Key Steps to Drive Ecommerce Sales Beyond Amazon w/ Ezra Firestone

Making a high volume of ecommerce sales on Amazon is great. But if you’re not converting through your own channels, you haven’t built a brand.

Ezra Firestone joins Capitalism.com founder and CEO Ryan Daniel Moran on his Freedom Fast Lane podcast to discuss the key steps to drive ecommerce sales beyond Amazon.

(If you're an entrepreneur looking to build a brand beyond Amazon, join a special training class with Ezra and Ryan on October 5. Register here.)

Changing your business focus

The first step to turning cold advertising into profit is to focus on the bigger picture. Think of yourself as a brand who take orders on Amazon, rather than an Amazon shop.

If you make a sale on Amazon, that buyer isn’t a customer. In order to turn someone into a customer, they need to see you in three places. Listen to the Freedom Fast Lane interview with E

Open up your communication mediums. As well as using email, Ezra recommends you should also use Pixelbliss for targeted ads and Facebook Messenger.

Ezra finds Messenger to be a very profitable tool when used correctly. His metrics have proved that subscribers through this medium are worth five to ten times more than email subscribers.

Building and sponsoring engaging Facebook posts

From your Facebook Business Page, create an engaging post with a short-form video showing the benefits of the product you’re selling. Include a discount offer with a directive, such as "Reply 'Yes' on this post to receive 20% off." Sponsor the post, and spend money to reach the right people.

Ezra’s suggestion for the ad structure is to use two sentences with emojis in front of them, as emojis get more engagement. He also found that adding a border around the ad has worked better for him.

In your post, you must demonstrate the ownership benefit. Tell people why they need to buy your product and show some social proof of someone who’s used the product and thinks it’s awesome.

Your job isn’t to make a video go viral. Your job is to convert. So have the goal of converting views into sales, and take anything extra as a bonus.

How to use Facebook Messenger to create customers

ManyChat is a growth tool which changes the way followers will interact with you. When someone comments on your post, the tool will automatically send a message through Facebook Messenger telling them to reply to the message to get the deal.

Once they’ve replied, they are now a subscriber and you can broadcast messages to them. You are able to send them a static coupon to your Shopify account. And you have the ability now to contact them in future with other offerings.

The right way to use a direct response funnel

Ezra says that most people know that they should be using a direct response funnel, but they’re doing it wrong as they aren’t building an audience first so aren’t feeling the benefit or getting any ROI.

Don’t try and build a theme park at the beginning, just start simple with a video add and a long-form sales pitch on your Shopify site. When a sale first goes through Amazon, send them through the funnel to get them to Facebook Messenger or Pixelbliss. Then send them to Shopify.

Tips for creating a long-form sales page

Long-form sales pages are an old school technique, but they can be very effective when done well. Once you’ve built your page, put 20% of your effort into it to figure out how it can work best for you.

Ezra noticed that building a landing page for his Shopify store was taking up to 40 days at a time and that there were no good solutions for eCommerce and physical product sellers on Wordpress.

Ezra decided to create a solution through his company Zipify to eradicate this problem. The new tool, Zipify Pages, allows users to run split tests, create opt-in and long-form pages, and optimized landing pages.

By using Zipify Pages, Shopify stores have the ability to build their brand and customers far beyond Amazon sales.