The Brand Builder Podcast · Capitalism.com

How To Provide Value In A Pandemic w/ Steven Black

May 18, 2020·49 min·4 clips

E-commerce sellers are reporting Black Friday numbers for the entire month of April as people shop more from home.

Max opens with context instead of ceremony. Stephen Black has been on before, and Max frames him as a practical e-commerce and Amazon operator with a strong marketing base. The timing matters because their earlier social-listening conversation connected with listeners, so Max brings him back for the current environment. Then it gets tactical. The conversation moves past the standard direct-response loop: cold ads, abandoned carts, retargeting, and break-even ROAS. The weak spot shows up fast. A beauty-store example gives the math some teeth. A $75 average order and a $25 customer acquisition cost can look healthy by themselves, but that is still the small game. If the brand has systems that can move a customer toward $400 over an 18-month window, the acquisition math changes quickly. Spending power looks different. The useful move is not a slogan. It is building a custom audience from purchasers and talking to them after they buy. Keep it broad and human. Stephen suggests a simple thank-you video on Facebook that names the company, appreciates the visit, and points people toward the product community. The same idea can sit inside a post-purchase email sequence before the next upsell. That is the brand work underneath the tactic. Max keeps returning to the bigger frame: physical product companies are trying to become brands, not stores that happen to buy traffic. The clip stays practical because nobody treats the first purchase as enough. The real focus is what happens after someone has already trusted you with money. For product operators, the useful shift is seeing retention, community, and post-purchase communication as leverage on the acquisition model, not side projects.

As heard by us

A practical ecommerce episode on turning first purchases into longer customer relationships and better acquisition economics.

Max Kerwick brings Steven Black back for a tactical ecommerce conversation about customer value during the pandemic moment. The strongest section pushes past the familiar cold-traffic playbook: buy ads, retarget abandoned carts, keep ROAS above break-even.

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Why you'd press play

If you want your ads to do more than chase the next click, press play.

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