Episode Summary
In this episode of the 7 Figures and Beyond eCommerce Marketing Podcast, host Greg Shuey and guest Navah Hopkins, a PPC expert and digital marketing consultant, dive into how understanding buyer behavior online can transform marketing strategies for 2025. They discuss the shifting landscape of online search and community engagement, emphasizing the importance of adapting to new platforms like TikTok and leveraging tools like Optmyzr and SparkToro for audience insights. Navah highlights actionable steps for finding and engaging with audiences, including leveraging video, joining forums, and optimizing creative strategies. They also explore balancing time and money investments across marketing channels, ensuring alignment with policies, and maintaining an authentic connection with customers. Both Greg and Navah stress the need for brands to reset expectations, experiment boldly, and give themselves grace in navigating a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Key Takeaways
- Shifting Buyer Behavior – Buyer habits have evolved, with platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and even ChatGPT becoming critical for search and discovery. Brands must adapt to these shifts to stay competitive.
- The Importance of Video Content – Video is a must-have for 2025, with platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and CTV offering exponential growth opportunities. Brands hesitant to embrace video are likely missing out on significant gains.
- Engage Authentically in Communities – Neutral, authentic engagement on forums, Discord, and LinkedIn builds trust and fosters meaningful connections with audiences. Spamming or overt promotion can harm credibility.
- Balance Time and Money Investments – Brands must decide whether to “pay with time” (e.g., organic search and engagement) or “pay with money” (e.g., Amazon or paid ads). Strategic prioritization of channels is key.
- Reset and Test Boldly – 2025 presents unique challenges and opportunities. Brands should reset their expectations, test new strategies, and remain agile in response to market and platform shifts.
Questions To Ask Yourself
- Am I consistently checking my SERPs and adapting my strategy based on search trends and competitor activity?
- How can I incorporate authentic engagement into forums and communities my target audience frequents?
- What steps can I take to overcome barriers to video content creation and embrace its potential for 2025?
- Am I balancing my time and monetary investments effectively across marketing channels?
- Have I reset my expectations and strategies to align with evolving buyer behaviors and market dynamics in 2025?
Episode Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
Navah Hopkins LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/navahhopkins/
Optmyzr: https://www.optmyzr.com/
Optmyzr Black Friday vs Cyber Monday Case Study: https://www.optmyzr.com/blog/black-friday-vs-cyber-monday-google-ads/
SparkToro: https://sparktoro.com/
Google Alerts: https://www.google.com/alerts
Microsoft Clarity: https://clarity.microsoft.com/
Notebook.LM: https://notebooklm.google.com/
Baked by Melissa: https://www.bakedbymelissa.com/
Lume: https://lumedeodorant.com/
Episode Transcript
Greg Shuey (00:01.294)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Seven Figures and Beyond eCommerce Marketing Podcast. This is our very first episode of 2025. And I can feel that it’s gonna be a really good year for brands and marketers in the consumer product space. I’m excited because last year was kind of hit or miss for some brands. So I think it’s gonna be a much, much better year.
Before we jump in, I did want to express my deepest gratitude to all of our listeners in 2024. was our very first year of running the podcast. And for all of those who did tune in each week, I truly hope that the things that we shared last year have been helpful in growing your businesses and your brands. So let’s talk about today’s episode. So my guest, her name is Nava Hopkins, and she is the evangelist.
for a PPC management tool called Optmyzr. We’re going to let her talk about Optmyzr in just a few minutes, plug it, talk about why each of you need to look into it. She’s also a monthly columnist over at Search Engine Journal. If you have not read her content, you need to go check it out. And she runs her own consultancy where she helps brands unlock the full potential of their digital advertising and uncover new profit opportunities.
Navah Hopkins (01:05.039)
you
Greg Shuey (01:24.32)
In short, she’s pretty good at what she does. So over the next 30 to 40 minutes, we are going to dive into figuring out how your buyers consume information online and how to use those insights to guide your marketing strategy. And this is going to apply to any kind of marketing channel, right? Understanding how your users use the internet to do research and make purchase decisions. It impacts your paid search.
your paid social, your SEO, your email marketing, everything. And I think this is important because the way buyers research solutions to their problems last year and even into 2025 is way different than it was five years ago. And if you’re not adapting, you’re missing out on opportunities to build more brand awareness, drive more traffic and grow your revenue as a business. So Nava, thank you so much for being with us today.
Navah Hopkins (02:21.487)
Greg, I am so happy to be with you and your audience. Thank you so much for that very kind introduction. Very excited to chat through seven figures, 70 million figures and beyond, how everyone can achieve profit and victory together.
Greg Shuey (02:37.422)
I love it. So before we jump in, one of the things that I have all of our guests do is just take a few minutes, introduce yourself to our listeners, share a little bit about your personal story and how you’ve gotten to where you are today, and also plug Optimizer. Tell us about the platform and why our listeners should check it out.
Navah Hopkins (02:54.511)
Sure, so this is actually my least favorite thing to talk about is myself and the plugins. So I’ll try to keep this as short as possible. I’ve been in the digital marketing field almost 20 years now. I started off in SEO, transitioned to PPC in 2012. And the core of who I am is I have always worked in some capacity in SaaS.
whether it’s actually working for software companies, being on the customer success teams, being on product teams, marketing teams, or I’ve worked very closely with SAS while working in agencies or in-house. I have a deep, deep, deep love for SAS and the power that it can really put behind brilliant human business acumen. So when we talk about optimizer and kind of the
the amazing things that it does, it’s really about taking your amazing, brilliant business acumen and applying it to a certain degree of automation layering. So if you can think of if this, then that rules of how to make sure that your budgets are going in the right way from budget pacing, bid management, conversational reporting powered by our own proprietary AI, lots of great management tools for
paid social for Amazon, of course, Google and Microsoft, that’s our bread and butter, a lot of great tools there. So if you have questions about Optimizer from our management suite to reporting, happy to talk about it. We help with e-commerce, we help with lead gen, but I really want to make sure we spend most of the time talking about how we can help you really achieve that profit and victory. And I think the topic of today is finding our best people. Is that correct? Amazing.
Greg Shuey (04:38.774)
It is. Yep. And we will make sure to include a link to Nava’s LinkedIn profile so you can connect with her as well as a link to Optmyzr so that if you do want more information, you can get with her. So let’s talk about finding your people. You know, we can start by the elephant in the room. It’s something that I’ve seen over and over and over again on LinkedIn for the last half of 2024.
is that Google is losing market share. Now it’s not a ton. I wouldn’t say like everyone should just up and abandon their SEO and their PPC. But they are losing market share and more and more people are using other platforms to surface information. They’re using chat GPT. They’re using YouTube’s becoming a huge search platform. They’re using TikTok.
The growth of TikTok over the last year has been insane. And so if you’re a brand and you’re looking at 2025, at this point in 2025, you’re probably already have a lot of your strategy built out for you. But as you start to think through, how am I going to maybe tap into communities? Like what are the first steps you should take to identify those platforms and those communities where your ideal customers hang out?
There’s got to be some cool tools and processes.
Navah Hopkins (06:03.833)
for sure. So I want to actually tackle something you said in talking about the transition in market share from Google first, because there’s a hidden hack that every single one of your listeners needs to think about. Video content is so cheap, because everyone is afraid of video. But the hidden hack is that Google ads and a lot of SEO on the search side actually factors into video.
Greg Shuey (06:14.318)
leaked.
Navah Hopkins (06:32.59)
So if you’re willing to produce the content and you’re willing to run those video campaigns and you’re willing to let Performance Max, which aggregates all different types of Google ad campaign types and Microsoft campaign types, including video, you’re gonna get substantially cheaper placements that can actually link to really powerful, powerful transactional campaigns, whether that’s the actual purchases themselves from those videos or whether it’s from remarketing. So hit and hack out of the way.
Greg Shuey (06:59.512)
That’s all.
Navah Hopkins (07:01.377)
Remember, YouTube is actually part of Google, so it is part of that market share. just don’t, you don’t have to learn a whole new system. It’s essentially the end. But thinking about the communities, one of the reasons why Greg and I connected is my tip from SCG is kind of top things to think about. And it’s non login forums versus login forums. So here’s what I mean by that. A login forum.
means that in order to access that information, you need to have a email password associated with you. So think Slack groups like PPC Chat or Women in Tech SEO, the Pastors Association, shamelessly plugging all of them, they’re amazing. Whether or it’s a non-login forum like Reddit or Quora or even some LinkedIn and Facebook content that you can access without having to actually log into your profile, you can still see that content.
Greg Shuey (07:56.17)
or like an old school forum, like a real forum.
Navah Hopkins (07:58.671)
Yeah, like the webmaster world and like chilling out back in the day. So one of the things that’s really important to remember is that the search result page has evolved to really heavily feature user generated content and actually back over professional written articles that you maybe would have tried really hard to get those links, you would have tried really hard to build those affiliate relationships. Now it’s much
more powerful because there’s a lot more trust in humans and fellow humans to build those relationships with forum content. When you’re thinking about which forums to focus on, you have to think about essentially your brand style guidelines. I personally struggle with Reddit, but I struggle with Reddit because I’m a gamer and I am into a whole bunch of really geeky interests and there are some very mean people on that side of the internet. But
Greg Shuey (08:36.984)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (08:55.416)
Yes.
Navah Hopkins (08:58.611)
If you just focus on the review pieces, there are some actually very helpful humans and it can be a really powerful way to supercharge your D to C efforts, especially if you can start getting feedback from the community, from your buyers without them having to deal with your email marketing and all that infrastructure. What do people actually think about your product? How do they like engaging with you? What are the messages that really resonate with them?
Greg Shuey (09:21.24)
Mm-hmm.
Navah Hopkins (09:25.539)
What are the messages that make them go, ick, this is stupid, I don’t believe you. So that’s a very powerful way. For the login forums, I’m a big proponent of Discord. I think Discord is entirely underrated. It’s been flying under the radar in the geeky parts of the internet, and it’s only starting to now come to the main stage because it has such powerful live event tools. It has some really powerful custom
branded experience. if you’re looking to curate a really amazing experience and you don’t want to pay for Slack’s really expensive monthly fees, Discord can be a very powerful way to really curate your community and to engage with them in that very meaningful way. And the final one I’ll give a plug to. LinkedIn communities, as much as I kind of roll my eyes at them now as someone who does mostly just kind of one-off placement content,
If you’re looking to get started and you’re looking to really have engagement in a more than just one market way, LinkedIn is super powerful because LinkedIn is one of the few platforms that’s done a really good job of following the rules for not just the US or not just the EU with privacy compliance. So really, really great way to find your people.
Greg Shuey (10:33.304)
Ciao.
Greg Shuey (10:48.236)
Got it. I like it. and, and, you know, one other thing, you know, I think it’s critical for any type of business, big or small is just make sure that you’re going in. You’re, typing your main keywords into Google and looking at the SERP every, every now and then, right? It changes. It changes so fast. It changes all the time and what Google’s ranking today. They may not be ranking tomorrow. and the different sources that they’re pulling in.
Navah Hopkins (11:05.039)
That was something, sir.
Greg Shuey (11:17.656)
changes and it changes for every single query you put in. And I’m always amazed when I ask prospects and clients, Hey, when was the last time you went, went to search this keyword? And do you, do you see what’s pulling up? And that’s when the light bulb comes on.
Navah Hopkins (11:31.937)
So Greg, I’m curious, do you do this experiment too, where you have multiple profiles with different levels of access or sharing that you’ll share what information with Google? So this is another wild and crazy thing. I highly recommend everyone does piggybacking off of your very good, very important, everyone needs to go do your check your SERPs every day, put yourself into chat GPT, put yourself into reflexity.
Greg Shuey (11:45.613)
No.
Navah Hopkins (12:01.635)
but experiment with different levels of sharing. So I have four different profiles. One that shares everything since I was what, 12, it just shares indefinitely. Another that’s a personal non-sharing profile. Another that’s a work sharing profile and another one that’s a work non-sharing profile. The quality of the results that I get is hilariously accurate.
on my sharing everything and I actually get less ads on my sharing everything profile than I do on my less sharing profile. So if you’re looking to kind of build those relationships with your customers, that’s also something to kind of give them that insider tip of, hey, if you want the best experiences or you want insider coupons, make sure you opt into sharing.
Greg Shuey (12:37.847)
interesting.
Navah Hopkins (12:55.151)
cookie consent with us, make sure that you opt into us being able to use your information. Because not only is it so that you’ll be able to track it for you, it’s so that you don’t annoy them with your marketing. Because you’re not going to be able to exclude them from a YouTube ad or TikTok ad or Facebook ad if they don’t consent to sharing that information with you. So as long as you explain to your users why you need that information, it’s very powerful.
Greg Shuey (13:04.483)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (13:22.082)
That’s cool. I’m gonna set that up and I’m gonna see how that goes. Awesome. So once you’ve picked these out, you’ve gone to the SERP, you’re like, okay, cool. I’ve got five Reddit threads, which isn’t uncommon. I’ve got four or five YouTube videos that are popping up. And then I go look at the people who are posting those videos and I’ve got a couple of old school forums that are still very active. What tools or what methods do you recommend?
for then going in and figuring out what consumer behavior is on these platforms.
Navah Hopkins (13:58.105)
So there’s a couple. The first is an old school tip of using the Google News alert system. You can actually have an email notification sent to you when your brand name or certain words associated with your brand come up, and you can have that as an email digestible. I’ll give a shout out.
Greg Shuey (14:18.766)
So it’s like anytime it comes up on reddit my brand name, it’ll notify you
Navah Hopkins (14:24.547)
Well, because it does that because that Reddit link would have been found also on the Google SERP. So you’re piggy banking off the fact that Reddit is indexable on Google. And my boss, Fred Vallis, co-founder and CEO at Optimizer, came up with an amazing GPT that will actually curate all of those emails into a single actionable email. And then he takes it a step further.
Greg Shuey (14:32.002)
Got it. Okay.
Navah Hopkins (14:54.189)
and we’ll put it into notebook.lm and have a podcast. So you can have an automatically generated podcast audio tool to just listen to all those amazing insights. So that you can do for free. You don’t need to pay a single dime for any of that. That’s a free thing you can go do. I will give a plug to Spark Toro, Rand Fishkins, a new resource.
Greg Shuey (14:58.186)
Interesting.
Greg Shuey (15:05.228)
Hmm.
Wow.
Greg Shuey (15:15.022)
Okay.
Navah Hopkins (15:23.223)
I think he’s one of the few that’s doing a really good job at kind of the where are the non-trackable people hanging out and how is that content playing? I think that he’s doing a lot of good work there. I will also say that Google Trends is another great free resource. Microsoft Clarity is not going to tell you what they’re doing on.
the other sites, but they will tell you what they’re doing once they come to you. So Microsoft Clarity is an absolutely free behavioral analytics platform that will let you see rage clicks. They’ll let you see heat maps of user behavior. They’ll let you do A-B testing. So if you see that there’s a pretty consistent through line of people that come from Reddit getting very frustrated with, your checkout process, you might understand, like, hey, I need to make sure that I’m fixing the one click.
checkout process or maybe I need to fix where the checkout is on on the page, like just do do something, maybe testing. Another great tool that I don’t think enough people do is be on the platforms themselves, like just have a profile that is your anonymous feedback, be respectful, be upfront that that, like don’t
Greg Shuey (16:16.94)
Yeah.
Navah Hopkins (16:45.561)
plant your product anonymously and have a branded profile where you actually go on and you chill with your customers and you’re very upfront about the fact that you work for the company and get honest feedback from them about what’s going on. Humans doing human things sells more than any tool. And I know that you’re paying with time. Yes, you’re paying with time.
Greg Shuey (17:09.584)
on scalable human things.
Navah Hopkins (17:14.787)
but it’s a worthwhile tool.
Greg Shuey (17:17.058)
Yeah. I have a couple of e-commerce businesses and that’s one of the ways that I launched both of them, right? As I went into the forums, I first started by listening and just paying attention to user behavior. What are the things they’re talking about? What questions are they asking? What, things are they complaining about? And then started to map from there. Like, okay, like how do you, how do we solve this problem? And then how do we talk about this problem and how do we nurture people?
And it’s an extremely powerful process. And anytime I talk to someone about this, it’s the answer is, huh, that takes too much time. I can’t do that. Or people really do that. I don’t want to do that. But it’s so critical today to be able to really understand what that flow looks like for these folks.
Navah Hopkins (18:05.167)
So one thing that, and that’s why I recommend the Google News alert signal as kind of a tip. It’ll help you prioritize where you work. So if you know that a certain subreddit is getting a lot of attention or a certain part of your business is getting a lot of attention, you can then focus your attention that way. I also highly recommend spending some time on chat, GPT, perplexity, Gemini, and ask.
Greg Shuey (18:15.566)
Yeah.
Navah Hopkins (18:33.743)
chat, GPT, Gemini, Perflexity, the same questions with the same prompts about how user perception is for your product and for your pricing, for your delivery, for your customer service, because what they end up doing is they crawl all of those same sites. So if you don’t have the time, I’m granted, you need to verify everything that comes from AI, but that is a way to kind of streamline speed up.
the process is use AI to start and then confirm with your human knowledge.
Greg Shuey (19:08.59)
firm. Yep, cool. All right. So once you’ve been able to compile all of this data and all of these insights, like what are the next steps from taking that to getting it into your marketing strategy?
Navah Hopkins (19:16.025)
Mm-hmm.
Navah Hopkins (19:24.207)
So it really depends on the size of your team. If you are a team of one, a wonder man, a wonder woman, I highly recommend having non-movable scheduled 20 to 30 minutes every week. That is your reflection time, your market research gathering time. And one of the outputs from it is I have to confirm that I acted on, or at least acknowledge I don’t need to act on.
all of the data I found from that 20 to 30 minutes. So having scheduled non-movable times for tasks is super useful. Like that’s just number one. If you have a team, obviously then you delegate, you collaborate, all that. One in terms of actually doing the work though, I think product feeds are probably the most underrated, but most useful source for actual work.
and outputs because your product feed is going to determine how your products get found on search result pages. They’re going to determine your paid efforts. So your descriptions, your titles, how you categorize yourself, if you make any changes there. Because if you see that your competition is categorizing itself one way and you’re never ever going to win that way, you may decide that you want to try categorizing yourself slightly differently or you may decide, know what, I need the volume that goes with what they’ve discovered and I’m going to just compete with them.
The next piece I would take a look at is your images. Formatting your images and formatting that kind of hook for the customer takes a lot of time. But if you know that there are certain products that are a priority or that are going to trend really well, or if there’s user-generated content that you can factor in, it’s a very powerful hook. So prioritizing
Greg Shuey (21:15.276)
Yeah.
Navah Hopkins (21:17.197)
where your creative resources go can be very, very impactful. And the final thing I’ll throw out there, and this is not answering the question, but I had to find a way to fit it in and I’m nervous that we’re gonna run out of time. Google has a really funky system where it will actually automatically discount your products if you opt into the automatic discount feature. And that could put you at odds.
if you’re selling on Amazon with the Amazon buy box, because Amazon requires you to have the best price on Amazon. And if Google’s forcing you to have a discount, like that could mess you up. So do an audit of all of your technical integrations and making sure that you’re in alignment with policies at least once a quarter. Because it’s not just about your audiences. It’s also about making sure that you’re compliant with the platforms that will let audiences find you.
So that’s one of those things that not enough attention gets put on it because it’s such a subtle setting. You would find it in your Google Merchant Center Next. But just make sure that all of your I’s are dotted, your T’s are crossed, and then you go from there.
Greg Shuey (22:33.538)
That’s awesome. That’s a great tip. I’m not a paid search guy. I’m an SEO guy. So like I had never heard of that before, but I think that’s a really good insight, especially for those who are selling through their website and then through other third party platforms like Amazon. That’s great. Okay. So it’s a lot of work. I think we’ve already established that. How can brands balance the time and resources invested in these platforms to ensure the best return on their, their investment?
Most likely time invested, right?
Navah Hopkins (23:04.185)
Yeah. So I think it’s really important that we come to terms with you’re either paying with time or with money. So there are certain platforms that make it super, super easy. Amazon is one of them, but they will take a lot of your money. And like there is a non-zero chance that your product will be just a
Greg Shuey (23:15.779)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (23:24.822)
Ha
Navah Hopkins (23:32.119)
appropriated and they’ll just start selling it. And that’s, that’s just the nature of Amazon. conversely, Google is never ever going to do that to you, but you have to have the technical wherewithal and the time to set up an infrastructure to set up your website. same thing with, with Microsoft, TikTok is an, and Metta are a decent compromise middle of the road. So
Greg Shuey (23:48.322)
Yeah.
Navah Hopkins (24:00.139)
On the spectrum of time to money. Amazon super easy, but you’re paying for it. Google, Microsoft, I’d put at the you’re paying in time. TikTok and Meta, Instagram. It’s not to a certain extent. It’s kind of in the middle. Email and SMS are I would put them slightly more towards technical, but it just it depends on whether like what you’re using. If you are a brand.
that is doing this all by yourself and you truly need to just move things, I would lean into paying with money first and then claw back the time as you start to see demand in the market for your product and basically use the data that you’re getting from customer reviews, from all that engagement to build out your own
proprietary experience that you can own everything and you can own more of that profit. If you’re an established brand, there is no reason for you to give away what you’ve already earned. You just need to carve out the time to handle all of those different tools. I don’t have a magic bullet answer for all the time and money, but it’s, I think,
Greg Shuey (25:17.934)
It’s different for everyone.
Navah Hopkins (25:23.375)
More brands, going to your question earlier about Google Market Share, more brands are going to lean into video. And so long as you have something approaching a video strategy going into 2025, you are way ahead of your competition, you are setting yourself up for success, and you will be able to handle any part of that time money spectrum. If you do not have a video plan,
The ad platforms have got you. They have AI generated resources. They’re not good. They’re not going to like it. But they’ll help you because they see how useful it is. So again, are you paying with time or are paying with money?
Greg Shuey (26:09.806)
I like that you bring up video and I think most folks would be amazed at how few brands are doing video and how few are actually comfortable doing video. I just got off a call with a client and they were like, yeah, we don’t know. We don’t want to do video. We don’t like it. We don’t feel comfortable doing it. It’s like it’s 2025. And I think those who invest
Navah Hopkins (26:38.927)
It’s like, do you like money?
Greg Shuey (26:40.27)
Those who have passed this year in video content and then syndicating that content to YouTube shorts, TikTok shorts, and then using it in ads are going to see big gains this year. Huge gains.
Navah Hopkins (26:54.127)
CTV is the number one channel of exponential growth going to 2025 for D to Z, hands down. There is so much infrastructure, ad spend coupons, every major ad platform is trying to get people to finally lean into video. I need to give a shameless plug.
Greg Shuey (27:03.214)
interesting.
Navah Hopkins (27:20.121)
to baked by Melissa. They are not a client. just love them baked by Melissa and also Lumi. Those two are great examples of authentic, clearly showing the product and not expensive to produce videos that clearly get the job done. And you are not going to forget those ads. They are, they are very memorable. They’re very enjoyable. Not everyone’s going to have a
owner or leader who’s willing to be a face of the company and then that’s totally fair. But that’s a really good example of just looking for any of the Bake By Melissa or Lumia ads to get an example of how to make that work.
Greg Shuey (28:04.184)
Awesome. Cool. Thank you for sharing that. That’s great. Okay. So let’s talk about mistakes. The most common mistakes folks are making when they’re trying to engage with audiences on these platforms. I mean, the big one for me is spamming, right? You come in and you drop one comment on Reddit and it is just even so slightly promotional. You’re dead. Like you’re dead. So outside of spamming, what are these big mistakes that they’re making?
Navah Hopkins (28:34.771)
so a big mistake is underestimating the power of neutrality in today’s marketplace. now what I mean by that is if you take a stand in anything, you will rally some of your customer base. You might lose some of your customer base. neutrality is a stand in and of itself.
And so I think going into 2025, I’m not going to say what stands you should or should not take. That’s not my job here. But I will say that there is a value to segmenting out content that you know leans a certain way or a different way and adjusting your creative for those while still keeping your authentic voice as the through line.
So what I mean by that is if you know that you’re targeting a group that maybe only likes certain demographics, do what you can to have those demographics featured in the creative and then change it for another audience rather than using the same demographics throughout all of your creative. If you know that a given
topic might be linked to a certain social injustice or scandal or whatever, just be careful about your hashtags and that you don’t accidentally put your brand in the middle of that conversation because it’s very easy for those to kind of misfire. And then the final thing I’ll say, and this is kind of a new one, is just be your authentic self.
Humans love humans. Humans despise companies. We are a capitalist society, we love making money, we love profit and victory, it’s all good. But it’s also important to remember that there are humans in our customer base and we are humans ourselves. When speaking as a human to another human, you will make so much more money than if you try to force
Navah Hopkins (31:00.287)
an over marketed sales line or product to your people.
Greg Shuey (31:06.452)
Interesting. I like that. That’s some really, really good insight. Really good insight. Okay. As we’re kind of closing up here, we’ve got just a couple of more things that I wanted to touch on. First, we’ve touched on this a couple of times. Like you have to invest a fair amount of time into this and it can be frustrating when you’re not seeing immediate results. So what should a brand do?
if they’re not seeing immediate results.
Navah Hopkins (31:38.991)
So I think we need to take a step back and think about what are immediate results for each channel. So I would consider, quote unquote, immediate results for Google search, two to three months. Some people would say, nah, can see it way faster. Some people would say two to three months, like you definitely need more time. I think two to three months is a fairly immediate
Greg Shuey (31:44.782)
Okay.
Navah Hopkins (32:08.847)
results for a net new ad account. On the flip side, a video campaign, especially a video campaign that’s linked to direct action, that can have supercharged results because your reach is huge. Yeah, exactly. So I think when we talk about where you put your budget and where you put your effort, you need to think about the timelines of what you will be accountable for success.
Greg Shuey (32:21.582)
It could literally be tomorrow.
Navah Hopkins (32:37.967)
So if your stakeholders are expecting results tomorrow, be mindful that there are certain channels that have faster ad approvals, there are certain channels that have faster verification processes, all these things, and there are other channels where it’s a little bit tougher and you need to kind of wade through that.
Greg Shuey (32:57.228)
You’re not launching an SEO campaign needing results tomorrow.
Navah Hopkins (32:59.885)
Yeah. Exactly. you like a year. Give yourself a year for an SEO campaign. And I and the other goes to also A.B. testing as well. A lot of people feel like they can’t do A.B. testing because they’re a super small brand. That is not true. Yes. A thousand impressions is likely ideal, but work within the cons or within the constraints of
Greg Shuey (33:04.45)
Yeah. Right.
Navah Hopkins (33:28.853)
your business. If you know that you’re historically going to be a super niche, low volume brand, work within your ratios. don’t have to. Exactly. Exactly. But in terms of what you go do and the go do off of all these lovely thoughts, my first go do is pick the top one to two channels for 2025 that you will make your channels.
Greg Shuey (33:37.474)
Don’t sit around and wait. Don’t wait for the thousand. Yep.
Navah Hopkins (33:57.583)
because results, success, time, effort, all of it, it only is going to pay off if you’re focused and if you really hone in on it. So for example, Greg and I met on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one of my focus channels. I post there pretty much every day. Come hang out, we’ll say hi. I am not nearly as active as I should be on TikTok. I am not nearly as active as I should be on Instagram.
That’s just the nature of it. They’re not my focus channels. Do I have them claimed? Absolutely. You should have every single one of your branded channels claimed. But you don’t need to necessarily make them your focus.
Greg Shuey (34:40.525)
it. I love it. Okay, so if you could leave us with one parting word of wisdom for 2025, what would that be?
Navah Hopkins (34:50.681)
Just one word.
Greg Shuey (34:51.554)
Just one word of wisdom, not just one word. If it’s one word, go for it. But what would that be if you could take everything we talked about today and just say, go and do this one thing? What would it be?
Navah Hopkins (35:05.295)
Give yourself grace. 2024 was a lot. 2025, there’s a lot of good, there’s a lot of stress. Give yourself grace. We had Optimizer did a study, if you wanna check it out, you can, it’s on the blog, I’ll also send it over in case you wanna link it in the notes, that looked at Black Friday, Cyber Monday compared, this year compared to last year. And even though the results were great, like everyone did great.
Greg Shuey (35:23.278)
Great, I will.
Navah Hopkins (35:35.531)
It was worse than last year. People sold less on conversion value and units, even though the individual sales were more. So people were maybe buying more expensive things. The actual revenue was slightly less. Give yourself the grace that this is a weird time right now. And not to mention there’s also
attribution analytics questions. So this is a time where if you have wild and crazy ideas, give yourself the grace to test them. If you’re trying to launch a product, give yourself the grace to get it, to give it its legs, to actually let it see if it can do well and give yourself grace to invest the time in amazing podcasts like seven figures and beyond because that’s how you will grow.
is by giving yourself the grace to learn and to let your different products do their things.
Greg Shuey (36:39.084)
Yeah, I like to tell people right now, reset. I like that word, right? Take a moment, take a step back, reset those expectations, reset marketing plans. What you did last year may not work this year. And take some time to really figure out what’s going to be most impactful for their business this year. So I like both of those, grace and reset. Cool.
Well, Nava, thank you so much for being with us today.
Navah Hopkins (37:09.625)
Thank you so much for having me and for such a great conversation. I love talking about audiences. I don’t get to talk about audiences very much. So when you were like, let’s talk about audiences, very exciting. Yes.
Greg Shuey (37:18.05)
You’re like, I’m in, I love it. And I think that’s going to be a big focus. It needs to be a big focus for everyone. Like just following the customer, getting close to the customer. talked a lot about it last year. I’m to talk a lot about it this year because it makes marketing so much easier, so much easier. Cool. Cool. Well, thank you again. We’ve learned a lot today. So to our audience, make sure that you take what you’ve learned, carve out some time over the next couple of weeks and start executing.
Navah Hopkins (37:23.566)
Yes.
Greg Shuey (37:46.702)
Thank you so much for joining and we will be back with you next week. Bye.
Navah Hopkins (37:50.671)
Cheers guys, bye.
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
