In January 2024, I spoke with eight knowledgeable partners in the MyFBAPrep network for a new interview series that dove into these folks’ backgrounds, what brought them to their current companies, their observations from 2023, and predictions and merchant advice for 2024.
In this case study, I’ll go over why we placed our bets on this marketing experiment, how I set everything up, and the results.
Using our network to create irreplicable content
In 2023, I agreed to review a guest post from a company whose blog and founder all passed the sniff test. A few days later, I got a draft that set off alarm bells, and after running it through some online checkers we discovered it was almost completely AI-generated.
(On top of that, the email replies got increasingly concerning. Three times I tried to confirm that it was the founder I was speaking with via email, and each time I got a response that didn’t say or address anything. Could the same company be using AI to auto-reply to emails?)
With the growing prevalence of AI-generated articles, I knew we had to start creating content that couldn’t be (easily) copied by AI. Brands and merchants are already drowning in a sea of blogs, eBooks, news articles, and emails—how could we create something they’re interested in enough to dig out?
Our solution: Leverage our community (many of whom are the very audience we’re trying to reach) and their unique expertise.
Similar to a podcast, but nothing so formal, I invited different people in our network to do recorded calls with me that we’d publish across our blog, socials, and newsletter. More than 75% were onboard, and we were off to the races.
Quick overview of the planning for this series
Goals:
- Create unique and compelling eCommerce expertise content that isn’t easily replicable and can be repurposed to boost our content strategy.
- Increase the conversion rate of visitors to contact form submissions.
Audience:
- eCommerce brands and merchants interested in the expertise of knowledgeable individuals in the industry.
- eCommerce professionals interested in the career journeys of their peers.
Creative:
- Full video with transcript
- Adjacent blogs
- Quote images
- Video clips
Channels
- YouTube
- LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook
- Blog
- Newsletter
- Partners’ channels
The logistics: Outreach, scheduling, organizing
The key to respecting your partners’ time and presenting a professional experience is organization. Here’s how I tracked our outreach, set up calls, and what our Asana board looked like.
1) Outreach
Step one to this interview series was finding the right individuals to interview. I looked through my LinkedIn, our co-founder’s LinkedIn, our partner database, and our history of collaborations to find our first few candidates to ask. I dropped names, LinkedIn profiles, and email addresses (if we had them) into a spreadsheet, and ran them by our co-founder and director of operations.
Next, I had to get those partners to agree to hop on a call. When relevant, I’d start pitches with how we were connected or where I’d learned of them. I quickly followed it with a few sentences of what we were doing, and an invitation to do a call.
I think the key here was to keep the ask as short as possible, and mention that it would be publicized across our channels (something they might find value out of). If we weren’t frequently in touch, I’d start with how we were connected. For example, “I worked with John from your team on some co-marketing back in 2023.”
One sample outreach message was:
Hi [Partner],
MyFBAPrep is doing an interview series where we chat with knowledgeable partners in our network, and I wanted to see if you were available for a casual call to discuss your background, how you started with [company], what problems you saw that really needed solving, and your insights into the eCommerce industry in general.
It would be similar to a podcast, but nothing so formal — and we would publish snippets across our blog, newsletter, and socials.
Is this something you’d be interested in doing with us any time in January? I would love to book a call on your meeting scheduler if so!
Thanks, and happy new year!
Rachel Go
Since I was using a mix of email, my LinkedIn, and a co-founder’s LinkedIn, I kept track of everyone I reached out to, where I reached out, my first message, and date of outreach.
Of the first 20 individuals I reached out to, 15 responded positively, and I was able to schedule 11 interviews within two email exchanges (with eight taking place over the subsequent two weeks).
2) Scheduling
Once someone replied, I got them into Asana by creating a card with their name and details inside.
I would include;
- LinkedIn profile
- Official title and company
- Website of current company
- Meeting link (if available)
- A list of seed questions that I brainstormed after researching their backgrounds and websites
The best scenario for this round of outreach was they replied with their meeting links, so I could find a time that worked for both of us (or make time by sleeping at 4 a.m.).
In order to manage the Google Meet recording and transcript, I needed to be the meeting organizer. So after blocking off their calendars for a certain time, I’d create another meeting invite that I owned, added a Google Meet link, and shared it with them.
In that Google calendar invite, I would include:
- Context: “This is a chat between [name] and Rachel Go for MyFBAPrep’s interview series.”
- Questions: “Starter questions below for reference.”
- Disclosure: “This call will be recorded.”
Alternatively, I could have had my own calendar link that they could schedule a time on, but decided against it for two reasons.
One was that I’m asking them for a favor, so I didn’t want to come off as too pushy by asking for their buy-in and action/effort on their part at the same time.
The other was that I hop around three different timezones, and I didn’t want anyone to see odd times on my calendar and self-eliminate. I was happy to accommodate their working hours in every case.
At this point on the Asana board, the relevant subtasks were;
- Schedule interview — If this was not checked, I knew we didn’t have any time set aside for our actual chat.
- Create cover image — Once an interview was scheduled, I had our freelance designer create cover images using the names and headshots of interviewees. We went off a template so each interview graphic looked uniform to our series.
- Create and share questions — I’d look through LinkedIn and any relevant websites to put together 8 to 10 thoughtful questions to use as a guideline. I’d then share these with the interviewee ahead of time to get their feedback and set expectations.
3) Organizing
To keep everything straight, I set up a kanban board with the following columns. Again, each card was the name of a person I was interviewing.
Information/Backlog: The first card in this list was “Resources,” which included links to my outreach spreadsheet, question bank document, and related Google Drive folders.
This is also where I dropped individuals who replied positively but weren’t scheduled yet, to remind myself to get something on the books.
Interview Scheduled: This column consisted of folks who were on the calendar, with due dates set to our interview date. This column helped me ensure questions were prepped and shared before the calls, and I could keep an eye out for those 3 a.m. calls to make sure I never missed a meeting.
Interview Complete – Processing: Every card in this column meant that interviews were complete, and the Google Meet transcripts and recordings were ready.
At this point on the Asana board, the relevant subtasks were;
- Edit recording — I cleaned up the recording by removing the small talk at the beginning and end, awkward silences, and interruptions.
- Upload to YouTube — Uploading to YouTube made the recording more accessible.
- Edit transcript — I sent the YouTube link and automatic transcription from Google Meet to our editor.
- Publish video with transcript — The fastest way to get something live on our website was to publish the recording with the transcript text below.
Distribution/Repurposing: At this point, our base product was complete. We had an article on our blog that contained an embedded video recording and the transcript of the interview. Next it was time to repurpose that for other channels.
At this point on the Asana board, the relevant subtasks were;
- Add to newsletter — I’d take a still from the call with a paragraph of summarized key lessons from the interview.
- Write article(s) on topic from chat — This was a blog recap of lessons from the interview, with the video embedded. For chats that went deep on several interesting topics we created separate articles (all embedding and linking back to the recording).
- Share on FB / LinkedIn — I’d post stills from the interview with text similar to what we used in the newsletter. I would also share on our co-founder’s and my personal LinkedIn.
- Instagram post — For instagram, I’d create graphics using quotes from the interview.
- Post on TikTok — I took multiple snippets of the video focused on different lessons and posted these to TikTok.
Done: Cards in this column mean the interview has been done, recordings have been repurposed and shared, and we can close the book on the task.
Conducting expert interviews
Speaking to others on a public stage is a growth area for me. Fortunately, I was interviewing rather than giving the interview, so all I had to do was ask questions! It was like being in college and getting to ask my professors anything.
Fun fact: The first time I did a podcast, I thought it would be audio-only. I also did it at around 10 p.m. So I showed up in PJs.
It was a really fun podcast with Jamie McCarthy over at Flxpoint (a former client) on how important marketing was for eCommerce sales.
Preparing for interviews
So, with slight stage fright and an aversion to being on camera, the best thing I did for the interviews was proper preparation.
I prepared customized question lists for each participant, which I ran by them and got feedback on. And all of the research I did for the questions (reviewing their LinkedIn and bios, reading through their company websites, etc) stuck.
Before each call, I did a 15-minute review of the questions and their background. I dropped links to their websites and LinkedIn accounts into Asana for easy access before calls. My research always came flooding back, and I entered each call with a good grasp of their background and expertise.
Conducting the interviews
Then comes execution. I learned that 30 minutes was a good amount of time for these chats. If I wanted to be safe, 45 minutes would help ensure a solid ~30 minutes of interview and knowledge-sharing, and 15 minutes for small talk throughout and thank yous at the end.
At first I didn’t do any introductions and jumped straight into my first question. After I heard how awkward it sounded, I started calls by saying thanks for joining and tee-ing up my first question.
After missing some good context on the first call, I began recording upon entering the Google Meet, instead of waiting until I asked my first question. You never know what small talk will reveal!
I also learned to mute myself when I wasn’t asking a question, because the camera would switch to whoever was talking and any background noise flipped the video to me.
Turns out I say “so” a lot. I had to be conscious of my connector words, swapping out “so” for “and” or even “well” once in a while.
Finally, I learned to keep my questions document and the interview video side-by-side in different windows, instead of flipping between different tabs. The latter made it so that the lighting on my face changed between each tab.
Editing and production
At this stage, we needed to edit the recordings and transcripts, split up clips for social media, create quote graphics, and write blogs around some of the article-worthy topics discussed.
Once an interview was complete, I downloaded the recording and uploaded it to YouTube. I would watch the uploaded video at 2x speed, and on another tab crop out unnecessary sections directly in YouTube Studio. Fortunately, the sound quality was good enough that I didn’t need to do white noise reduction or anything too complex.
Note: These interviews were casual productions, so I did a lot of amateur tinkering to get everything up quickly and on a budget. If we were going for a polished podcast production, I would have gotten some professional help editing recordings, creating the supporting graphics, and repurposing content for different channels.
At the same time, I requested two 1200 x 628 px images from our designer featuring the name and photo of our interviewee (pulled from LinkedIn). One image was for the YouTube video cover, and the other the featured image on our main blog with the YouTube embed and edited transcript.
Once the video was cropped in YouTube, I sent the link and transcript in a Google Doc to our in-house editor. Her job was to clean up the script and match it to the new edited recording.
I could publish something to our blog once I had:
- The video uploaded in YouTube
- The cover image for YouTube and featured image for the blog
- The edited transcript of our interview
I’d embed the YouTube video, drop in the transcript, and publish it on our blog on Wednesdays. Once the blogs were live, I’d share the link with the interviewee on LinkedIn.
Then it was time for some repurposing, which I’ll cover next.
Video and audio editing tools
Below I detail the tools I used for this project, as well as some notable mentions that I didn’t end up going with but are worth a look.
What we used
- Google Meet — For interviews, call recordings, and transcripts.
- YouTube — For video editing and uploading.
I also worked with an agency to clip the longer recordings into shareable clips, and create social media graphics from memorable quotes. These are what we used to promote older interviews periodically.
Free options
Some of the really great free software options to take your video and audio to a more professional level.
- Audacity — A free sound editor that makes it easy to clean up audio and remove background noise.
- DaVinci Resolve — This is a popular free video editor that has a slight learning curve, but plenty of powerful features.
- OpenShot — A free open-source video editor that runs on donations and is straightforward to download, learn, and use.
- Canva — To create quote graphics for social.
AI-Powered options
Lets not forget the value of AI-powered tools to lighten your workload and easily create different clips for social media and other channels.
- InVideo — Add text, background music, and transitions.
- Lumen5 — A tool that can turn copy into video.
- Descript — A tool specialized for podcast editing.
- Munch — Clip longer videos for social media and add subtitles.
- OpusClip — Turn a longer video into 10 shorter clips for social.
Content repurposing
The base product for this series is an article with an embedded video recording and transcript of the interview.
Once we had that, it was time to clip and repurpose the content for different channels.
The next steps were to:
Add a teaser of our most recently published interview to our newsletter. Articles were published Wednesdays, and newsletters sent Tuesdays. Teasers would include a screencap from the chat, a quote and overview of topics discussed, and a link to the video and transcript on our blog.
Brainstorm two to three additional blog topics that we spoke about in the interview. Write those blogs, incorporating quotes from the interview, and publish them. Each of these blogs would include a video embed that started at the first relevant topic’s timestamp.
Natively share clips from the full interview on social media; Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok. At the end of the clips we shared the MyFBAPrep logo and our URL. Within the post text, I’d share links to the full published recording on our blog.
Create quote graphics from each interview and share them on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Each graphic included our logo and URL.
In the future, we can use these recordings to help answer questions in Quora, on Reddit, and in different Facebook groups—once we get the bandwidth for it.
The results
We announced new interviews on our newsletter and across LinkedIn (our strongest and most relevant social channel) while waiting for shorter clips and quote graphics.
The interviews consistently received the most clicks of the entire newsletter, and they were often shared by our interviewees and their companies.
Within the first month of launching the new interview series, we saw:
- A 39.7% increase in contact form submissions
- A 40.3% increase in pageviews
- A 30.4% increase in blog pageviews
- A 27.2% increase in unique visitors
Note: We started this effort with the knowledge that it would be primarily a brand building effort, since it’s difficult to tie this specific initiative directly to metrics such as signups outside of monitoring overall trends. The attribution for the interviews are so difficult to track, because someone might listen on YouTube and type our website directly into their browser, for example. There are no convenient UTM links or codes to track when it comes to how much an interview influenced a lead’s decision to reach out.
However, looking at the key channels that we shared our interviews on, we saw:
- A 152% bump in direct traffic (we can consider this brand traffic)
- A 223% bump in organic social traffic (from the social shares)
- Interviews were consistently in the top 10 of our most popular blogs for weeks after publish
Anecdotally, our very first interview was promoted on my personal LinkedIn, MyFBAPrep’s LinkedIn, and our Co-Founder and CEO Tom Wicky’s LinkedIn. Steven Edelstein (our interviewee) and Fulfillment IQ (Steve’s company) also shared the link.
Within a day or two, we saw 88 reactions, 12 comments, and 5 reposts.
I should also mention that we published the news on a Friday and Saturday, which means the content did well even with a weekend share.
Saying thanks
I brainstormed with the MyFBAPrep team for a while about how to say thanks to everyone who agreed to chat with me. We settled on a gifting platform that allowed them to choose their own items from things like household supplies, clothing, outdoor gear, and the age old gift card.
I collected names, email addresses, and personalized notes in a spreadsheet and initially shared it with our co-founder in charge of operations and finance every two weeks for processing. Eventually, the team gave me admin access to send them out myself, which I started doing after each call.
Fortunately, I had allocated a “miscellaneous marketing” budget for the year, so these gifts came out of that line item.
Note: I grabbed a referral link for the gifting platform that is supposed to give you $20 upon sign up. I haven’t tested it!
Factors that contributed to success
Looking back, there were a few things that helped this interview series along. Some were strategic and international, others were a nice surprise that worked out for the best.
Starting on the month of new beginnings
I started my first round of outreach in January. Although I didn’t have any completed interviews to show as samples, schedules were clear, and everyone was eager to try something new. In fact, I agreed to appear on more podcasts for MyFBAPrep when asked in January.
By the time I start my next round of outreach, I will already have interviews with really impressive folks under my belt, so it’ll be easier to get buy-in even though the optimistic January glow would have worn off.
Starting with our close contacts
The nature of our founders and our business meant that MyFBAPrep as a brand was seen as warm and personal to the people we interacted with online, in trade shows, via LinkedIn, and for partnerships.
Many of the people I reached out to were friendly with MyFBAPrep, one of our founders, or had done some co-marketing with us before. This helped us get the ball rolling, and many of my outreach messages were paired with co-marketing updates.
For example, I’d let a partner know their blog was live on our website, and then mention we’re doing a new interview series and ask if they were interested in doing that as a next step.
The nature of the eCommerce logistics industry
As one of our interviewees, Steven Edelstein, said; “The industry is consolidating.” As companies and assets are sold and acquired, news, introductions, and anecdotes make their rounds. In eCommerce logistics, everyone knows everyone, and it plays in our favor.
Once I had the first handful of interviews done, many of the others I reached out to were familiar with our previous interviewees.
In subsequent rounds of outreach, I’d check the LinkedIn profiles of the person I was asking for an interview to see if we had any mutual connections that I’d spoken to.
Tip: Always send a LinkedIn connection request to your interviewees, podcast guests, show hosts, etc. Those connections act as endorsements if anyone they know looks your profile up.
What’s next?
In the coming months, I plan to repeat the process above with the remainder of our expert list. After watching the first few interviews, our co-founder has also requested:
- A custom background I can add to Google Meet with my name, title, and the MyFBAPrep logo
- More conversational responses from my side that mention MyFBAPrep, tying in what we do
- An intro and outro including our branding
My goal is to conduct and process eight interviews per month for the first three months, then one interview per week after that. I’d conduct an interview, process it the next week while doing another interview for that week, and cycle. That way, we have a new teaser in each week’s newsletter with a healthy bank of interviews built up.
The most valuable thing that has come out of these interviews for me personally is access to such knowledgeable experts in their field. I wouldn’t have had a chance to learn from them otherwise, and I’ll always be grateful to each guest for being so generous with their teachings!
Watch the interview series
Find MyFBAPrep’s playlist below!
Mid-campaign check-in
Hello all, it’s June 19 and I’m back to share a few mid-campaign results.
Most noticeably, there is a higher correlation between who views an interview and submits a contact form, versus who views any other blog and submits a contact form. We can see the graph at the bottom has a closer correlation between the two lines, versus the top graph wherein the contact submissions line doesn’t seem to follow the pageview line as closely.
Anecdotally, this initiative has become more of a brand and partnerships driver. Our partner manager has mentioned multiple partners expressing an interested in being interviewed, and our co-founder spoke with someone I had already interviewed who commented it was a good experience. Many of the people I spoke with had said the same to me directly after our chats.
I expect to decide within this year whether the interview series is worth continuing, outsourcing, or sunsetting.
Final update 9/16/24 – I’ve decided to deprioritize the interview series for Q4 to focus on peak. During this time everyone in eCommerce is scrambling to get in gear for BFCM and the holidays, and we’ve got a lot of supporting resources to create. In addition, the numbers didn’t convince me that the MyFBAPrep interview series was helping us gain leads at a better/higher rate than our other efforts, although they did help with brand recognition and conversion rates. I will continue to run interviews but won’t strictly stick to a schedule of one every other week. It will be worth continuing the program after peak, but likely in a different format. The next evolution of the MyFBAPrep Interviews will be combining them with our partnership efforts to start doing joint webinars live. Stay tuned to see how that experiment goes!
Published: Feb 26, 2024
Updated: June 19, 2024
Updated: September 16, 2024