Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn how to use website funnels to sell your new product directly to end customers from an expert who's worked with over 400 direct-to-consumer businesses.
Kevin Mako: This is the Product Startup Podcast, a show to learn from top leaders in hardware product development, prototyping, manufacturing, product selling, and everything in between.
Kevin Mako: Hosted by Kevin Mako, the leading expert on product development for hardware startups.
Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. I'm very excited to introduce Taylor Frame to the show.
Kevin Mako: Taylor Frame is a co-founder of Focus Funnels, a direct-to-consumer agency that's been around for over eight years and worked with hundreds of businesses.
Kevin Mako: Before that, he worked with big brands such as The Gap, J.Crew, Adobe, and more on this very thing.
Kevin Mako: Today, Taylor will share valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on the four pillars of a direct-to-consumer funnel,
Kevin Mako: how to best ensure the sales funnel is built correctly, and best practices specific to physical product startups launching their first product to consumers online.
Kevin Mako: Now, on to the episode.
Kevin Mako: This show is produced.
Kevin Mako: by Mako Design, the original firm providing end-to-end consumer product development services
Kevin Mako: tailored specifically to hardware startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Take your product from
Kevin Mako: idea to store shelves at MakoDesign.com. Now on to the episode. Hey, Taylor, welcome to the show.
Taylor Frame: Thank you. Excited to be here.
Kevin Mako: Well, we're excited to talk to you today about selling a new hardware
Kevin Mako: product directly to your customers on your own website. So how do you sell even just a small amount of
Kevin Mako: units up to millions of dollars of units, just selling directly to customers who are looking
Kevin Mako: for your very product. And who better to bring on the show today than you that has done
Kevin Mako: literally tens of millions of dollars in ad spend, almost 10 years, working with hundreds of
Kevin Mako: direct consumer brands. Before I get into the best practices here and the topic that we're talking
Kevin Mako: about today in terms of actually building out and the logic you need as a hardware startup to sell
Kevin Mako: direct to customers, Taylor, just give us a bit of a background of how you became the success story
Taylor Frame: you are today. Yeah, thank you. So my name is Taylor. I was one of the co-founders here at
Taylor Frame: Focus Funnels. We've been in the space for over eight years now. And I've directly been in the
Taylor Frame: direct-to-consumer, you know, website, experience space for over 10 years. And so tons of experience
Taylor Frame: boots on the ground, really in the trenches, helping big and small startup brands figure out
Taylor Frame: how do you connect with that consumer and get your product into their hands?
Taylor Frame: And so it's just been an amazing journey we've had over here and excited to share some tidbits
Taylor Frame: and some tips that'll help your people today. Yeah, right on. I mean, even in the early days,
Kevin Mako: you were working with companies like Gap, J. Crew while you're working at Adobe on some big
Kevin Mako: brand policies on how do they get more eyeballs on their product and more purchases on their website?
Taylor Frame: You know, that really kind of got the bug in me where I was working with these big brands and we
Taylor Frame: come to the table with these really innovative strategies. And then there was so much excitement
Taylor Frame: on both sides. And we'd sometimes see the strategies integrated like over a year. And it was never,
Taylor Frame: ever close to like our vision or what we had for the brand. And now I get to work with mid-tier and kind
Taylor Frame: of startup brands where we can come up with a strategy. And seven days later, it's implemented and
Taylor Frame: we're testing and we're seeing results. It is so gratifying. The big guys were fun to work with,
Taylor Frame: but the ability to work and impact people's lives on that granular level is so much more impactful.
Kevin Mako: Yeah, I mean, it's such a good feeling when you start selling products, especially a new product, right?
Kevin Mako: Somebody who really has never sold anything before, which is very typical for a hardware startup.
Kevin Mako: This is their first time coming to bat and the first time getting any product to the market.
Kevin Mako: And it's a new product that's coming to the market for the first time as well.
Kevin Mako: So you put these things together and it's a really exciting experience.
Kevin Mako: So for today and for the conversation, let's talk about how that's done.
Kevin Mako: Give us a bit of an overview and then let's jump into these various pillars of a direct-to-consumer.
Taylor Frame: advertising play. Yes. So we have worked with probably 100 plus brands that are bringing
Taylor Frame: new products to market. We actually play very heavily in the mom and baby space. There's a lot of
Taylor Frame: innovation in that space. And so we've had a lot of experience bringing these products to market.
Taylor Frame: So here's the framework that you need to think about. If you're a new brand, you've got a new hardware
Taylor Frame: that you're going to be bringing to market. You need to be thinking about four things. The first is your
Taylor Frame: product. You know, Kevin,
Taylor Frame: And that's your specialty, right? We're not product development guys, but that's your
Taylor Frame: specialty. So the first is you've got to get your product dialed. The second thing is positioning,
Taylor Frame: meaning why is your product different? What problems does it solve? And if I have limited money,
Taylor Frame: why should I buy your product as opposed to the competitors? Okay. So that's product and then positioning.
Taylor Frame: The next one is placement, right? Let's say we're doing a weighted blanket for kids. And this is
Taylor Frame: actually one of our big case studies. We took this weighted blanket brand from doing five to
Taylor Frame: six K a month. When they took all their stuff in house, they were doing over a million dollars a month
Taylor Frame: over the course of about a year and a half. We helped them with that whole launch and scale. It was all
Taylor Frame: direct consumer. The second, so you got your product, you got your positioning, then you have your
Taylor Frame: placement. Where is your audience spending your time? For a lot of our customers, we're marketing
Taylor Frame: to moms and women. They spend a lot of time on Instagram. They spend a lot of time on Facebook. They
Taylor Frame: spend a lot of time on TikTok. So we put the content there, right? But if you're an innovative brand
Taylor Frame: that's like potentially marketing to like golfers or rock climbers or some other demographic,
Taylor Frame: you've got to find out where they're spending their time online and you need to be there. Okay,
Taylor Frame: so we've got product, we have positioning, we have placement. The last one is audience. What does my audience
Taylor Frame: care about? So let's take this weighted blanket, for example. As a parent, the most
Taylor Frame: painful thing you can experience is when your child is not sleeping. And you will pay any level
Taylor Frame: of money to solve that problem. I've got three kids, so I feel you. Yeah, me too. My son was up twice
Taylor Frame: last night. So it's painful. And so what we did is we started talking to this audience about solving
Taylor Frame: that core problem, right? So what I just described is called a focused acquisition funnel. And let me
Taylor Frame: break that down into a non-marketing term. It's a customer.
Taylor Frame: journey that gets someone to buy something. Okay. So a focused acquisition funnel.
Taylor Frame: And it's designed to get in front of somebody that's never heard of you before and say,
Taylor Frame: oh my gosh, where has this product been my whole life? And hit the checkout button. Right. So inside of that,
Taylor Frame: there are three core aspects you need to have. Once you've got product, positioning,
Taylor Frame: placement, and audience down, right? In the framework, there are three aspects you need to figure out.
Taylor Frame: The first one is your content. Okay? And you use that product positioning placement audience
Taylor Frame: to guide your content. If I'm selling a weighted blanket, I'm going to tell a story about
Taylor Frame: keeping my child asleep at night. And that content, because I'm serving it on Instagram,
Taylor Frame: and because I'm serving it to tired moms, it's got to be engaging, it's got to be quick,
Taylor Frame: it's got to solve the problem, right? So the first piece that you have to solve for is you've got
Taylor Frame: to build the right content. And the content has to sell the value of your product. Okay. So that's
Taylor Frame: step one. Step two, once you've got your content dialed, is next, it's, all right,
Taylor Frame: how do I get this content out there? If you've got a little bit of budget, paid ads are an amazing
Taylor Frame: way to get in front of the right audience very quickly. If you have no budget and you're like totally
Taylor Frame: bootstrapping, now you can use influencers. You can have friends and family call you out. You can start
Taylor Frame: building an audience on Facebook and Instagram. It's never been easier to get in front of your people
Taylor Frame: right now. Like the barrier to entry is as low as it's ever been in the history of the world. Right. So if you have
Taylor Frame: no money, you can get creative and that's going to require more work, but it's still very doable. The second aspect,
Taylor Frame: once you got your content dialed and your creative set, then it's about how do I get this message out there?
Taylor Frame: So that's usually paid ads or organic. Step three is when somebody clicks on that. They see that way to
Taylor Frame: blanket. They're super interested. They click on it. Where are they going? This is your product page.
Taylor Frame: or your landing page needs to be dialed in to sell the value of the hardware that you've
Taylor Frame: built. Why is it valuable? What problems does it solve? What are my reviews? What was the manufacturing
Taylor Frame: process? Answer all the questions that someone's going to have before they ever have them. So that's the
Taylor Frame: framework of solve these four things, product, positioning, placement audience, and then build out
Taylor Frame: your funnel with content, your media buying strategy, and then the landing page. You get those
Taylor Frame: things in lock? The world is your oyster. That's so powerful. And I love how you broke it out
Kevin Mako: into those pieces. The reality here is, especially when you talk about the organic search volume,
Kevin Mako: you can do this without even paying for it. In reality, when it comes to a very basic version of this,
Kevin Mako: if you're not using a great agency, if you're not using a great web dev, if you're not using
Kevin Mako: pay ads, you can start small and work your way up depending on whatever your budget is. I think what
Kevin Mako: you've dialed in here is, if you put this structure together,
Kevin Mako: anybody can sell a great product. Now, I like how you mentioned as well, and I've got to address it
Kevin Mako: the fact that you started with product. That's the very first thing. Us as a product design firm,
Kevin Mako: that is our first and largest objective. Build a great thing that people truly want. That's got to be
Kevin Mako: your step one. After you have that thing, which most hardware startups, they've come up with something
Kevin Mako: innovative, something amazing. And if they've gone through the correct efforts and they've done the design
Kevin Mako: right and they've tested through prototyping and they're ready to go into manufacturing and they've got the right
Kevin Mako: manufacturing partners engage, they've got a great product that's innovative. So there are
Kevin Mako: people out there who you've solved a paypoint that they need. And now it comes to Taylor's world,
Kevin Mako: which is, okay, you've figured out this object. You've got it in production or ready for production,
Kevin Mako: let's say. Now, how do you get it in front of the eyeballs and get those people to convert?
Kevin Mako: Yes. That's so powerful how you've expressed that journey. Are there pieces of that puzzle that you
Kevin Mako: want to dive into for someone who's really kind of new to the process or things that can
Kevin Mako: help kind of dip their toe in the water, let's say, of this process. Yeah. So the first thing I
Taylor Frame: will say is you want to keep it simple. There are so many people that overcomplicate this. And
Taylor Frame: the reason they overcomplicate it is they want you to hire them. You need to keep things simple at the
Taylor Frame: beginning. So your content, you need to clearly articulate like you would to a friend at a coffee shop.
Taylor Frame: You have a problem. My product helps you solve that problem in here.
Taylor Frame: why. And here's how it does it. It needs to be conversational. So that's the first
Taylor Frame: tip. Realize that there's a person on the other end of that content that has the same experience as you do
Taylor Frame: and you just need to speak to them like you would speak to your friend at a coffee shop. Second piece
Taylor Frame: is if you are doing paid ads or you are doing organic, keep it simple at the beginning. Do broad
Taylor Frame: targeting, create some great content, and then test your first two or three pieces of content.
Taylor Frame: content probably aren't going to work. But those tests influence what you need to change.
Taylor Frame: So we, with our brands, will test anywhere from three to four pieces of content every week and a half.
Taylor Frame: And those pieces of content have different hooks. They have different problems they solve. They have
Taylor Frame: different promises. It's all built in, right? So you have to test. Even us with millions of dollars
Taylor Frame: of ad experience and so many up at bats, we have to test for every single brand. Okay, so step one,
Taylor Frame: keep it simple. Get a really good value prop. Test the value prop. And then three,
Taylor Frame: on the website, answer the questions. More is better in terms of information. If you've got a small
Taylor Frame: product description that's like handcrafted in Malaysia and solves this problem, that's not enough.
Taylor Frame: You've got to go and do tons of detail around this product because consumers are more educated than
Kevin Mako: they've ever been. And once they're on the site, they're willing to spend the time. They're either going
Kevin Mako: to buy or leave, but the reality is the more information you can get them, the higher
Kevin Mako: the probability you're going to convince them. Maybe not on the first or second or third thing
Kevin Mako: they read, but it might be the fourth thing, that that hits whatever the corridors that they were
Kevin Mako: particularly looking for or the validation point they needed or just the right combination of things
Kevin Mako: that they finally said by the time they've read and read and read, aha, that's the one I'm finally ready
Taylor Frame: to make a buying decision. Yeah, totally. And there needs to be a lot of content around that.
Taylor Frame: I'll go to sites that have innovative products and they'll have like three pictures.
Taylor Frame: They look like stock images that they pulled off of like a Google Drive. Tell the story. Record some
Taylor Frame: videos. Do some selfie cam. Like get some information around this product. Show your consumers how it
Taylor Frame: works. The ability to create content, we all have our phones in our pocket that shoot in 4K. So the ability
Taylor Frame: that like I said at the beginning, the barriers to entry are the lowest they've ever been. You just have to
Kevin Mako: take action. It's interesting when you mentioned about the phone too because I find that more
Kevin Mako: than ever, especially with new and emerging brands, people almost appreciate that more than having
Kevin Mako: some stuffy corporate brand that has every single piece perfect. So if you've got a video you
Kevin Mako: recorded of yourself using the product on your phone as the founder, people love it. Because
Kevin Mako: you know what? They don't see that when they go onto the big corporate's website. So the authenticity
Kevin Mako: comes through. That authenticity, at least in today's era, really.
Kevin Mako: sells product as opposed to, you know, we don't know what the future holds. And we know in the past
Kevin Mako: there's been times where corporate trust has been incredibly high and people trusted startups
Kevin Mako: potentially lower. But we know that as of right now, people trust startups immensely. It's a hot
Kevin Mako: topic. People want to see that young, energetic emerge product. And as long as you can validate it and
Kevin Mako: they can trust and believe in what you are saying in terms of your brand promise and the product
Kevin Mako: promise and the value, as long as they trust that, they're going to want to buy from you over the
Kevin Mako: companies that are potentially a lot bigger than you that you are maybe originally afraid of
Kevin Mako: competing against. You've got to make your competitive advantage. So you utilize that competitive
Taylor Frame: advantage, especially as a new emerging brand. 100%, Kevin, like you nailed it right on the head.
Taylor Frame: And so this is exactly what we do here at Focus Funnels is we help people solve this equation.
Taylor Frame: So we have a full content shop. We can help you build the content and the creative and the copywriting
Taylor Frame: that's going to get your vision properly in front of people, right? We have the whole
Taylor Frame: media buying team, whether it's meta, which is Facebook and Instagram, Google, YouTube,
Taylor Frame: Pinterest, TikTok. We're absolute experts on all those platforms. We've literally spent millions and
Taylor Frame: millions of dollars on those. And then all the way down to the product page or the landing page,
Taylor Frame: we build all that out, helping create that authenticity and that trust. And so when people
Taylor Frame: come to this thing, if this is so overwhelming for you, we can help you build out that entire customer
Taylor Frame: journey and that's really where our expertise comes in. Can you give everyone the website
Kevin Mako: of where they can find out to learn more about the services you offer in case they're looking
Kevin Mako: to hire an agency and work with somebody like you to develop this thing out? Yeah, I love that. So
Taylor Frame: it's FocusFunnels.com. FocusFunnels and Funnels has an S on it. FocusFunnels.com. And on that site,
Taylor Frame: we have a ton of information about what we do. You've got customer reviews. We even have a little small
Taylor Frame: podcast where we feature some of our customers, some of our case studies on there. And then
Taylor Frame: last thing I'll say is, anybody that's interested, book a call with my team, because we will add
Taylor Frame: serious value, even if you don't work with us. We are very honest and open with our leads being like,
Taylor Frame: hey, you're ready for us. Or you know what? You should do things organically for a little bit before you
Taylor Frame: engage with us. So we're not here just trying to get that sale at any cost necessary. We really
Taylor Frame: think about what is best for the consumer and the customer. And we put that first in our sales
Taylor Frame: process. So feel free to book a time and we'll chat with you. Taylor, that's much appreciated. And as
Kevin Mako: always, I will put the links below for anyone who wants to just click through. They can click through
Kevin Mako: to Focus Funnels and learn more. Taylor, much appreciated for your words of wisdom today on the show,
Kevin Mako: showing people how you can go from that idea, that manufactured product, and then into actual sales
Kevin Mako: himself directly on your own website, directly to your end customers. Love it. Thank you.
Kevin Mako: Thanks, Taylor. Take care.
Kevin Mako: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast.
Kevin Mako: If you found some value in the show, please do us a huge favor and hit the like button and subscribe.
Kevin Mako: If you have any questions, guest suggestions, or anything else, feel free to reach out to us anytime at our email,
Kevin Mako: podcast at MakoDesign.com. This show is hosted by Kevin Mako, North America's leading expert on product
Kevin Mako: development for hardware startups. And the podcast is produced by Mako Design, the original
Kevin Mako: firm providing end-to-end consumer product development services tailored specifically to hardware
Kevin Mako: startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Take your product from idea to store shelves at MakoDesign.com.
Kevin Mako: That's M-A-K-O-Design.com. Thanks for joining and see you again soon.