Growing Profits 4x by shifting from a selling to service mindset with Eye Love’s Travis Zigler (episode 306)
Travis Zigler is the CEO at Eye Love, a US DTC retailer of eye health products, who give a portion of profits to ending preventable blindness. Founded in 2015, now in 2020 are on track for over $4m in sales.
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About Travis
Travis started selling stuff he no longer wanted on eBay in 1995 at 11 years old. He jokes about the cliche story, but not everyone can claim being on eBay when you still had to run transactions with paper checks.
Even though his entrepreneurial roots run deep, the current business has more to do with his adult life. He and his wife are both optometrists.
They began their practice under the guidance of Travis’ uncle who encouraged him to pursue developing his own practice. In 2015, Travis and his wife took his Uncle’s advice and went all in, starting not one, but two optometry practices in a new city.
One fateful day, Travis found an eCourse to selling online in his inbox and the couple soon found themselves taking on the world of eCommerce as well.
Today, they focus exclusively on the eCommerce businesses and no longer run independent practices at all.
About the Business
- Based in Austin Texas
- Sells Globally from their Shopify site
- Sells USA only via Amazon.com
Favorite Shopify Tips and Widgets
- Keep it simple (advice)
- OneClick Upsell (widget)
- Zippify Pages (widget)
The team
EyeLove is comprised of a small core team and a handful of contractors. Travis is the CEO, his wife is the COO and they share an Executive Assistant.
They also have an in house marketing manager and part time customer support agent.
Outside of the core team, they utilize the work of a Virtual Assistant in the Philippines and a handful of contractors in the United States.
Bringing Amazon Back to the States
EyeLove was in multiple markets on Amazon and Travis says that they simply didn’t have the bandwidth to build Amazon in all the markets.
EyeLove’s core audience is in America and Canada primarily and they found that trying to expand was a distraction. They also ran into a lot of obstacles around cultural priorities and different access to Universal Healthcare.
Ultimately, they made the intentional decision to focus, which Travis says is the key to their success. This has not only made the business healthier, but the people as well— no one needs to work a full 40 hours a week.
Focused Effort — Building the Audience
The main thing that the team focuses their efforts on is audience building. In 2017, they started bulking their work in providing useful content regarding dry eye, inflammation and other problems people have via blogging and video creation.
Travis says that by answering peoples questions and solving their problem with their products they have a simple to follow formula that has high conversion.
The most clever bit is that rather than move people from the Shopify blog to the Shopify Store, Travis has embedded their Amazon listing of the product that solves the problem at the bottom of the blog.
He says the reason is simple. The Amazon listing converts at 40% and the Shopify store at 3%.
Bid on the Problem
Travis is able to keep Ad spend low by bidding on the terminology around the problem—not the solution.
The connection of the Shopify blogs and embedded Amazon listing has been a consistently reliable, supercharged marketing effort. Leading with education and solving real problems is the foundation for success.
The Persistence in building the content for their community is why it’s flourished.
Schedule the Life you Want
Travis is incredibly focused on building a life he loves. Freedom for him comes from structure so he is a big advocate of scheduling the things you really want in your life first.
eCommerce Book Top Tip
- Ready Fire Aim by Michael Masterson
- Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by Mike Michalowicz—Get the audio!
- Ecommerce version of Profit First recommended by Chloe: Profit First for Ecommerce Sellers: Transform Your Ecommerce Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine Paperback by Cyndi Thomason
eCommerce Traffic Top Tip
- Find the problem your product solves and go after that on Google Ads—volume play. More traffic for less money!
Tool Top Tip
Growth Top Tip
- Build your audience and focus on serving over selling
Interview Links
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