Intro: 00:04

Welcome to another episode of Ecom Experiences, a podcast for ecommerce 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: 00:30

Hi, it's Sameer 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 have a really great guest here today. I have Kevin Shields, the paid acquisition lead at Atlas Coffee Club. You are a wealth of knowledge and I am so excited to dig deep into things. So thank you for joining us.

Kevin Shields: 01:05

Yeah, yeah, super happy to be on. Thanks for having me.

Samir Balwani: 01:08

Yeah. So why don't we get started. Tell me more about the brand. Let's kind of give some background and go from there.

Kevin Shields: 01:13

For sure. Yeah. So Atlas Coffee Club, we are a coffee subscription service that delivers amazing coffee from all around the world. So fresh to your door. Our thing is, we source specialty arabica coffee from the top farms in the world. So for example, this month is Burundi. Last month was Colombia, India, Brazil. You know what most coffee drinkers don't realize is that over 50 countries actually produce coffee. Yet when you go to the grocery store, you see the same 3 to 4 countries on the shelf in different types of blends and things like that. So our goal is really to bring our customers on a world tour of coffee, highlighting some of the lesser known regions of the world. So that's really cool. Yeah, we sourced the coffee from different countries. Then we, you know, import it back to Austin, Texas, where we're based. Roast it fresh after you order and then we ship it to you.

Samir Balwani: 02:08

That's so interesting. And I imagine that there is a huge education element around this as well, because there's so much to learn. So can you just touch on what you guys do from an education standpoint?

Kevin Shields: 02:19

Yeah, actually funny you say that. So one like, you know, it's when people are in a habit, especially like an addictive habit, like drinking coffee every single morning, they tend to get in their way. So it's, you know, what we found in our marketing that works really well is educating the customer on why they should be essentially drinking coffee. That's essentially like double the price of, you know, like a potential Folgers or something like that. So what we find is like, you know, educating the consumer about, you know, why freshness matters, why coffee quality matters. You know, the different tastes, different different tasting notes and different ways different coffees are produced in different parts of the world. For example, like some of the drier countries like in Africa, they produce more like natural coffees. Basically, like they let the sun, like they use the sun to essentially bring the coffee cherry out of the or the bean out of the cherry. Whereas in like some of the countries that do have more water, they use like a wash process. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So that, you know, and each of these processing has different tastes. So there's like a whole world of this coffee, you know, that we could dive into. But I'm sure you want to talk about marketing stuff. But yeah, education like especially in the coffee realm is like its key.

Samir Balwani: 03:50

Yeah, I think it's fascinating because I think it adds a complexity to marketing because it's similar to wine, right? Everyone tastes different, wines taste different things. What is good to one person may not be good to another. And then you also wine fragrance. They all kind of follow in. How do you communicate that to somebody? How do you get someone excited about something that they physically have to taste? So it's like a real challenge of there's no samples like exactly. Here, here's a sip. Like try it. You're really in on it. I know we talked we talked about your title of paid lead. Paid acquisition lead. So what does that mean? Like, what's your purview? What's your day look like?

Kevin Shields: 04:32

Yeah. For sure. So I'm within Atlas. We have a growth team and I'm on like specifically the paid acquisition team. And I personally oversee the management of all our paid channels. So including paid social paid search native, you know, a few other smaller channels and the things that also bubble into those channels, for example, paid social, you know, a lot of creative paid search specific landing pages. So you know, like a lot of your other guests. I do wear a lot of hats. Like who doesn't in marketing? But you know, on our on our specific performance team, like our paid acquisition team. We have myself who manages the media channels. We have a creative strategist who, you know, works with both outside vendors and produces creative in-house. You know, works with designers, video editors, etc. and then we have another team member who, like, really flexes as like kind of a head of growth, a data analyst, and really manages like our digital product, like the site side of things. And we're small, we're scrappy. But like on a day to day, I could be, you know, running the ads manager, checking in, you know, praying that my, you know, some ads hit overnight and we're scaling up increasing budgets, etc.. But, you know, running split tests, creating landing pages, coming up with different creative angles, playing with data kind of do it all from a day to day perspective.

Samir Balwani: 06:04

That's amazing because it's that's a huge breadth of things that you are covering off on, on a day to day basis. So what's your favorite part? What gets you excited?

Kevin Shields: 06:14

Yeah, well, meta has been my favorite part. But recently not recently. Yeah, recently. Not as much. Just because of all the, you know, we've been seeing some weakness like a lot of other brands I think that are going on. But I think, you know, if I'm going to say like what gets me fired up, what gets me excited would be, you know, just growth in general. And I think we we look through this in like a few different lenses and just to like kind of to backtrack on on Atlas like during Covid we were you know, we were able to maintain like really solid year over year growth. Like when Covid hit, people were looking for fresh coffee, like good fresh coffee, but they couldn't go out to the store and get it. So during the, you know, years of Covid, we like doubled the business and then doubled it again. I wasn't on at that point, but I came on like right after Covid. And in the past 2 to 3 years, like even post Covid, we've been able to hold a very steady growth rate year over year. You know, as our team has both expanded and like our product offering has expanded. But, you know, if I'm going to talk about like what gets me really excited, like we look is growth in general. We kind of look at like growth in different buckets. It's like channels products, markets and then like yeah site tests. So happy to dive into one or all of those, you know if you want. But like that the growth side of things and like playing with those different levers is like what gets me really pumped up.

Samir Balwani: 07:47

Yeah, I think it's so you guys have such a robust growth team that you have a lot of levers that you can pull. And and it's really interesting. So I guess on we talked about the softness of meta and the impact it has, plus just the general problems that people are generally having with meta across the board. If you're if you're in the ads manager, you know exactly what I'm talking about because I hear it from the teams, I hear it from our clients of just it doing random things or breaking at random times. So it's definitely a challenge. I'm really actually curious, like, where does most of your day go? Like of those levers? Which one takes up most of your time or brainpower? Just truthfully.

Kevin Shields: 08:38

Yeah, I think in my role it's more of the channels side of things like channels and tests. We do have a products team that like, works on the actual coffee product, and then also the digital product, like our website. And I do some, you know, I'm in that realm some, but more so the channels and the, the like tests or my realm. So on the channels front, like for example, as of recently it's been, you know, working on a strategy to fix like, you know, we've been experiencing some weakness across meta, you know, the past month. And it's like it's very I would say, like both on the macro and micro, micro level, we're focusing on like, you know, a number of things to to try and improve this. So recently for me, it's been looking at a lot of like our creative creative mix, our account structure. You know, how we're thinking about attribution, you know, with like more of our top of funnel middle funnel channels like meta. And then on, you know, on the another channel front, like one of the big bets that we're taking this quarter is growing like our programmatic program, like our native ads. So we're expanding into like Rev content Taboola Outbrain testing that out. And this is like a whole new realm for me. Like, I get it from like a very high level, but like, I'm in the ads manager, like with my knuckles bloody like, you know, learning as I'm going on this. So like a whole different ball game than than meta. And just like, you know, it's launching tests, getting the data back, diagnosing, figuring out where the opportunities are coming up with new hypothesis launch again, you know, get the data back assessing, you know, assessing the data. And it's just a cycle of like launch data analyze and then like it continues. So I think recently you know meta and like native advertising have been like my big buckets and big responsibilities.

Samir Balwani: 10:51

I'm really curious what have you seen work well on the native side. And it's interesting because you have a unique you have a unique opportunity in that that education around coffee is something that so native seems like a natural place for you guys to play. I'm curious what has worked, what made you bloodied and kind of what are you excited about for that channel?

Kevin Shields: 11:16

Yeah, I think, you know, if a native expert hears me talking about this, it's, you know, I will say this is like, you know, we're a month into native, so it's like, I'm I am learning a good amount here. But yeah, I think, you know, one of the big things is like comes down to three things is like getting creative that has, you know, very high click through rate. Mainly all native placements typically lead to like an advertorial or some type of pre-sell article. You know, that I've seen and I think, you know, mastering the advertorial, getting high click through to your actual site is critical. And then like on the site is like making sure that the landing page converts at a level that makes sense for your total costs and making sure that the math backs out through the entire funnel. So it's not rocket science, but like high click through rate on the ad, high click through rate from the advertorial to the site, and then conversion rate high on the site. Nothing novel, but like, you know, it's looking at the data and finding where the weakness is and coming up with a plan to to address how you improve.

Samir Balwani: 12:27

That's really interesting. That's so cool. I mean, I know, you know, we talked about meta a few times that as that being an obstacle, which has kind of led you into making a big bet into native. What other obstacles are you seeing? What else kind of is been the challenge as you look ahead?

Kevin Shields: 12:48

I think, you know, there is this challenge, like meta as a channel is challenging, but like on a on a business wide level, it's obviously we want to like maintain the growth that we've had the past 2 or 3 years and exceed that while also staying profitable. And, you know, one of the things that another like one of the big bets that we're thinking about is like introducing new products into our product mix. So typically Atlas has been like we've offered whole bean coffee or ground coffee, like whatever you prefer. And then over the past two years, we've introduced two new products. So we introduced like a Keurig like coffee pods that are compatible for Keurig or coffee pods that are compatible for Nespresso machines. And with those introduction of like products, we've we've seen growth like we've seen stepping stones of growth because it's like new markets, like typically holding ground coffee lovers are usually younger folks. And then like a K-Cup drinker is like typically 50 plus. So, you know, one of the big bets slash challenges like continuing that growth. And it's like coming up with new products where we think that there's potential within the market to reach net new customers.

Samir Balwani: 14:12

Interesting. I think that that's such a a key piece that a lot of marketers forget is that product has a big driver in terms of growth. Also, I feel like we get so focused on what's ahead of us. We forget like is it in stock? Do we have any new products coming up? Like what is the new product? Did that product resonate or not resonate? But then also how do you actually take what you're learning from being in market in that data and helping inform the product team to on that next set of products and what's coming next? And I think that that's a piece that a lot of people miss in the marketing journey.

Kevin Shields: 14:52

100%, yeah. A lot of times it's easy to get caught up in the weeds, but it's like, you know, a product can unlock, you know, 30% growth for the entire company. So yeah.

Samir Balwani: 15:04

Huge, huge.

Kevin Shields: 15:05

Lover to think about.

Samir Balwani: 15:06

Yeah, I. Earlier on we talked about creative for a little bit, and you said it a few times around creative being a big piece of what makes a successful on meta and what makes it possible on native. How do you guys look at your creative? How do you actually determine if something is successful? And then more importantly, how do you use that to improve the next round of creative?

Kevin Shields: 15:33

Yeah, it's like the hot topic. I you know, one of the things that we do that we found really helpful is like every quarter we'll do a creative brainstorm where essentially our creative strategists or like back when I was doing creative strategy, was like we would come to the team with, like, you know, our top 5 to 6 like angles or, you know, creative ideas that we wanted to explore, like fleshed out. And we would essentially be like pitching each other these creative ideas. And you get feedback from everybody. And then basically we would do these sprints around those angles. So for each angle we would have maybe, you know, we would do different creative formats, whether it's like UGC videos, like static ads, we would do a sprint, like to produce a bunch of creative assets, launch them, you know, get the data back and then basically, like, you know, if one of those is taking off, we would essentially just like lean into iterating our way to, you know, to scale or to like, you know, a CPA that like, made sense to, to continue running. And with the other stuff, we would, you know, call it loss and and cut it.

Samir Balwani: 16:43

Yeah, that's really interesting. And then when you're looking at creative, how does brand play into the mix? I guess how do you guys think about that. And what does good branding look like. Like how are you. Because it's it is such a performance driven perspective around creative. What, if any, does brand play?

Kevin Shields: 17:05

Yeah. You know, I'm incredibly biased towards more of the performance side. You know, where some people on our team are like more brand side. And I always feel like there's this sometimes like this friction between the two. You know, I do think it's incredibly important. And I think that, like, you know, the creative, like, it might not align well, you know, with certain audiences, but like, you know, in my opinion, if you're trying to like, I'll put it this way, if you're if like, I'm under the assumption or of the camp of like if it's a V1 test and you are testing like a wildly new concept, I'm less concerned about, like having the brand exactly on point. It's like we're testing a completely new marketing message to a completely new audience, like, let's try some very, very different things that might be off brand. But like, you know, once you find one that starts to work, then like, and you can kind of drill deeper down into the brand. You know, I think that's where like there's a lot of room for like more of, like a vertical scale within the angle or something. I love.

Samir Balwani: 18:16

It. I in full transparency. I'm a brand guy. It was a loaded question. I knew exactly where this was going, so I think that's fine. I it's interesting because I think especially over the last few months and this I'd say over almost the last 6 to 12 months, we've been seeing this transition on meta moving more top of funnel where because that's it has always played up there. But as you know, privacy comes in and algorithm changes start to shift out. It's definitely playing a different role in our media mix. And from my perspective, brand starts to become more and more important the higher the funnel you go, right? And less concerned about brand messaging and impact on your conversion campaigns and more on like the top model. So the reason why I asked that question, and I guess I'll dig a little bit deeper of when you're looking at your top of funnel metrics, what are the metrics you're looking for? Are you still looking for purchases driven over an attribution window, or are you looking at engagement metrics? And then. Are you looking at brand metrics or doing brand health tracking or anything kind of in the mix around that as well?

Kevin Shields: 19:30

Yeah, I think that is, you know, one of our, I would say probably like one of our gaps that we're we're not as like keen on is like measuring more so like the brand metric side of things. You know, like I said, like we're we're a very lean performance team. Yeah. You know, we do. I think we look at our like across of our, you know, x number of channels we're on. We look at. Like on the attribution side of things like we weight channels differently depending on, You know, things like post-purchase survey compared to like our Google Analytics data. But I would say, you know, I don't yeah, I don't really have a way that we're like tracking brand metrics.

Samir Balwani: 20:22

Yeah, I think it's one of the hardest parts. I'm always curious when people have a perspective on it because I agree. I think it's one of the most unique ways of we've gotten so used to tying performance to a creative and saying, okay, this creative message, this is what it did. And it's really hard when you then have to say, okay, this group of messaging did this versus this group of messaging did this, and kind of tying that together. Kevin, I'm really curious. So as you look ahead, what are you most excited about though? What are you looking forward to?

Kevin Shields: 20:56

I think in the next by like the end of the year, next quarter, we're launching like a really exciting new product. Unfortunately, I can't like disclose it on the call, but like it is, It's going to be incredible once it once it comes out. If you're a coffee drinker that you like, you know, to stay sharp, stay focused, like you're going to love the new product. I just can't give any more away than that.

Samir Balwani: 21:21

We're going to have to if you've got a waitlist or something, we're going to add that to the show notes. So I'm sure a lot of people that listen to this drink coffee, and then they can sign up for the waitlist and find out when it launches. Yeah. But it's awesome. And then so my one last question for you. So as a marketing leader, when you when you're talking to a new marketing leader, what advice do you give them? What do you tell them to do in their first 90 days?

Kevin Shields: 21:48

You know, I think the one thing that I found personally works really well for me, like through my career, so, is to learn by doing like, you know, you can study something all day. Especially like if you are, but like getting in the weeds and like actually taking the action on something Like I said before, until you start pounding the keyboard and like your blood, your knuckles are bloody. Yeah, you're not going to learn. So I've had catapults in my career when I've, like, put in the effort to learn the new skill, whether, you know, it was originally running Facebook ads, Google ads like CRO creative strategy, it's like I learn it by doing it. And I say like, if, you know, if you're trying to level up your career, like continue to learn that skill by doing it. And then the other thing is like, yeah, don't be afraid to test radically different concepts. Like if you want different results you have and like by an order of magnitude of like 2 to 5 x, you have to take wildly different swings. So yeah.

Samir Balwani: 22:53

I think I think that that's actually a really important takeaway. I hope people really take that away, because I think the most frustrating thing is when people are like, oh, we tested button colors like, no, that's such a waste of time. Like, you're not going to do anything like, yeah, test your offer, change your messaging. Like I do something that actually matters, especially in the growth stage, right? Like you don't have enough volume to really have a clear read on this font size versus this font size. It just that doesn't matter. Testing doesn't matter.

Kevin Shields: 23:22

I feel like there is definitely room in every marketer, every marketer's playbook to like, hack away at things. And you know, whether it is test a new button color or whatever. Like, yeah, you might get like a two, five, maybe even like 10% lift on like your control. But like if you're looking for huge changes in conversion rate or huge changes in, you know, whatever the metric is that you're monitoring, you have to take huge swings.

Samir Balwani: 23:52

Yeah. Yeah. And sustainable swings. Right. Like that button color impact may only impact that one creator for that. So you get that 10% lift for like four weeks, and then you're back to the drawing board. Right. Exactly. It's. Yeah. That's awesome. Kevin, thank you so much for joining us. This was so much fun. If someone wants to find you online, where can people learn more about you?

Kevin Shields: 24:15

You can go to AtlasCoffeeclub.com, or you can send me an email it's at or go to my personal website Kevinshields.co and yeah that's it.

Samir Balwani: 24:28

Cool. All right. Thank you so much for joining us again.

Kevin Shields: 24:31

All right. Thanks, Samir. Thanks for having me.

Outro: 24:42

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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