In conversation with Pete who is Founder and CEO of Ampjar, a karmic advertising community that helps small brands to acquire customers through a fast and simple exchange of shout outs. We discuss the evolution of marketing, the similarities of SMB Online Retail and the Creator Economy and what creators can do today to amplify their reach and genuinely reach out to their target audience in a way that reflects their personal brand.

Prior to running Ampjar, Pete ran a social and digital media agency which worked with household name brands in 6 countries. Pete sold the business to Private Equity in 2017.

Reach out to Peter -

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterjamesdavis/

AmpJar - ampjar.com/lets-grow

e-mail - pete@ampjar.com

Reach out to Naga – 

Twitter - @n1n3stuff / @PassionPeop1 (https://twitter.com/ThePassionPeop1 )

Facebook - The Passion People Podcast

email - naagasubramanya@gmail.com

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thepassionpeoplepodcast/

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Transcript

[00:00:00 ] Pete: [00:00:00 ] these small businesses have all these platforms that they're meant to be using like Facebook advertising, like SEO, like Google advertising.

[00:00:10 ] And they just don't have the bandwidth to learn how to, how to use it  because they just have so many other things that they're doing in their business.

[00:00:17 ]But the way that we see it is that this is a movement in our minds towards giving the control back to the brands. So giving them more autonomy to control how they advertise, because essentially what we're trying to do is create a third model

[00:00:33 ]. So I'm the founder and CEO of a company called amp jar. I'm actually based down in Melbourne Australia right now. So we're actually a us company, but I live down here. It's home. So it's a good place to kind of shelter while all this COVID things going on. And yeah, Ampjar is a community of brands that shout each other out through various channels to help each other grow.

[00:00:56 ] So we have hundreds of brands all over the U S [00:01:00 ] Canada, Australia. New Zealand is our focus markets at the moment. Yeah, they shout each other out through social or emails or  post  checkout on their website. And the whole intent of it really is these small brands have incredible relationships with their customers relationships that are just stronger than I've ever seen anywhere before in marketing.

[00:01:19 ] And what we're trying to do is help these brands. Team up work together so that customer acquisition is something that they can do together rather than having to go to platforms like Facebook or Google to get that amplification and to meet new customers.

[00:01:32 ]Naga S: [00:01:32 ] And ideally what is the size of these businesses and what, what are they into.

[00:01:36 ] Pete: [00:01:36 ] Yeah. So typically the main type of customer for us is a smaller business. So someone who maybe has. Four five, six employees is kind of core to us. And sometimes we have people who are just on their own. Sometimes we have people who have 20 employees, but maybe core is that small team with a handful of people.

[00:01:55 ]And more often than not, they are what we call [00:02:00 ] independent retail. So someone who has a product. They're not dropshippers, you know, they, they have their own product. They have their own social channels. They sell a product through a website, like a Shopify style website they're really authentic businesses.

[00:02:14 ] Naga S: [00:02:14 ] Got it. And what, what would drive the decision of these businesses to you know, choose to come to Ampjar as against traditional modes of marketing?

[00:02:23 ] Pete: [00:02:23 ] Yeah, absolutely. So my background was, was marketing. So I, before doing this, I ran a marketing agency. So we run it down here in Melbourne. We built it to having 20 staff and we worked in six countries , we worked with some incredible brands  I would say that there was a time in there where I was the expert.

[00:02:41 ] I was the go-to. If you wanted to know anything about Facebook ads or Google ads or how to use this channel or that channel, I was the go-to come to me and talk to me about it. And then as you know, when you build a business, you grow it over time and you get to a point where you do more of the management, less of the hands-on dirty work.

[00:02:59 ] And [00:03:00 ] it quickly became a fact that I didn't. Have the expertise, I wasn't the go-to on these things. And so what we found was that I would then go back to check out how Facebook works. So like Facebook advertising and the whole thing completely changed. And so that's a really good example of how. These small businesses have all these platforms that they're meant to be using like Facebook advertising, like SEO, like Google advertising.

[00:03:29 ] And they just don't have the bandwidth to learn how to, how to use it and to then stay abreast of it because they just have so many other things that they're doing in their business. So typically people have tried those platforms. Maybe they've tried working with influences and had a bit of hit or miss over there.

[00:03:44 ] Maybe they've tried. Partnerships of some extent to some, some degree, but what Ampjar does is it provides a really simple way for them to leverage the audiences that they've built, but also the skills that they have as people and knowing what they're really good [00:04:00 ] at, which is having a really good, genuine conversation with their own customers.

[00:04:03 ] So it feels like a really natural place for someone to go when they have maybe tried. All of the, all of the above obvious places to start. Now we present an opportunity which is perfect for them because it doesn't have a steep learning curve. It's really natural to the way that they are spending their time, running their business and communicating anyway.

[00:04:22 ] Naga S: [00:04:22 ] I can relate to the fatigue factor that you are to where you know, as small businesses you're. Need to keep up with so many things that keep changing on a constant basis. Right. And especially like last platform that Google and Facebook, it's not really feasible for them to do that.

[00:04:37 ]What's the duration of the learning curve for Amtrak and what's the difference in the customer acquisition costs that these businesses typically see on your platform?

[00:04:45 ]Pete: [00:04:45 ] For us where you don't think we have much of a learning curve, so the way that we see it is essentially what we're saying to them is when you land in the platform, here's a bunch of other brands that you can shout out. So go and choose someone to  share through your [00:05:00 ] channels.

[00:05:00 ] And then what they'll do is they'll just. Pick someone out that they'd like to look over and they'll say, wow, I'd never knew that this company existed in here or Hey, check out this brand founded by this brilliant person in Nebraska or wow. Check out this beautiful imagery over here. And so they'll do something like that.

[00:05:16 ] Something that's really nice and natural. And so they're doing that anyways. So they're already used to doing that and having that as part of the process. And then the way that Ampjar works is that when you do that, when you shout someone else out, You earn what we call karma credits. So it's like our internal currency of Karma or Goodwill.

[00:05:34 ] So I've shouted someone else out. I then earned credits for shouting them out. And then as soon as you've got credits, other people can start shouting you out. So you might find that it takes a couple of hours. You might, it might take a day, but someone else is there. And so you shout someone out and bang someone else shouts you own return.

[00:05:51 ] You shout someone out. Someone else who helps you out in return? So it's not necessarily one-to-one is not a shout out brand. A brand day. Shouts. We back [00:06:00 ] in return is more like I shout out brand a and then brand J comes on and shouts me out. And then brand F shouts me ou