Episode Summary
In this episode of the 7-Figures & Beyond e-commerce marketing podcast, Greg Shuey is joined by Rivkie Lieberman, Creative Director at Motif Studio, to dive deep into the nuances of high-ticket e-commerce and how brands selling expensive products can learn from B2B marketing strategies to improve conversions. Rivkie explains why selling high-ticket products requires a different approach than traditional DTC, emphasizing the importance of trust-building, education, and a longer sales cycle. She highlights the role of content marketing, case studies, email nurturing, and strategic lead generation in persuading cautious buyers. The conversation explores the psychology behind high-ticket purchases, why impulse-driven marketing tactics fall short, and how brands can optimize for motivation and ease of purchase. Finally, Rivkie shares practical insights on leveraging AI, trust signals, and personalized customer engagement to increase conversions and create a seamless buying experience for high-ticket customers.
Key Takeaways
- High-Ticket E-Commerce Mirrors B2B Sales – Selling expensive products online involves a longer consideration cycle, requiring brands to focus on education, trust-building, and lead nurturing—just like in B2B sales.
- Trust Signals and Authority Are Critical – Unlike impulse purchases, high-ticket buyers need video testimonials, case studies, FAQs, and transparent policies to feel confident in their purchase decisions.
- Email Marketing Plays a Huge Role – Instead of aggressive abandoned cart emails, high-ticket brands should use longer, more educational email flows to nurture leads and gradually overcome objections.
- Selling the Dream Drives Conversions – Consumers need to visualize the transformation your product will bring—whether through compelling storytelling, aspirational imagery, or personalized consultations.
- Patience and Long-Term Strategy Are Key – Unlike low-ticket DTC sales, the marketing you do today may not drive conversions for 6–12 months, requiring brands to take a long-term, multi-touchpoint approach to win customers.
Questions To Ask Yourself
- Does my website make it easy for customers to trust our brand? (Are there case studies, testimonials, and clear trust signals?)
- Am I treating my high-ticket customers like impulse buyers, or am I building a long-term nurture strategy?
- Have I optimized my email marketing for long sales cycles, or am I just sending abandoned cart reminders?
- Am I clearly selling the dream—helping customers visualize what their life looks like after purchasing our product?
- Am I proactively addressing objections, or am I waiting for customers to find reasons not to buy?
Episode Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
Rivkie Lieberman LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rivkie-lieberman-%F0%9F%AB%80%F0%9F%A7%A0-a0a803146/
Motif Studio: https://motif.studio/
BJ Foggs Behavior Model: https://behaviormodel.org/
Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow”: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555
Episode Transcript
Greg Shuey (00:01.424)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Seven Figures and Beyond eCommerce Marketing Podcast. I am your host, Greg Schuey. And if you’ve listened to any of our episodes, you know that I eat, breathe, sleep this stuff all day, all night. I’m really excited to be with you today. My guest today, her name is Rivke Lieberman. She is the creative director for an agency called Motif Studio.
They are a micro agency that crafts modern identities and thoughtful, highly customized websites for brands in high ticket e-commerce and B2B. I’m really excited about our topic today. We haven’t covered anything like this before, so I was super excited when I was introduced to RIFKi. Over the next 30 to 40 minutes, we are going to dive into selling high ticket e-commerce items and how borrowing from B2B e-commerce strategies
can really help you start to grow faster because when you look at things, B2B e-commerce and high ticket, it’s just a little bit different than your traditional D2C. And so it’s gonna be a really great discussion. I’m super excited. So Rivke, thank you so much for being with us today.
Rivkie Lieberman (01:16.994)
Thank you very much for having me.
Greg Shuey (01:19.808)
So before we dive in, would you take just a few minutes and introduce yourself to our listeners and share a little bit about your personal story and how you’ve gotten to where you are today.
Rivkie Lieberman (01:31.758)
Sure, so I’ve been running Motif Studio for about four years now. Previous to this, I was at a marketing agency. That was actually my very first job, so I was there for quite a few years in Brooklyn. And it was a small agency, and I started out as your garden variety graphic designer.
Greg Shuey (01:45.029)
Nice.
Rivkie Lieberman (01:53.678)
You know, in like a small agency, there’s a lot of room to move sideways. And I, you know, I’ve always, since I was a little kid, I’ve always been scribbling, drawing on the side of my notes in school. So I always loved design, but at the same time, I always loved writing too. And I’m kind of a bit of a nerd, proudly. So, so at this, at this agency, GCNY marketing, I, you know, every time they, needed a copywriter for something and their freelance copywriter wasn’t available. I was like, Oh, I could do that. And, know, let me hold on. What?
Greg Shuey (02:21.732)
You were the one. You were the one.
Rivkie Lieberman (02:24.918)
Yeah, I was like, can I, and they were like, okay, yeah, sure. Cause you know, it was small and there wasn’t a lot of bureaucracy. So I ended up in this funny space where I do both things. I am a designer and a creative director and I’m also a copywriter and a strategist. and I guess I found that even though I also do B2B and you e-commerce, know, I, I do other stuff as well. found this natural niche in high ticket e-commerce because I find when it comes to non
You know, when it comes to B2B sites, right? The visuals aren’t typically super important, right? You’re selling a software suite, you’re selling clunky hardware. It’s not about the visuals. And then when it comes to low ticket e-commerce, you’re selling like shirts or sneakers. The copywriting isn’t so important, right? The visuals really sell themselves. So in the high ticket e-commerce space, I find you’re selling something expensive, right? Like, you know, what I’ve sold, helped clients sell is cabinet, kitchen cabinets and custom closets and.
things that require fabric samples. So the visuals are very important and the copywriting is also very important because you need to sell the product, but you also need to sell the copy. So that’s why I found this space and I love it because I’m able to really help my clients with it. And having those strong visuals, aesthetics and having the powerful writing, they really come together in high ticket e-commerce. So that’s why I love it.
Greg Shuey (03:48.27)
I love it. That is a fantastic story. Thank you for sharing that. Probably one of my favorite questions that we ask on each episode. Everyone’s story is just a little bit different and that was great. Thank you so much for sharing. So how long have you been in the space?
Rivkie Lieberman (03:54.798)
everyone.
Yeah. Yeah.
Rivkie Lieberman (04:03.118)
Um, marketing or high ticket e-commerce. Okay. Um, about a decade around a little like 12, 12 years or so. Yeah.
Greg Shuey (04:05.774)
marketing in general.
Greg Shuey (04:13.028)
Awesome, cool. You’ve got a lot of experience, a lot of depth. That’s fantastic. All right, you ready to jump in? Okay, cool. So before we get into kind of the meat, could you help define to our listeners, like what is high ticket e-commerce? And how does selling expensive products differ from selling lower ticket items, like shirts, like you talked about?
Rivkie Lieberman (04:17.612)
Yes. Yeah.
Rivkie Lieberman (04:39.446)
Yes. So when I say high ticket e-commerce, I find the best differentiator to be anything that has a longer consideration stage. So when you’re making a purchase, I see it, I like it, I buy it.
That’s, that’s low ticket, right? Even, even if it’s something expensive, technically, if it’s really an impulse purchase, I don’t consider that high ticket, right? I consider something that’s not an impulse purchase, a high ticket. consider if you need to run it by someone before you swipe your credit card, it’s, it’s high ticket. and you know, you need to match the way the visitors show up, right? You need to match the fact that they are prepared. They are not going to make an impulse purchase right now.
Greg Shuey (05:02.906)
Thank you.
Rivkie Lieberman (05:21.908)
And in that sense, it’s very similar to B2B, right, which we’re gonna get into.
Greg Shuey (05:25.818)
Got it. That’s very helpful. I mean, I was originally thinking like you talked about cabinets, things like that that have really long cell cycles versus per se like a baby carrier or a stroller, which still sometimes requires some time, right? We’ve got to consult with our partner.
Rivkie Lieberman (05:35.223)
Yeah.
Rivkie Lieberman (05:44.462)
Right. Right. That’s right. That’s also not an impulse purchase usually. Right.
Greg Shuey (05:50.734)
Right, not necessarily super expensive like putting cabinets in your kitchen, but could take quite a bit longer.
Rivkie Lieberman (05:54.99)
Right. But still, you know, $600, something like that. Yeah.
Greg Shuey (05:59.504)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, cool. So we’ve already touched on B2B a little bit. you know, borrowing from the B2B playbook, like what are some of those things that work for B2B that don’t necessarily work for smaller D2C or don’t work as well, right? That these high ticket brands might be overlooking.
Rivkie Lieberman (06:26.72)
Right. So in traditional D to C, like I said before, it’s I see it, I like it, I get it, right? If I’m buying a dress online, I all I need is the visuals. I like the shape. I like the length. I like how it looks. Maybe I’ll check to see if it has like synthetic materials. But you know, often the copywriting is like a distraction. You don’t need a lot of copy to sell something that’s cheap. You need a few nice icons for some products, but it’s not right. Yeah.
Greg Shuey (06:52.752)
short product descriptions with some reviews and your goal.
Rivkie Lieberman (06:56.94)
Yeah, some SEO strategy and you’re good. But with high ticket e-commerce, so the way it’s similar to B2B is it’s an expensive purchase. Customers really need to feel confident to hand over that chunk of change. And so what you’ll notice if you speak to B2B marketers is they’re always talking about the system one and system two of the brain, right? If you’re familiar with Daniel Kahneman’s thinking fast and slow.
he talks about how their system one, which is like the intuitive part of your brain that makes these fast decisions. And that’s sort of what controls a lot of our impulse purchases. I like it. Cool. You know, add to cart. I’m going to look beautiful in that, right? The emotional part of our brain and system two is slower. and we sort of call it the system one, the lizard brain. I just love that term because it really helps sum it up what’s going on. and then system two is like the slower part of the brain, right?
Greg Shuey (07:32.058)
Hmm. Yeah.
Rivkie Lieberman (07:47.846)
the analytical part, the parental cortex, the part that slows down and thinks, Hey, am making a wise decision here? And does our best to slow that emotional part of the brain down. in B2B marketing, we see there’s a lot of those covered conversations.
engaging with the frontal cortex, right? Because what’s going through people’s heads when they’re on a B2B site and they’re deciding, should I buy this piece of software, is they’re using their analytical thinking skills and they’re thinking, what am I going to say to my boss? How am going to defend this? Is this a good investment? How do I explain this to my team? How does this work? Like, I really need to understand how this works before I purchase it. So those conversations are happening in B2B marketing, right?
So people are going through a similar thought process when they’re buying something like kitchen cabinets or a stroller, right? Even a stroller, I’m still thinking, you know, is my husband gonna say, you know, why’d you get this? Like this breaks after two years, you know? Did I need to review, sorry. You do I really, really think this? Will I be able to defend this to someone? I think that’s something that comes up a lot in V2V. Like how will I defend this to the board? And I think it comes up in high tech and e-commerce as well. So.
Yeah, so we do need to address the emotional as well. The emotional is always there, even in B2B marketing. There’s still some selling the dream that we want to have. And so too with high ticket e-commerce, there’s still some of that emotional selling we want to do, but people are using their frontal cortex a lot more and we need to address that. So like some examples of things that we do that help a lot in high ticket e-commerce as well is using a lot more trust signals, right?
using a lot more authority building on the site is so much more crucial with a big purchase. think, like getting creative with the way that you’re creating trust. instead of just having a written testimonial, consider doing a few video testimonials to really create that trust and tell the story of people.
Rivkie Lieberman (09:42.034)
And another thing, another tactic I love is like creating case studies, which is really a B2B idea, right? But showing people, okay, you know, an example that I did for one of my clients, RTA, what cabinets is we created these mini case studies showing what people’s considerations were, what they were looking for in cabinets, how we help them figure out what they need, right? It was very much in a problem solution case study kind of format. And that, that, that really works in high tech e-commerce.
And then, know, FAQs is really helpful. Anything you can do to build authority and trust signals. another, you know, one more approach that I love, which is not specifically related to the website, to, to the overall sales process is email. In, in, in low ticket DTC, if you have an abandoned cart flow, it’s usually, you know, two quick emails.
Bye bye bye. I’m sure you forgot about this. Hey, you know, pick up something’s in your cart. And that doesn’t work with high ticket e-commerce because like you mentioned earlier, there’s a longer sell cycle, right? There’s a longer consideration stage. And just like B2B, people discover a software and they’re thinking they’re sitting on it for months making that decision. It’s the same thing in high ticket e-commerce, right? People are taking months to make that decision. So I like to create a much more B2B style email flow that’s much heavier on the copy than the flashy imagery.
And that really builds more persuasive arguments over time in a softer way, less aggressive, a lot softer because there’s a longer sell cycle. And because people who are buying custom blinds, they’re taking some time to make a decision. It’s not, they have to figure it out. They have to fill out that whole page and put their measurements in. they’re sitting on it a little bit more and understanding that is really, is really helpful.
Greg Shuey (11:29.476)
Yeah. So with B2B, you know, it’s heavy lead gen. So do you find that high ticket e-commerce is also heavy lead gen versus capturing a purchase on the website? Are you trying to optimize towards capturing emails and then nurturing people?
Rivkie Lieberman (11:43.788)
Yes, absolutely. Yes. I mean, I do find that email nurture, I think it works in every industry. I think it’s great in low ticket data sea too, but yes, absolutely. It is really, really imperative to get to capture people’s email and SMS if possible and gently harass them over time and introduce them to…
Greg Shuey (12:06.768)
That’s the quote of the day, gently harass. I love it. So what are some of the biggest challenges that you see in selling high ticket products? mean, we’ve already talked significantly about content, right, and education and nurturing. What are some of those other challenges, and then how do you overcome those?
Rivkie Lieberman (12:29.934)
So one challenge I’ve noticed, I would say this is more like a mindset challenge, but something I’ve noticed when I speak to lot of B2B brands, sorry, high ticket e-commerce brands is around samples. So this is not relevant to every high ticket company, but like you said, strollers, no one’s really ordering the sample of the plastic, if you’re ordering, like if you’re giving out fabric samples for, this is a lot obviously in the furniture home decor space.
or wood samples for the closets or some, something where they take a baby step that’s free, right? Let’s say they have to just fill out a form, and you know, to connect with a designer to get some help, right? Anything where there’s a baby step. I find that the mindset problem is that brands think that there’s going to be more immediacy than there is. Like they, they, they think that if someone buys a sample or if someone fills out a form.
You know, for sure they’re like, what’s wrong with them? Why aren’t they making that purchase? But you know, it’s, it’s, they expect this immediacy because of DTC, but really I find that if you, if you apply that B2B mindset and look at it as a funnel, it’s like a really long funnel, right? B2B people get this like, okay, there’s gonna a really small percentage of people who sign up for freemium and then actually, you know, end up paying, right? So they need that same mindset where, you know,
it’s it’s it’s there are not going to be so many people who buy samples that are actually going to buy things you know and you have to sort of understand that the samples is a step of the funnel it’s not a guarantee to purchase i think that you know i don’t know if i’d call it a challenge but i think that that confounds a lot of brands and you know someone buying a sample gives them more promise than it actually should
So I’m not saying you shouldn’t optimize for those. course you should. And I do, you know, I do have different ideas for how to optimize for sample buyers. Like, you know, offer, like send an offer with the sample with a short timeframe, right? That’s a very common one. Another more interesting idea is like sending a delayed offer. So they get samples, nothing comes with it. And then a week later they get, you know, or a month later, right? Try to get in the mind of your buyer and understand how long is their sales cycle and then interrupt them later with an offer.
Rivkie Lieberman (14:44.462)
You know, don’t send the offer in the beginning, send an offer later, because again, you want to get into that slow mindset of like, people take time to marinate on decisions and get comfortable with it and say, yeah, I’m going to spend this money. So consider sending an offer like a month, a month after you send the sample or a month after they fill out the form. And again, here’s where email is really, really helpful, right? To match that longer sale cycle. So yes, you know, the challenge is it’s slow and you need to be patient. And the response is match that slowness.
and you know, buckle up because it’s going to be a while. and yeah, you know, with myself, I am not like a slow decision maker, but I bought like a runner for my steps. and I spoke to the company, I got a few samples and then it was probably a year before I had the head space to like actually, and I wanted to do it and I cared to do it. wasn’t like I wasn’t interested. I wasn’t nervous about anything. I just didn’t have the head space to have the person come down, measure my steps, blah, blah, blah, blah. So like, that’s just, that’s normal in high ticket e-commerce.
Greg Shuey (15:34.128)
Yeah.
Rivkie Lieberman (15:41.378)
Obviously there are gonna be the people who act quickly, but it’s also normal for a take on. So I guess that’s my challenge that I see come up a lot.
Greg Shuey (15:44.656)
Bye.
I like to tell people the marketing that we’re doing today is going to help you in 90 days. What we’re doing now isn’t going to help you right this minute. And then I can imagine, like you mentioned with B2B and high ticket e-commerce. So the work we’re doing now is going to help you in nine to 12 months. Right?
Rivkie Lieberman (16:06.634)
Exactly. Yes. We literally just set up an email flow for a client, which is, it’s nine months long. It’s spaced out and it’s like, all right, I’ll check back in a year to see how it’s doing. Because yeah, you need to be a little patient. I mean, well, thank God, like we are checking in at it every month and it’s, you know, it’s doing pretty well. But yeah, yeah, you gotta be patient.
Greg Shuey (16:15.312)
W
Greg Shuey (16:32.142)
I’ve got to imagine that attribution’s nightmare.
Rivkie Lieberman (16:35.894)
Yes. Yes. I, in general, I, you know, you need to have like a more holistic approach where we’re like, let’s look at all our marketing efforts and see how, how they’re going. because that’s, it was very difficult, especially, especially because, you know, with high ticket e-commerce, a lot of times, if it’s a complex product, you’re having sales, you’re having designers or salespeople and you know, there’s a lot of phone conversations happening. So yeah, it’s really tricky to attribute that email to the phone call you made the next day. yeah, absolutely.
Greg Shuey (17:03.3)
Yeah, that’s tough. Okay, so we’ve already touched on trust a little bit. You know, we’ve talked about, you know, case studies and FAQs and things like that. What other ways can brands build trust with potential customers?
Rivkie Lieberman (17:10.687)
Mm.
Rivkie Lieberman (17:20.498)
Mm-hmm. Um, so I Do you find in high ticket? It’s really helpful to you know, do the same thing in b2b where there’s a phone number in the corner Call us calls if you need us Showing that you’re a local company. You’re you know American based or whatever country you’re based in Creating that level of trust where hey, this is not like some overseas company and you know, no one’s I do find that’s really helpful when someone’s making a big purchase
people get on the phone and hear an American speaking and it’s just like, okay, I feel a little safer. And in general, creating that connection and encouraging some form of human connection, obviously it’s more expensive. So you have to make it work with your margins. I do find that finding some kind of excuse to connect with the customer, like free design services is something that a lot of people at home, the core space, but let’s say you mentioned strollers, know, hey,
Greg Shuey (18:01.328)
Sure. Yeah.
Rivkie Lieberman (18:16.972)
you know, chat with us and discover what stroller works best, right? Encouraging those sort of communications, even though people don’t necessarily take you up on that offer, it just reassures them that, there’s someone there to help me out. Okay, this is a legitimate company and I’m willing to part with my dollars for this. So I find that, you know, creating that connection, even if people don’t take advantage of it, does help people feel reassured to make a larger purchase.
Greg Shuey (18:39.032)
Yeah. Do you find that in kind high ticket and B2B e-commerce scenarios that there’s a lot of opportunities with like third parties and journalists, like there is with like traditional D2C. You work with a lot of bloggers and journalists and influencers. Is there something like that, like an ecosystem for this space?
Rivkie Lieberman (19:00.526)
Yeah, sure. A lot of my clients do PR, get on blogs, relevant blogs. Yeah, that absolutely helps. I see it works in the B2B space as well if you choose the right medium, media. So yeah, it definitely helps to get into PR. And it’s funny because it’s kind of the imagine that because we’re actually working with a B2B e-commerce client.
So again, there’s a lot of overlap between high ticket e-commerce and B2B e-commerce and they sell like hotel locks. Yeah, to hotels. And it’s a really similar problems, right? Complex decision, pricey per lock, it comes out to a pretty big order. And one of the things we’re working on with them is getting more legitimacy.
out off their website because they’re a newer company and they have a great price, great product, but no one’s really heard of them. you know, there’s, there’s, know, when people research them, it’s like, there’s not even a Wikipedia article about these guys. Like who are these people? So yeah, that’s one of the tactics that we’re doing. We’re helping them work with PR people to get out there more and to be posted about. yeah, same thing with high ticket. Yes. Great. Great point. You definitely want to make sure that there’s legitimacy about you off of your website and you want to make sure you’re doing some authority building, you know, that’s, that’s, you know, not owned.
Greg Shuey (20:05.136)
Yeah.
Rivkie Lieberman (20:23.97)
that’s paid or earned because you want that legitimacy about you and not just saying, hey, we’re the greatest, right? Yeah.
Greg Shuey (20:31.714)
Everyone can say, we’re the greatest. But when other people start saying, hey, you’re the greatest, that’s the magic,
Rivkie Lieberman (20:37.196)
Music to my ears. Yeah.
Greg Shuey (20:40.986)
So we’ve touched on content as well a little bit. So what role does content marketing and really education play in helping customers make these big purchases?
Rivkie Lieberman (20:44.738)
Mm-hmm.
Rivkie Lieberman (20:54.688)
Yeah, so it’s a great question because it really illustrates how high ticket is so similar to B2B, right? Because B2B has so much content because it understands that there’s that longer consideration stage, right? So yeah, we’re pushing education in front of website visitors so that they can keep you top of mind, right? Because they’re not purchasing as soon as they get on the site. So they need to see those ads and they want to consume that.
organic social media posts and keep seeing things from you. definitely, and again, definitely email is a really, really powerful way to leverage content. We will create really long, like I mentioned before, we’ll create these really long email flows that…
really educate people and work through what are their reservations and how can we acknowledge them and how can we show, you know, case studies even within email and how can we keep sharing educational content with them to, like I said before, gently harass them and like slowly, slowly introduce them to new content and address queries that they might have.
over time. So again, it’s really like playing the long game with education and content. It is also great to have, you know, like I said, to have case studies on your site that people could peruse or to have a blog on your site and people could peruse all of anything that bulks up your site. You know, I like to think of it as people are not necessarily reading every word, but just seeing that it’s there gives people this reassurance that these people know what they’re talking about. If I have 10 blog posts about, you know, how to design your space or how to choose the right stroller, people visiting the site say, oh, this
This is done by serious people who really, really care about my baby’s, know, stroller comfort. So, you know, just, just bulking up your site in that sense, gives people that reassurance because with the higher ticket purchase comes that frontal cortex saying like, wait a second, slow down. What are we doing? And the education helps soothe that soothe that brain, that the front, that the, the logical brain and say like, bring down your guard a little bit, fork over some money.
Greg Shuey (23:00.624)
I’m going to throw you a curveball right now. Do you find that fewer people are actually consuming blog content? Are they leaning more into chat GPT and other kind of discovery engines? Where does all of that live?
Rivkie Lieberman (23:02.688)
no.
Rivkie Lieberman (23:18.85)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a great question. We’ve all been thinking about this question for the whole year, right? Past few years already. So yes, like I said, for me a blog is not necessarily to be read, it’s to exist. It’s so that people see it there. I know that maybe sounds a little cynical, but I do think that, it doesn’t have to be a blog per se. For example, I’m working on a website in the,
bathroom space, like toilets, bathtubs, all that, vanities. And we’re, we’re not, it’s not really a blog. It’s more like resources. So we’re creating a really comprehensive toilet guide, right? And throughout the site, we’re saying, Hey, do you need help shopping for toilets? You know, if you’re confused, cause there are just so many toilets and you know what to choose, you know, click through this really handy dandy guide. So you could definitely create content that is directly useful to people and not just like a blog.
Um, where, know, it’s just lots of SEO keywords. Um, in general, like I said, I don’t necessarily expect everyone to read that toilet guy, but I do expect them to see that and feel a little comforted. Like, Oh, that’s a little, little hug from the person, you know, from, from the team who are making these toilets, who are not some offshore company, there’s some company who created this nice, beautifully designed, you know, guy for me. So for me, a lot of it is about the perception that you create for the website visitor, then content that necessarily needs to be read.
So, you know, when you ask about chat to be T yeah, for sure. People are, people are, you know, typing things to AI. People are learning things in different ways. People are not necessarily using, um, you know, Google the way they used to, and SEO is not doing what it used to necessarily. And it probably will really change, but I’m not coming from an SEO perspective at all here. I’m coming from a conversion perspective. Once you’re on the site, what happens when you see that there’s content, when you see that there’s content written for me designed to be helpful, I feel reassured.
And I might also read it and find it very useful. Okay, this is actually going to help me. So is that all right?
Greg Shuey (25:18.416)
I like that. I like that. All right. So for brands that are currently selling high ticket products but are struggling with conversions, what’s the first thing that they should start looking at or thinking about?
Rivkie Lieberman (25:35.51)
Right. So I have a very, I have a very theoretical, I have a very philosophical approach to this. Not very practical. I apologize. But, so the, the approach I like to take is, not, you know, obviously you can just dump, like run into all the best practices and read through a list of best practices and see if we’re doing those. So that’s, know, the low hanging fruit. So I’m not going to address that.
Greg Shuey (25:36.272)
Ha
Rivkie Lieberman (25:59.17)
I would rather address the mindset of what tools are you using for optimization? How are you thinking about optimization? So the, the, the model that I like to use is fog’s behavioral model, which is it’s a neuroscience model that it says, what do we need to do to motivate a human being to take action? And it’s very, very simple. It’s not, not scary at all. It’s just high motivation and high ability.
I want to do it and I can do it. So the more you motivate someone to want to do something and the more you motivate them to be able to do something, the more likely they are to do it. So using that very simple model, you could uncover so many more things than if you just like walk through a list of best practices, because let’s, let’s like break these two items down. Right.
Suppose on your website, your website’s really, really clear. Like, you’re selling kitchen cabinets, and we’ll take that example because it’s so complex. You’re selling kitchen cabinets online, and it’s really clear, really easy to do. They’ve really made sure that’s easy to do. But you’re not selling the dream. You’re not motivating them enough.
You need a lot more motivation than if someone’s buying a dress because of that higher price point, right? So with high ticket e-commerce you need more motivation and you need more ability You need a lot more because it’s more expensive. So I’ll look for a gap in either one So like I said on that, you know kitchen cabinets company website
Am I motivating people with perceived benefits, right? Benefits about the product. Am I creating emotional connection and selling it and selling the dream, painting a picture of what will your kitchen look like once you have this and selling the dream of how simple and easy and streamlined it’s going to be and how we’re going to make it easy for you. And even an incentive or promotional offer comes under motivation, right? Giving someone a short window with a promo or some kind of incentive.
Rivkie Lieberman (27:56.566)
will help sell that, right? The second piece is high ability, right? So let’s say you have a website that’s really motivating, really exciting, but you’re missing the ability piece. Now that’s really, really common with high ticket e-commerce, especially if it’s complex, especially if you need to put a few things together and it’s custom on the site and I have to do it myself. That’s really overwhelming, really hard for people. It’s not like adding a dress or a t-shirt to your cart and checking out, right? So…
High ability comes up a lot in high ticket e-commerce. So really, really working through how easy is this for people to do and using tools like Hotjar and Microsoft Clarity. Those are awesome. And seeing how people are checking out will really help you see like, wait, this is hard for people. People don’t know what they’re doing. They’re bouncing around and help you identify ways that you could give people more ability to accomplish. And we’re moving any roadblocks that are making it harder for people, right? Any roadblocks in checkout that are.
making it more difficult to able to check out. And obviously, including instructions like on the kitchen website again, we have a little really, really concise, like one, two, three, how to do this, right? Very concise, very to the point at the top of the page. creating content like that that really helps guide people’s decision and helps educate them in a fast, simple way is really crucial on high-tech and e-commerce websites, which are complex. yeah, another thing that falls under high motivation is…
tackling any reservations they might have like, you know, returns, what’s going to happen, you know, if I don’t like my stroller, what happens then? Am I able to, know, how difficult is it? If I already use it, can I still return it? All of that falls under motivation, right? You’re reducing their roadblocks, their internal nervousness and reservations and helping them overcome those. So.
I find that like that behavioral model is just so simple and so easy and it just tap. helps you work through all of those things. So go through your website, run through all of the things that you can do to make people more excited and all the things you can do to make it easier for people. And. Boom, you don’t need a conversion optimization expert anymore. I’m sure, I’m sure you’ll still find it useful.
Greg Shuey (30:03.215)
you
Greg Shuey (30:07.888)
You said three or four times, selling the dream. And I don’t know that I’ve ever thought of it like that, right? Like that’s, people have dreams and aspirations and helping them envision that and then helping lead them down the path of actually fulfilling those dreams. I think it is huge. So I love that you brought that up. Cool. So as we’re kind of wrapping up here, know, 2024 was a weird year.
Rivkie Lieberman (30:26.924)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Rivkie Lieberman (30:33.538)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Shuey (30:36.88)
Where do you see 2025 going?
Rivkie Lieberman (30:40.664)
I’m not a big predictor. I’m not a, I’m not a prophet. don’t, I just like hold on tight, try to, you know, I obviously AI is getting faster and faster and better and better. And that’s both scary and exciting. And you know, I try my best to stay on top of it and learn from it and learn from all the other marketing experts about how to use AI.
Greg Shuey (30:42.148)
You
Rivkie Lieberman (31:05.664)
Now to harness it. think, I think that people who, know, AI is the new internet and people who jump on that train and figure out how to utilize it, for their needs, and to better their websites and to help it, you know, I think, you know, AI is getting smarter and smarter at, analyzing and strategizing for you. and I think using these tools to, to strategize for you is really,
you know, it’s doing a phenomenal job. know, the same way, like I can put my, I can put my, my son’s symptoms into Chatcham BTN. It’ll, it’ll do a better job telling me what he might have than the doctor might. So it’s the same thing with Webb. Like it’s, getting really smart. And I think we got to prepare for that. And we got to, we got to stay on that train if you want to stay, you know, stay with where the world is going.
Greg Shuey (31:47.653)
this.
Rivkie Lieberman (31:55.406)
Um, and yeah, also helping it, you know, I, this is a little bit tangential to our general discussion, but just cause you, know, just cause you asked like how, how, one of the ways I’m using AI is, um, I, I’ll, you know, this is, this is image related, but I’ll generate a background image and then I’ll remove the product and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll whatever product I have, and then I’ll, I’ll create a render of my client’s products and render it into the mid-journey generated image.
So I’m using AI to like drastically speed up image generation and really, really make it a lot cheaper. It’s becoming so much more inexpensive to create a beautiful website with beautiful graphics and, you know, using your items and putting them in. So that’s really exciting. We get to create beautiful things at a much, you on a budget. And yeah, again, kind of tangential, but that’s just something fun that we’ve been doing for our clients.
Greg Shuey (32:28.548)
Hmm.
Greg Shuey (32:50.64)
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, I think that we’ve all learned a lot today. I have from a high ticket perspective. So Rifke, thanks so much for being with us today. Hope you had a good time.
Rivkie Lieberman (33:00.43)
Thank you so much for having me on. It was really a pleasure. All right.
Greg Shuey (33:03.438)
Yeah, I’m incredibly grateful that you were willing to take time out of your busy schedule to be with us and to help the e-commerce businesses who are listening really help move their companies forward.
Rivkie Lieberman (33:13.24)
I hope it’s helpful.
Greg Shuey (33:14.98)
Definitely was. So make sure to tune in next week. And thank you everyone for joining. Bye bye.
Rivkie Lieberman (33:20.462)
All right, bye.
Greg Shuey (33:24.944)
See you later.
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.
