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SUMMARY:
Connor Swegle, CMO and Co-Founder, Priority Bicycles, discussed continuous learning, nimble execution, and a customer-first mindset on this episode of How I Made It In Marketing. |
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I realize everyone who listens to How I Made It In Marketing is not a marketer, per se.
Entrepreneurs also listen. Not native to our industry, so to speak, but you still need to know it well enough to get customers…so you can run your business and do whatever it is that you really are passionate about.
Well take heart in a lesson from my next guest – everything is learnable. Even marketing. Even photo shoots.
To hear the story behind that lesson, along with more lesson-filled stories, I sat down with Connor Swegle, CMO and Co-Founder, Priority Bicycles.
Priority Bicycles started by raising $565,000 on KickStarter 11 years ago, and now has 35 models and fields 25,000 orders a year. Swegle manages four brands – including e-comm, omnichannel, advertising, and events – with a core nimble team of six.
Hear the full episode using this embedded player or by clicking through to your preferred audio streaming service using the links below it.
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In the beginning, Swegle’s company was completely bootstrapped. They had launched their second bike nine years ago and needed photos of the bicycle for ecomm. They worked with an out-of-house company and paid $2,500 for 10 photos – trusting in the company’s creativity and product. It felt like $2.5mm at the time.
The photos were average – poor Photoshop-merging images, inconsistent color – all the stuff you DON’T want in your key imagery.
Swegle ran the math. For $3,000, they could get a Sony A6000 camera and some cheap lights and do it themselves. The tradeoff was spending $500 more, and about 500 hours of YouTube, but they went from 10 photos to all of their product photos, videos, reviews, and being able to create content for their partners, to help partners do the marketing for them on social media and on the partners’ own websites.
Their polish has continued to increase, and an in-house video led to a very successful product launch with no out-of-house marketing costs.
The pandemic hit and they had no idea what to do. We all know how that ended up working out for bicycles, but for about six months, they believed they’d be out of business. People couldn’t shop for products, the team didn’t have a long leash of time to not make money, so they quickly pivoted. Within two weeks of the shutdown, they moved to a virtual customer service model.
They created virtual visits, where customers could schedule time to meet the team online when it worked for them, and they created a whole new custom bicycle – they called the “Lemonade Coast” – a bright yellow beach cruiser. They made content from home, really taking advantage of the limitations and turning it on its ear.
The tone was positive, the product was optimistic, and ultimately it because a campaign that Microsoft built around as a case study for using Teams to collaborate – the original Microsoft video had over 1mm views thanks to a media buy.
The learning from that experience – don’t take hurdles as losses, or reasons to quit. Look for opportunities in everything you do. It helps foster fearlessness, collaboration, and excitement for every campaign, and has you looking for learning, not finding failure.
OK, not totally true, but this was a massive learning experience. Swegle was working on their new TOF ads, while trying to figure out the massive problem with attribution – they can’t really know how effective paid advertising is, so how can they try to streamline it? He’s drawing charts, looking at numbers, trying to tell a story, and meanwhile he has a chat with a bunch of college friends. Swegle was looking for distraction, so he hops onto it.
One friend shows a picture of some hot oil – Rosi’s Hot Oil – and says “this is good.” Immediately, three of the nine people on the thread buy it. He’s looking at it thinking “How do you pronounce that?” “What kind of chili?” “How do you pronounce ‘Rosi’?” meanwhile, this mysterious picture has a 33.3% close rate amongst his friends. That’s a lot better than a 1% conversion rate in ecomm!
It reminded him – there is a load of tech, a lot of great agencies, the threat of some new tech takeover or ban, but they need to keep it simple in marketing. Get people to simply say, in real words, why they like what’s great about your product…sheesh, even just say that they like it and people should buy it. It’s reinvented how the team writes copy at their top levels right now, and reminds them to keep it simple.
via Sam Calagione, founder, Dogfish Head Brewery
Dogfish Head defined the independent craft beer. Their fans love everything they release, tell their friends, and even get tattoos. One of their mantras is “Off-Centered Ale for Off-Centered People” and it is driven by their goals to create great products with passion, unapologetically.
The team was at the Dogfish Head Brewery in Milton, DE, and someone runs up to Calagione. He says, “I know you come by here, I wanted to show you this!” It was a Dogfish Head logo tattoo on his arm. When he walked away, Calagione said – “What happens if I just leave all of this? What happens to him?”
They realized that they can be leaders of the brand, that they should be themselves and share their passion as a way to connect with others’ passions.
via Melissa Ben-Ishay, Baked By Melissa
Ben-Ishay makes cupcakes…the coolest cupcakes that end up getting featured as gifts for the holidays on Good Morning America. Ben-Ishay makes salads while chomping and chopping away on TikTok…and then the salad goes viral. Why? Because she is herself. She was fired from an advertising job, and decided to make cool tie-dye cupcakes as a coping activity, and then she became an icon entrepreneur and girl-boss, all while doing what she loved.
Swegle believes that if they are passionate enough to build this company, they should share the story, and be the story, so that they can bring that into every customer experience.
The team made an in-house storytelling video around a custom bike gift for Ben-Ishay – Jason Naylor, a renowned artist known for his vibrant and optimistic designs, collaborated with Priority Bicycles on the custom project which became a synergy between art and branding – and it laid the groundwork for doing more work like this but from a commercial perspective.
via Annika Lydenberg, muralist and co-founder, You Are Not Alone Murals
Samantha Shulz co-founded the "You Are Not Alone" murals initiative alongside Annika Lydenberg. Swegle’s team has worked with the You Are Not Alone murals project for four years. The idea is simple – world-renowned artists give their time to put up murals that say “You Are Not Alone” to help destigmatize the conversation around mental health, and put up reminders in the some of the busiest areas for those who may need it.
The team has a platform and they can use it, even the “Marketing” isn’t just about ROI.
The team helped to put the message in motion, creating custom “You Are Not Alone” bicycles. Is it a massive marketing initiative? NO. But is it massively important and can they help spread this important message? YES. If the artists are going to take their time as professionals to help others, Swegle’s team will, too. They can do better together.
Working better together includes inside a company with your colleagues, a lesson he learned from former colleague Trevor King. King emphasized that people are usually willing to help if you clearly articulate what you need. This principle has guided Priority Bicycles’ collaborative efforts, ensuring that external partnerships and internal teamwork are both efficient and impactful.
Whether working with artists like Naylor or supporting initiatives like Shulz’s murals, this approach has fostered creative execution and stronger relationships.
Creative Social Media Marketing: When to break the rules (podcast episode #129)
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Content and Communications: Tenacity, keep it simple, authenticity works (podcast episode #33)
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This podcast is not about marketing – it is about the marketer. It draws its inspiration from the Flint McGlaughlin quote, “The key to transformative marketing is a transformed marketer” from the Become a Marketer-Philosopher: Create and optimize high-converting webpages free digital marketing course.
Not ready for a listen yet? Interested in searching the conversation? No problem. Below is a rough transcript of our discussion.
Connor Swegle: I think that the challenges are working in that. On the flip side is that you can be beholden to waiting for a client to tell you what you're supposed to do next. There are certainly challenges within that that can be difficult. I think you can't be as nimble as you'd like. And so one of the things that I like that we've been able to do in party bicycles is knowing that is just trying to be as nimble as possible and constantly be asking, you know, why are we doing this at this pace?
How do we do it the best we can and execute against that dynamically?
Intro: Welcome to how I made it in marketing. From marketing Sherpa, we scour pitches from hundreds of creative leaders and uncover specific examples, not just trending ideas or buzzword laden schmaltz. Real world examples to help you transform yourself as a marketer. Now here's your host, the senior Director of Content and Marketing at Marketing Sherpa, Daniel Bernstein, to tell you about today's guest.
Daniel Burstein: If you're listening in right now to how I made it marketing, I realize you may not be a marketer per se. You may be an entrepreneur, not native to our industry, so to speak, but you still need to know well enough to get customers so you can run your business and do whatever it is that you really are passionate about.
We'll take heart in a lesson for my next guest. Everything is learnable. He says even marketing, even photoshoots. Here to share the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson filled stories, is Connor Siegel, the CMO and co-founder of Priority Bicycle. Thanks for joining me, Connor.
Connor Swegle: Thanks for having me. I'm excited for this.
Daniel Burstein: This is going to be fun. All right. Let's let me tell the audience who where you're about to hear from. First, some quick background about Connor. He's been in our industry. He was an executive producer at click click three X entertainment and executive producer troika. For the past 11 years, he's been at Priority Bicycles, which he helped co-found.
Party bicycle started by raising $565,000 on Kickstarter 11 years ago, and now has 35 models and feels 25,000 orders a year. So Miguel manages four brands, including E-Com omnichannel advertising and events with a core nimble team of six. So Connor sounds like a lot on your plate. Give us a sense. What is your day like as CMO?
Connor Swegle: Yeah, a lot is on the plate. I think, every day, I'd love to say that there is some consistency to every day, but in terms of functionality, there really isn't. The biggest point of consistency is I do get the opportunity to ride my bike into work, and I get to ride my bike home every day, which is a huge lucky aspect of what we get to do.
But in terms of like what we have going on every day, it's a bit of a moving target. I mean, between those different disciplines, we're rotating our team between to, you know, this week might be a product launch and next week might be a, event that we're getting set up for, but I will I will say that every day starts with trying to set the tone for what has to happen for the day.
And I think the chaos that lives, whether you're a manager or whether you're an entrepreneur, the chaos that lives in all of our heads at that point, what we try to do is remove that at the start of the day for the team, and really set expectations for the team for the day on what they can achieve. And so they can leave with a sense of completion and clarity, even if I don't always feel that way.
Daniel Burstein: I like that remove the chaos. That's a good leader, but also, okay, you're saying ride a bike? And I just kind of question, you know, guys I've known who've worked at car dealerships, it's like, today I'm taking the Porsche Cayman, today I'm taking this. Is it a different bike for. It's like, oh, today feels like this model today feels like that model.
Or do you have your bike? It's like, this is the commuter. This is what's going in every day.
Connor Swegle: Yeah. So I'm fairly consistent. Part of my ride is dropping my daughter off at school. So she's nine. So I'm lucky that one of the brands that we run is Extra Cycle. And they have family cargo bikes. So I am able to start the day with my daughter on the back of the bike. We get about ten minutes together where we get some laughs in and I can drop her off at school and then jet another 15 minutes into the office here.
So I'm fairly consistent with my daily ride.
Daniel Burstein: That's way too I like that. All right, well, let's take a look at some of the lessons from some of the things you've made in your career. I like to say we as marketers and as entrepreneurs too, we get to make things like, I've never been anything else, I've never been a podiatrist or an actuary, but I don't feel like they leave at the end of the day, like say, you know, at the end of the day when you leave with the chaos, you also leave.
Hey, I made something. I made that brand, right? I made that campaign. So your first lesson was everything is learnable, which I mentioned in the open. How did you learn this lesson?
Connor Swegle: Yeah. So I think we learned, the lesson, as most entrepreneurs do. But I think anybody who's creative minded is you sort of learn through the stumbling blocks along the way. So when we first launched as a company, we were very bootstrapped. And, I went from working at big branding agencies, or we had clients like ESPN and NBC sports and, you know, big budgets to play with.
And then we come here and we launch Party Bicycles. And again, you know, this is for entrepreneurs, but it's also for people within a marketing department who are trying to figure out how to get initiatives off the ground in a changing media landscape. But I remember our first time we launched a bike. We paid it at a house company, $2,500 to give us ten images for our bikes, and it wasn't a lot of money.
I mean, when you know how much everybody knows how much commercial shoots cost, this person was doing us a favor. And I remember getting the images back and finding them to be fairly average. And I looked at the time and I remember a Sony a6000. I mean, we're far beyond that functionality or that, you know, gear now, but I remember that the cost of a lens and a body was the same cost as we were paying for these ten images, which we had no control over.
And I think at that point I was like, you know what? Like, next time we do this, I'm buying a camera, I'm going to go on YouTube. And I remember just spending hours, probably 100 hours on YouTube, really figuring out how to manipulate this piece of machinery that we had bought and turn it into an investment. And pretty much from there on, I became the head of content for what we were doing.
And so what I learned through that process is everything is learnable. And I think when you have stumbling blocks, like 90% of what we do every day is marketers, we can figure out how to do it. And I think we have to know that with as quickly as media is changing and technology is changing, I think we have to be open that idea that we can figure it out.
If we just want to get in there and get our hands dirty. So over time, I mean, we saved a huge amount of money, but we also just have a lot more control over the stories we tell, the content that we create, what we want to put out there. We can try stuff and we can stay at it and really, all of that came back to this idea of like, everything can be learned.
Let's try it. Let's figure it out. If it's working for us, we can amplify it with dollars and time and energy later. But like, let's just not be afraid to get our hands dirty.
Daniel Burstein: You know, I love that. Now, I think with the internet everything is so learnable. Everything's on there. Like you said, you just went on YouTube to learn things. And I think in marketing departments, whether you have a big budget or not, it's always next thing to learn AI, whatever it is. But I always like to play devil's advocate a bit.
So let's look at the other side of this. And sometimes something that vendors bring to the table is, hey, it's this other opinion on what the customer wants. So I wanted to ask you, how do you remove your personal opinions from your marketing and even product design? Right. So for example, when I interviewed Rene Miller, the founder of the Miller Group, one of her lessons was you don't have to like if you aren't the target.
Right. And she talked about a campaign she was doing with the Wolff Range Company, where the president didn't like it. They were doing this, print campaign. It was like with Wolfgang Puck Cookbook, let's write. And the president didn't like it and it wasn't for him. And she's like, look, I don't care what you like. Honestly, I care what the customer likes.
And I think something really interesting for you is sometimes I know in my career, in our careers, we're not the ideal customer. Right? So we've got to do this other thing where it's like, well, we know we're not the ideal customer. We know this. All right. So we do have to do these mental gymnastics for you specifically in your team.
I think it's interesting because I would guess you kind of are the ideal customer. I mean, I saw the videos of you and obviously you found an a bite company. So how do you do that? But because I saw one of your, tips from your first ten years in business, it's great that Connor put out these ten tips from ten years in business.
One of them was also. It's not about you. It's about helping the customer. So how do you find that balance? Knowing you are in the ideal customer set so you feel like, well, you know, maybe I have this special in but also knowing literally you're running a bike company, you're trying to sell bikes, you're not the customer. How do you balance that?
Connor Swegle: Yeah, I learn, so being seeing products through the eyes of the customer is one of the things that's most important to me personally. And in fact, like people internally know that if we're in a meeting and we're reviewing creative or reviewing copy or reviewing product development, when people start to say, I like, I like this, I like that I get infuriated, I get infuriated, it will show on my face, and I will not make an effort to hide it because I don't care what you like and don't like.
What I care about is your understanding and the context for the product that we're trying to launch, for the story that we're trying to tell to the customer with whom we're trying to connect. And I think the biggest person I learned that from is actually my wife. My wife is a merchant. She's a great merchant. She works in retail, and she did men's clothing for years as she was coming up.
And she would always tell me that one of my best advantages as a merchant was because she couldn't wear the product. So when she had to look at was what's sold before, why it sold, she needed a technically to understand it, and then she needed to work with designing concept to understand what that meant moving forward. And I think that was the biggest thing I learned.
And if she listens to this, she's tired of hearing my voice, so she probably won't. So like, she's never going to know that. I told her that I learned this lesson from her. But I did, and I think that's been something I've carried forward. And I know that in the Generac episode, you have that, the, the woman, the leader, marketing leader who spoke, talked a lot about, empathy.
And I think that's something that, you know, when we look at not personalizing product, when we look at how do we understand the concept of the marketing initiative that we are trying, what's the impact and what's the context for context for creating that impact within a marketing initiative? Those are the most important things. And really, when it comes around to products, the thing that I remind people internally and I think this is a scalable lesson for people everywhere, particularly in the products, products and services world, is we get our products for free.
There is always a bicycle here that somebody can take off the wall. And a good example I give is, let's say that there's a family that's making $100,000 and that and they are upper middle class and depending on where they live, and at the end of the year, they may have 3 to $5000 that they can spend on something for them.
That is purely an indulgence. And what we're saying to them is a product that we're rolling out of. It's on the higher price side of what we're doing, even though it's a great value in terms of where we think we sit in the marketplace. This is the money that this family has earned that they just it's either go on vacation or maybe, you know, decide to put some money down on the car that they're going to know that they're going to need in a couple years, or buy this bicycle.
It is a huge decision for people, and we need to understand that. We need to respect that, and we need to take that as part of our development. So to the simple question of not personalizing things, there's a lot of points where we can be better at what we're doing and more effective by thinking about where the customer is and taking ourselves out of it through every part of the process.
Daniel Burstein: We have two things that you said that really resonate with me, that I love how hard you are on your team, or you're like, they're like, I don't like this. I don't like that. I've heard that from art directors so much in my career of like, oh, this is too long. I would never read it. And it's like, yeah, you know, when your fridge breaks, the person whose refrigerator broke, they're going to want to read about fridges.
Nobody else is going to, you know what I mean? But the other thing that you said about the we get the bikes for free, so the one thing I do with my team always push. For example, we have events. We've got, you know, free events. And sometimes people ask, oh, hey, give me the zoom info, give me this.
And it's like, no, no, no. You go to the landing page, you register for the event and you get it. Because I want you to live like the customer. What you said about the bikes reminds me a very famous story with General Motors. And have you heard this before about how General Motors, the quality of the cars, you know, was going down was the 70s and 80s and, you know, Japanese upstarts, Toyota and Honda beat GM.
You know, these great American companies. Why was it? Well, the executives at General Motors, they weren't going to the dealership and buying a car. Right. They were getting special spec models off of the assembly lines just for them. And everyone who built it knew it, so they weren't living like the customer. They didn't realize these cars were falling apart.
So I love how you're kind of in to. I'm sure that's kind of a nice perk for your team. Get the free bikes. You're still instilling that in their mind.
Connor Swegle: Yeah, I, I think it's very important. Yeah. For people to understand that the bike for us, it's grabbing a bicycle off the wall. Or, you know, at other companies, it's getting a chance to use a prototype that isn't even out there yet. But for other people, it's a decision about where their limited amount of dollars can go.
And right now, like, more than ever, even in the last 11 years, like, it's more important than ever for us to really be thinking about that.
Daniel Burstein: Yeah. And there's and that's also like when they're riding it, it's a different experience. You experience a product different depending how you approach it. So when the guy's riding it, he's like, oh, my wife really wanted to go to Cancun. And I told her, no, but this bike is wrong. I don't know, is it worth it? I don't know, she's still mad at me about that.
All right. Here's another great lesson. You said whatever they said about lemons and lemonade. What did they say about lemons and lemonade? And how did you live that?
Connor Swegle: Yeah, I guess what they say is if you got lemons, you got to make lemonade. And for us, the the understanding of that practically, you know, because that's just something that it's a term that everybody knows or it's something that somebody said to you when you're pissed off and it just made you more angry because you're like, help me through this situation.
But if there is practical relevance and I and we saw here a priority by schools in pandemic when, everything's shut down for us, we weren't sure what we were going to do and we weren't sure what we're going to do about supply. And we weren't able to get supply. Bike demand was high, and we ended up having a chunk of overstock of fleet bicycles.
So these are bicycles that we would customize, for hotels and resorts and hotels and resorts certainly weren't buying at the time because nobody was traveling. So the team got together and said, well, what are we going to do about this? And, we decided to make a lemon Aid coast. So the bike model was called The coast, and we took the literal lesson of lemon lemons to lemonade and made a bright yellow custom bicycle that we painted in house.
And we sold a limited number around, but we sold everything that we could, but it was still a limited number. But we told the story of how the team came together. We were all working in separate places, so we were able to develop a story together where we're able to share creative, and then we're able to launch this bright, positive yellow beach cruiser and it sold really well.
And it sold not only because the product was needed, but because of the story and the look and how we all work together and the energy that we put into it. So we literally took lemons of this situation and made the lemonade Coast. And, I think that it showed that we could work together and show that we could do things differently.
I think it allows people to find solutions in different places, or even just take the constraints of a moment and put that into the brief. And I think that's something that we've really carried forward is the constraint, is the is the brief, the lemons are the brief. So you have to include that in the process. If you don't have time, you don't have budget.
You don't have the manpower. You don't have the team power to be able to execute something. You take that as a given, you put that into the project and execute.
Daniel Burstein: Knowing it there in goes Bruce Lee famous. The obstacle is the way, the obstacles, the path. And like that, you know. So that's great. And I'm glad you kind of got to that point because, where you're ending it with because, you know, we've heard a lot of stories about the Covid era. We're five years past that.
Hopefully we'd never have to use those lessons again in that specific way. But I was asking, how do you use that in your day to day life? So, for example, I did a case study with a company called Creative Co-op. They won an email marketing award from us. And, they did this close out campaign. So basically, you know, sometimes they would have items on closeout and so they would be able to use all their order data to send personalized emails to customers who previously bought that or a similar product.
And it became a real win win. They had to offload the products, they were able to sell them. The customers were getting a discount. Plus, when they were sending these emails, how often the customers, when they came back, you know, this would really entice them back. It would also buy other stuff at the store. So they got an 808%, ROI.
It was our highest, you know, revenue producing email. And I just think that's a great way to turn lemons into lemonade. You got these close out products anyway. So for you, kind of like what? How do you do that? How have you done that in your day to day? Now?
Connor Swegle: Yeah, I think from a day to day perspective, it really is this idea of taking of, of the constraints of an initiative is being able to find a way to embrace them and leverage them. So recently we shot a bunch of material for, we shot a bunch of material for Extra Cycle, our cargo bicycle brand, and we shot it out west in San Francisco.
So our team went from New York to San Francisco, and we shot and we started. We brought everything back and we started cutting it to create little brand moments and brand spots. And what we wanted to do is be able to create a multi video campaign so that we could have good brand repetition when we executed a paid marketing campaign, wasn't just going to be an anthem spot.
We know that we need more volume because people are on their phones too much. So we got to use that to our advantage. But, what happened is when we brought the footage back, the quality of what we wanted from, we actually didn't get great audio quality for what we were shooting, and we weren't we didn't have a good backbone of story.
And so, our team was just was really frustrated not being able to create to the breeze. And so we took a step back and we said, well, what do we have? And what we had was a bunch of amazing B-roll. So instead of doing a linear testimonial style ad, we ended up changing the creative. So instead of, hey, we love our bicycles, you get to spend great family time.
Come and check them out at X recycle.com. What we did is we we went more with great audio where we had building epic hearts pulling, tugging at the heartstrings audio. We put all the emotions together and then we changed the tagline out to it all happens back here, because these are long tail bikes where your family sits in the back.
So it's photos of kids smiling, getting on and off the bike, families hugging, families playing around, loading stuff on the bike, taking it off with this build of it all happens back here and we feel like that came back to what the core of the brand was. We can deliver the brand message. We have all of the we have all of the assets created that we need.
And it was just a matter of saying, you know what? We don't have this aspect of it. We don't have the vocal throughline that we want. Take a step back, figure out how to take that as a given and then rework that creative. And I'm really happy with where we got with the campaign, but we had to be open to reworking what we had in front of us.
Daniel Burstein: Working with what you have. Yeah. You know, I know you've got kind of a production background and something I learned in college when I took a film class that really blew my mind, is you think of kind of, a lot of shoots as being very controlling the French New Wave, Truffaut and some of those guys, this whole idea of, like, any mistakes they make, that's part of the process.
And they got to figure that out and use that to their advantage. I think that's something we can do as marketing, too. I mean, we especially shoot, I mean, shoots, they can be nerve wracking because you got a lot of money on that set. You got two days to get what you need, you know. But having that open mindedness, like you said, like, okay, let's turn lemons into lemonade.
We got we got. Now what can we do with it? All right. Your worst friend is still better than your best marketing. I love this. So how did you learn this lesson? Your worst friend is still better than your best marketing.
Connor Swegle: Yeah. So, this is an interesting story about referrals in the world we're in about how people choose products, and, it's in. So we're we have a group or a group thread, with a bunch of friends. So there's ten of us, and we all live in different places. We actually all lived in New York over ten years ago, and we never see each other in person.
But we're constantly talking sports and different things, vacations and all that on this group thread. Well, at one point, somebody on the thread, took a picture of a hot sauce and sent it out and said, I really like this. I that was it. I really like this. And all of a sudden three of the ten people, 30% conversion rate chime in saying, hey, I just bought it.
And I looked at it. I didn't know what what peppers it was made from. Didn't know if it was for cooking or for dipping or as a condiment. Couldn't pronounce the name of it. And I realized that 30% now 40%, because one person had it of this thread, had bought it, and it just reminded me that in today's age, we can do everything that we want to do.
As far as our push marketing, we can tell all the stories that we want, and we can try and refine things down to the sharpest point of messaging. It's not right now. It is not going to be as good as a friend telling you to just buy something. And I'll say this, that in the product world, or in a, in the transaction world in general, when you have somebody say, hey, you should get this as opposed to the brand saying it, you're resistance to price doesn't exist.
The velocity to purchase is a lot faster. And then the desire to then include yourself in that process. I want to tell a friend because someone told me, somebody put me on to this product. I want to do the same thing. The multiplier effect to that right now is so high. And so a lot of the marketing that we're thinking about doing, right now really is about giving people the tools to, for discovery and to share their experience with other people.
Daniel Burstein: Well, what do you do in the post-purchase customer experience to get that word of mouth and direct feedback from customers? I think a lot of us want that word of mouth, but it's hard to get in. For example, talking about a post-purchase customer experience, I read a case study with Baked by Melissa, and I know we're going to be talking about Melissa Benicia in a bit a little later here.
I did want to mention that, like you, Melissa did start in our industry. She was an assistant media planner before she launched her brand. So that's interesting. But anyway, I did this case study with, Baked by Melissa about how they optimize the post-purchase customer experience. And it increased triggered email revenue 70%. And one of the interesting things for me from doing that case study was it wasn't necessarily that they did anything groundbreaking, it's just that they focused on that post-purchase customer experience.
And I think that's something that we just overlook so often. Because to your point, you talked about conversion rate before we were working so hard to get that conversion rate, all of our money and time and attention and focus there. We overlook the post-purchase. But if we want to get that word of mouth, that's where it's at. So is there anything specific you do post-purchase to to help juice that word of mouth and get it flowing?
Connor Swegle: You know, post-purchase, I think with a lot of post-purchase stuff, like our take on post-purchase is do everything that is a best practice. And there's really for in the post-purchase world, we think that there's nothing unique about it. I think we give the buyer a lot of credit as to what decision they want to make. I think, we also have a product that has a long, consideration window.
So typically when somebody decides to buy a product from us, if they're happy with it, they generally feel like they are carrying the brand forward. So but I do think in general, so much of it comes down to what your pricing model is and your customer acquisition costs that you got to work out on a, on a Excel spreadsheet to figure out what your threshold is for how aggressive you want to be within your post-purchase, flows.
But, I will say for us, it's really just about best practices. So, you know, making sure that after a month we're checking in with people, making sure that we have an automation for some of you, get a discount code moving forward. When I, I will say that as a company, we are not hyper focused on splitting that list into a million different pieces.
I think. I do think that getting hyper, segmented with your emails is something that can take a lot of time and a lot of energy, and particularly in the products and services world, I think the biggest groups are people who are prepared to buy and not prepared to buy. And what you should do is just try and get that prepared to buy into the biggest pile.
When you're looking at mass, or broadcast techniques like post-purchase flow or even, you know, broadcast email flow, if that makes sense. I mean, for us, you know, really just thinking more about tools, at the point of purchase is probably more important for us. So, you know, statistics show that people spend, you know, 1% of their marketing dollars on point of purchase conversion methods.
So we've spent a lot more time thinking about, chat, how we use chat, how we personalize chat and not even use AI, but our in-house team. So we use, a platform called Remarque for chat. Because of its personalization. And I think us spending more time and energy there and, you know, we're finding that, you know, we're seeing probably lift of 10% by not by spending a marginal amount of more money at the, at point purchase.
Daniel Burstein: Okay, great. So we just talked about some lessons from some of the things that Connor made in marketing. Next, we're going to talk about some of the lessons he learned from some of the people he made them with. But first, I should mention that, the how I Made It marketing podcast is underwritten by MacLeods AI, the parent company of marketing Sherpa.
You can get conversion focused training from the lab that helped pioneer the conversion industry in the AI Guild and a community to collaborate with. Grab your free three month scholarship to the AI Guild at Joint Mic Labs ai.com that's joining MEC labs ai.com to learn how to put artificial intelligence to work for you and your brand. All right.
Let's take a look at some of the lessons from some of the people, that have been key in your career. First, you mentioned Sam Calagione, the founder of Dogfish Head Brewery, and you said you learned from Sam that you can and should be yourself. How did you learn this from Sam?
Connor Swegle: Yeah. So Sam has been a great whether he knows it or not. Sam has been a great mentor. And I think, anybody has seen the Dogfish Head brand, whether they're, you know, at a bar or, you know, probably on a flight or on a train on the East Coast, it's just, it's an everywhere brand. And I remember we, had met Sam when we were product testing, our new beach cruiser, and he's out there.
He paddle boards every day. So we ended up being linked up with him, sending him a bike and said, hey, we'd love your feedback on this before we launch. And so we had asked him for feedback. He's not getting back to us. And he's like, you know what? Come, come to Delaware and hang out. I'll give you feedback.
And we're like, man, it seems like a lot of effort, but all right, let's go. Well, we went and he spent the whole day with us. We rode bikes everywhere we went in and out of his bars. We went to his restaurants, we went to the brewery and it was amazing. And at one point, Sam walked into one of his restaurants and somebody came up to him and had the Dogfish Head tattoo on their forearm, and they're like, Hey, Sam, like, I come to your restaurants.
I, you know, go to the brewery all the time. I knew I'd see in here. At one point, I wanted to show you the Dogfish Head tattoo that I got. And Sam was gracious and amazing, and he took a photo together. We walk out and Sam goes, man, like, like like what happens if I leave this company? Like, what happens to that guy?
And it was such a resounding note that, like, he put himself into the brand and people loved it. People were getting tattoos of the brand on their body, and it was because of him. And it reminded me that when we look at performance metrics, when we think about the performance of our own company, we think about the performance of our own group.
Particularly as leaders of teams, we may feel that we need to act a certain way or do a certain thing, and he listen to a podcast or read a book that somebody you read. I want to act like that leader. I think the biggest thing was just reminding to be ourselves, put ourselves into our team. We do need to figure out our strengths and weaknesses, but people want that real, relatable aspect of who we are and how we work.
You know, warts and all. And I think that sets a great precedent for where we start with how we work with our teams and how we lead our brands.
Daniel Burstein: So what did you learn from the production and agency world about how to run a creative company that you've then taken into your own company? The positives and negatives? Because as you mentioned about, you can and should be yourself. I mean, there's a lot of people probably sitting in agencies or production houses right now that's like, if this was my place, if my name was on the door, would you be doing it this way?
You do have a co-founder. So, I mean, you both had to get together, as you mentioned, strengths and weaknesses and figure out, okay, how are we going to do this thing? It's not entirely up to you. But having sat in that seat that many of our listeners are sitting in now, what did you take, like what positives and maybe negatives did you take when you now had a chance?
Okay, let's run a shop ourselves. Obviously not an agency. You're building bicycles, but it's a fairly, I'd say creative powered, company. It's not just a manufacturer.
Connor Swegle: Yeah, and it's tough. I just went through all of the PTSD of working in an agency. So if you're listening and you work on an agency, I feel you. I feel you out there. The agencies are hard. You know, agencies are difficult because you're getting pulled in two directions. And so anybody who works in an agency or agency environment.
And what's interesting is priority buys, because our marketing team really functions like an agency internally. I mean, we take we get input from product on what we're making, and then we present it back, and then when we work with partners, because we're adept at creating content, we end up working with our partners and figuring out how to fold the brands into a partnership or doing, if that's Gawa or if it's Dogfish Head or anything like that.
So I will say the thing with from agencies that has been tremendous is process. How do you approach something with some consistency? See, how do you determine what part? How do you clearly ask for things? So one thing at agencies that when we worked at our best, what I liked is when you went from, let's just call it like writing to concept, to design, to production.
What I liked was creating a system where the next stage of that process, you, you took the product from the stage before you and then you added on to it. And I think that was very different than somebody just feeling like, oh, I'm going to hand this off and like, I'm done with my part. Here you go. It was the next stage really saying, hey, here's what I need, here's what I want now.
Now I get my hands on it and I really liked in agencies when you had those like groups of excellence that were built where each stage was really sharp. I like that agencies were very clear about what deliverables were and how to approach it. So I came from entertainment branding and I loved it. Sports and entertainment loved it.
I mean, I'm a sports fan. I love getting to work in sports, but what was really great was that, entertainment and sports are, you know, it is a mature business, right? Like the the NFL has been around for over 50 years. And so what's interesting is when you look at a mature business, entertainment finds a way to, to represent itself or reinvent itself with each season, with each show.
So each product is looking for an edge to tell a story and look like the medical drama that comes out is shades of the same of Gray's or whatever you saw before, but they find a way to reinvent it and find a new angle to it. And I think that that's something that's great. It's still a show. It's still some somebody has to sit down and watch it.
They find the angles of reinvention. And I've loved that about specifically working in, in entertainment marketing. And, and I think that entertainment and sports are a great place to look for inspiration. I think that the challenges are working in that. On the flip side, is that you can be beholden to waiting for a client to tell you what you're supposed to do next.
There are certainly challenges within that that can be difficult. I think you can't be as nimble as you'd like. And so one of the things that I like that we've been able to do a party bicycles, is knowing that is just try and be as nimble as possible and constantly be asking, well, why are we doing this at this pace?
How do we do it the best we can and execute against that dynamically?
Daniel Burstein: And speaking of sports and entertainment, I mean, another key element of it is it's very personality driven, right? And so you want to see that actor or actress, you want to see that quarterback running back, whoever it is. Another lesson you mentioned is people want your story. Be brave enough to tell it. I you learned that from Melissa Bean from Big by Melissa.
As I mentioned earlier, she also started in the agency business. So how did you learn that from Melissa? And, and as a small company, a startup, I've seen you in a lot of videos. You're not just a CMO behind the scenes. You are part of the story as well. But how did you learn this from Melissa?
Connor Swegle: Yeah. So, Melissa was great. We we met her through, through some friends, through also through an artist named Jason Naylor. We did a project together, years ago where we made a custom bicycle that was inspired by the Baked by Melissa tie dye. And, it was just something. It was very unique and fun and positive.
It just ran with the personality of Jason Naylor as an artist. And then Melissa, as a, really just as a as a person, as a personality, that leads baked by Melissa. And so the funny thing with Melissa, and I don't know if I've ever told her this, which I'm sure she's heard it from other people, is that, you know, Melissa, in a lot of ways, I exploded because she was, like, making dinner, right?
She put her phone up and make a salad, and all a sudden that salad shows up at sweetgreen or you know, wherever it was, she was just making dinner for her family. Maybe one of the most simple, functional acts that we all do every day. And most of us would be horrified if somebody saw us in our moment of making breakfast or dinner, trying to yell at our kids while they're, you know, trying to get their homework done.
And we're messy making dinner. But like, for her, it became a point. They really just provided differentiation. It showed people kind of who she was and how she put, care into what she did. And it wasn't necessarily she didn't have to show that by making the product or just talking about the product or going from a can script, it was just being herself.
And I think it showed people what went into the product. And I think that that's really important. So I think that, you know, if you're a marketer, if you're leading a marketing team or you're working, if you're the head of a product or group that has a certain way that it does something, I think that it's really important to be yourself.
Talk about how you did it and why you did it. I think people right now, and this is talked about in a lot of places, people want to know why they're buying, what they're buying or why they're spending time with, with the things that they're spending their time with, who's behind it, how do they get there? And I think that that has to be an essential part of the marketing process is to show people where the sausage is made or how the sausage is made.
And, and the personality behind that is really important. And I've always said to people, the best people to tell the story are typically ones who aren't even the most comfortable doing it, because they're typically the ones that feel like they need to sharpen the pencil and put their head down and really work on whatever that product is.
And I think being able to take that vulnerability, that and the care that they have and put that into the story is something that is a is a huge differentiator and something that you have to do today and something you have to try to do today to be successful.
Daniel Burstein: And that's been a real evolution of marketing and advertising to where we there is a very polished spokesperson. Right. And it used to be that, but now it's like, yeah, I want to see the real person behind this and I might not be the best on camera, you know, but wow, they're real. And let's see what they're actually making.
Yeah. So that's a key part of it. Obviously founders, you know, telling their story or their employees. But what about customers? Right. You talked about that word of mouth. Have you figured anything out on how to get a good customer story and highlight it? For example, when I interviewed Jenny Asim, the head of content communications at Wacom, on how I made it marketing, one of her lessons was Authenticity Works, and she told about her time at eHarmony about how they would feature these real life success stories from real people.
Very hard to get. Took a lot of extra work. They just work so well. So I wonder, I don't know if it's the Melissa Bean story that was a customer Daus how you found that story or just in general, how do you find customer stories? Do you highlight them and then like ultimately like with the past in production, you know, like how do you know, like which stories are going to play well, which are going to be good on camera?
Connor Swegle: Yeah for sure. So something that I think is important there really it lines up with what, you know, what I was mentioning about Melissa and just how she was just authentically herself and it was very popular and resonant with people. I think a lot of what our take is, is that we have to be in the situation with our customers to really identify, so our customers are deciding to take their money, their time and their energy to ride their bikes, whether that's just at the end of the day to blow off some steam or to commute, or they want to do something that's a full bore, like, you know, ten day adventure across a
state. That's an important process for them. So for us, we are trying to make an effort as much as we can to be in there with those with those people. So there's a big ride. It's called Ragbrai. It's really unique. But it's seven days across Iowa and there's set stop towns and last year we had a team of about 225 people.
And they were all just link. They register to be a part of the team. They didn't have to pay to do it. They just it was really just an affiliation, like you might do when you're running your local 10-K with your run club. And, but what it was is that I think it showed customers that we, we are doing it reinforced with customers.
We're doing the thing you do like we are part of this. And so the stories that we got were just riding next to people and we had a range of stories. We had people who there was a family, a lovely husband and wife who they hadn't gone on a vacation in 22 years because their special needs daughter, nonverbal, special needs daughter had just passed away.
And so 22 years of their life was them staying local and being caretakers. Now, they would go on little rides and their other kids would watch their daughter, but they didn't get a chance to take a trip. They decided to take a trip and do the thing that we were doing this Ragbrai ride. So we got a chance to ride alongside with them and hear that story.
As we're riding bikes across Iowa on a 80 mile ride, and other people are sharing their stories and being there. And so we are able to then take that material and put it out there. And I think what that does is for us, it just shows that we are part of the life that our customers are leading in, in, in a real way.
Like we're not doing it just as a act of performance. Like, you know, when you're looking at 100 mile day to ride, you got to ride 100 miles, you know, and I know that there's a lot of people who listen or a lot of people have been on the show. It's like, you know, being there and being part of it is a is a is a big thing.
And with where we are in marketing and communication right now, you can't be performative and just talk about the lifestyle of the brand. You have to be able to go out there and be a part of it and take part and really be a member of it.
Daniel Burstein: Yeah. That's great. I love what you said. You've got to ride on your miles. You actually got to go on that journey. Nothing is worse than that kind of thing. I'm like, okay, I'm along. I'm along with you on this. I think that ties really great into your final lesson and actually where you said you are not alone.
And I know you think maybe talking about something slightly different here, but it's kind of all, along the same idea of being there with your customers and being there with the community. You said you learn this from Annika Lindberg. She's a muralist and co-founder of You Are Not Alone murals. So how did you learn this from Annika?
Connor Swegle: Yeah. So it's Annika. Sorry. Yes, yes, that's, So Annika, and, her partner, Melissa Schultz started this program called You're Not Alone. Murals. And it's very simple. They work with world renowned muralists, and they put up murals around New York and around the world. And they also do it digitally. And all it says is you are not alone, and it's rendered in these beautiful ways because we're working with these famous artists, and these artists are giving of their time and energy.
And the goal with that is so that somebody it's to destigmatize the, conversation around mental health, to let people in a time of need know that they are not alone. And so there's an act of surprise. You may be frustrated and heading into work on a given day, but then you pass this mural that says you are not alone.
And I guarantee if you see it, you're going to feel something different. I think it's also a great reminder that if you're in one of those, if you aren't in one of those situations, there surely is someone in your life who is. So it reminds you to be cognizant that that could be happening around you, and to maybe take the time to, call a friend, text a friend, and just make sure that you're, understanding the situations that other people are in.
So, working with them. The relevant message from that was definitely one about what this program is, and the fact that we got to be a part of it is a huge gift. But I think when I look at it from a leadership perspective, it's also that if times are changing, you know, with marketing or there's new things to do or you're not really sure where to go with a project and you know, you could be a marketing leader, you could be just somebody, you know, you're two years in and new, and the reality is that you're not alone.
You know, if you're trying to learn something or trying to figure something out, the opportunity to ask somebody for help in your role is right in front of you. And, you know, the other thing I've learned from from a good friend and coworker, his name is Trevor King. Anybody will help you with anything as long as you tell them exactly what you need.
So I say that to people all the time. Hey, I'm not really sure where to go with this campaign. Well, talk to somebody who's done it before. Ask them what they learn. Trying to find, like, you know, if there's maybe there's an ad, a house creative partner I should use. Well, find a brand, you know, find a colleague who's maybe had to deal with that before.
Ask them, but tell them specifically what you're looking for, and everybody is willing to help, especially when you look at the world of creative and marketing. I mean, you're you're looking at a lot of creative folks who have had to figure stuff out in their lives or they're trying to take a different path or, you know, maybe they want to be more creative or they don't get a chance to.
And so, like, these are people who are willing to help. They want to collaborate. They want to work with you. So not being afraid just to ask people and reminding yourself that you're not alone and asking for help specifically, don't make people solve your problems. That's a waste of time. But asking people for help about something where you really think they can be of assistance is something that's really important to do.
Daniel Burstein: Yeah. You ever hear that there's a famous a Harvard Business Review story about the monkey? Everyone's got a monkey on their back. Don't give someone else your monkey. They love what you say. You are not alone. That is kind of one of the points of the how. I made it a marketing podcast, right? You can see some of these big marketing leaders.
You can see videos of Conor out there and all the cool thing he's doing, party bites goes and be like, yeah, well, let's come easy to him, right? But believe he's here. He shares, hey, this is what's work. This is what did and this is what I learned. But finally, I want to ask you, I love looking at people's backgrounds.
Very few people actually start in marketing. They do many other things. I know you, you had a background in the agency business we talked about, but before that you were a Division one athlete. So I wonder what you learned from that. That really helped with your marketing because when I think of you are not alone. I mean sports, obviously they're team sports.
We are not alone. Work together in a team. I think maybe we're a little unique in that you did track and field. You were a pole vaulter. So it's almost like a combination of you have to be an individual contributor, like we need to do in marketing and CMO, yet you're on a bigger team. So was there anything you learned about you are not alone about marketing, about running a business from being a Division one athlete?
Connor Swegle: Yeah, for sure. I mean, being Division one athlete in college was was a great experience because it just it it teaches you that you got to show up and work every day. And there is a certain amount of a workout that has to get done on a given day that is completely outside of your control, and it's going to be awful and it's going to hurt 100% of the time that you do it every single time you go out on any given day for a workout as an athlete, you'll be pushed your limit.
And I think that that adds a certain level of resilience to it. And I think as I've, as I've gotten older in time, I can't expect that same level of resilience or desire from everyone on the team. But I do think the thing that, that does carry forward is the fact that, you know, teams are organisms, they have different personalities, but a shared goal.
So I think there's a lot of aspects of how can I give people the vision for success, how can we share in that? How can we work on that together? How can we understand that people are different and will contribute in different ways, and if they're contributing differently, it doesn't mean that they're not contributing correctly. So I think all of that is great, but I do think, too, that, the fact that just things are hard and things take work and that it's okay to be uncomfortable, those are all things that even, even though I'm 20 years removed from wearing short shorts and spikes, I still carry that with me.
And I do try to take it as a point of pride of being able to work hard, figure stuff out, and, you know, in some respects, you know, win in terms of being able to accomplish goals.
Daniel Burstein: Yeah. And, hey, maybe you could use your past experience to do a mash up like bike pole vaulting. Or it could be like a Red bull flu tag. There you go.
Connor Swegle: Oh, man.
Daniel Burstein: There's a bad idea for you.
Connor Swegle: You know, there's, there's a great, pole vaulter, now who's just crushing world records and, I can't even imagine the thought of doing of doing it. I can't believe I ever did it. When I look at photos, it's like it was a different person.
Daniel Burstein: Yeah. Different life. All right, well, thank you for telling all these stories from throughout your career. If you had to break it down, what are the key qualities of an effective marketer?
Connor Swegle: Yeah, I think that the key qualities are, the key quality for a marketer is, is resilience. I think it's being able to be flexible. Projects change. Times change. Work ethics change, team skills change, technologies change. Like things are going to change. And and anyone who's listening to this, you're listening because you are trying to find a way to get ahead of the roles and the opportunities that you have in front of you.
And so and you know how quickly things change. So I think resilience, and not being stuck with what work before we're going to do it again is, is really the most important thing. Once you understand that and then you can scale, how you work to your personality and you know what parts that you like about your job or parts you want somebody else to do, but really, being resilient, as a marketer is key.
Daniel Burstein: I also thank you for sharing all these lessons from your career, Connor, showing us that we are not alone. Thanks for all this today for sure.
Connor Swegle: Thanks for having me. I hope it's helpful.
Daniel Burstein: Thanks to everyone for listening.
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