Forecasting Growth for B2C E-commerce | Travis Biechele from Common Thread Collective

Ernesto Quezada: Pathmonk is the intelligent tool for website lead generation. With increasing online competition, over 98% of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments. With relevant micro experiences like case studies, intro videos and much more, stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50%. Add Pathmonk to your website in seconds or let the AI do all the work and get access to 50% more qualified leads while you keep doing marketing and sales as usual. Check us on pathmonk.com. Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guest. We have Travis from Common Thread Collective, director of SEO with them. How you doing today, Travis?

Travis Biechele: I’m doing great. Appreciate you having me on.

Ernesto: It’s great to have you on. And, well, I’m sure our listeners are tuning in wondering what Common Thread Collective is all about, so let’s kick it off with that. Travis, in your own words, can you tell us a little bit more?

Travis: Sure. Common Thread Collective. We’re a B2C e-commerce growth team that helps our partner brands bridge the gap between marketing and finance. So that means we’re involved beyond just traditional media buying and creative production. We help our brands forecast their spend and their revenue projections down to the individual day.

Ernesto: All right, awesome. Great to hear that. And on that, so that way our listeners could get a good understanding there of Common Thread Collective. What are the key problems that you guys like to solve for your clients?

Travis: I think it’s about creating a foundation of predictable, profitable growth. You know, there have been trends in the past of grow at all cost. It’s a different situation when you’re venture-backed. So a lot of the brands that we work with are more bootstrapped. And so we try to hold ourselves accountable and help them grow by ensuring that every dollar that kind of flows through their marketing channels is held accountable for a specific predefined threshold that helps preserve their profit margin.

Ernesto: Definitely important. And so then is there, I mean, you did mention at the beginning e-commerce. Is that the only vertical segment or is there another ICP that you guys tend to go for?

Travis: Yeah, most of our partner brands are selling their products or services online, so they’re typically in the ten to $20 million revenue range. And we span just about every industry. So we have insights into hundreds of brands that utilize our growth and technology services. So we are kind of uniquely positioned to speak across many different verticals and many different product categories.

Ernesto: Definitely important. All right, so how would somebody then usually find out about Common Thread Collective? Is there a specific top client acquisition channel that gives the best results for you guys?

Travis: Yeah, we’re very active ourselves across social platforms. We have our own podcast, the eCommerce Playbook Podcast that’s hosted by, Richard and our CEO, Taylor Holiday. So we try to be very regular about producing our own content to kind of create that attraction to us as a brand and as an e-commerce growth partner. And most of the individuals at the company are active on Twitter and other social platforms. So we’re able to bring in a lot of interest that way.

Ernesto: Definitely important. All right, great to hear that. And on that note, so that way, our listeners who are tuned in could go out and visit you guys. You could always check them out at commonthreadco.com. What role does the website then play for client acquisition, Travis?

Travis: Yeah, it’s a great way for folks to kind of check us out, review the services that we do offer, take a look at some of the content that we produce. And, you know, a big part of how a lot of folks interact with us is we have an entire kind of education and training hub called Admission. And so all of our clients get access to that. But it’s everything from coursework to guides to videos to even some live Q&A sessions with folks at Common Thread Collective. So our website is a way to kind of demonstrate before you’re actually, you know, partnered with us, what we’re all about, what we offer, our expertise. So it’s kind of a living, breathing manifestation of that.

Ernesto: Definitely important. All right. And on that note, is there any tools or tips or methods that you would recommend to our listeners as far as some website lead generation?

Travis: Yeah, I think it’s about making it easy for folks to reach out to you in a way that they want to. So I think so often we get caught up in kind of a classic form, and that’s still valid and viable, but there are other ways that folks may want to engage with you, whether that’s social, whether that’s through video content. Sometimes it’s not always just securing the lead, but it’s kind of nurturing that lead before you know who each other are. So I think that’s just, it’s important to give people different outlets to interact with you.

Ernesto: I think that’s super important as well. Definitely would agree with you. So thank you so much for sharing that. And, well, let’s switch gears a little bit then, Travis, and let’s talk about you as a leader there at Common Thread Collective, you being the director of SEO. What are some key tasks you like to focus on your day-to-day work?

Travis: Day-to-day work, where, it’s incredibly important to stay organized. So we use a number of different platforms and tools to do so. But outlining a given day in a week and time blocking is really critical to make sure that you are devoting the right amount of time to tackling things that need more time or that are a priority for that day or week’s work. And those things within the scope of SEO can range from technical work, helping a website become retrofitted so that it’s more crawlable and searchable and discoverable by search engines, or it might be into content production where it’s more deep thinking and research and copywriting, and things of that nature. So just staying very well organized and devoting blocks of time on given days is particularly helpful.

Ernesto: Definitely. All right, very great to hear that. And so then, in those in-between times that you do have available, how do you stay up to date with all the marketing, news, trends, strategies? Is there a preferred channel that you like to go with?

Travis: I have an insatiable appetite for learning, so I try to read as much as I can. A lot of times that is just articles or my particular favorite platform is Twitter. And so there are a number of folks that I follow there and engage with regularly or just consume their content. So Twitter has become kind of my go-to resource. Other than that, I would say it’s just important to kind of have for yourself three to five go-to hubs, resources that produce content on a regular basis that can help you stay up to snuff.

Ernesto: All right, perfect. Awesome. Great, great. Thanks for sharing those insights. And, well, let’s jump into our next section here, Travis, which is our rapid fire question rounds. Are you ready for them?

Travis: Yeah, sure.

Ernesto: Awesome. All right, well, first off then, Travis, is what is the last book that you read?

Travis: Last book I read was, let’s see, I’m always reading a handful at a time. The one that I was reading most recently is by, gosh, I’m forgetting the author’s name. It’s called Four Fish and it’s by kind of an economist and social individual. And he writes about kind of the four main fish that are part of cultures across the world, salmon, cod, tuna, and I’m forgetting the fourth. But it was just a really interesting way to kind of understand the ecosystem of fisheries and our own relationship with fish as a food source.

Ernesto: Definitely. Okay, perfect. Awesome. Thank you so much for that. Great read there. Next up is what is one single thing that your company is focused on at the moment the most?

Travis: I think it’s being able to predict and forecast out daily spend and revenue for any partner brand that we work with. So forecasting is always going to be inaccurate to an extent, but we’re on a constant quest to make that even more finessed, even more accurate, so that when folks partner with us, it’s highly reliable that we can predict their growth trajectory for them.

Ernesto: Absolutely. Okay, great, great, great. Thank you so much for sharing that. Next then is if there would be no boundaries in technology, what would be that one thing that you want to have fixed for your role as a marketer today?

Travis: I think that privacy is a big hot topic right now, but there are a lot of things that people, I think, the average consumer takes for granted. And aside from paying to access the Internet, there’s so much content that’s free. And so there’s this unspoken exchange of, in order to get that free content, there is data about your browsing and consumption habits that is that exchange. And so the recent privacy changes over the last few years have really made it difficult for marketers to effectively reach the right people on behalf of brands that need to advertise. So I guess I wish I would prefer that folks had a little more of a better understanding of what privacy actually means in today’s world, so that marketers were freed up to do a really good job for brands and help them become discovered.

Ernesto: Good. Great, awesome, great, great. There next is if there’s one repetitive task that you could automate, what would that be?

Travis: Well, you know, logging into a zillion different websites is always frustrating, but we’ve got that kind of tackled with password managers these days. That was something that was always a thorn in my side, but I think I’ve got that pretty much wrapped up now.

Ernesto: Awesome. And lastly, then, Travis, is say you would go back in time. What is that one piece of advice that you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Travis: I think it would be to have more fearless conversations with people that I might think were out of my league. So if I were starting over again at 22, I might not have the guts to speak to a CEO of a company, but they’re still just a human. They started the same place that a 22-year-old would at some point in their life. So having kind of the courage to strike up conversations with people that were maybe even decades beyond where I would be that day, that would be what advice I’d give, because there are great lessons that people are really happy to share with folks that are coming up.

Ernesto: All right, some great advice there, not just for yourself, but for everybody. And, well, Travis, we are coming to the end of the show here, but before we do end, I do want to give you the last word. If someone forgets everything about the interview today, what is that one thing they should remember about your company?

Travis: Well, we are now fully offering SEO as a service, and I think that SEO as a service has gotten a bad rap because not enough folks out there, not enough practitioners are zeroed in on delivering revenue. It might be rankings, it might be traffic. Those things are important. But what we’re doing differently is we’re orienting around revenue first, and that’s what we hold ourselves accountable for because it’s really the only measuring stick that matters for a brand. So, yeah, definitely come check us out. Visit our website. Click the hire button if you think that we could be a good fit, and we’d love to have a conversation.

Ernesto: Definitely. And you can always check them out at commonthreadco.com. Travis, thank you so much for being on with us today and to our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to our next episode at Pathmonk Presents. Thanks a lot, Travis.

Travis: Thank you.