Paul: 0:29

Good afternoon and welcome to another episode of MarketPulse Pros and Pioneers. And this week, I'm excited to announce that we've got Dylan Lam, the founder of OmiRank with us. Hi Dylan. How are you?

Dylan: 0:40

Thanks, John, for having me. I'm stoked to be here.

Paul: 0:43

Ah Dylan is a digital marketing agency expert who specializes in helping e commerce and Amazon sellers scale through effective marketing strategies. Expertise in lead generation, pay per click, media buy in, and email campaigns. And Dylan's built a reputation for delivering data driven results, something that I know a lot of marketers are keen on, not many marketers manage to deliver on well done for that. As an advisor to multiple eight figure Amazon brands, he uses his deep knowledge of the e commerce landscape to help businesses grow. Phenomenal background, phenomenal experience across a variety of different businesses there. And your passion for marketing extends also into crowdfunding, product launches, and empowering brands to achieve a sustainable success online. That is a big bio to live up to, Dylan. Amazing. How did you get started? How did you come across the idea of building OmiRank in the first place?

Dylan: 1:36

First of all, like that's, in a nutshell, in 30 seconds, that's a lot. Thank you. like super fast. Amazing. So the way that I built OmiRank was because I started my whole journey in e commerce. I first started in e commerce as a job shipper. And then I went on to Amazon and then need to bootstrap the company on selling on Amazon and therefore started offering services to Like they were just asking like, how do you do this? How do you do that on PPC? And so like I started having one, two, and then they would just refer other people. And then just like right now we have like more than 100 customers. So. So that's Omirank in a nutshell, but back in the day was like such a wild journey from just starting from, I was starting on eBay first before Amazon, carrying a lot of stuff, going to the post office, sending stuff like units a day. The host post office knows about me when I lay over all the package on the, on the floor, I stick the things like, like I made a, like a, a factory workers, like putting all this tape on it, you know, me back in the days.

Paul: 2:41

Amazing, amazing. I imagine that they were both pleased that you were coming because it kept them in a job, but were all in their eyes at the same time, right?

Dylan: 2:49

the queue is so long at the back.

Paul: 2:51

It sounds a bit like when I was a kid and I was the guy that could fix desktop PCs and, replace RAM modules and things like that. And before I knew it, like I, I had to stop telling people that I could do it because I just ended up with so many people wanting me to fix their computers and give advice for them. So it's nice to see somebody who's grown out of their own capabilities. Helping other people and I guess now taking that to very much the next level. Working with eight figure businesses, how does that compare with what you were doing back in the day? How have things changed, from what used to work versus what works now?

Dylan: 3:26

So back in the day, it's like I would work with a eight figure sellers that, would have like 20, 000, 40, 000 like as in a like individual

Paul: 3:38

Yep.

Dylan: 3:39

Because the way that they do is it's not really focusing on branding. They are more focusing on, quantity, but not quality. And so, whatever they see on the internet, they, we even have a Python, like, for them, like in the past, like they would just, they would just scrape the whole internet and then, and then connect it to Google translate. And then back in the day, there's no, there's no AI stuff, you know, and then they would just come up with a description. a broken English or broken, that kind of like this thing from Chinese to, to English. And then they just upload to the internet and then they would just hand over to us and then just ask us to do the budget auditing and then come up with a plan for the, for the app. And so that doesn't work anymore because obviously the algorithms from different marketplaces is already. Change, they, they wanted you to, focus on your own branding and that is the differences. Right. And, and so that will be like the, the 2020 changes or 2018 changes already. But nowadays the changes is all about AI. Like everything is more on like really AI can do everything right now. The only thing. What AI can do is the optimization and analyzation, right? Can they do that in the future? I don't know, but I know that even then, even if they can do it in the future, it won't be as good as like what we can do by ourselves humanly.

Paul: 5:03

Interesting. So I, hands on heart for our usual followers for this show, as we were talking before we came online, Dylan, are B2B, SME experts, right? People who are working in services and products selling to other businesses, and I'd be willing to bet a few of them are scratching their heads going what's Paul got Dylan on the show for? I'm not selling, I'm not selling on Amazon. The reason I wanted to speak with Dylan on this show is predominantly because I think there's a big problem that B2B businesses have. in that they struggle to work well with peered media, with peered advertisements, and to, when they do have the money available to invest in adverts, they do it badly, they work with the wrong partners, and as a result, it feels like there aren't any results to be had for peered media, when in actual fact, if you speak with the right people, there's phenomenal results to be had, it's all about how you do it, and working with the right people. I want everybody who's listening to the show today just to Reframe what Dylan's talking about and consider the context for your own business in terms of paid media, because Dylan has made a fantastic career so far out of working predominantly with paid media, right? It's all about driving success with that, and do you, would you agree that there are some interesting parallels between what you would be doing for Advertising a product and how to be effective with that versus how a business can advertise themselves or their own products and services to another business.

Dylan: 6:32

To Me, I would say general, to be fair, e commerce app is actually more difficult than B2B app, because the way we scale stuff is systematically it's like the fundamental of B2B. On top, we have to track so much things behind and to scale according to revenue. like B2B more of like, more of like you are scaling according to the CDA. And CPC, and of course, like Corebooks sometimes, and, and that's why, like, we have an additional layer on top, like to make sure that our app is not going to suffer apathy, but the fundamental is always the same.

Paul: 7:06

Awesome. Talk me through OmiRank then. How are you guys different to other agencies that are out there working in the same area? Cause it's quite a, it's quite a full marketplace, right? There's quite a lot of people doing similar work to what you guys are doing.

Dylan: 7:20

So for, for Omirank what, what's Omirank about is we integrate the system in the whole. It's not just about running ad on Amazon using Amazon CPC. We run ad using Shopping Ad, using TMAC, using YouTube Ad, using Facebook Ad. Right. So the way from that, that is like back in the day is like my experience was a performance marketer, a job shipping seller on Facebook. And that comes with a, like a insight on the strategy on how brand can scale rather than just a brand that sells on Amazon. Whereas the, as you say. The Amazon brand, where it's like, you cannot sell outside of Amazon, right? Because they are commodities sometimes. So the way that we, our client is like, we pick the client who can really scale past Amazon, who can really get interactive marketing base to attract people to the brand. It means that the brand have potential. That's what the difference differentiates us from the just Amazon BBC

Paul: 8:25

Got it. And one of your other areas of expertise is around crowdfunding as well, which I don't think I've ever spoken to anybody who, who has worked on multiple crowdfunding projects before or had any form of success with that. I'm gonna throw my thoughts into the air in that I'm guessing it's a lot to do with community. But can you walk us through your experience with crowdfunding? What that could mean for people who are out there wondering how they can bootstrap their business?

Dylan: 8:52

Sure, quite big topic, like there is equity crowdfunding and reward crowdfunding, right? Equity crowdfunding is, it means like those like getting funds from seed round A, B and C, like, but we're not talking about those A, B and C series. We're talking about, Reward crowdfunding, as in like you provide a reward after people help you out to raise fund for your business, right? so in crowdfunding, we, we also like tweak a little bit, like we treat crowdfunding, not as in a a crowdfunding from scratch. We treat it as in marketing. to help us to get a fund to launch the idea that might not have been proven. so we use crowdfunding to see whether or not there's interest, we use that to help you to snowball down your whole, to generate funds so you don't face premium worth of inventory that you need right off the bat. So, the typical route that we go for crowdfunding is more of like the typical way to go for e commerce is more of like, Hey, you go into the business, to invest three month worth of inventory, and then you have to have to on to invest additional month on the fourth month. So your stock is going to be going over and over. Whereas in crowdfunding is you don't invest in inventory. You just go on to launch your crowdfunding campaign. And then be able to use those funds to fund the business. So, you were asking about the nature of it. So, why does crowdfunding work? It's because of community, you're correct, Paul. Because crowdfunding helps you create a community that they support you, they see your journey, they know that along the way that you're developing something with them. And therefore, follow you, right? And as a result, you collect your email list. I guess if you guys in B2B, then you should know email is king. That's how you convert people. But why people want to join your email list? Right, there must be a reason. In B2B context, you have a lead magnet, you have a tripwire, or you have an offer for them, right? Whereas in e commerce kind of angle is like because we let you see how we created the whole business. We let you know about the story behind, we promised you that we will fulfill the promise, and therefore are a community,

Paul: 11:14

Yeah.

Dylan: 11:15

And therefore the community is really important. Because they're gonna come back and support you in the future. And so that's why we ran crowding as their marketing.

Paul: 11:24

This is interesting because I know so many businesses that I've tried to build communities before in the past. It's so hard to build. Communities and there are definitely like I would advise anybody out there who's wanting to build a community to go and seek The expertise of somebody who's had experience doing that in the past because it's not as simple as it sounds a lot of businesses out there think I'll build it and they'll come like of course people would want to be part of my community it's a brilliant idea. Of course it is and with the best will in the world people just don't care People just don't care. So I would say

Dylan: 11:55

They, yeah, they yeah,

Paul: 11:57

What's your experience of how to, what's some of the best ways of building that community in the early phases? How do you start to attract people in to even care about that idea?

Dylan: 12:08

I would just like add forward maybe into, in the B2B way. So the way that we, we launch a B2B we launch a e-commerce brand is we make sure that the brand idea is sustainable. Same as like any idea, it's like, it's like, just like, you just like think up, figure out if you come up with an idea, out of the blue, without any data proven or without any Validation, you know, it means that they are just a worthless idea. Go on to chatGPT, ask them to give you an idea, they'll give you 10 different, like a lead magnet, right? Say can you give me, hey chatGPT, can you give me a lead magnet for attracting clients, right? And they'll just say, make an ebook, make a course, and doing this, doing that, right? But the real value behind there is, if you create a course, you won't immediately go on to create a course. You're going to create course 1 and course 2, and just launch it and see if anyone's interested. And that's the idea on, on how we do crowdfunding. Okay, now we have a cup. This cup is from IKEA, I believe. I don't know. And then and then this cup is a different color, a sand color with a blue ocean at the bottom. So, to tell a story, did we come up with this cup? Because this cup comes with inspiration from the nature that we spent there for 360 And then we realized that the blue has to be this blue, right? The sand color has to be this kind of mixture. Right, that when you look at a cup, it makes you feel so calm, so comfortable, and you are inspired by the nature of God, right? For example, that's a story. And now, you have a story to tell, that people want to buy in, oh, you're trying to connect with people, right? Because they have the same problem as you, right? Okay, now I need to be calm I'm always so stressed out. I need a cup that can help me calm down. So I'm just going to call this cup a calm down cup.

Paul: 14:00

Love it.

Dylan: 14:00

so, and so now you have a story to tell and then then you're gonna speak the message. And then you will find the right angle then you will launch the app to find the right audiences, right? So it's about the messaging and angle that connects together to come up with an offer, right? So what's before that? It's the hook. You have the hook to kind of try to attract them to look at the messaging and the angle and then you provide them with an offer. That is how we are able to create a community by gonna talk at different angle, right? You have the let's say yoga angle, then you go for the yoga niche. You have the spiritual angle, you go for a spiritual niche. And then you, you have like the maybe Pilates one, then you go Pilates So you're going to niche down, find at least, at least three kind of audiences. Once you understand that if there's three seed audiences is working, it means that your business is going to be proven because in this vertical, you will be able to scale in this and that you can scale as well. And then of course, there's a lot of like sub vertical that is not the seed vertical that you can auto scale, right? But if it, if it, if the, if the product doesn't, doesn't validate by by data, that will be a problem. It means that, okay, I created a course. tried to say tried to create this car trying to advertise people to see if they're interested. If in the validation funnel, no one is really interested, is not engaging, they're not paying you even 1 to try to reserve this car, it means that it means that there's no potential and therefore you may as well just change the idea. Don't waste too much of your time you should just invest in something else, And that's the idea of like building a community and to, to follow your whole product, to make sure that it's good enough before you launch it, otherwise return on time invested is going to be bad.

Paul: 16:31

Fantastic. Do you know what? Like that advice is absolutely gold dust for people. If you can take that and reframe it for your business there's magic in those words that you've just said there, Dylan, and it's about, you're not selling your product, your business, your service, you're selling the feelings. The experience that come with that product, and the story behind it. And business, B2B is terrible, I'll say it again, terrible, at telling stories. We just want to sell features, buttons, services, consultants. It's boring, and that's why people don't buy into things. But I love the thought that, You know what, it's not always your ability to build a community that's at fault, sometimes it's just the product behind it isn't enough to attract people, or it doesn't resonate with them in the right way, therefore there's no real engagement. And that's, I was listening to I did a podcast with Stephen Bartlett the other week where he had Daniel Priestman on, and he would talk about the same sort of thing. Build a waitlist. If nobody joins your waitlist, nobody's interested, move on to the next idea. Community can be the same sort of thing. Build a community, if nobody wants to join it, why are you wasting your time on it, cause nobody really cares. But, to your point exactly, first of all, you've got to know how to market it. And it's not about, you don't sell the sausage, you sell the smell of the sausage cooking in the pan. And I really appreciate the way that you've phrased all of that, Dylan. I like that.

Dylan: 17:56

Yeah. It's not going to sustain. It's not going to sustain if you don't have a community, even though if you create one, it might scale you to six figures, though if you reach seven figures and you're going to end it

Paul: 18:05

yeah.

Dylan: 18:06

scale it.

Paul: 18:07

aswell So knowing who your customers are in there, separating'em out by their segments, and people struggle to do this oh, I'm, my target is chief financial officers. Or chief operations officers or business owners, right? Great. Not all business owners are created equal. Some of us like football, some of us are, former corporate people. There are millions of different ways to break down your target audience. And job title alone isn't enough. Vertical that they work in isn't enough. It's about understanding what about that person leads them to be a good fit for my product, service or business. And in your case, it's their pastimes their Spiritual life there, in that example, that's a great idea. You take that and run with it because, I say, I love to work with business owners who were ADHD like me, right? Like I, I know because we get each other because we, we speak the same sort of language, we interrupt each other's conversation all the damn time. So just if you're considering a lot of people out there are scared of niching their customer base down because they're worried that they'll lose customers. And actually they're just not impressing the ones that are the best fit for them because they're not talking their language. So I, I like that. What's something that you see on the horizon? You talked about AI briefly earlier on. What are some of the other things that are coming down the line for digital marketing in, in, in the e commerce space that you're looking forward to? Or maybe you're worried about coming around the horizon. Yep.

Dylan: 19:36

I would say video avatar, AI avatar, I think. I think that really changed the timing because video avatar is like, know, like HeyGen, like HeyGen is quite a famous one, right? HeyGen we have something called Cynthia. it's kind of like. But it's just a great version of it. And all they're trying to do is like the, the leapsing, they're trying to make sure that this thing is going up. with the so HeyGen is still like, it's good, good already, but then they're not as good as I can think of in the future. the future, what I can think of like AI can contribute is video avatar. So you can launch e commerce app or B2B app. Even faster, like the way that we launch it right now, we have to frame it, and then we have to edit it, and then you have to revise it, and that process may take weeks, right? Whereas, if you just come up with a script, and then copywriting is done, and then just put it into the video editor, it it, gave me, I mean, it would just churn out ads in just, like, What, why four days? But to be fair, it's just like 15 minutes, it's not four days. The four days is like, because we're running ad from start, we're creating ad from shopping ad and, and, and Facebook ad, that would be four days. But for that just video, it's just 15 minutes, right And think about the, the, Photoshooting as well, right? If we're not talking about like VSL right now, we're talking about e commerce listing, Back in the days, we have to have a lightbox and put the product in the turntable and then you have to have all the lights set up, right? Now you can use AI to just do the AI shooting. Whereas you just put

Paul: 21:11

Yeah.

Dylan: 21:11

use your iPhone, just see the product, they will remove the background and then they would just the lighting automatically. So that's the thing that I think that is the next step forward as in like, launching product back in the days, now launching a funnel with AI, it's just super fast because you can just churn it out in just 15 minutes.

Paul: 21:31

Awesome. Yeah. And I think there are so many, I guess half the benefits of AI we don't even know about yet, right? Like we're still only, people think we've been using AI for a long time. It's only just finding its feet. And I'm looking forward to, some of the things around augmented reality glasses, where we can see much more information about the products that are actually in front of us and that. I guess the link between experiential shopping in person, but not actually needing to buy anything and that link to e commerce and D2C. There's some fantastic options that are coming up for retailers in the not too distant future. What's one thing that you wish business owners would stop trying to do? What's maybe a false expectation with their marketing or a tactic that just doesn't work anymore? What gets you annoyed when you come across it?

Dylan: 22:24

The way they launch it, I would say, I work with a client that they, they, they launch at that. That in a way that is just virtually not scalable and not data driven, I would say. They will just like place money like a hundred quid a day and then just hoping there's leads to come in. The fact that, like we, we really need a structured way to launch at this because running ad, there's so much things behind there's like from prospecting to to using the right message to scaling, right. It all comes with different kinds of campaign on different platform. say for Google, we have this thematic campaign. We have this GoPending campaign with this Ngram, right? They're all, they're all there for a reason. Whereas like, I would see it like before a client come in, they would just, would just like, they would just create a campaign and say, Hey. I just put all, all my keyword there that it doesn't work. I just stop all the keyword there without trying to segment it. And I think that's the only one mistake that, that most of the people getting it wrong because they didn't really have data just from the post to create their own campaign. Like, even on, on Facebook on Facebook, they would just think of like launching a campaign using ABO or CBO, that would be fine. But in fact, like, The data always takes 15 conversion before they can receive a good feedback from the platform for you, for them to continue to use it as a signals to find more additional customer. So. We got to use the right way to scale the ad process in order to to make sure that our business is growing. Otherwise everyone can call themselves an agency.

Paul: 24:06

And that leads nicely onto my very last question for the afternoon, Dylan. Which is, when you're talking to a new client, what's How do you showcase that you're the real deal, that you know what you're talking about, and therefore, what should be the questions that business owners are asking of their agency or prospective new agency partners to understand whether they are people who are faking it and just taking money, or whether they're the real deal that can deliver real results for that business?

Dylan: 24:37

Would say firstly, ask about whether or not they have been doing it. that's all proof. think that's number one. Secondly, it's about how they report to you. Do they just come up with a report from a PDF? They can manipulate the PDF by themselves? Or do they with a strategy that tells you this is step one in week one that we're going to do, with two week three and week four, what we're going to do for you. Those ad groups is like it's just like fundamental ad group. Like there's a lot of people that they're trying to do is they just tell you, I'll just launch PMAX for you, launch Structure for you next, and launch this for you. But they don't really know how to optimize

Paul: 25:16

Yep.

Dylan: 25:17

ask them do they optimize it? they don't share it, then it means that they don't know what they're talking

Paul: 25:24

Yep.

Dylan: 25:24

They are just trying to create an ad campaign and that's it. Right. Or even they just outsource it.

Paul: 25:30

Scratch beneath the surface and see how far their knowledge goes. Even if you're not the expert yourself, right? I guess you don't need to know the answers. You're just looking at how confident they are in giving you the answers when you ask those questions, right?

Dylan: 25:41

That's right.

Paul: 25:42

Awesome. Dylan, I've thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. A little bit different to our normal conversation topics. So very interesting to get your insights on some things and hear some stories in a different way, in a different frame to what we'd normally do that. If anybody's interested to learn a bit more about what OmiRank does, or get in touch with yourself and ask questions, what's the best way for them to contact you?

Dylan: 26:03

go on to omron. com to just like send us a message, a message in the chat box, maybe just connect me with Digital D Lan. I talked about AI in my profile, so you guys can just if you guys want to know more about AI, you guys can just reach out to me. So you can get, you can stay up to date on the latest AI trend.

Paul: 26:20

Awesome. Sounds exciting. I'll have to check that out. Thanks, Dylan. Thanks for being an amazing guest. I've really enjoyed the conversation.

Dylan: 26:26

It's cool.