Why The Giveaway Method Works With Van Oakes

Van Oakes, a successful e-commerce marketer for Diesel Power Gear, The Diesel Brothers, and Diesel Sellers, was interviewed again by The Robust Marketer host, Erick Dyck. Van discussed using the giveaway method as something unique to offer their customers that move the needle over discounts for their demographic. Van also shares thoughts about influencer marketing, Facebook Ads, and the importance of being prepared for the last business quarter.

Interview with Van Oakes | CMO, DieselSellerz

By Erick Dyck

Robust Marketer Episode #44 Transcript

Van:: So we have a repeat customer rate of 55% which is fantastic. It’s actually 54.7%, right?
Eric:: Okay.
Van:: We put a lot of value in our repeat customers. Most of our customers are going to buy multiple times. And surprisingly, once they get entered into a giveaway, let’s say, they purchase the first week because they want to win a truck, they’ll enter again towards the end of the week if we give them additional offer just to get a better chance at winning, right?
Eric:: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Robust Marketer. In these final months of 2018, we’re going to be interviewing all the speakers that we have coming to Bangkok on December 7th at E-commerce Mastery Live Asia. There are only about 100 tickets left and you don’t want to miss this absolutely game-changing, career-changing event. You got to get your tickets soon. The prices are gonna be going up on a weekly basis now. So just jump in while you can. Come see us, come see me. Come see Van at E-commerce Mastery Live Asia by going to https://istacktraining.com/ECML-Asia or just go to iStacktraining.com. Figure it out. I think this set of speakers that we’ve gathered together for this Bangkok show, E-commerce Mastery Live, is the best speakers we have ever had. Some of the most impressive, biggest spending, best-presenting speakers that we’ve had. And I’m super excited.

Van Oakes: One Of The Top Performance Marketers

: That leads me to Van Oakes. So, Van, as you may know, if you’ve watched the podcast I’ve had him on before. He is one of the top performance marketers I know. He has an incredible grasp of product audience fit, the psychology of audience, the power of influencers. And he’s just got some incredible Facebook Ads and Instagram chops. It makes him an absolute unit in the world of Facebook Ads…
Van:: Please call me by “Unit” from here on out.
Eric:: He’s an absolute unit. He’s also a good friend of mine and someone I can’t wait to party within the steamy night air of Bangkok in a few months. Welcome to the Robust Marketer, Van. How you doing?
Van:: Fantastic. How are you?
Eric:: I’m pretty good. I’m really starting to get psyched up for Bangkok.
Van:: I’m so pumped.
Eric:: You’ve been before, right?
Van:: Yeah, I’ve been all through Southeast Asia. I backpacked it all but like, it’s been a while.

Influencer Marketing at Affiliate World Europe

Eric:: Very cool, yeah, I know it’s going to be amazing. It’s funny I introduce you to the whole affiliate world scene after we met at Tim Burd’s Mastermind. And then you went on stage in Barcelona and gave one of the highest value talks. I think your talk on Influencer Marketing at Affiliate World Europe, if you can track that down, it reminded me of like that back to the future scene where Marty McFly plays the Chuck Berry. And he’s like, “it’s a little…”And then he goes into like Def Leppard or something at the end of it, something like hardcore metal and he’s like, “your kids are gonna love it.”
That’s what I felt, like your talk at ECML Europe was because I think it was so far on the edge of Influencer Marketing that I maybe went over a lot of people’s head. If you can find that talk and you’re into Influencer Marketing, make sure you track it down because Van’s a Unit, an absolute unit.
So if in case people haven’t seen the previous interview, they don’t know why we have this great rapport and repartee, why don’t you just give the nutshell story of who you are and what you do?
Van:: My name is Van Oakes. I run all the marketing, and present marketing for Diesel Power Gear, Diesel Sellerz. We have a show on Discovery Channel called Diesel Brothers. We’re in between seasons right now but basically, just an e-commerce store. And I do all the marketing for them.

From A Nobody to Doing 8-Figures

: I used influencers very heavily for everything that I do. But yes, it’s been a ride this last 2 years. Going from a little nobody e-commerce store to doing over 8-figures. It’s been a little bit of growing pain but it’s been fun.
Eric:: You do the marketing but you also do like pretty much the whole e-commerce suite. Like when it comes to all the products in the store, all of that.
Van:: Yeah I do all the product development, so I have a product development team that I work with. I have a marketing team that I work with. I curate all the content, like kind of everything. So Swiss Army knives of things but we make it work in any way that we can.
Eric:: I think what you’re doing with Diesel Sellerz, Diesel Power Gear, with Diesel Brothers, it’s sort of like generates this incredible performance momentum. Like a lot of these shows have momentum, a lot of people that have broad cross media appeal, there’s a lot of momentum, but you guys are harnessing it in a way that I feel like every entertainment brand in the world should be like taking note up, would you agree with that?

Performance Momentum

Van:: Yeah, I think a lot of times these people who have all this following, they don’t really know what to do with it, right? A lot of them just get famous. And that’s kind of the guys that I work with are very, very smart. It’s not like they use their following to build brands. They’re making stores and they’re building names for themselves but they’re also selling stuff along the way, making actual companies that will last long-term. Actually, the show’s only going to last too long, right? Eventually shows get cancelled so they’re doing everything in their power right now to build brands with the following that they have.
Eric:: And super diverse brands. Brands from like print-on-demand and beard care to all the way through like car parts and things like that.
Van:: Yeah, everything and anything that touches our demographic. I mean, it’s not to say they’re all successful, right? You’re gonna fail a couple times here and there. But we do have a demographic, strong following. So anything inside that demographic, that following, we’re gonna try to capitalize in some way, shape or form.

The Giveaway Model

Eric:: Yeah. I think of the way you’ve described your business a little bit, we’ll talk a little bit about the giveaway model and how that’s built into your advertising. Essentially people buy products on Diesel Power Gear and are given entries into draws that actually take place on the show, on the trucks that are being worked on, you actually give away a 6-figured truck pretty much every week when the show is on. And so, in my mind, it almost gives you like the cheat codes a little bit because you have so much of a following. You’ve built up such a loyal audience over time that I feel like it allows you to like really experiment with your Facebook Ads and really push the level of expertise that you’re bringing to the table because you’ve got all this backing with this incredible brand behind you. And so I on this interview, I really want to get into some of your Facebook Ads tactics that you’re enjoying and working with these days.
Van:: Yeah, I think, what we do really, really well is we’re aggressive, man. We have an aggressive offer all the time. So we go into the marketplace with something that very few people can compete with. And at the end of the day, that makes the whole thing run. At least for us, it’s having that offer that’s untouchable.

CPC: Volatility And Inconsistency

Eric:: Yeah, and it’s a diverse offer within your core audience group there. So I want to start with the news of the day a little bit. And this is just, I just sort of scan the groups. And there seems to be a general sentiment, I guess over the last 2 months but maybe even specifically over the past couple weeks of a lot of volatility, a lot of inconsistency when it comes to CPCs, when it comes to cost per purchases, and things like that. Is that stuff that you experience or do you guys sort of push your way through that because of how solid your whole business model is? And what are you seeing in the Facebook Ad space, right now?
Van:: I mean like Q4, yeah, CPC’s gone up a little bit. We’re almost double what we were last quarter but that’s to be expected, right? We went into Q4 understanding that, and understanding that we were still going to be aggressive with that. Volatility to a certain extent, we experienced. Yeah, I’m experiencing that a lot. A lot of it is Facebook, a lot of it is just the marketplace, in general. But we just kind of plan on paying a little bit more for traffic. Like at this time of year, you have to.
Eric:: Yeah. Does it change influencer, just Q4 actually changed a lot with influencers? Or is it more stable?

Our Biggest Hiccup

Van:: No, I mean it’s more stable, right? But as long as you have… we usually have a very aggressive Black Friday, Cyber Monday offer. And it’s a little bit more stable but yeah, I mean traffic, in general, is just going to go up in Q4 and you just got to kind of expect that. We’re about double what we’re normally paying right now.
Eric:: Do you have any good tips on preparing specifically for Black Friday, Cyber Monday? And you guys obviously have a really multifaceted strategy. But any tips out there for people trying to prepare for specifically those kinds of sales?
Van:: Make sure you can handle the sales that are going to come through. So we fulfill our own orders right, we don’t drop ship. And that Black Friday, Cyber Monday when you hit it with an aggressive offer like we do, we blow it out. We’re very clear and transparent on our checkout page that, “Hey, listen, we ship our own stuff. It’s going to take us about 2 weeks to ship this stuff.” And we send them 2 or 3 different emails to make sure they don’t get upset with that. But that was our biggest hiccups in years past with Black Friday Cyber Monday is that with our aggressive offers, we weren’t prepared for the actual sells that we’re going to get. And we rely so heavily on repeat customers and making our customers happy. That’s been our biggest hiccup but we’ve fixed that. So we’re prepared this year, we’re prepared to ship a hell of a lot of orders in a short period of time.
Eric:: When you say aggressive Black Friday, does that mean aggressive in the discount you offer or aggressive in how much you hit your audience?

Being Aggressive In Implementing The Offer

Van:: Aggressive in the giveaway that we’re doing in the offer. We’ve found that with our demographic, the discount doesn’t hold as much weight as actually giving away a physical product, right? Having something tangible for them to touch, for them to gamble with so to speak. But yeah, we don’t do a ton of discount offers. But when I say aggressive with our offer, I’m saying aggressive with something that they might be able to win. Because we’ve run that giveaway model, right?
Eric:: That’s right. Even in the offseason, that was a question I had. So in the offseason when you’re not building shows around modifying trucks, what are the giveaways you rock with during the offseason?
Van:: We’re always on giveaway, right? Like we always give away trucks. That has nothing to do with the TV show, technically. We’re always 6 weeks on. And then we take about a week to find a winner. And then, we go 6 weeks back on. We’re always trying to be on a giveaway of some sort whether it be we’re giving away a truck, we’re giving away a side-by-side, we’re giving away a vacation, whatever we’re doing, and we’re always trying to have something for our customers to be entered to win.
Eric:: Yeah. So this is a question I thought of originally. I interviewed Alex Brown last week, the founder of the Beard Club. And he was talking about…
Van:: Thug.
Eric:: Yeah, he’s an absolute thug, a smart guy. Great facial hair, fits right in with the group. He was talking about this sort of psychology that underlies that particular group of men and it was sort of… it ended up being about like togetherness and self-care, you know. This idea of like…

Build That Community

Van:: Camaraderie man, that community that you’re building man.
Eric:: Yeah and so talk a little bit about what’s underneath your community? Obviously, people want, they like the brand, they want to win these trucks but like what’s the layer underneath that? Is it still just that is it part of being a tribe?
Van:: There definitely is. There’s a community with it. I don’t think people really realize in the niche that we’re in with Diesel trucks. That’s like these guys glides. Like whatever your hobby is, may it be a crochet or whatever, I don’t care.
Eric:: Cricket.

Be Part Of A Community

Van:: These guys’ hobby are their truck. Yeah, cricket, you’re a fantastic cricket player, right? Yeah. So whatever it is, these guys’ hobby is Diesel trucks. They’re like they want to be a part of a community that has the same interest that they do. And all they care about is their truck. And that’s all they want to hear about, and that’s who they want to make friends with. And that’s why they support our brand because if they’re out walking the streets and somebody sees their Diesel-powered truck shirt, it’s the easy conversation starter. They love that. It’s just part of being that community, right?
Eric:: And it’s gonna be an extreme amount of status if you pull up in one of those trucks. The amount of people probably within their communities that will recognize that. I can imagine the status boost you get in that situation.
Van:: Yeah, yeah. I mean they live for that, right? And everybody has their own thing that they do. Our people are Diesel trucks so they’ll pull up in their diesel truck. They live and die. I mean most of the time these Diesel trucks probably cost more than their house. So they’re wearing Diesel shirts, Diesel hats, I mean whatever works. They just want to be a part of a community, a clan. It just happens to be about Diesel truck.
Eric:: I’ve seen in some of your gear on the store, you do a supreme club where you in Diesel AF or something like that, you got to consider like a European, like diesel brand. Like the European, like Berlin clubbers. See if you can do like a cross audience with yours. It might work.
Van:: Right. We’re actually working on that now. I’ll show you some of the stuff.
Eric:: Good.
Van:: We actually have a manufacturer overseas who wants to do European soccer league shirts with Diesel stuff on them. So we’re working on it.
Eric:: Amazing. Diesel goes worldwide. I love it.
Van:: Yeah.
Eric:: So let’s get back to ECML Asia here. So you know, after you blew everyone away in Barcelona, I’m like “I gotta get him back. Got to bring him up to Bangkok.” And get you on stage out there.

How To Spend $50,000 A Day With A 5x ROAs

: So talk a little bit about, I know it’s early, you probably have to fine-tune exactly what you’re gonna be saying, but let’s talk a little bit about what you’re gonna be talking about in Bangkok. What people will get out of it?
Van:: So I have…
Eric:: Yeah, you go ahead.
Van:: No, I’m gonna be talking about how to spend $50,000 a day with a 5x ROAs. So technically, like when we spoke last, I was just like “I could spend 50.” I ended up spending like it $48,000 something but we had like a 5.1 or something ROAs. But that’s what I’m going to be talking about. I’m going to break it down on how to make sure your offer is legit, how to make sure all the prep work is done leading up to the launch of the giveaway with your influencers. And I said influencers with an “s”. I’ll talk about that a little bit. I’ll talk about, once again, the retargeting afterward with the influencers. The process that I setup to. I mean we did like 1.4 million in 4 days. And the last day, that was on Monday where I spent $50,000 and yet I think we made like 400,000 that day, something like that. But yeah, it’s very aggressive and I’ll go through the process that we used to set that up.
Eric:: Very cool. What are some basic tips you could give to people who would want to test out? So say they’ve got an audience, they’ve built out an audience, they want to do, not a $100,000 giveaway. But like, what would be some basic tips for people setting up a giveaway to their audience.

Basic Tips: Setting Up A Giveaway

Van:: It would depend on your audience, right? So like, we have a very specific niche but if you were doing like cosmetics or something of that sort, you know, maybe a giveaway to a Bora Bora vacation would do better. Like a vacation type thing, whatever it may be. And then you need to factor that in the cost of that into your COGS, your cost of goods. And you need to put margins in there for that. You didn’t need to do that stuff all before instead of just like keep selling your stuff for the same price that you’re selling it at. And then, just start giving away free stuff. You have to have margins built in. I mean, our shirts, you can go buy a $20 shirt anyways. You get to pay 35 bucks per shirt on our site, $30 to $35 dollars, why? Because you get a chance to win stuff. And they’re okay with that. It’s a niche brand, it’s something they want to be a part of and they know they could win something in return.
So you got to build that stuff into your business model beforehand. And then after that, you got to make sure it’s all registered and done correctly in order for Facebook to allow it, right?

Visualize The Perfect Thing

Eric:: Yeah. You mentioned makeup and Bora Bora, you know, you guys have such a seamless fit with your audience and the giveaways. It’s just a one-to-one thing and it’s backed by a reality television show but your example of a makeup, you know you’re not giving away a big makeup thing, you just know your audience well enough to know that hey winter is coming and you know being able to visualize a Bora Bora vacation could be you know the perfect thing. So it’s really I think comes down to really understanding your audience at a core level and making sure the giveaway is something they truly desire.
Van:: Yeah, people ask me all the time like “What should I do? What kind of giveaway should I give?” It depends so much on your demographic, right? And who you’re targeting and where they live and what they think is important and their average order value and their lifetime value. So there’s a lot of things that go into it but you’ll know that. I mean you should. You should know what your niche is into and what you can give away.
Eric:: Yeah. My first giveaway I did was a pair of Air Max of 90’s custom-made in the colors of the course I was launching. Turns out I was the only one who really wanted those.
Van:: I would have wanted one of them if you just hit me with an Ad bro.
Eric:: Yeah, the nerf gun. The nerf gun colorway which I’m a big fun off. We’ll get into sneakers after we cover a little bit more on Facebook Ads here.

Tim Burd’s Bidding Methods

: I wanted to do a quick checkup because it’s funny, we met at Tim Burd’s Mastermind. Tim Burd is sort of the dawn of launching these sort of bidding methods. These methods that sort of allow you to scale to give you, they just basically are tool. I understand them to be a tool in your arsenal as a Facebook advertiser, ways that you can sort of gain things from the algorithm gain scale. So I wanted to talk about whether these methods are still things that you integrate in your strategy? Things like the bully method, the shotgun method, and surfing method. What are your take on these kinds of methods and how you use them on a day to day basis?
Van:: I think what Tim teaches is fantastic, right? I took a lot of value of what he taught.
At the end of the day for our business model, our target CPA is like 5 bucks, right? So when I bully, honestly like (Sorry Tim), it really hasn’t worked out, I’ve tested it. What works out best for us is just the actual automatic option, right?
Eric:: Always, yeah.
Van:: If you had a business model where your target CPA is a lot higher than yeah, you’re gonna be bullying. You’re gonna be surfing a little bit more. But our customers buy in the morning and they buy at night as well. We have pretty level purchase times, so I don’t really ever surf, to be honest. I tried that, I still test it occasionally. And very rarely do a manual bid. But sometimes I do manual bid.

Campaign Budget Optimization On Facebook

: I’ve been hot on Facebook’s new budget optimization on Campaign Budget Optimization. I’ve been really hot.
Eric:: I see that option. Tell me about what that actually means because I’m not operating. I promote for iStackTraining. I run a lot of the ads. But we’re not spending at a scale I feel like it would be super meaningful. So what is what is that tool exactly?
Van:: I mean it’s the same thing that you used to do with third-party apps and whatever, in order to scale your campaigns. And it just allows you to allocate budget differently in your ad sets, right? So you can just set up your ad set and Facebook will choose which ones are performing. And a lot of people think that’s scary, a lot of people that I work with and deal with on a daily basis, don’t want to put anything into Facebook’s hands. But you got to understand they want you to use that stuff. So, if it’ll perform better, you might as well just use it. They’ll give you better traffic. I’ve had a fantastic experience using it, I really have. As long as you’re setting in rules in there, on an ad set level to where you’re shutting it off, if your CPA is too high and stuff. It’s been it’s been fantastic for me.
Eric:: Very cool. What about some other new features, are you are you using dynamic product ads at this point? Any luck with them?
Van:: Yeah, all the time, man. I love dynamic ads, man, especially retargeting, right? So I use…

Breaking New Audiences

Eric:: Very cool. What else here, so how does it work with breaking new audiences for you guys, in terms of prospecting? Are you just going entirely, you guys have so many purchases happening on a daily basis, are you entirely operating on lookalikes? Or do you integrate other kinds of interest or demographic targeting on top when you’re trying to break new markets?
Van:: Yeah obviously, like our conversion campaigns are heavily lookalike but we prospect constantly. And depending on what we’re giving away or what we’re currently doing, we’re prospecting interests only on top of the lookalike stuff. I started to, have you ever heard of Glew.io?
Eric:: Yeah, Shackelford talks about it quite a bit.
Van:: Yeah, I love it. It allows you to build heavy LTV customers. It allows you to filter through your customers that are just super valuable, right? And it’ll let you pull that and upload it into Facebook. So I’ve been able to make a lot stronger lookalike using that, you know. And then, we still do the interest targeting on top of that. But yeah, it’ll allow you to put like people who have purchased in 180 days, who have purchased 3 times, who have spent more than $300. And it’ll spit out those people who have done that. And then if you can make the lookalikes of those and retarget those people that showed massive return.
Eric:: And you still lay your interests on top?
Van:: Depends, sometimes.
Eric:: How does that affected you?

Effects of Layering

Van:: Well, it depends on what you’re layering, right? So, for example, we gave away a Polaris RZR this last weekend, it’s like a side-by-side, it’s like a 4-wheel kind of, and it was layered. So I had all the people who had purchased in 180 days, all this LTV stuff. But then, who also had interest in Polaris, right? And who hadn’t purchased within the last week because we didn’t offer that until the last week. So there is times that I’ll layer in there depending on what we’re giving away or anything like that. But yeah, I still layer as well.
Eric:: Very cool. So I pulled the office that I’m in here, that the Helmkin guys because they’re a Facebook agency in there, they had a few questions. They wanted to know, how do you typically break out your visitor retargeting on 1 day, on 5-15 day or 15- 30-day basis?
Van:: So with my business model, it’s different, right? We run 6 weeks on and a week off, and then 6 weeks on. So, I’m constantly retargeting like your typical 3-day, 7-day View Content, 14-day View Content and Add to Cart, 30-day View Content, Add to Cart. I’m always doing those. But when we get towards the end of a giveaway right, the retargeting gets a lot heavier because we got a lot more traffic. We go in weeds and flows. Our business model does, we spiked at the end of that giveaway because people have the scarcity of loss, right? So they’re like “I better buy if I want to win this truck.”

Retargeting

: So we hit really hard on retargeting in that last week. And then I’ll go through, so in that last week I’ll typically I’ll go through and I’ll retarget engagement of videos that we’ve shown, people who have looked at our videos but haven’t purchased. And I’ll group them into one group and I’ll throw that as an ad set. And then I’ll also do like your 3 and 7 days and 1 day Add to Cart, that are always huge. And then like your 3, 7, 14-day View Content, 14, 30-day View Content and Add to Cart. But then I always actually go through that last week and I’ll do our whole customer list. Because that last week, we have a really aggressive offer. And I’ll do like our whole customer list with people who haven’t purchased within the last week because they’re obviously missing out on a promo that we’re doing. So we have a repeat customer rate of 55%, which is fantastic. It’s actually 54.7%, right?
Eric:: Okay.
Van:: We put a lot of value in our repeat customers. Most of our customers are going to buy multiple times. And surprisingly, once they get entered into a giveaway, let’s say, they purchase the first week because they want to win a truck, they’ll enter again towards the end of the week if we give them additional offer just to get a better chance at winning, right? So, we retarget heavily in that last week with people who haven’t purchased in that last week.

Entries Lever

Eric:: You also have, do you ever play with the entries lever? Because you have the cost lever which you say you don’t play with very much. But towards the end of the week, could you offer like an optimized cheap thing potentially that has maybe outsized amount of points? Or is it always like a linear scale to how many entries in the draw you offer with the purchase?
Van:: Yeah, that’s a great question. So we actually, we were always just, every $5 you spent got you an entry. And we switched over to, not switched over, it still that but we have a rewards program now that we’ve implemented. We use Smile.io for that. They’re fantastic if you haven’t worked with them. But basically, what it does is it allows us legally where we couldn’t do before. We couldn’t offer people double entries if they spent $5, you couldn’t do that. But with a rewards program, they accumulate points for buying stuff, right? And then, what they can do with those points is we allow them to cash those in for extra entries. So yes, we do promos with that now. It’s something that we had to get the legalities worked out with. It took us a little while to figure that all out but we’ve got it all rocking and rolling now.
Eric:: Amazing. Ok so I have a question here that I only barely grasped myself. And so if it is nonsensical, just say it’s nonsensical. So talk about custom events, you’ve got purchase events, you’ve got all the different events that lead up to purchase, and then you’ve got these custom events that you can do.

Using Multiple Purchase Events As Custom Events

: The guys had some questions here about when you’re running campaigns that you’re using multiple purchase events as custom events, you’re putting different kinds of purchases in the custom events. What they were wondering is, are these events just in your mind, just blank slots that you can kind of put any goal that you want in there, or are you going to lose the juice of like, is Facebook going to be able to recognize these custom events as being as valuable as purchase events like as opposed to those dedicated purchase events? Does that make any sense?
Van:: I think I understand it. So I did custom events, right? And I felt like when I did that, it was probably, it’s been almost 6 months. It’s after Tim Burd’s Masterminds and I set up some custom events.
And I felt like when I did it, I didn’t see a massive change, right? Like even with those custom events, I felt like my numbers, my CPC, like everything kind of stayed the same. But I felt like you’re saying diluting my actual real purchases at that moment. And I just felt like Facebook Analytics weren’t reading that correctly. And I wanted them to understand what was actually really valuable to me. So I kind of quit doing that. I know a lot of people still do it. A lot of people have custom events set in there. I personally do not. I did it and I didn’t see a massive change so I just kind of left it at that.

Purchase Event

Eric:: Yeah, okay that does makes perfect sense. That in your mind those blank slots don’t have the juice necessarily that a purchase event get.
Van:: Yeah I don’t feel they do.
Eric:: Interesting. Okay cool. Are there any things that you would do if you had more time, like besides you know, more fun with your growing family, you’ve got 4 kids?
Van:: Yeah, 4 kids, man.
Eric:: 4 kids. So obviously, your time is at absolute premium. But if you had another, if you could clone yourself, what would you want to be tackling right now heading into Q4 or having already tackled a month ago?
Van:: All my time, I wish I had somebody to focus more on a bigger Ad team, really a bigger media buying team because I am focused so much on a new company that I’m launching right now, next week. That it’s taking up a lot of my time. And I feel like I’m really missing out on some of the intricacies of our current Ad account that we’re running with Diesel Power Gear, right? Because starting this new company is taking up quite a bit of time.
Eric:: Is this your own thing or it’s still with the same company?

New Product: A Tire Made For Their Truck

Van:: It’s with the same company but it’s just, we’re launching a tire company, right? We sat down and we thought you know, “What’s the consumable product that’s relatively expensive that people will continue to buy?” And we figured out that tire, I mean, it is a hundred billion dollar industry, right? So we went through the process of actually making and developing a tire here in the US which isn’t always cost-effective as it’s making it overseas. But our demographic, I understand very well and they love American-made, right? So we went through this process. It’s been a year now that we’ve been working on this and we launch next week. So it’s taking up all my time.
Eric:: And it has your amazing branding on it that everyone has such an affinity for. People are going to be throwing out perfectly good tires to get these on their trucks, I bet.

Direct-to-Consumer

Van:: Yeah, it’s fantastic too because we’re doing direct-to-consumer which really hasn’t been done. We proved the business model last year with a different tire. And we’re going to launch it direct-to-consumer for Diesel fanatic. I mean, it’s a truck made for their truck or a tire made for their truck, right? It has a better rubber compound, they last longer. They’re made for Holland, they’re made specifically for them and nobody else is doing this. So the targeting and the marketing that we’ll be able to do directly on Facebook, I’m very excited.
Eric:: It’s cheat code. It just sounds so cool. It’s funny that direct-to-consumer, that’s the most basic term in the world but it’s what I’ve been doing with affiliate marketing and with e-commerce for a very long time. And it’s going to be one of the biggest factors in the next 10-20 years as all these brands realize that they can bypass, you know, getting on store shelves necessarily and just go direct-to-consumer.
Van:: Everything will be direct-to-consumer. If there’s a way, shape, form, to make it direct-to-consumer who thought, you would, I mean how would you do tires direct-to-consumer, but it worked. People are fine with tires being shipped to their house. And somebody’s showing up and mounting them at their house, right? It’s an industry that’s old. And they have old tactics and old ways of selling through wholesale and distribution where if you find an actual performance marketing company, I think we’re going to be a big fish real quick.

Eliminating the Middleman

Eric:: Tons of middleman you’re cutting out too. So there’s gonna be so much cost-saving, maybe not even cost-saving, you can probably still charge a premium. So it just all goes to your margin potentially when you cut out that whole middle market. But again, for that to work you need to have, it’s like, people are buying tires from AliExpress, you know what I mean. They’re buying it from… You guys have built up this incredibly rabidly loyal fan base. And they know that you understand quality and understand American-made, so all of that goes into it. Oh, dude, it’s getting phenomenal.
Van:: We’re actually partnering with Cooper Tire who’s been around for 100 years. So when it comes to actual quality-wise, we chose to go that route, to partner with somebody who’s known for quality, right? And then just use our influence with the Diesel market and our influencers and so forth. And then, do a collab with them and sell the tires that way. So the quality is there. They know the quality from Cooper. And now they’ll know that it’s made for them by us from the Diesel guys.
Eric:: Oh man, I love this. I love to hear about this because this is the trend. You guys are just crashing it in this other space of getting products, fulfilling them in yourselves, doing POD, doing all these things to build your brand along this. And now you’re moving to that whole other phase of direct-to-consumer badass products, man.
Van:: I’ve never been more excited to actually market these tire. Yeah, I’m super pumped right now. We’ve been working on this for so long. To be launching next week and to be able to push this, very, very excited.

Hang Out With The Stash

Eric:: Well, if you want to hear more about Van’s amazing Facebook techniques, you want to hear more about this launch which I hope he talks a little bit about in Bangkok as well. And if you just want to hang out with the stash, and have a few drinks, talk sneakers…
Van:: Please come hang out.
Eric:: You’ve got to come to E-commerce Mastery Live in Bangkok. Van is just a perfect example for me, personally, of what happens when you throw yourself out in the world, you end up making these great connections with people. And they become, hopefully, lifelong friends. I want to thank you so much. I wanted to… what is the dopest sneaker in your collection right now? Like how you feeling about sneakers these days? Is Boost dead?

What’s Your Vice?

Van:: No, Boost isn’t dead. I mean it is what it is. Like I have all the Yeezys and whatever. I’m still a fan of the Yeezy 2, Nike Yeezy 2, I still rock those.
Eric:: What’s that?
Van:: The Yeezy 2 is the second Nike, they’re black, they’re kind of high top and then he switched over to Adidas. So I’m hot on the Nike 270s right now. But I don’t think I’ll ever like, all sneakers, I don’t know.
Eric:: Yeah. What do you think of these off whites?
Van:: Some people smoke, some people drink, I buy a lot of sneakers. That’s my vice.
Eric:: I like it. Do you like the off whites? Do you have any of these off whites?
Van:: Yeah, I have a pair of off whites but I don’t have as many as I wish I had. They’re a little bit pricey but they’re worth it, right?
Eric:: I like these ideas of future craft.
Van:: I have the Vapormax in off white.
Eric:: When I told you about, I was like I’m not really into that Vapormax like soul style, you’re like, “you will be.” with like utter contempt and confidence. I love it.
Van:: You will be.
Eric:: Very cool. There was one other thing I wanted to cover but I think we’ll just have to wait for Bangkok. I want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I think a ton of value for people out there. So if you want to get in touch with Van, make sure you can track him down on Facebook.

Insta-thoughts

: Oh I wanted to talk about your Instagram a little bit because I wanted, this would be the first time I’m going to show a picture on the podcast where I actually like, I’m gonna superimpose the picture up here. So you’re really going after these, what are they called thoughts? You’re really going after these Insta-thought.
Van:: Yeah, I mean, I guess, I live in this Insta, this influencer world with all these Instagram influencers. And I guess you get, I don’t want to say set up because we work with them a lot. But like these mommy bloggers, like half model, like 5,000-follower type people.
Eric:: Part-time models.
Van:: Yeah, part-time models that think it’s like a full-time gig but it’s really not.
Eric:: I love it, you really go after them like hard which I really enjoy. But I think you just enjoy so much of those poses that I think it’s a mutual beneficial relationship, I think.
Van:: I’m so sick of social media sometimes. How fake it is and whatever. I mean I will poke fun of it quite often on my Instagram, how fake everything is.
Eric:: Follow Van on Instagram, follow us both to Bangkok and it’s gonna be a fantastic Q4. And I’m really excited about 2019 which we’ll talk a little bit about again next time.
Van:: Yes, very cool. Thank you so much for having me, brother.
Eric:: Okay. Cheers. Peace.
Van:: Later.
Eric:: Awesome, wow, value-packed.
Van:: Cool man.

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