Intro 0:00

Music. Welcome to another episode of Ecom Experiences, a podcast for E commerce marketing leaders who want to grow and scale their brands faster. Join us as we interview some of the smartest brand founders and marketing leaders in the industry. Explore the lessons they learned, discover the keys to their success and discuss what excites them most about the future.

Samir Balwani 0:28

Hi. It's Samir Balwani here, host of Ecom Experiences where we talk to brand founders and marketing leaders about their experiences growing brands. This episode is brought to you by QRY. QRY is a paid media agency that helps brands balance brand awareness and performance marketing to drive predictable and profitable growth, to learn more about how we can help you visit. Weareqry.com, I'm really excited for our guest today. I have Kaleigh Redington, the Director of Marketing at Zen Habitats, and WeGro Co she's super smart, does a lot of things, everything kind of falls into her wheelhouse, and thank you for coming.

Kaleigh Redington 1:03

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Samir Balwani 1:06

Well, let's start with the easy stuff. Where do you work? Tell us about the brand. What do you do?

Kaleigh Redington 1:11

Yeah. So like you said, I'm the director of marketing for Zen Habitats, and WeGro Co and what Zen Habitats is is actually a reptile enclosure company, which is very niche, and a lot of people are surprised when I tell them that that's what I do. I work with reptiles, even though I'm really not a reptile person, which is really interesting, like, how I even got here. Yeah, it's just, it's kind of a crazy story, but yeah, and then WeGro Co is a pet industry focused like marketing agency that helps pet brands grow on social media and through affiliate marketing. And yeah, so we went from just doing reptile enclosures and being really successful in that, and then taking those marketing strategies that we were using through Zen Habitats and applying them to other reptile brands, other pet brands and so, yeah, I've been involved in everything from day one of Zen Habitats. I was their number four employee, 2020, and I was a one person marketing team handling everything from social media to email marketing to brand management to graphic design, like you name it, I was doing it all, and yeah, I've learned so much from in the past four years. And just like the way that this role has grown to now, I went from being a one person marketing team to now managing a team of four other marketing creatives. It's just really cool. And, yeah,

Samir Balwani 2:44

that's exciting. And so on the Zen Habitat side, I guess, what's your favorite part about that role and kind of the challenges you're dealing there? Yeah,

Kaleigh Redington 2:53

so my favorite part is definitely that no two days are the same, because, like, I said, like, we are a startup, small business, but we're growing very rapidly, and also the people that I work with are so great. We have an awesome team of creatives that I get to work with every day. However, on the flip side, when you're working in a small business or in a startup, it's a lot of work, and it's very challenging, can be very chaotic, because you're kind of figuring things out as you go, especially in marketing, especially I was fresh out of grad school when I got this job, and it started as a job where I was like, Okay, I'll take this little marketing gig from a company that's just starting out, while I job search, and I thought this was going to be a temporary thing, and it didn't end up being that way. I ended up really growing in the role. The company grew like crazy. And so it's just in that sort of really fast paced environment, like every day, there are challenges. We're just trying to figure it out kind of as we go, but it's super fun and exciting at the same time and on more of like a challenges front, especially in the pet industry. Back in 2020, when I first joined, obviously covid was happening, and with that, the pet industry took off. It absolutely boomed, because everyone was getting pets and quarantine. And since then, the market has been dropping off and slowly declining since 2020 so we had our best sales year ever in 2020 we were growing like crazy, and we were like, Oh, this is great. We're going to keep this momentum in years to come, and that didn't really happen. So what happened over the past couple years is we actually declined a bit in our sales, and we're like, oh my god, what are we gonna do? Yeah, yeah. Like, it was just crazy. So we kind of were in a panic, and we're still in that phase where we're like, all right, like, what are we gonna do? We kind of. To you, start figuring things out. And over the past year, we started to bring things back up again. So with that, like we had to downsize, we had to, like, all hands on deck and really focus on the things that were bringing in revenue. So like, when we were growing, we were on the marketing front of social media, like we were starting a podcast and doing all this really fun stuff to build a community around Zen Habitats, but we realize like, okay, is this podcast bringing in a ton of revenue? Probably not. We need to be focusing on activities that bring direct revenue. So affiliate marketing has been huge for us, and working with different pet creators and influencers like pet tubers. There's a ton of them out there. Yeah. So like focusing on that, focusing on our website and our user experience, because when it comes down to a someone's user experience on your site is a amazing for SEO and B like is what's going to bring in sales. So we really did a deep dive of our website and changed wording. And we realized that slightly changing a wording in, like, our pre order disclaimer when things were out of stock helped boost our sales. So just like little things like that, and just kind of like refocusing and reframing.

Samir Balwani 6:23

Yeah, that's awesome. That's amazing. And so you said affiliate and influencer were kind of two key channels. Were there any others that really stood out as you guys have kind of started to pivot and make this change?

Kaleigh Redington 6:36

Yeah, absolutely. So social media has always been kind of our top marketing channel, we've grown a huge community on there. We have hundreds of 1000s of followers and subscribers on our YouTube channel, and we really grew that through creating high value content. So the people that are following us, they want to learn more about reptiles or the pet that they're keeping, things like that. So we really focused on putting out educational type content, and also, along with that, we started a blog on our website where we were putting out articles about highly searched for questions having to do with reptiles, because in email marketing, we would feature those articles in email marketing, get a lot of clicks, so we're driving people through our website, and it also heavily boosted our SEO on Google. So when people are searching for reptile enclosure, we're right up there because we have just this awesome database of articles and informational resources. So that's been really pivotal for us. And also, I'm a huge advocate for SMS marketing these days. Yeah, yeah, we've seen a ton of growth through implementing SMS marketing. So yeah, I would say, if you're a business and you haven't implemented it yet, definitely do it, because the ROI for SMS marketing is crazy high, because the people that are subscribing to you are people that want to hear from you and are very passionate about your brand, like you're not just gonna subscribe to any brand's SMS list. I mean, unless you're getting a coupon code, that's a different thing, but you're not going to stay subscribed to that company's SMS program unless you really want to hear what they have to say, or you're really invested or you love their products. So building up that community on SMS and sending out all of our new campaigns and our news, our new articles, has been really pivotal in not only acquiring new customers, but also getting the biggest bang for our buck with our existing customers as well. That's

Samir Balwani 8:51

awesome. How often are you guys publishing then? So how often are you publishing on your YouTube? How often are you publishing on your blog? I'm so curious to understand that.

Kaleigh Redington 8:59

So a couple years ago, we were probably putting out a new long form YouTube video every couple of weeks, and they were really highly edited, like a lot of time and editing went into them, and that was one of the things that we sort of had to cut back on, because we were trying to focus on bringing that revenue back up. And so now I would say we're focusing really long, shorter form content. So utilizing YouTube shorts. YouTube shorts great if you're looking to grow on YouTube. We haven't been posting as much long form content. We probably post one long form YouTube video, maybe every couple of months, posting YouTube shorts, probably twice a week. And we've gotten so many subscribers just from that. Yeah, so YouTube shorts, they're really pushing that right now. So yeah, I would definitely recommend that. And then in terms of blogs, we're putting. Now about two a week. Okay,

Samir Balwani 10:02

yeah, that's awesome. And so that's a lot of content. How do you guys come up with the topics? What's your process for, kind of making that come to life? Yeah. So

Kaleigh Redington 10:12

there's a few different ways that we do that. We have different like SEO tools that we utilize, where we will, where we're able to basically, kind of say we're in the reptile space, let us know what people are googling, what questions people have, like, what type of substrate should I use to agree to drag in? What's the what tank should I get for my bolt I thought, and see trends and what people are asking, and then basically take that and make content about it. Because whether it's a blog or it's a YouTube video or even an Instagram post, because people use social media search engines as well, you're going to come up. So yeah, that's kind of how we've been doing it. And we have a really great team of reptile experts. So we have an animal care manager who does most of our animal centric content. So she's an expert in the space. I certainly am not. I just kind of like run the show of it, and I'm like, Okay, can you do that? Can you do that? But she is a certified Vet Tech, and she's very knowledgeable about everything having to do with reptiles. So she's been sort of like the face of our social media content. And so yeah, having in house experts is has been really helpful for us. And then we also have another really, really smart woman that works for us in the reptile and animal space, who writes our blogs for us. And so they'll use, like I said, like the SEO tools, but they'll also they're parts of, or they're part of, like, tons of Facebook groups, and they're active, they're active parts of the reptile and animal communities on social media. So they're seeing the types of questions that people have or comments that people are posting, and that's where we get a lot of our content ideas, is just answering people's questions.

Samir Balwani 12:01

Oh, that's really interesting. And so do you just generally have someone interview the experts and then that's how you guys create content? Is that? Is that kind of the structure? Or, I guess, how do you bring it to life? I'm sure a lot of people are curious about that. Yeah, yeah,

Kaleigh Redington 12:18

absolutely. So there's a few different ways we do it. So one way we do it is in reels. You can actually reply to a comment with another reel. So we'll have our animal care manager who works in house with us, but we'll get the comment. She'll film her answer to it, so it'll literally just be her answering question. And then, sorry, can you repeat your question again?

Samir Balwani 12:46

Yeah? Just, I guess, how? What are the like? What are the types of content that you're creating? Are you actually interviewing your experts, or are they kind of doing it themselves? Like, yeah, how are you getting everyone involved? I think is the best, yeah.

Kaleigh Redington 13:00

So okay, that was the other part, the expert part, the interviewing part I totally forgot about. So another thing that we're doing, aside from just having our animal care manager create this content answer these questions, is we have a little show called Casey talks critters. Which Casey is our animal care manager, and she will seek out different experts with different species and different animals, and she will interview them. So she it's sort of like a podcast, but it's also a YouTube video. So another way that will get external voices involved, and then a lot of times, these very knowledgeable people have a big social media presence as well, and so when we're featuring them on our channels, they're likely to share our posts and things, which is great exposure for our brand. So yeah, kind of works full circle, and it's a great it's been a great strategy for us.

Samir Balwani 13:59

That's awesome. And then I'm curious, do you guys use any AI tools to actually speed up the process, or, I imagine that you're making YouTube shorts out of like, the long form video, I'm assuming. So what tools when? How are you kind of doing that

Kaleigh Redington 14:14

at scale? Yeah, so AI, we've definitely been trying to utilize it. It's just, it's moving so fast that it's, it's kind of hard to keep up with. Like, there's so many new tools coming out all the time. So what we're really utilizing AI for is we will say, like, say we want to do a short form video on a topic that we've already wrote a blog post about what do sometimes is we'll take we'll copy the blog post, put it into chat, GBT, or whatever it is, and say, can you create a script for us based on this content for a 62nd long, short form Instagram reel, yeah. And so we do that. A lot. And so then that's a really easy way to take the information that we already have or we know it's accurate, because sometimes the information you get from AI isn't going to be 100% accurate, and then it's putting it into script format. And so that's been a really helpful tool for us in that way, that's

Samir Balwani 15:16

really interesting. Oh, man, I didn't even think about using like, chatgpt or quad for creating scripts. That's a really good idea. That's awesome. So yeah, I'm excited. It sounds like you have a lot going on, and that's really interesting. So as we kind of look ahead to the future, though, as we're kind of looking at the, you know, the year ahead, what are you guys most excited about for Zen Habitats? I you know, knowing that you've kind of started focusing in on these, like, core channels and unlocked revenue from these things. What do you get excited about, as you're looking there,

Kaleigh Redington 15:52

yeah, I mean, we're very excited, just with all of these new platforms coming out, like, you know, like Tiktok shop is a huge thing right now. Like, as we know, marketing is ever changing, it can be very, very overwhelming. But I would say, like something that you have to be cautious of, because it can be very exciting to just jump on the band map and join and start selling on Tiktok shop, or post on X or like, whatever, like, there's all these forms coming out, is just, we sort of started to do that, and then we're like, Wait, this platform isn't for us. So rather than just jumping on the bandwagon because we're very excited, you kind of have to analyze, like, okay, is this right for my business? And yeah, so like, yeah, there's a ton of exciting new things coming out in terms of AI, which we're very excited to explore, but also keeping in mind that we want to keep our business as human as possible. That's that's something that we really pride ourselves on. So human interaction, like when you're chatting with us on our website and you're looking for customer service, like, we try to keep that as human as possible. But for example, like we're We're upgrading our customer service platform to utilize more AI, so if somebody has a question like, where's my order, those type of things can be answered via AI, and then the more in depth, questions can happen with a real human um, really interesting. Yeah, and so that way our customers, every team, has more time to create those relationships with people that aren't just asking, Where's my order, and then also allows them to upsell and things like that. So we're really focusing on upgrading our platforms right now to just sort of streamline everything, which is very, very exciting. And we're also coming out with a new product line very soon, which, yeah. So right now we have our main line, which is the Zen Habitats, original enclosures. And then we came out with a better line, which is the Zen Habitats, Meridian enclosures, which are a little more expensive, but they're way easier to assemble. They're actually like collapsible. So a lot of people that like travel a lot find these enclosures super useful if they move a lot and they need something that is very easily, very easily assemblable. Yeah. Um, but now what we're doing is we're taking the best of both of those product lines, and we're making Zen Habitats 3.0 so we're taking the price of the original, which is very affordable, plus the ease of assembly of our new line, and we're coming out with Zen 3.0 so it's gonna be exciting. That's very exciting. It's a lot of work because we're basically phasing out the other two product lines to phase this in. So yeah, very, very exciting. And we're just gonna continue to, you know, use those strategies that I talked about, focusing on revenue generating strategies, like for us, SMS, social, but still maintaining that human element, building a community, because at the end of the day, community is what is going to make your business successful, we believe so, yeah, that's

Samir Balwani 19:17

exciting. Yeah. It sounds like, as a marketer and new product launches is always the most exciting thing that you can have. It gives you something to talk about. It gives you a campaign to build around. It reinforces the brand position and brand in the market. So I get why you are excited about that and what that means. So All right, last question for you, what advice do you give a new marketing director, someone that's just starting in their role? I know hearing you go from just starting to now managing a team of four. What was that journey like? And what would you share? Yeah, so

Kaleigh Redington 19:51

I'll talk a little bit about like how I even got here in the first place. So I graduated with my MBA in 20. 2020 and as we all know, 2020 was crazy time covid was happening, the job market was just terrible. And so I was applying to jobs, applying to jobs, and just not really having any luck. And I came across this job. It was a brand manager position for Zen Habitats. And I knew that I was interested in the pet industry. However, I knew nothing about reptiles. Reptiles are not really my thing. And I was like, All right, why not? Like, might as well just give this a go. So started doing it. And like, I said, like I thought I was going to be a temporary thing while I kind of searched for better, like my dream job out there, and it ended up, like my position, and the brand just ended up growing like crazy. And so because I was employee number four, I was the first person on the marketing team. I'd been there from the beginning. I learned a ton about the business, and I was able to apply my knowledge, my fresh knowledge from grad school, as well as my internships I did in college. I then was sort of like the go to Marketing gal at the company. And then when we hired, like a social media specialist, I sort of managed them. Then we brought on, like a video editor, I managed them, so I kind of just started rising to the top from there. So I would say my advice is especially like today's job market is also very crazy. Don't be afraid to take a seemingly small opportunity, because you never know what's going to come from that. So that would be if you're looking for a job or looking for the new phase of your career, maybe want to change industries. Don't be afraid to put yourself out there, try something new. Maybe try working for a smaller business, because I'll be the first to tell you, like working for a small business or a startup is one of the best learning experiences you can have. You can work for a huge corporation, but and you're going to be one out of maybe 1000 employees, and you're not going to be, yes, that's a great job. You're not going to be as involved in, like the actual building of the company. So I personally love working for a small business. And you just learn so much. It's you meet so many people. It's great opportunities. And yeah, and another tip that I would have is just, if you're a new marketing leader and you're managing a team, I know, like, when I first started out, I'm a bit of a I'm a bit of a perfectionist and sort of, like a control freak. I would say, like, I like things done right. I like things done a certain way. And so when I first started out, I would just be really involved in, like, every little thing, and I'd want to, like, make sure that they looked good, like all their posts, everything. But I slowly learned that you hire people for a reason, like people are very talented, and you just have to trust your team. So that is something that I would definitely advise to do leaders, is trust your team. It'll be a lot less work for you, they'll feel more empowered. And yeah, you're the people on your team, super creative, super skilled, they're gonna they're gonna do it. You don't have to, like, be super controlling in every aspect. So that's

Samir Balwani 23:15

I'll tell you, that resonates so much. And I'm sure that every leader right now is listening to this going, Yeah, we learned that the hard way, and it's just when you let your team do what they need to do. And I was thinking about it, it's like, the best leaders learn how to coach and help gate and like, develop people, and mistakes are going to be made, and you're going to have mistakes like you have to, you have to know that that's going to happen. But man, as I look at my team and I see the work that they're doing, they're doing stuff that I would never have even thought about, or like I'm learning from them every single day. And it's, it's a really amazing opportunity when you take a step back and say, All right, I trust these, you know, the team, to get what needs to get done, and I let them do their thing. And to your point, I think the best leaders are able to create a vision that everyone's excited about, and then it doesn't matter how you get to there. And I think that that's the most important thing to remember, right?

Kaleigh Redington 24:12

Exactly 100%

Samir Balwani 24:16

well. Kaleigh, this was awesome. Thank you so much for joining us. If someone wants to find you online, where can they go to learn more about you?

Kaleigh Redington 24:23

Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn. Um, I'm Kaleigh Redington, and then you if you're interested in Zen Habitats, you can find us at Zenhabitats.com or at sign Zenhabitats on all of our social

Samir Balwani 24:34

tools. Amazing. Thank you again.

Kaleigh Redington 24:37

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. You

Outro 24:45

thanks for joining us. If you liked it, remember to subscribe, so you'll be notified of new episodes. And if you know someone who would enjoy this show, don't forget to share and leave a review. It all helps us impact more brands. If you're looking to improve your paid media, go to. weareqry.com, and schedule a consultation. We're always happy to chat. See you for the next one.

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