Hello and welcome to the Product Growth Lab podcast, hosted by Andrew George and Melissa Pickle.

This is the podcast for creative product-based business owners who wanna grow their businesses without overwhelm or massive investment.

Each episode, we explore actionable strategies, real life stories and insights from business owners and experts who know what it takes to succeed, whether you're just starting out or looking to scale.

We are here to help you grow your business on your own term.

Subscribe and join us each week as we dive into practical advice and inspiring stories to help fuel your growth journey.

This is the Product Growth Lab.

Let's get started.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast.

Hey, we are working on episode three of like wildly Betsy series going on here and today is one of the most exciting bits and probably also the scariest for most people.

And that is how to drive traffic to your store without ads, which is the fun part.

'cause I use ads.

But the good news is you don't need

too.

do it.

There is so much organic traffic there any strategy, even a strategy that has ads.

Should combine ads with some organic traffic.

absolutely.

spoken a lot.

I've done a whole summit about it.

We've done events, we've done a lot of stuff where we talk about traffic, and one of the things I bring up time and time again is the four different buckets of traffic.

And you should have a social source of traffic, source of traffic, paid source of traffic.

And search.

Social and search are, I suppose relationship as well are like your not ads and then Probably a much easier, nicer way to explain that.

But here we are.

But having something from each of the four buckets and that is what I always recommend.

And we also say, do not.

Come into a fresh business and decide, okay, I'm gonna do all four from day one.

You start slow and stuck.

Hey, you have all four buckets right there.

If you think about it, over the course of a year, if you dedicate one.

Quarter of each year to one of those buckets and stacking on by the end of the year, you got all four.

yeah,

pretty fast.

I think it is getting a little bit harder to say have one social platform because things keep changing.

Things are shifting a little bit.

Platforms are coming and going and there's all these algorithm changes and maybe if you were on Twitter when it changed to X, there was like a massive exodus of people and you could have lost that track search.

So sometimes you do need to add some extra in there.

But I think having one main platform.

And then you syndicate out.

You have your like repurposing strategy, which that is made easier with ai.

And then should shit hit the fan, suddenly Instagram disappears tomorrow.

You're like, okay, I have a bit of a base following in some base content over on platform B, and I can just move in there and kind of, tailor my a little bit more towards that.

So today we are gonna be going over, stay tuned here for the best organic traffic sources for handmade businesses.

We're gonna go over how to use Pinterest for long-term traffic, how to leverage social media effectively without having to post 24 7.

And finally, how to get found on Google with simple keyword here.

Simple.

SEO.

Alright, let's get going.

So first we gotta get out of the way here is.

We talked about like we're all, this is without ads.

Why?

Without ads?

Because paid ads aren't always the answer.

And they work.

They totally can work, but only if you know that everything works.

First paid ads are an accelerator and they burn money no matter what.

Okay?

So if your offer is good, it's gonna burn your money and the ads and you're gonna get it back.

But if your offer or your conversion, or your pages are bad and you put ad money on it and it throws traffic at it, you're gonna make a bad converting page.

Probably convert worse.

I know most people think if I just get enough traffic hitting my page, it'll work and ads will get me the traffic.

But you gotta know that you got your ad set up correctly.

They're going to the right people.

They have a message on them that people wanna click on, and an image that they want to click on, and they land on a page that the person's interested in taking an action on.

That's a lot of steps on something you're throwing money at.

So if you're not willing to straight up burn your money, don't.

Go ads now.

I will say, and get it out of the way with ads.

If you have something that is working really well in organic, you can supplement and boost and encourage growth on that with ads.

And that's all we're gonna talk about with ads today.

Sound good to answer?

Yeah,

Okay.

ads make a bad product, fail faster.

Yes.

when you start with ads is data.

And either Tells you, oh, and it ads difficult 'cause it's like sometimes data can tell you.

Okay.

This works.

The product is great and I have great ads sometimes that your product can suck, but your ads are great.

Sometimes your product's great, but your ads like, it's hard to

So many

that's a whole thing.

So what we're focused on is the other three of the equation.

And there are so many there, but I think the main ones we'll focus on today are Pinterest.

It's the one I can hear people groaning as I say it, but it has been there forever.

There's always the, oh, Pinterest is no, it's always been there.

And the people who make use of it and who've adapted with it over time love it and keep getting traffic over the long term.

And it's a great traffic source for them.

So it's totally something to.

Focus on.

And then if you're like me and I think Melissa as well it's like one of the things that's on your list to get to eventually and it just never happens.

So we're gonna tell you why.

Maybe move up the list.

We're gonna talk about Google search that kinda SEO great long term sustainable ish until they make some changes.

Strategy.

We're gonna talk about social media, of course.

That's the first thing everyone thinks of when they think of organic traffic.

And of course, I want.

It wouldn't be me if I didn't sprinkle and submit my market in there too.

That's kind of relationship building right there is email marketing.

Like I feel like it fits in that relationship bucket.

Yeah.

Case could be made.

but if you're wired that like you think, okay, no one has successful business without spending a ton of money.

It's not true.

I've done it.

I've never spent money on a single penny on ads.

I think I've boosted one Facebook post.

Sarah spent one in ads, but our clients, I don't think any of them have spent money on ads either.

Boosted posts.

That's about it.

Yeah, all have businesses that we've grown to a level that like you might want to go to too.

So don't lay, you can career traffic.

You can have sales coming in.

Every day.

You can have collections that sell out.

can have like the sellout Black Friday, that makes you wonder why you ever started a business 'cause you're just driving orders.

Like you can do all of that any totally organic way.

Because I've been there and I've tried,

Everyone says, I want a hundred orders a day until they get it, and then they go, no,

yeah, you can have a.

Cry on the floor, want to go out your business level of orders

and then get your shipping done.

So Pinterest is the first thing I want to talk about.

And total hypo a great, you're telling you to get on Pinterest as a great traffic source because I have been super inconsistent with this.

I do it, I like get behind it for a week and then it's abandoned for another three years.

I will be relaunching my Pinterest.

Yeah, and it's one of those weird platforms that it's, it's a bit socially, it's a bit search engine.

It's hard to put it in a bucket.

It's a bit doom scrolly.

Yeah, it works a bit like social media, but it is a search based platform and you can't have links.

Like it is pretty separate from a social media platform, but it's more social than Google is, Somewhere in between.

And I think people, because most people are on social media and they kinda think if I think about social media.

focus on Instagram, so not doing there.

And if they're focusing on SEO, they're probably focusing on Google.

So they're like it won't do Pinterest.

And it ends up getting ignored.

'cause it is this weird in-between platform.

I.

But the great thing with Pinterest is like on Google stuff doesn't die.

Since it's search based, instead of what's the newest thing out there?

Your stuff has a chance of living for years versus the only time your stuff lives for years on social media, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, any of that is if you go viral and even then it might be a good luck on it getting to last for years.

Think of Pinterest much more in the same vein as thinking of YouTube.

Just you don't need to create videos for all of it.

Yeah.

Also, much like everything else that has had this form video introduced, those do perform well.

It's the short form video is hard to escape at the moment, but we'll see how that goes long term.

But the basics of Pinterest, and these are like the try and tested truths that even a non-expert can tell you works Make sure you have some really great quality product images and focus more on the kinda lifestyle photos.

Mm-hmm.

Fit into a lifestyle?

How are people using it?

Having people in your images and making sure that you include in your pen towels and descriptions, and making sure that you're paying consistently a pin or two every day is a great way to get started.

And because.

I think you have to have a link on Pinterest.

It's not even just a, you I think you have to post a pin.

They're a really great way to drive traffic over to your store.

they also, if you integrate it with Shopify, they have a really great way of tracking that traffic, which is really nice.

They have a really fantastic integration with Shopify.

I know when I grew a brand to a million monthly views on Pinterest, which doesn't like, it sounds impressive, but it doesn't actually mean that much.

'cause they didn't put any of their own unique content up so it didn't go anywhere.

But at that point I was doing five posts a day.

Yeah, I don't think you need to do that anymore.

I think you can post less than you want.

Pinterest used to be like this serious, like you need specific software, you need a strategy, you need to be in there every day.

And having all this tech content, I think it has become a slightly more simplified, streamlined kind of platform to work with.

and you can simplify a little bit and, I think it's a good thing to say.

Okay, just get started.

Batch up a bunch of pins schedule 'em in whatever schedule and software you're using or I think you can schedule 'em Pinterest or just set yourself a reminder to go in and do organically.

'cause I think that does help on interest and just start getting some stuff up.

aren't gonna see results overnight on Pinterest.

You aren't

No.

results overnight anywhere.

Start doing it.

And I think over time you'll start to see a growth in traffic on Pinterest

You're looking at 60 to 120 days really to get your growth on Pinterest, which makes seasonal collections difficult.

If you're doing seasonal collections to where, if you're like Andrew and you repeat the same seasonal collection, it's fine.

It's easy.

Content's up there, great.

If you're like me and it's next week I'm gonna do a Christmas collection.

Not very good.

Yeah, making sure that whenever a collection goes, that you're sending that traffic over to somewhere that gives them something relevant and related, if that soap, the Christmas e soap scent is gone, you're taking them to your other more

Yes.

seasonal soap selections instead, so you can we keep using those clicks over time.

Yep.

Alright, so Pinterest, which we just said is very SEO, very Pinterest is about pretty pictures, easy readability on those pretty pictures and keywords, long tail keywords, and your pin titles and everything else.

So from there, we're gonna move right on down to Google search, which is all keywords.

This is the one Andrew is much better at than me.

and I wouldn't call myself an expert here, but it's something I have put some time, effort into, and I do see results from it.

I'm trying to think, what year would it have been?

I think it might have been 2020.

Like it could, yeah, probably around four or five years ago is when I did a lot of these SEO strategies started taking it a bit more effort.

And I'm seeing the results of that today.

the past couple of months I've seen a nice upturn in the amount of sales that I get that can be chased back to a Google site.

So it is that long term strategy and it is, even though I did it all that time ago, it's still working.

So it's a nice long-term strategy in your store.

And although it might be a bit more work upfront.

I think it's worth it if you can say four or five years later that I'm still getting results from it.

How often you say that about other traffic sources

That is almost a set it and forget it right there.

I thought I was doing better, but I keep running outta breath

So when you're looking with your product pages at Google, SEO.

All that.

So you wanna make sure your product titles are keyworded.

You wanna make sure your meta descriptions, your product descriptions have keywords sprinkled throughout them and you wanna make sure that your images have, are named keyword friendly things, right?

Andrew?

Yeah, those are like the, those like kind of nice basic of things, the things that you can focus on and I think some of the tips there are.

Like when it comes to collect images, make sure that you title your images in a keyword friendly the way before you upload them is the easiest way to do this.

And for some platforms

only way.

yeah, they don't let you change it.

What?

It just, it saves us what I was uploaded as it Shopify extens.

Now that said, a recent kind of update but I don't think WordPress.

Slash Blue Commerce, whatever you want to call it.

let's see, change those at all.

So, doing that before you upload your images making sure that your titles are QA researched and getting things in the description.

And those are the really the main things focus on.

And skip any of the weird kinda.

Tactics that you see online that are like, this or use these tactic, like most of that it means nothing.

If it sounds a weird kind of trick, ly nonsense.

Actually someone who's really good at dispelling the whole kind of they aren't focused specifically on.

Like e-commerce.

So you won't get for that.

if you go to Nicki Pelkington, which is N-I-K-K-I-P-I-L-K-I-N-G-T-O-N.

But she has these SEO myths, debunked posts that are like all of the things that might hear online, and she's just no.

She's probably blunt and a lot sweaty.

So if you don't like that, maybe not the best person to follow, but really good at going.

This is nonsense.

All right, so definitely go check out Nikki.

If you're worried about what kind of keywords to use, here's a quick tip.

You can use Google's free keyword planner to get started at least.

So you have some kind of knowledge going into with your keywords that you do.

So they have a free keyword planner, very simple use, and it's gonna give you base idea on at least you could put a keyword and be like, does it get any sources a month?

Or does it have a gazillion?

Because you don't wanna be at the ero, and you definitely don't wanna be at the gazillion, you're never gonna rank.

But if you find things that are in what would you say is a good number to start at Andrew?

30 to 500.

yeah, like 150 to 300 if you're just starting out trying to I think that would be a good

Yep.

start.

Because the thing with keywords that people that don't have a ton of searches mean that big brands, but sophisticated systems probably aren't going to target those words that much, which means you have a chance of getting a higher result in the search results.

Alright?

All right.

And I totally didn't realize that I 100% jumped over social media.

So let's talk about here, social media and without burnout, like what kind of stuff actually works to get you progress on social media without you having to be on it 24 7 and doing stupid things.

Yeah.

The first kind of thing to throw out.

Is the quantity over quality thing that, that You have to post daily.

if you're just gonna post junk and nonsense that no one cares about, it doesn't do you any good.

You're just flooding.

So like there are enough social media posts in a day, you don't need more of your kind of junkie posts out there.

Spend the time and create decent.

Content that people are gonna chat with.

I think people often learn like I post every single day, but I don't get 10 employers and no one interacts with them.

Post look on your own feed and be like, okay, if you were your customer, would you like your stuff?

Would you leave a comment?

And nine times outta 10 if you, when I ask someone that and they're like, no.

So how can you expect anyone else to.

And I think there's a ton of, especially with AI and there's all these like prompt things out there that there, it's easy to come up with a bunch of content, but how much is anyone really interested in it?

How relevant is it?

yeah, like I, I know, I think a lot of it comes from like the coach and stuff where it's okay, it's super chapter for, you have to go, here's how you can create a hundred posts.

a minute and I'll show you like the Canva bulk crate thing, and you get some quotes, but no one cares about the 100 quote posts you're about to post after that.

And it sounds really good for me telling you how you can get all these posts, but they need to, you need to do something with it.

You need to, if you're gonna post a quote, is that relevant to your audience?

Use your caption to it back to some sort of point.

just the random quote with no real point it's I don't really care.

Or maybe put it in a carousel with a.

Quote and maybe your reactions to the quote and a product pick,

Yeah.

Just that kinda random posting doesn't get you anywhere.

So focus on high quality posts that get engagement posts that if you were to see it, you would like it, you would leave a comment.

You would do something.

Yeah.

If it's like really good stuff that you'd want to share, that's another great one.

A good kinda measure to go is, would I be comfortable ad money behind this post?

Every single post you put out should be something that if you had the budget, you would put money behind Anthony.

You're like, oh, no, I wouldn't be aware of that.

It's probably because it's not good.

I put our post, our part, the broken script into chat GBT to do stuff with it.

I was like, Andrew is really blunt.

I'm like, am I?

And I'm like, I can heat it today.

One you're gonna hate me for telling you, but creating some sharp farm video is the best way to grow these days.

I'm not saying you can't grow with stag posts, but they, the platforms want the video your people on, like want it because your people want it.

Really.

Honestly, there are people who hate video, but.

On the most part, people engage more and are more interested in video.

And of course it is harder to do, like the PostIt fa well are like decent quality videos.

Voiceover stuff tends to work better, and a lot of people hate their own voices, but it's kind of if you want if you're on growth and want to use the best man for it.

You kinda have to get over it, suck up and say that as someone who had to do that themselves, there was one point where I was like, I'm never gonna do any video content.

I'm never gonna go live, ever.

And look at us now.

It's hilarious.

You don't have to, so you can make the videos all about.

Products.

You can do the voiceovers, you can show behind the scenes of your products.

Someone who I just started following and I am like addicted.

Anytime one of his videos shows up, I'm gonna watch it.

Is shoot Grayson something he does.

His wife is crafty and he's like a down south guy.

So he's all you people who's what was the one I was watching yesterday?

Your wife is bougie.

You don't know bougie until you know whether you're team cricket or team silhouette.

I didn't know there was a difference and like all this stuff.

And at the end he is and we got stickers.

we got sick.

And you're the wife.

Did you talk about Yes, we got stickers.

You can get your own crafty, bougie stickers, blue collar bouie and all this stuff.

yeah.

No, because I'm not a sticker person, but I will watch every one of his videos and I will share them to people who are sticker people.

Yeah, and I think the thing that always works really well and that people never seem to do show your process.

People Love seeing stuff.

I've seen so many soaps and condos and stuff get made.

Do I ever buy that stuff for myself?

No.

occasionally as a gift.

But I will sit and I'll watch it and those videos can get views If you can show yourself being your product record an nice voiceover, You can get some really high quality content that has a chance to go vital or just getting enough of your people in front of your people.

And it shouldn't be too hard

Just be yourself on video.

And last notes on here, you wanna talk about collabs?

and no.

Okay.

So key takeaway here on social media is they've, it's not about going viral.

Okay, just eliminate the word viral from your vocabulary.

When it comes to social media as a business, we are not content creators like getting paid from the platforms to create content for them.

Okay.

If that's a side effect of what you want, that's fantastic, but it should not be your main thing.

Your main thing is using social media to get followers who will want to buy your products.

Okay?

So it's not about going viral, it's about attracting the right buyers, getting the people, the right people to see your stuff.

So when you have an offer out there for them, they buy it.

That's what we want outta social.

Yeah.

And remember that for the most part, it really is about creating great content even more than the platform.

I think most people wouldn't consider themselves going on YouTube when we speak to people.

one of our clients who makes soaps, Gets a ton of views on YouTube when she

Yep.

takes 10 films of content.

So your content really can live anywhere and get yourself, in fact of our other clients creates more of the Long Farm YouTube content To build traffic and has had some great results on stuff she's

Yep.

So it really, you really can set up a home anywhere.

Did you wanna talk about email?

Yeah, so the one thing I should mention on top of all of this is that if you want to take those people and have them with you term, the best way to do this is to drive some of that traffic your email list.

That way you have them, you can take them, transport them to whatever email platform you might use indefinitely, and keep them as long term repeat customers.

And if one traffic source shuts down, you can send your people to another one.

Yeah.

If your email platform shuts down, make sure that you've

That's bad if your email platform shuts down.

Yeah, you can take that with, I'm sure that some of them have shut down before, like they, there must be some I've always used ones that are fairly big, so I don't, I haven't had that problem.

Yeah.

that's just speculation.

Yeah, make sure you have that list somewhere and you can transport them if Shopify shuts down tomorrow or if.

Something happens with Shopify that makes you want to leave them.

I've seen stuff on social media about that.

You can go and say, okay, I'm gonna move to WooCommerce, whatever.

And you can tell people, okay, go

Thrive Cart Gum Road.

There's

don't have to

a million of 'em now.

You have to tell people you just link to your products and send links on a different site.

Of them won't know us.

Very true.

Even if you're starting out on Etsy the day that you start your own website, you just change the product links and the products, and suddenly the people are on your own send to Etsy.

Like it's, that's why it's so important to have an email list.

So we went over Pinterest, we went over Google, SEO.

We went over social media without burnout and a little bit on email, which is great because next week.

We are gonna be going deep on email and how to use email marketing to website visitors into loyal buyers so you don't have to constantly chase the new traffic.

'cause it's much easier to sell to people who have already following you or have already bought from you.

Sell them again versus getting new people in.

We still want new people.

But it's great to add it to resell the ones who are already there.

So that's coming up next week.

Maybe you post about a flash sale that you run this weekend.

Right

We got you.

Okay, we got, you can grab our flash sale in a snap guide over at the product growth lab.

Do kit.com/slash He's nodding at me.

I got it right.

Woo.

The product growth lab.com the product.kit.com/flash.

And we can help you set up and execute your own flash sale this weekend.

So you got something to post about on social, and then next week you can post videos of you making those products because you got orders in, right?

Fantastic plan.

Wholeheartedly do it.

And otherwise, be sure to let us know.

Drop us a dm tag us in the Facebook group, any of that stuff for which platform of the stuff that we listed tonight.

You wanna go deep in, you want to try, you want to be like, okay, this is my next thing.

This is the thing I'm doing right now that I'm focusing on between Pinterest, Google, SEO, and social media.

Okay, so thanks for tuning into the Product Growth Lab podcast.

We hope you found today's episode insightful and inspiring.

If you enjoyed the show, leave a review.

It helps us reach more creative entrepreneurs just like you.

Stay connected and keep experimenting.

Follow us on your favorite podcast platform and don't forget to join our community for more resources, tips, and support.

Until next time, keep growing and creating.

This is a product growth lab signing off.