Andy Frisella is no joke. While he was growing up outside of St. Louis, Missouri, Frisella sold anything he could get his hands on — baseball cards, lemonade, even light bulbs — cultivating the business skills he would later use to become a successful entrepreneur.
Dropping out of college to start his first business, Supplement Superstore, with a friend, Frisella didn’t take in more than $200 a day for his first 8 months. It took 7 years to make more than $695 in a month. Today, Frisella is the CEO of a family of brands that brings in more than $175 million a year in revenue.
How did he get there? Marketing plays a key role in the story. Here are 5 marketing strategies from Andy Frisella.
1. Marketing Is A Branding Game
Frisella believes that branding, rather than direct-response sales, should be the goal of any marketing strategy if your goal is to build a solid brand. While direct response has its place and offers instant sales, the key is to use branding and direct response in harmony. Frisella says, “The way [customers] buy isn’t, ‘I saw an ad for this company, so I’m going to buy their stuff now.’ They buy because they get familiar with your company.” He recounts the many times he invested in an advertising campaign expecting quick sales, only to be disappointed. He realizes now it’s because he was investing in short-term advertising for a product, rather than long-term branding of his company.
Frisella’s brand was created by slowly and steadily building a reputation among customers, not with quick-response advertising. He was dedicated to being a consistent and reputable vendor. Frisella warns business newbies not to be someone “who sells a product instead of building a company. There’s a big difference.”
Brief video from branding guru David Brier on what makes one form of branding successful and another unsuccessful.
2. Use Social Media Right
If you are building a brand, Instagram can be useful. However, Frisella advises against using it as a sales tool. “You should be looking at Instagram as a sort of introduction,” he says. Relying on a concept he calls “focused engagement,” Frisella uses Instagram and other social media platforms as a means to constantly connect and engage with customers, instead of expose his brand to them. Frisella focuses on “micro-influencers,” or accounts with 1-100,000 followers, rather than those with a million followers or more.
Frisella believes these smaller accounts are more likely to have an active, engaged community of followers, thus providing more “bang for your buck.” Frisella sees branding as building relationships with customers, and he knows to look for social media presences that actually have a relationship with their followers, rather than those that offer superficial exposure.
3. Avoid This Common Mistake When Using Social Media
Of course, Frisella has occasionally made mistakes with social media, and he doesn’t shy away from warning against its misuse. “Looking at Instagram as a sales tool...you’re never going to sell anything,” says Frisella. “I’ve tried.” Frisella says that he has gone the route of paying major influencers big money to simply expose his product to their millions of followers. However, representing a product none of their followers cares about is no way to actually sell your product. Don’t repeat this common mistake of confusing eyes on your product with interest, and keep your brand pointed toward “focused engagement.”
4. Relationships Are Currency
Branding is about building a community around your product. In his lean initial years, Frisella would go door to door to introduce himself to his neighbors and tell them about his store down the street. Now, even though he’s running a $175 million business, Frisella sees those personal connections as fundamental to his success. “For every relationship that you build, you’re gaining that person’s network, that person’s friends and family,” he says.
Those people will have a very good reason to try your product, because someone they like recommends it. According to Frisella, if you build a relationship, you’re going to stand out. Often, building solid relationships is all it takes to maintain a successful company that customers turn to again and again.
5. There Are No Shortcuts To Success
“When you plant a Chinese bamboo tree, you have to go out and take care of the soil and water the plant for 5 years before you ever see it sprout above the surface,” says Frisella. Making the connection to business, he notes: “People just don’t stick with things long enough.” This is Frisella’s favorite metaphor and one that explains his concept of “aggressive patience.” He says that he sees too many business and brands these days expecting instant gratification — whether it's a startup or 100-year old brand introducing a new product.
“Branding is slow,” says Frisella. “Branding takes time to work.” He remembers that many times he invested money in a branding campaign and prematurely declared it a failure. Looking back, he thinks that, had he been more patient, some prematurely curtailed campaigns could have been more successful.
