Stephanie Valenti Of SmartBug Media On The Top 5 Ways To Market, Advertise & Promote An Ecommerce Business Today

An Interview With Eric Netsch

Organic Traffic: Organic traffic and content are the most profitable, long-term strategy to grow an e-commerce brand. This isn’t limited to just Google searches through blogs or video content. Brands are driving tens of thousands of views and customers daily through TikTok organic posts, YouTube videos, and even niche channels where their audiences live, such as podcasts or online communities.

As a part of this interview series called “The Top 5 Ways To Market, Advertise & Promote An Ecommerce Business Today,” we had the pleasure to interview Stephanie Valenti.

Chief Revenue Officer of SmartBug Media, Stephanie Valenti has 15+ years of experience building and leading B2B omnichannel organizations from 50 to 500+ team members across the U.S., Australia, and Europe. Stephanie leads sales, marketing, and all client services and delivery departments at SmartBug Media, including the e-commerce channel, with a focus on creating unity between revenue teams, fluency in the customer journey, and credibility with partners. With a passion for scaling teams, building processes, and cultivating a winning culture, Stephanie has a track record of success as an executive member of three record-breaking companies that boasted triple-digit growth.

Thank you so much for your time! I know that you’re super busy. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

My career path is a curvy one with some sharp turns along the way. I started my professional career with Staples Business Advantage, the B2B division of the office supply giant Staples Inc. During this time, I grew to have a passion for helping businesses save time and money and implement stronger buying processes. Starting in a business development role and then transitioning into leadership roles in various verticals such as account management and even project furniture, I had the opportunity to have visibility and insight into the benefits of an omnichannel organization and the unity of the experience if done correctly.

After almost eight years with the Staples organization, I earned my first executive role as the senior vice president of sales for Vari, formally known as Varidesk. I joined this organization when the e-commerce platform was driving hundreds of millions of dollars attracting both individuals and businesses to buy office furniture online. My task was to create a B2B solution for these ergonomic solutions and scale our revenue worldwide. After building the team from 40 inbound salespeople to over 170 salespeople across the country, I hung up my sales hat and joined Loftwall, a modular privacy company, as their chief operating officer.

This step in my career allowed me to diversify my background and lead the operational departments, such as finance, human resources, and operational manufacturing. I loved that team, our experiences, and the results we drove during my tenure. I had been in the future industry for over seven years and was ready for a totally different challenge; that is when I was connected with SmartBug Media. Today, I am unifying our customer journey at SmartBug by leading marketing, sales, and client delivery as the chief revenue officer.

Can you share the most exciting story that has happened to you since you began at your company?

As I transition into my second quarter with SmartBug Media, I would have to say that my favorite story lives within our internal mentorship program. I love mentoring others. Guiding someone through self-discovery in their career is truly a huge responsibility and one that I take seriously.

One of my mentees, who shall remain anonymous, came to me struggling to find her path. She is newer in her role, so it was not about wanting a promotion — it was truly about future planning. This is where I get to take my CRO hat off and just listen and guide. Through multiple sessions and homework assignments, she is now determined and filled with vision for her future. I get to do this multiple times a week with three different mentees — each with different challenges and growth opportunities. I look forward to these sessions and urge organizations to push for an official program.

What’s the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson did you learn from that?

Let me start out by saying that I love technology. SmartBug is a 100 percent remote agency, and I am a first-time full-time remote employee. It was my first week, and the company had an all-hands meeting to review the annual performance for 2021. I bought this fancy webcam that had a nice speaker built into it and had myself all set up. I get introduced, I come off mute, and my speaker puts one syllable on a loop. I cannot hear it, but everyone else sure can — the expression on their faces! Needless to say, I have changed my fancy camera/speaker to a different model.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?

About nine months ago, SmartBug Media acquired Worth eCommerce. In January of 2022, Worth eCommerce officially became SmartBug Media, and integration began. As you know, acquisitions are filled with processes and financial integrations, but the most challenging is the people integration.

Right now, my team and I are focused on truly coming together as one company. This includes role and responsibility alignment, team integrations, and — most exciting — new services for our e-commerce customer base. Worth was fabulous at partnering with Klaviyo and generalized retention-based marketing such as email and SMS services, but at SmartBug Media, our B2B teams had so much unexpected historical experience in e-commerce for paid media, SEO, CRO, content creation, and even website projects. By bringing the team together, we gain so much expertise that we can provide to our clients. When our clients hit their revenue goals, we win!

You’re a successful business leader. What are three traits about yourself that you feel helped fuel your success? Can you share a story or example for each?

1. Say YES! I have always been one to dive right in and, honestly, sometimes overcommit. Although sometimes this is a fault, it has allowed me to try more, fail more, and learn more than I ever could have if I had played it safe. A great example of this is the story of how I became the facilitator of revenue forecasting and annual planning at the CRO School with Pavilion.

I signed up with Pavilion about two years ago. Upon signing up, I raised my hand to be a cohort leader for a rising executives program. As a cohort leader, I was required to watch the sessions and walk the small group through a discussion on the topic. We got to the revenue forecasting course, and man, was the cohort group lost. The facilitator was brilliant — just not a great instructor. I provided feedback to the VP of the program, and she prompted back, “Well, how about you teach it?” At the time, Pavilion was filled with 90 percent SaaS leadership, and she wanted me to teach SaaS leaders how to forecast and perfect annual planning! I was not a SaaS leader!

Fast-forward, I said yes. I now teach and facilitate three courses for executive education through the Pavilion community and will be kicking off a new revenue planning workshop in August of this year. The exposure from this community provided me with an unbelievable network, which actually connected me to the CEO of SmartBug — and I think you know how that story ended.

2. People First! I learned early on in my career that if you focus on people, results are not far behind. I have had some fabulous mentors throughout my career and some not-so-fabulous leaders that have taught me how not to lead. I personally strive for continuous humility, transparency, and advocacy in my leadership style, which has yielded great results.

3. Never Stop Growing! I learned early on that in order to be successful, you can never stop learning. Curiosity is key here; read, ask questions, raise your hand and say you don’t know, listen to podcasts, seek out mentors, and repeat. There is no end here. Even when you are the CEO, there is still much to learn.

Awesome, thanks so much for sharing that. I want to shift gears and talk about eCommerce. In my work, I focus on improving shopper engagement, so I’m very passionate about this topic. As you know, mobile has taken center stage in terms of how people are engaging and transacting with eCommerce stores — leading a lot of stores to lean into mobile-first shopping experiences like mobile apps. Can you help articulate a few reasons why an eCommerce business should consider creating their own mobile app?

In this technology era, consumers have access to on-demand information and knowledge at their fingertips. On top of this, consumers are constantly being targeted through social media paid ads, paid search, SMS, and email campaigns. Of course, this is common knowledge, but it drives my point. We spend so much money attracting and converting our customer base, but what are we doing to keep our customer base engaged post-sale?

By investing in a mobile app, you get out of the customer’s cluttered inbox and into the world of notifications. Not only is the notification world a wonderful way to keep your customer base engaged with new products and discounts, but it can also elevate the customer experience post-sale with delivery updates and shipping notifications. Upsell and cross-selling opportunities soar, and unique applications — such as “try on now” virtual opportunities — are endless with your custom creation. The app becomes a direct line rich with data on your most engaged customers that, when done right, is as frictionless and fun as technologically possible.

The death of the cookie is going to happen. By 2023 marketers will no longer be able to track consumers online using third-party cookies. How do you think that will impact how businesses acquire and re-target customers? What can they do to pivot?

As rules and regulations tighten around cookie tracking in the coming months, I think it’s only natural that marketers are going to have to step up their game elsewhere, such as conversion optimization. We might be losing some insight on web visitor behavior in areas such as what source they came from, what they clicked on, and what products they are looking at, but that does not inhibit best practices around inbound marketing from really coming forward and shining. I have to believe that technology will step up in other ways to help buyers navigate the online shopping experience. Creative forms with really easy-to-fill-out and accept privacy policies will become the center stage for remarketing campaigns.

The cost of paid ads is at an all-time high. What are some alternative strategies to reach your target consumers that don’t involve paying a third party like Facebook and Instagram?

Before brands dismiss paid media platforms because of cost concerns, they first need to examine their data and consider key metrics that impact their likelihood of achieving a positive ROI. Specifically, they need to review their AOV (average order value) and/or their CLTV (customer lifetime value).

From there, the brand can develop a hypothesis of what their ROI could be based on a few key metrics combined with the cost of advertising that will have to be absorbed into their gross profit.

As an example, if you assume an average CPM rate of $10, an average CTR of 1 percent, an average conversion rate of 3 percent, and an average order value of $100, you would yield a 200 percent ROI. Without doing the math, you may have incorrectly assumed that the cost of paid media was unprofitable.

If a brand goes through the aforementioned process and determines that they are likely to have a negative ROI, paid media is not the best place to invest its budget. Instead, they could consider organic tactics such as SEO which will take longer to have an impact, but the cost over the long term is likely to be less than the cost incurred through advertising.

Organic social media marketing is also an option. However, most major social media platforms have intentionally decreased organic reach over time, which prevents brands from being able to maximize the reach of their audiences. As an example, if a brand has a million followers on Instagram, it is unlikely that its organic posts will reach more than 2–10 percent of its followers.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your experience and success, what are your “ Top 5 Ways To Market, Advertise & Promote An Ecommerce Business Today?” Please share a story or an example for each.

1. Social media could be the answer for all five of these (stories, ads, influencers, Reels/TikToks, swipe up): Paid media is still a driving force of growth for brands; Facebook and Instagram are still the most influential, followed by TikTok, Google Shopping, and YouTube. In paid media, ad creatives and data are king. Test multiple angles for different audiences, and let the machine algorithms do their work. Creative diversity can be video stories, brand videos, UGC, or influencer content.
2. Email Marketing/SMS: In the competitive e-commerce landscape of 2022, margins on a customer’s first purchase are slim. The most cost-effective channel to remarket to visitors or customers is through channels such as email and SMS, where the cost to get in front of your target audience is pennies once you’ve collected their contact information.
3. Comarketing Events: When brands first start, I think a great way to grow quickly is through the use of comarketing. For example, we had a client who sold athletic gear run a campaign with a peanut butter company that targeted athletes. They both got to leverage each other’s lists, and both benefited by gaining revenue and new subscribers. This works well with noncompetitors with similar market companies.
4. Organic Traffic: Organic traffic and content are the most profitable, long-term strategy to grow an e-commerce brand. This isn’t limited to just Google searches through blogs or video content. Brands are driving tens of thousands of views and customers daily through TikTok organic posts, YouTube videos, and even niche channels where their audiences live, such as podcasts or online communities.
5. Honestly, just create a good product: Solve an actual need, improve an existing product, and develop a winning formula. A good product drives referrals and is the key to lasting brand recognition. You can develop a fully built-out optimized referral program, but that’s pretty useless without a product that people will want to actually share or repurchase.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Our educational system does not focus on teaching our leaders of tomorrow how to be true leaders of people. Today, many leaders learn through a lot of trial and error, which results in unneeded emotional pain, low performance, and a whole lot of cost. Let’s start teaching our children how to be empathetic, vulnerable, transparent, and communicative. Let’s teach our students how to give and receive feedback. Let’s teach our students how to deliver change management and go through it.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

The majority of my work is in podcasts through a variety of hosts in the revenue operations and leadership fields. Connect with me on LinkedIn for weekly posts and articles.

I want to thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise with us. I wish you continued success!

About The Interviewer. Eric Netsch is the co-founder and CEO of Tapcart, a codeless mobile app builder that helps Shopify’s fastest-growing brands to create an owned marketing channel so that they can reach, engage, convert, and retain their audience without ever relying on another entity for access. Eric has been featured in TechCrunch, Business Insider, The Verge, etc. To launch your mobile app, visit Tapcart.com.