GE 165: From 100-1,000 – How Jungle Scout CEO Greg Mercer Acquired Those First Customers with Webinars and Content Marketing

Hey everybody, today on the show we have Greg Mercer, CEO of Jungle Scout, which helps Amazon FBA sellers find profitable product ideas, get sales data, estimates, and more.

In today’s interview we’ll be talking about how Greg acquired their first 100 customers by leading webinars with other people’s audiences, how they get conversion rates of 20% to 25% for their webinars when most people only get 10%, and how giving away value-packed information and content allowed them to hit $2 million a year in revenue.

Download podcast transcript [PDF] here: From 100-1,000 – How Jungle Scout CEO Greg Mercer Acquired Those First Customers with Webinars and Content Marketing TRANSCRIPT

Episode highlights:

• [3:11] – Jungle Scout is a product research tool that looks for key metrics and identifies opportunities
• [3:37] – To get going on FBA it requires a couple of thousands to order inventory
• [4:02] – Jungle Scout has a monthly fee and the chrome extension has a one time flat fee
• [4:22] – The extension works when browsing the Amazon stores and it will show sales and key metrics and data that sellers will be looking for
• [5:09] – They have over 30,000 customers with both products combined, there are 17 people on the team, and they are plus 2 million a year
• [5:47] – Acquiring first customers: Greg posted in groups of sellers that he was active in, that is how he got his first customers – going from 100-1,000 they used webinars and content marketing before moving on to paid traffic and other channels
• [6:53] – Greg used influencer outreach to promote his webinars – 50 minutes of knowledge bombs and then a “oh, by the way I have this tool”
• [7:39] – They give 100% of first month on SaaS and a flat $20 on the extension
• [9:31] – Conversion rates of 20% to 25% for webinars plus additional sales watching the replay
• [10:36] – They are dialing in retargeting for Facebook and influencer outreach, they also put out high-quality content[11:23] – They did a case study on marshmallow sticks – on Amazon there’s a bamboo marshmallow stick product called Jungle Sticks.
• [12:28] – Greatest technical pains were dealing with developers. He lucked out and his second developer has really been a good fit, but they still hit a lot of snags along the way.
• [13:26] – First developer came from upwork or elance.
• [14:42] – When working with developers, have really detailed instructions and specific wireframes
• [15:21] – Planning into the future 3 years ahead is what Greg would do over again. Middle management confusion in the structure of the team. As the team grows it needs to be structured better.
• [17:19] – All developers have been hired from referrals from the second developer. They have found other hires through flexjobs and his email list.
• [18:59] – Greg is a digital nomad, he and his wife bounce around from airbnb to airbnb
• [20:13] – In Cambodia, you can help the government dispose of unused ammo, hand grenades and rocket launchers
• [22:06] – To keep the report accountable they have all their tools integrated into Slack and they have end of day reports
• [23:15] – Remote workers need to be self driven and get stuff done

Resources from this interview:

• Jungle Scout
• Twitter @mercer_greg
• Review Kick
• Nomad List
• Must-read book: Elon Musk Biography
• Groove Blog

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