conversion rate or increase your AOV, because as you scale, your CPA is going to go up.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:

Right.

Ashvin Melwani:
So always testing everything, it's so cliche now. It's like, test this, test that. But you need to set up. You have to put in a process where you are doing these things, right? Are you even split testing your banners? Those are easy wins, right, on your landing pages. If you split, test a different headline, like a different headline can resonate with more people and that could boost your conversion rate 10% to 20%. So things like that, where if you're not testing constantly, you're doing yourself a disservice.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Absolutely. A couple of things here I think I really want to reemphasize for the audience because you really nailed it. And I think one, while testing takes time and it takes a little bit of gut, right? Because for a lot of brands, if you say, hey, you're going to have to spend X money on designing copywriting, spending so much time on building those lenders, and you might do that for a couple of months until you see any type of money back from it. It's scary, it's a big risk, it's a big time investment, but eventually, most of the time you do end up finding that works. But patience is required. And it sounds like it was very successful for you guys. Second thing you said that I think was great is not test everything, but for example, the headlines are important. Sometimes people think of test as I feel like there's two ways people tend to think about testing.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
They either overcomplicate testing or they oversimplify. It like testing button colors probably won't do shit. Right. It's not solving a problem. But if you're testing headlines well, one advice that I tend to recommend to people is check into your scroll maps and your heat maps. If you're seeing that a lot of people are landing on your landing pages but no one is scrolling, well, chances are your headline is not relevant enough or the top of the page isn't relevant enough to get people to scroll. So instead of trying to fix something at the bottom of the landing page, focus on where the issues are.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
I think that's key to save a lot of time. And the third thing, which I really love that you mentioned, is landing pages should target problems. I think, again, a mistake a lot of brands make is they sell their features and hey, we do this, this and that. But the truth is people don't care about that. They care about getting their problems solved. So I think you really nailed it there.

Ashvin Melwani:
Well, you can do both, right? I think you should do both.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Right.

Ashvin Melwani:
Here's the problem. Here's why this feature solves that problem, right.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Bridge that as long as you explain it.

Ashvin Melwani:
Yeah. You have to bridge the gap there. Otherwise, it's like, hey, our collagen is formulated for maximum absorption. Great. Why does that matter to me, right? Well, if your body's absorbing more collagen, you're getting the nutrients that you need to stop receding hairline. Oh, I get it now. That's why it's important.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Right

Ashvin Melwani:
So bridge the two. Sell your features because the features are why you stand out, but how do those features solve the problem? So, yeah, I totally agree there.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Awesome. If you were looking back at when you guys started testing landing pages, building landing pages and really thinking about what happened post click, right. What would you do differently if you were to go back?

Ashvin Melwani:
Good question. I don't know. It's a tough question. I think the only thing that I would probably do is maybe so right now, there's a certain flow to which I like to kind of plan our landing pages. So it kind of starts with your main headline and offer and then goes into the problem solution, social proof, value, props, and then buy box. I think one of the biggest things I would probably want to have tested, which I kind of want to test now, but I wish I did, like four or five months ago, is taking those different sections and just moving them around to tell a different story. So you don't actually have to reinvent the wheel.

Ashvin Melwani:
You can literally just move different segments around to see, what if I move my buy box up right? There's more people that are towards the top. What if more people are just adding the cart? But then what if people were leaving because they didn't get the information they needed?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Right

Ashvin Melwani:
So there's like, that double edged sword where you have to test it. I just wish I tested that before now because I have, like, four months of data, which I could have figured out if another, I guess, layout would have performed better. You know what I mean? But, yeah, I think that's the only thing I would probably change is just test more of the different layouts instead of different landing pages. Those are easy wins, I think.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Awesome. Sweet. One last question as we're coming up on time here. When it comes to building landing pages or just coming out of the iOS crisis that some brands might still be struggling with, what would be your biggest piece of advice for those brands to get some success?

Ashvin Melwani:
Yeah, I think you got to stop overcomplicating it. Just get back to the roots of marketing the basics, literally figure out why did you make your product in the first place, what problem were you trying to solve? And just tell that story.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Right.

Ashvin Melwani:
Use the ads to acquire the right audience who may be facing the problem that you're trying to fix. That is what you're supposed to solve on the ad level. On the landing page level, you're supposed to offer the solution to their problem. So two sides to it, I think people have to separate it. The ad is pre qualifying traffic. The landing page is converting that traffic. So if you dial both of those in, that's where you'll win.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:

Amazing.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Awesome. Well, Ash, it was a pleasure chatting with you. This was a really fun chat, especially talking about landing pages, one of my favorite things to do. So thanks so much for all this gold. Now, if people want to learn more about you, about Avi, where should they go? What should they do?

Ashvin Melwani:
If you're interested in trying out some of our collagen, you can find us on myavi.com. We're also in Vitamin shop nationwide, 600 stores. So if you live nearby one, definitely check it out. Ask where the Avi is, and then if you want to learn a little bit more about what we're doing and what's working for Avi on All Things Paid and social, follow me on Twitter. Ash vin malwani. So hopefully we can connect there.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Awesome. All right, Ash, thank you so much. Have a great day and talk to you soon.

Ashvin Melwani:
Take care.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
All right, that's it for today's episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. Now, to make sure you don't miss any of the new episodes coming up, make sure to subscribe to the podcast. And if you've liked what you've heard. Just make sure to leave a review in the itunes store or wherever you're llistening to this podcast. Now, if you're working on an e commerce store that does over a million dollars in online sales, and increasing conversions is currently a priority, make sure to go to Splitbase.com to find out how we might be able to help you improve marketing performance through landing pages and site optimization.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
One more thing. We recently launched the DTC swipe files. So if you want to see thousands of examples of landing pages, PDPs home pages, cart from hundreds if not thousands of DTC brands from across the world, head to splitbase.com and click on the Swipe file NAV link and you will be able to find all those examples and you'll even be able to sort by industry and type of company. So make sure to check it out. I think you'll find it super useful. And if you have any guest requests, questions or comments for the podcast, make sure to just tweet me at rpaulindaigle and I'll be super happy to hear from you.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle:
Thanks again for listening.
This is minds of ecommerce.

‍

‍

‍