John Hagan is Director of Growth at Purelei. It’s a German jewellery brand inspired by Hawaiian and founded in 2017 that now an 8 figure brand who aim to double in size every year.
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About John
John got into eCommerce four years ago by way of a highschool friendship with the inventor of the fidget spinner. At the time, John was working in typical college jobs while pursuing his marketing degree.
He persistently made contact with his inventor friend to teach him the marketing ropes and the two began collaborating more. They eventually started doing influencer marketing and then opened an ad agency.
They moved the business to Los Angeles and began doing some consulting as well, which is how John met and began working with Purelei.
About Purelei
- Currently focusing on the German, French and Italian Markets and looking to expand
- Inspired by Hawaii
- One of three co-founders studied abroad in Hawaii and fell in love with the culture
- Shopify Plus Platform
An American in Europe
There was a learning curve for John when he moved from working in America to focusing on Europe.
Purelei is a German company, and John was surprised by how quickly they hit the much lower ‘ceiling’ in Germany vs. America.
He wasn’t used to hitting growth marks so quickly, something that happens largely because of the relative smaller market size.
Marketing Tactics
The major marketing tactics that have been powerhouses for Purelei are product launches and influencer marketing, but nothing is more important than maintaining focus on acquisition.
Acquisition
For John, the most important concept for successful growth is that acquisition is always at the forefront of your marketing approaches.
According to How Brands Grow by Byron Sharpe, the propensity to grow a brand with existing customers doesn’t work for massive growth. Expanding into more markets is the real key to growth.
But it’s not as easy as running new Facebook Ads — doing acquisition intelligently requires a thoughtful look at new markets.
John says they consider every detail — from product type and design, to channel presence, advertising look and feel and tone.
Acquiring New Markets
Similar to moving into new demographics, John says moving into new markets in Europe requires a high level of attention to nuance.
The European markets are a couple of years behind the United States in many ways — which according to John — is a good thing.
Being able to use tactics that have been tried and tested in America on European markets can give European brands a leg up among competitors.
Look at Your Competitors Tactics
In order to be competitive and innovative in the market, John says it’s important to evaluate your business in terms of tactics, not product type.
When observing other companies, he recommends not paying attention to whether or not they sell the same thing you do, but rather whether they are selling a similarly saturated product.
Understand Attribution
When the company dabbled in Snapchat, John says that they did an attribution test and quickly realized that what they were being told was happening in Snapchat’s statistics was not reflecting in their numbers.
Using tactics like UTM tags, shortened attribution windows and more, the company began focusing on attribution to understand and optimize their marketing.
eCommerce Book Top Tip
- The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and Long Term Marketing Strategies by Les Binet and Peter Field
- Cashvertising: How to Use More Than 100 Secrets of Ad-Agency Psychology to Make Big Money Selling Anything to Anyone by Drew E. Whitman
- Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders by Adam Morgan
eCommerce Traffic Top Tip
- Dark Posting — Run ads from influencers profiles
Tool Top Tip
Growth Top Tip
- Figure out how to break profit with influencers. Won’t be possible in 10 years, but that will be the thing that not only drives sales for your brand, but creates a mental comparison for your brand and influencers to generate trust
Interview Links
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- How to get from $500k to $1m annual sales with Lucy Bloomfield from 10,000 Customers
- Exploring the cutting edge Dark Posts strategy with John Hagan
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