Dennis Yu

The mindset of an employee versus a profit maximizer

Analytics, Business, e-commerce, profit, search engine optimization /

One of our team members asked if they should increase the budget on a campaign from $80/day to $140 a day.Here’s what I said. Please choose whatever budget you see fit in your expert opinion.You’re the pro! You know our business goals and are best positioned to determine what tweaks to make to maximize revenue at the target ROAS. As we know in eCommerce, unlike most agency work, it’s not about a daily budget (which is about managing expenses), but about maximizing profit (at whatever spend maximizes this). A typical agency employee has the goal to spend exactly $X as the budget– which can be too low if the campaigns are profitable, but too high if we’re wasting money. So use your pro skills to test and optimize, while we’re here to advise in our areas (me on strategy/optimization), the client on content/financials, Daniel on analytics, etc…

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China is 3-5 years ahead of us

e-commerce /

I’m as patriotic as anyone (born in Dayton, Ohio), but not blind to what China is doing. They’re building systems for e-commerce and infrastructure– Belt and Road Initiative is a $4-8 trillion dollar investment, Huawei 5G is way ahead of us, so we have to ban them– even backed by billions from the Chinese government. Singles Day in China was $38.4 billion dollars, while our Black Friday was $7.8 billion. And in digital marketing, they’re systematically building influencer networks like the Russians developed athletes, instead of hoping brands would sponsor celebrities. Now it’s time for us to build better systems unless you’re okay with Chinese brands being dominant in America– like McDonald’s is elsewhere. TikTok, Lenovo, and Alibaba are Chinese– and I’m okay with it. Even Burger King has been a British company until bought by a Brazilian holding company– but markets natively in each country, so we wouldn’t know. Now it’s time for us to catch up, instead of being stubbornly patriotic and complacent. I’m spending a lot of time in Asia this year to understand manufacturing and marketing– want to join me? The Future of Influencer Marketing Is in China

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