How to Build Authority in AI Search for Your Brand

Matt Edmundson (00:04)
Well, hello and welcome to the e-commerce podcast. My name is Matt Edmu````````````ndson and it is great to be back with you this week. And I'll tell you what else is also great. Great to be talking again to Alex. If you're a regular to the show, you will know that Alex has been on before just over a year ago. And we thought it would be great to catch up with all things Alex going on at Couch.

What has been going on the last 12 months? We're going to get into that. There are some fun stories coming up, so don't go anywhere. Make sure you stay connected with what's going on. Grab your notebooks, grab your pens, of course. And of course, if you don't have them handy, you can find all of the notes from today's conversation on the website, ecommercepodcast.net. They'll be on there. If you're subscribed to the newsletter, they will be in your inbox. And if you're not subscribed to the newsletter, why not? What's wrong with you? Get on the newsletter list.

It's a great place to be, especially now we've revamped it. ⁓ That is the best marketing I've ever done, Alex.

Alex Back (01:06)
We've ran, it's like those, under new management, those signs you see, you're like, all right, I'll try the pizza one more

Matt Edmundson (01:08)
Yeah,

yeah, under new management. I love that we should be definitely might need that on the podcast after me insulting people that aren't connected to our email list. But hey, this is memorable. At least it's memorable. But welcome to the show, man. It's great to have you back. How you doing?

Alex Back (01:22)
Ha

I'm doing well now. I've never been invited back to a podcast, so I don't know what you're thinking, but here I am.

For round two, I tried to wear the same shirt for continuity, but I just put it on. No, I tried, but it was too wrinkly. It was wrinkly.

Matt Edmundson (01:39)
Round two.

well done. Okay. It was too...

I think we're in the same recording location. I kind of remember the gold and blue behind you from last time.

Alex Back (01:53)
Yes, and I remember the purple LED Wonderland that you've got in your house, or recording studio, or wherever you are.

Matt Edmundson (01:56)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, man. It's a wonderful place to be, the Purple Land of Matt.

And it's not just purple on the outside. It's purple on the inside as well. That's all I'm saying. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. Don't do it too long. But it's good to have you back, man. It's been too long. And I enjoyed our conversation last time. And like I say, think Sadaf, who's the show producer, was like, we have got to get Alex back on the show, man. He's going to be... I'm really wanting to hear his story. So the whole team has been looking forward to it. So thanks for joining me again.

Alex Back (02:13)
⁓ interesting. ⁓ something to ponder.

Well, I'll just say one thing. I think I did about 40 podcasts last year, ⁓ on my sort of world PR tour of couch, the platform that I've been building for the last two years. And I enjoyed my podcast with you. You were, you'd be number one of 40. And I'm not just saying that I genuinely. So I was almost, I was not that surprised when.

Matt Edmundson (02:45)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Alex Back (03:04)
⁓ you guys reached out to me because I was already thinking of you. I think of you often whenever I see your stuff on LinkedIn or whatever, always give it a listen or give it a like. So thanks for inviting me.

Matt Edmundson (03:13)
Oh, sweetheart.

No, it's it's good to have you back. Good to have you back. You're definitely one of the guests that we remember as well. So well, let's jump into it. Just for those that might not know, maybe, you know, we do get a lot of first time listeners come into the show each week because it is growing, which is the purpose of the podcast and a warm welcome to you if this is your first time with us, by the way, it's great that you're here. Just let everybody know. The elevator pitch, what is couch? What what do people need to know?

Alex Back (03:39)
Yeah. So, ⁓ couch is a marketing platform for the furniture industry. Our goal is to connect the users or the customers. Why don't I take that? That's the tough one. Our goal elevator pitch. think the elevator just stopped and like, we have to call the emergency help. ⁓

Matt Edmundson (03:55)
It's a difficult word.

Yeah, just bounced a couple of times. Yeah, yeah.

Alex Back (04:08)
Our goal is to connect customers with retailers in an industry where both entities seem to have a very difficult time finding each other. Customers very rarely buy new furniture. It's something that we do only a few times in our lives, specifically a couch, right? It's something we generally keep for a number of years and only do a few times in our life, much like our weddings. know, some of us do it once, zero times, some of us do it three or four times.

Matt Edmundson (04:18)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Alex Back (04:36)
The ones that do it three or four by the end, you see by the end, they know exactly. They know the caterer, they have everyone on speed dial. So that's the kind of, so to bring it back, that's kind of what we're trying to do for customers, make it feel as comfortable to buy a couch as it is to have a third or fourth wedding. And on the retailer's side, marketing for furniture is a very difficult thing, really for the same reasons. Consumers...

Matt Edmundson (04:42)
Yeah, Yep.

Mm.

Alex Back (05:05)
only make these purchases a few times in their lives. They don't self-identify ⁓ very easily. And the cost of acquisition for a furniture customer for various reasons is extremely high. So ultimately our goal is to reduce the cost of acquisition for retailers ⁓ and both e-commerce and brick and mortar in the furniture space and reduce the time of conversion. ⁓

Matt Edmundson (05:09)
Yeah.

Alex Back (05:32)
by a good margin. And how do we do it? It's through content. We're making content for the brands that we work with. We're making content, ⁓ educating our consumers and users to make them feel more comfortable with their purchase, much like a fourth wedding.

Matt Edmundson (05:49)
first either way. Yeah. As as you're thinking, I'm remembering our conversation last time. I remember. I'm also remembering the fact that I have two couches in my front room, both of which are probably about 20 years old. think we've got them quite early in our marriage. And I've never even thought about replacing them. They're just comfy couches. You're just familiar parts of life really.

Alex Back (05:51)
Right.

Matt Edmundson (06:15)
⁓ and so I can see how there's some, some stuff to overcome over the, I can't remember when it was actually, maybe about eight months ago or so we, we had a guy called Dan, ⁓ Nikas, I think his name was on the show. Forgive me, Dan, if I got your surname wrong, ⁓ down from the land down under an Aussie guy. he, he was talking about how, ⁓ when someone goes and adds something to a basket.

They often e-commerce entrepreneurs, they like their abandoned cart sequences, right? So you put something in your basket and a few hours later you get an email. Later that day you get an email and the discount gets bigger and bigger, right? We've all experienced it. But he was talking about a couch company that he was working with and he understood that actually their buying cycle was much longer, much, much longer. And he figured, they figured out that if they sent the abandoned cart emails 37 days after...

I think it was 37, I can't remember the exact number, but it was something like 37 days after they initially put it in the cart, they had a much greater success rate because the buying cycle is so very different from, say, supplements, which is one of the things that we sell, right?

Alex Back (07:26)
is completely on target. ⁓ So I ran a popular ecommerce furniture brand called Apartment 2B for about 13 years, right? This was I took us through the dawn of the ecommerce revolution, ⁓ where people were still afraid to put their credit cards online back in the early 2010s.

Matt Edmundson (07:30)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Alex Back (07:50)
⁓ through the pandemic where people couldn't swipe fast enough to get new furniture delivered to them. So I've seen it all. But one thing remains, remains true throughout that entire process. It's a buying cycle, ⁓ specifically couches, and furniture. It's something very personal to people. It's not necessarily just the price tag. It is something that people, it's a high consideration purchase.

Matt Edmundson (07:56)
Yes.

Yep.

Yeah.

Alex Back (08:16)
And speaking of fourth weddings, it's something that generally requires decision making of two or more individuals. And I don't know about you, Matt, but as a divorced man, I know how difficult it is to get on the same page with a partner. ⁓ So it can take a long time. ⁓ Two to three weeks was our average. ⁓ 37 days sounds aggressive in a direction that I wouldn't expect, but I've seen stranger things work. ⁓

Matt Edmundson (08:21)
Yes. Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Alex Back (08:44)
The point is we have to hang on to these customers for a very long time. And as marketers, we know that if we're just consistently retargeting and putting stuff in front of them, it's both helpful and costly. We can spend hundreds of dollars marketing to one customer just to get them to convert on a thousand dollar sofa. So you really have to be careful. It's a very nuanced game.

Matt Edmundson (08:59)
Yes.

Yes.

Alex Back (09:11)
to be successful in furniture marketing. And that's what we're aiming to help people do.

Matt Edmundson (09:12)
Yeah.

So you've decided to do this with Couch and you're doing that through content, educational content, you're doing brand reviews, you're doing comparisons. I see there's a lot of videos and stuff now on the site. What have you discovered, I suppose, over the last 12 months content-wise that's really working for you guys?

Alex Back (09:37)
So I think the brands that we've worked with, so we make content for brands, right? Whether that's a product review ⁓ or something where we needle in on some of their top value propositions, ⁓ in-store visits for some of the brick and mortar. One of the biggest brands in the world is Ashley Furniture. We recently shot something for them where we go to their store.

Matt Edmundson (09:42)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Back (10:02)
⁓ we and me, you know, I'm sort of the host of, of for better or worse, of most of the content that we have. And, through my expert eyes, going through the store and evaluating, ⁓ my visit there, talking to employees, getting everybody talking and laughing in a very authentic way, but all centered around one specific narrative that they are trying to push almost as a PR related piece, which is.

Matt Edmundson (10:05)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Alex Back (10:31)
Ashley furniture for the last 15 years has been known as a more promotional, red cheap version of other furniture that's out there. And they've made a big push to make it actually a lot more, a lot better quality over the last few years, but people, but they have the stigma attached that's going to require sort of years of PR and changing consumer sentiment. So to have third party authorities like us go out there and tell a story that isn't them saying,

Matt Edmundson (10:50)
Right.

Yep.

Alex Back (11:00)
Please trust us, we swear the stuff is nice. I go into that store, I sit on it, I tell people what I like about it, what I don't. I tell them, I show them specifically where the value is. And this is an example of the type of content that we make for other brands too, where we basically show very clearly to people who otherwise aren't connecting the dots to their either customers are in the funnel or not yet in the funnel. We show these people what's best about this product or the brand.

Here are the value propositions that I see as an expert that you should see as well. Very much in the way that you have a podcast that guides people through certain topics and dives deeper into things that they may not have thought as much about and makes them more comfortable with it.

Matt Edmundson (11:42)
Yeah,

yeah, that's true. And are you doing this, like for Ashley, are you doing this content creation on behalf of Ashley or are you doing this as like a user generated content, like an independent third party or is it some kind of mashup between the two?

Alex Back (11:58)
They are lining my pockets, my friend. I am for hire, okay? I just want everybody to know if you pay me enough, no. No, it is paid, it is a paid collaboration. We've done a mixture of both. I mean, it's all for, we're a for-profit entity. I believe that we are providing a service and it's a very nuanced thing, right? Like we wanna be careful so as not to ⁓ just...

Matt Edmundson (12:04)
Ha ha ha.

Alex Back (12:27)
be just seem like we're all sponsored content. What we do is point out, you know, a pretty real and authentic view of what companies do best. You know, just much like, I don't know, have you ever seen the show Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives? This is like as American as it gets.

Matt Edmundson (12:31)
Yeah.

Yeah.

No.

Okay. I should definitely watch it. Yeah.

Alex Back (12:48)
So it's this guy,

well, should you? I don't know. No, it's very popular. It's this guy, his name's Guy Fieri and he has bleached white hair like this and he has a goatee. He's a very, very popular chef, but like a TV chef. He goes around to the diners, drive-ins and dives, like dive restaurants around the US and...

Matt Edmundson (12:51)
I

Yeah.

Alex Back (13:13)
Here's the place they've got the best chili in town and I'm gonna try it for myself and he goes in there But he's not showing like the dirt on the floor. He's showing them the best chili. That's what the people want to see What do they do best? He's not reviewing their worst product So there's a there's a fine line that we walk. But yes, it is all paid content We've tried to do it. You know, we do flat fee sometimes sometimes on a performance based model ⁓ So yeah, I can get into the details of that but

Matt Edmundson (13:24)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Alex Back (13:43)
That's a little bit less interesting.

Matt Edmundson (13:45)
So what have you, I'm curious in terms of you're trying to take this brand, Ashley, and reverse maybe the sort of the bargain feel that it's got about it, right? So you're trying to sort of rewrite the narrative in people's heads. The immediate comparison I have here in the UK is there's a car brand called Skoda. And when I was a kid, Skoda was like the worst brand, you know, I grew up never ever wanting a Skoda. You just associated that car

with like, can't afford anything else. I'm gonna go buy a Skoda kind of thing. Skoda is in a very different place now, very different brand. It's like Volkswagen kind of, you know, own it. There's a very different feel about it. It's a good family car. It's got a good branding about it. And you look at that and you go, that's a really interesting change they've managed to do.

And so I'm curious for you, right? You look at something like Ashley and they say, we need some, we need some content here. What's the strategy that you have to get them from where they are to, to where they want to be with their content? What kind of things would you think about them?

Alex Back (14:52)
First of all, we have a few similar brands in the car industry. Kia is one of them that has taken a 25 year, still on the path of a 25 year transformation. I think, first of all, luckily people know less about furniture than they do about cars generally. So you can change. I mean, if you wanna change a brand, even the biggest brand in America, Ashley Furniture. ⁓

Matt Edmundson (14:58)
Mm.

That's very true. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Alex Back (15:19)
I don't think people are like that dialed in that it's going to be that hard to achieve. I doubt it would take as much time, but you know, I think it's, it's a multi-prong approach. I think it's about on their side, you know, they have, they're, they're showing up to the party. It's not fake. They've made their products nicer. They're used nicer materials. I'm showing people, I'm taking off cushions. I'm showing them the insides. I'm showing them the zippers, the high quality zippers that they're using now, like that kind of stuff. I think just builds.

builds more trust and confidence in the product. But not only are we, you know, we're doing it sort of at least what we can do from our standpoint, we do a number of pieces of content every time we work with someone, right? So it's not just a one and done, right? We need to do, we need to hit it from a few different angles and on multiple different platforms, all in service of trying to be a little bit everywhere so that people will interact with us on, interact with the content of different platforms.

Matt Edmundson (15:54)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Alex Back (16:18)
But also, because right now as we move like a freight train towards AI led search as our main source of information as humans to inform the LLMs ⁓ and help mold consumer sentiment from the little soap box that we have to stand on. we're doing in-store visit was number one. We'll do a product review where we actually have a product with real customers in a home.

Matt Edmundson (16:26)
Yeah.

Alex Back (16:47)
where basically our goal is to basically tell the same story or the general narrative in different ways. Hey, look at the store here. The employees are loving the new look and these things are selling like hotcakes. Hey, look at these happy customers in their home. It's amazing. here's their credit card, the Ashley Furniture credit card. Like even though this stuff's a little bit more expensive, they have amazing finance offers where you can pay for it over five years. That kind of stuff.

Matt Edmundson (16:51)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah, that's great. That's great. It's a really interesting one, isn't it? And I think, I think there's a lot of ⁓ skill and talent in trying to rewrite a brand narrative like that. But I think the thing that I've learned, I suppose, is it's not a quick thing. You have to sort of think a little bit more medium to long term. And I like that phrase you said, a little bit of us everywhere. ⁓ Like you're doing all these different sort of ⁓ pieces of content in different locations. Do you think that's still important?

Alex Back (17:44)
I do. Well, yes. And I do for a very technical reason that has sort of re-inspired me. ⁓ I'll give you ⁓ an anecdote. The anecdotal story behind my current thought process is that ⁓ some point last year I said, man, we're not posting on social media anymore. Our engagement furniture, ⁓ furniture, social media engagement is abysmal for any brand. It's like, it's ⁓

Matt Edmundson (18:10)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Back (18:14)
It's just not there. are certain brands that do a good job of it, but, it's a bit too abstract to, to be interesting on a regular basis to people other than who are shopping that day. Okay. So that's an example of a decision we made. However, the way things are working with LLMs and, and AI search, we've seen a lot of success posting on different platforms. For instance, YouTube, YouTube I saw in the beginning of our strategy as

Matt Edmundson (18:20)
Yeah.

Alex Back (18:43)
a means of getting more traffic to our website, of boosting our organic rankings simply by having YouTube videos on most of the articles that we have, when in fact it is the YouTube videos themselves that have been ranking in Google searches far better than a lot of our content and perhaps more importantly, informing LLMs.

Matt Edmundson (18:59)
Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Alex Back (19:13)
So I saw a whole seminar about LLMs and sort of where they get their information. ⁓ Wikipedia being still the vast, vast ⁓ majority of information sources for LLMs. But Reddit and YouTube being first, being second and third and very close to one another. ⁓ Even though you can kind of put whatever you want out there, even if it's completely untrue, it still seems to...

Matt Edmundson (19:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Alex Back (19:43)
to be considered very heavily even over a niche publishing site like Couch is. So the YouTube videos themselves and some of the social media content we'll put out there now, because we've kind of started dabbling back into that, ⁓ is informing the LLMs and ultimately changing answers to questions like, is Ashley furniture good quality? Our stuff that we've written about that is showing up and is...

Matt Edmundson (19:49)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Alex Back (20:12)
changing and molding the sentiment behind it.

Matt Edmundson (20:16)
That's really incredible. I mean, really, really incredible. And I want to get into this a little bit if I can. want to dig into this. Before we do, I'm curious, how do you know that what you've done on YouTube and Reddit and social, et cetera, has actually influenced the LLMs, the large language models? Because it's not like Google Analytics, which can tell you, you've ranked from three to four now, right? So I'm curious how you figured it out.

Alex Back (20:46)
So there are some software platforms that claim to be able to rank and track your LLM presence, right? For instance, on Ahrefs, is sort of one of premier software products for tracking your organic presence and SEO, et cetera. ⁓

Matt Edmundson (21:09)
Yep.

Alex Back (21:14)
those tools will have sort of like give you a sense of how many times your brand is being cited in an LLM. So there are certain software tools that will give you an idea, but I'm in a networking group of some of the best content marketers and SEO professionals out there. ⁓ And we all, none of us, there's no sort of like... ⁓

There's no leading dog in this right now. No one's really trusting any of these tools yet. Now this may change very quickly or even by the time that this airs. So I think there are tools that are coming out that are really, really going to dial into the science behind this and the results. ⁓ What we do for our clients is after we'll post something, we'll send them a report at the end of the month of, here's...

Here's the sort of before and after. You measure the before of certain questions like is Ashley furniture good quality? We're not showing up in the citations. Then we write an article. One week later, we go back. We are showing up in the citations. There we are. And the consumer sentiment has been molded into a different. The answer has been changed. It's very delicate. It's not.

Matt Edmundson (22:30)
Yeah.

Alex Back (22:35)
You know, way that AI works, it's not going to show you the same thing every single time, obviously. So it's, it's abstract and it's tough to get brands on board with this, especially ones that aren't dialed into all this AI stuff. So it's a lot of education that we're doing to get people comfortable with what we're doing for them. ⁓ but at the end of the day, it is pretty incredible when we'll post something, put up a video, write an article. And then two days later, we see the.

Matt Edmundson (22:40)
Yeah.

Mm.

Alex Back (23:04)
answers on chat, GPT and Google AI mode being molded in the way that we want them to. So not saying it'll work forever, but so far for us and the authority that we've built over the last two years, I think is really helping to, push us into the top position of those citations.

Matt Edmundson (23:16)
Mm-hmm.

It's really powerful. And I think it's such a big thing, isn't it? AI search and we're going to, it's like we said before, we hit recording. This is one of those topics. I think that's not going to go away for a little while. and it, it almost feels a little bit like the start of the internet again, when Google came out, like, you believe what Google did? And then we all figured out how to get top of Google and then Google figured out how to not make it. So we knew how to get top of Google. And then this sort of dance happened, ⁓ several times, isn't it over the years, but, those that figured it out.

Alex Back (23:44)
Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (23:52)
certainly early days did really well as a result of it and staying on top of AI search I think is perhaps one of the biggest opportunities that we have right now. But it is slightly shrouded in mystery, which means it feels like you've got to stay on top of your game. I don't know if this is what you're finding.

Alex Back (24:10)
You're absolutely right. And it's certainly questionable, as we've seen from our content marketing brethren. ⁓ It's risky to have any sort of business model that is based on the algorithms of these massive companies like Google and Reddit and OpenAI. ⁓

Matt Edmundson (24:23)
Mm.

Alex Back (24:36)
So it is very delicate and very fragile in a way. ⁓ and at the same time, as you just said, there's a ton of opportunity there. So it's a gamble, right? Do you want to spend half your day trying to figure out LLMs? Well, it might change next week, you know, but are you trying to hit it right now? You know, it's, it's a gamble like so many other things. ⁓ at the same time, I see it all in service, like the time that I spend digging into all this stuff and

Matt Edmundson (24:48)
Yeah.

Mm.

Alex Back (25:05)
nerding out over LLMs is in service of my own education. I find that the people who were successful 20 years ago on Google, they still really understand it, whether they're doing successfully now or not. They're poised to ride the wave and apply that knowledge in other areas. So I see it as time well spent. However, I wouldn't say every e-commerce brand should say,

Matt Edmundson (25:26)
Yeah.

Definitely.

Alex Back (25:32)
Stop doing all your other marketing. Go into the room and don't come out until you figure out AI. Like, I wouldn't do that.

Matt Edmundson (25:35)
You

No, not yet, but definitely figure it out would be my advice. with I'm intrigued by it and I must spend like you a lot of time trying to figure it out because I'm, I am curious as to where it's going. And like you say, I think the guys that feed out Google early doors, yes, a lot has changed since then. ⁓ but actually the principles still remain the same. And I think, you know, it's easier to, it's, once you get the basics of it, it's easier to stay on top, isn't it really? ⁓ and so, yeah, just, just keep going with it. I'm curious. So you talked about, ⁓

YouTube videos, obviously they do rank well on Google, especially as people are getting more and more like, I just want to watch a video now. Google seems to be pulling them in more and more. AI is interacting a lot more now with YouTube videos and YouTube transcripts, especially figuring all of that out. Obviously you mentioned Reddit. What specific strategies have you found work well for you when you're thinking AI through YouTube, AI through Reddit?

Alex Back (26:39)
Okay, here's something that I think is very valuable for e-commerce brands and content marketers listening to this right now. This is my process for ⁓ creating content in an economical way that is very valuable ⁓ and works. ⁓

Matt Edmundson (27:01)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Back (27:03)
First I'll tackle Reddit, because that's a little bit, it's different. Reddit is a very tough nut to crack. I'm friends with some people who have agencies where they have acquired Reddit accounts that are aged throughout all different verticals, meaning that have sort of common points and expertise dating back 10 years, like.

Matt Edmundson (27:10)
Yep.

Alex Back (27:28)
If you have a 10 year age credit account, there's probably someone who wants to buy it out there right now, because that's the only way to gamify Reddit is through sort of this like really fake authenticity. ⁓ and it's, it's kind of a nasty game in a way, cause we're literally having to go, it's like take fake personas really is the only thing that works. Because as soon as you go on there as a brand and you say anything that somebody doesn't like, or they think is overly promotional, you're done.

Matt Edmundson (27:32)
Mm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Alex Back (27:57)
So brands going on Reddit is a little bit of a fool's errand. Like you need to work with a third party that has sadly figured out this game because Reddit's, know, gating is very, very good. But there are plenty of agencies and entities out there that can help you with this. And Reddit sentiment is very, very strong. And consumers really, really trust it. When they interact with Reddit, there's a reason it's the top dog. It's because they trust it.

Matt Edmundson (28:00)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Alex Back (28:26)
and there's a lot of threads about furniture, for instance, that are incredibly influential to purchases. So that's Reddit. ⁓ Here's the way that I do YouTube content and content in general. ⁓ If you've been listening for the past 20 or 30 minutes, you know that I'm a talker. So the words flow freely to me ⁓ a lot quicker than I could write them down probably. So I will generally...

make an outline for myself and I will start with a YouTube video. So I will kind of either voice take notes into some LLM like ChatGPT and say, hey, I wanna make a video about Ashley furniture. I wanna hit these value propositions and I want to really talk about these points. I'm an expert so I know what to say. I just need you to give me an outline that will be compelling so I can make a three minute video. I get the outline. I turn the camera on.

I look better than this generally. don't know why it looks so bad for you today, Matt. Don't take it personally. ⁓

Matt Edmundson (29:25)
No,

just me. It just means you're comfortable. I'm happy.

Alex Back (29:29)
So

then I start recording and I give it my best shot. ⁓ I give it a pretty quick edit. I send it off to an editor that is ⁓ or sometimes I'll do it myself if I think that I can handle it. I'll send it off to an editor with sort of links to where to grab B roll from other websites and other videos that some of these brands like Ashley furniture have created. And in a day or two, I get back an edited video.

The raw version, however, I make a transcript and I use that transcript to then create articles or at least outlines of articles in GBT. And I have a writer, my head writer that I work with and I'll say like, hey, here's the transcript, take this, these are all my words, make it into a compelling article. So he spends a few hours tinkering with it, personalizing it, editing it, making it into something that's pretty decent. ⁓ And usually they're quite lengthy because I have a lot to say. ⁓

But ⁓ we produce these articles, we have the video, we post the video on YouTube, we embed the video into the article, and we post the article. So we post them basically on the same day, within a few hours of each other. And then we'll often, depending on the thing, we'll syndicate that to YouTube Shorts and to all the other social media outlets. If you start with video, start there, it's much easier to back your way into having all this other content.

So if I had an e-commerce brand and I sold supplements, I would make maybe a daily video about some aspect of the supplements or something related to it that can then sort of back our way into a blog post. And then we're putting out a blog post and a video and we have syndicated social media content all because I turned the camera on for a few minutes and said what was on my mind as an expert in the supplement industry.

Matt Edmundson (31:28)
Yeah.

Yeah. Super powerful. And actually it's such a straightforward strategy, isn't it really? it, but so many people don't do it. And I, I, it's always curious, like with our supplement brands, ⁓ a head of marketing, Jen and I, we're going to spend, we've got the studio booked out for the next two days and we've just built a new studio, just invested 20 grand into a new studio. ⁓ I'm not saying e-commerce brands have to do.

Alex Back (31:53)
Let me guess, purple.

Matt Edmundson (31:55)
⁓ No, green. This one. This one's green. got some lovely couches in there as well. But it's a proper little studio we've invested in. Now, you don't need 20 grand, right? I'm just saying that's what we've done, because we recognize this simple process. A bit like with this podcast, we record the video, the video is on YouTube, the audio goes to Apple there. I've got the podcast, I've got the video.

We've got the blog post from the transcript and we've got all the YouTube shorts that come out of it. We've got the LinkedIn post. We've just one piece of content. I mean, I mentioned his name earlier, but the master of this, think is at the moment seems to be Alex Hormozi. So from one long piece of content, he gets around 150 pieces of content, which he can just is a machine, you know, and he's in your feeds all the time. You just think you just must record lots of content.

But he just, reuses everything really, really well. And it's quite an extraordinary thing to be able to do it. Just take a bit of a team if you're to do it that, know, that crazily. But I spent an hour recording this podcast. I actually edit the podcast myself, which sounds quite odd, but because I've had the conversation, I know what we talked about, right? It's just so much quicker and easier for me to go.

That's the blog post that I want. They're the social media clips that I think are going to work because of this, this, this, and this. And it takes me maybe 45 minutes to an hour after the recording. So within two hours, I get all of these pieces of content that we can use over and over again. Because let's face it, you know, especially with my voice, people have forgotten 60 seconds later what I said. So I can show them the same clip the next day and they won't even remember it. like, there's a fresh clip. But the strategy is just really simple, isn't it? It's just that...

start here with the video and it gives you all of this other stuff which you can then use. And I love how you use AI to help you get the structure or the outline at the start. You've understood that actually AI can be really helpful here and once it gives me something ⁓ that I'm sitting well with, man, we can hit the go button and that's when the magic happens.

Alex Back (34:16)
Yeah, I mean, that's all it takes. You know, there's so much in here, right? As there's so much that a value that we have. And there are so many challenges or obstacles that are in place to prevent us from getting what's here out into the world. And for me, what's worked for me is just while I'm driving or generally doing something else, because I have ADHD, going like this and saying like, okay, outline for this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I have it.

Matt Edmundson (34:19)
Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Alex Back (34:45)
And you go from there. Like finding

Matt Edmundson (34:46)
Yeah.

Alex Back (34:47)
the starting point is super important. The entry point into getting this and getting that first piece of content that you can then syndicate and use in other ways.

Matt Edmundson (34:57)
Yeah, super. One of the things that do, I, ⁓ which you may, listener may find helpful or not really. ⁓ I have an app on my computer. If I'm sat down at my computer, I've got this app called Aqua Voice. There's a few of them now, and it sort of transcribes what you're saying. and it's all very accurate. And so I will have Claude or whatever your, you know, your AI of choices. ⁓ and I will say, right, this is what I'm thinking I'm going to do in this piece of content. I want you to tell me.

what you think, I want you to act like someone who listens to the show, right? That maybe they're this type of person or this persona. What would they think? And so chat, chat GPT will then come back and tell me what it thinks. So quite often, I'm Steph walk into the office and they'll find me talking to the computer. think I'm on the phone, but I'm having this conversation back and forth with the computer because I find it much easier than typing. I just like you. just, I'm, I'm I like to talk. I like to process my ideas out loud.

Alex Back (35:54)
You?

Matt Edmundson (35:56)
I know who knew.

Alex Back (35:58)
Ha ha

ha ha.

Matt Edmundson (36:00)
And so I love it and I find it really helpful. And so I'm not having AI create the content. We're having the conversation, but I'm having AI help me almost like a coach in certain areas to try and get the best out of what it is that I'm trying to do. And I think that makes everything a bit of a late level playing field, doesn't it?

Alex Back (36:24)
Absolutely, and it's hard to break. This is what you're describing for most people would be a new habit, right? Not a lot of people are doing this, including me, and it's difficult. ⁓ There's oftentimes I'm typing a long text message, like, what am I doing? Press voice record. But as someone who's in their 40s and grew up in a different...

Matt Edmundson (36:31)
Yes.

Alex Back (36:48)
time period really and just I have these these lifelong habits and preconceived notions of how work needs to get done. I think yes, if the macro thing here is changing your habits to adapt to the new world, the new way of the world. And ⁓ I think we can all get it's like, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk, we're always like, this guy's crazy. He's doing everything in his car. He's decent. I did a podcast one time with him.

Matt Edmundson (36:54)
Yeah.

Mm.

Alex Back (37:14)
And he's literally, he's doing it on his phone in the car. Yup, yup, yup, with the seatbelt on. like, he's like, the screen goes off for a minute, because you know he's checking his texts. But the reality is he was adapting to the new way of the world. We're like, he's not sitting in an office talking to me with full focus. Well, he was fully focused and he was just doing, he was just working in the way that sort of the new world dictated.

Matt Edmundson (37:28)
Yeah.

Yeah, Yeah.

Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. Where do you see, where do you see the next 12 months going? What do you think is going to happen in this world of content for Couch? What you guys are doing? What are you excited about? What are you wary of maybe?

Alex Back (37:57)
I'm gonna answer that, but I'm gonna close my door, because all I hear is crows. They come once a month, I'm telling you. Have you heard the crows?

Matt Edmundson (38:05)
Yeah, I genuinely thought it was they were outside my window. thought, gosh, they're loud. I hope they're not coming through on the audio. ⁓

Alex Back (38:11)
No,

they're mine. My crows. Someone feed the crows! ⁓

that.

Matt Edmundson (38:19)
quite funny. I've never had ⁓ a podcast that's

been interviewed, ⁓ interrupted by crows before. I mean, that's a first right there.

Alex Back (38:27)
Well, they have access to my Google Calendar somehow and they always show up at the wrong times, Matthew. I don't know how they freaking know.

Matt Edmundson (38:36)
Huh?

Alex Back (38:40)
⁓ The next 12 months for couch. ⁓ It's a good question. before has never has there before been such a nimble business as couch, meaning like, we're almost like a pivot machine. I don't even know what our business is at this point. It's taken so many twists and turns. So how am I okay living in that chaos? Sometimes I'm not.

⁓ but I also feel like based on the things that we've talked about in the last, you know, 30 minutes, like that, you know, we're onto something where we're right there. we're providing a service. We are content has value. ⁓ we're learning how to use it. There are certain things that could hit at any second, like way bigger than they have before. ⁓ so my.

Matt Edmundson (39:15)
Yeah.

Alex Back (39:35)
my business sense slash gamblers mindset feels like we're about to hit that, you know, that next hand is going to be hot. So that's sort of like more emotionally what's going on. But the plan de jour is actually quite interesting. It's the brands that we're talking to, they're interested in our services, but the furniture industry is very, very difficult right now.

Matt Edmundson (39:45)
Mm.

Alex Back (40:05)
Especially in the US, they're all dealing with crazy tariffs. And when I say crazy, it's not like, they're so high. No, they're literally insane. They're just the game. There's games being played with industries, multi billion dollar industries right now that are out of everyone's control. So that's one thing that's creating uncertainty. The housing market in the US is another thing. Furniture, there's just the furniture market is down.

Matt Edmundson (40:10)
Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Yeah.

Alex Back (40:32)
So everybody's really still focused on the fundamentals and doing the fundamentals well enough to stay in business. lot of companies going out of business. ⁓ That being said, myself and my team, my business partners are one of them. It has a full stack development firm on the e-commerce side of things. And the other one had previously had a paid media agency that he exited last year. And so as a team, we're very dialed into

Matt Edmundson (40:32)
Right.

Alex Back (40:59)
e-commerce, e-commerce marketing strategy, and most of the brands, large and small, that we're talking to are actually looking for more. ⁓ So of late, I started positioning us more as a almost an e-commerce, excuse me, a furniture marketing partner, both for e-commerce and brick and mortar, where if a company isn't just wanting to focus on content marketing now, ⁓

Matt Edmundson (41:00)
Yeah.

Alex Back (41:26)
Yeah, we'll run your meta ads and Google ads, or at least consult on them and share strategies that have worked for us in the past. We'll audit your SEO and take a look at things. And for the furniture industry, it's particularly valuable because it's a very nuanced art, as we discussed earlier. I forget the Aussie fella that you talked about before, Dan. Dan's story about

Matt Edmundson (41:43)
Yeah.

Done.

Alex Back (41:56)
having abandoned cart at abandoned cart emails go 37 days after is proof positive of the fact that marketing for furniture is very nuanced art. And it's one that I'm personally very experienced in. And ⁓ I don't know, this is something that feels like feels like it makes sense for us to have this sort of managed services ⁓ aspect along with the platform that we have to amplify.

some of the narratives and messaging points that we're pushing through paid advertising and through organic for our brands.

Matt Edmundson (42:27)
Yeah.

Fantastic. I love it. And as you're ⁓ busy, as you're talking, I'm busy writing down my notes here. And I think if I was to summarize some of the things that I'm taking away from this conversation, Alex, number one, I think the thing that you have done very well without really vocalizing it actually is you've understood your niche. You...

You've not said, go understand your niche, but you talk about the furniture market with expertise. You talk about the furniture market with knowledge and understanding both of who the brand is like Ashley furniture, but also who the customers and what they want. And you're, you've understood how to bridge those two things. ⁓ very, very well. And I think if you're in e-commerce, which I assume you are, if you're listening to this podcast,

given the name of the show, ⁓ then understanding your niche is just like, it's hypercritical. And the other thing that you seem to be doing very well is just putting content out there and doing that consistently. And as you're talking, I'm thinking of an email I got the other day saying, congratulations, this particular article on one of your websites has had over many tens of thousands of views this week.

But that article is five years old, right? It's taken a little while for that article to take off. Some of them do it quicker. Some of them don't ever take off. there's this thing about consistency, isn't there? That where water hit in the wave, the water eventually wins. Sorry, the water hit in the rock, the water eventually wins, right? Over time. And the third thing I love is, what did you call yourself? We are a pivoting machine.

And I love that you're adapting, you understand the market and the times that you're in and you're adapting in so many different ways. And I think that's such powerful lessons for all of us in e-commerce.

Alex Back (44:32)
Yeah, I mean, look, if you have a formula that works, fantastic. My former business, we were extremely successful, just ground and pound. We kept doing the same thing that worked over and over, and that was successful for us. But I think most businesses, especially ones that are not yet established or new brands that are emerging, if you don't have that, ⁓ there's no shame in changing

Nobody cares. Nobody knows. We have this sort of self-centric view sometimes of like, no, we can't change this. brand will, everything will be different and all of our, I don't think anybody really cares. ⁓ You know, if you have a supplement company and people are not hot on fish oil anymore and you need to switch over to biotin, well, you can switch over to biotin. I'm here to tell you, nobody really cares. Even if they know you as a fish oil people, you can do it.

Matt Edmundson (45:03)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Back (45:31)
So sometimes just knowing that it's okay to change something about your business, I think is very powerful.

Matt Edmundson (45:39)
Yeah. Yeah. Alex, listen, again, loved the conversation. I'm aware of time. It has just flown by a million miles now. If people want to connect with you, if they want to reach out to you, what's the best way to find out more about you, about couch, where do people go?

Alex Back (45:55)
⁓ actually I think finding me on LinkedIn is the best thing. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and, ⁓ very, very communicative. As long as you're not spamming me, then I will reply to you. So Alex back on LinkedIn, aren't too many of us look for the one that looks like a furniture guy and talks about couches a lot. That's probably me.

Matt Edmundson (46:11)
Hahaha

Yes, there's a good, there's a good, good chance that it's you. We will of course link to Alex's LinkedIn in the show notes, ⁓ which will be either below the video if you're watching on YouTube, or they'll be on the podcast platform of choice, which you're listening to this on. And of course they'll be in the email if you're subscribed to that email. And if you're not, why not? My best marketing line ever.

Alex, really appreciate you, man. Appreciate the conversation. Thank you so much for coming on again. Absolutely loved it.

Alex Back (46:49)
My pleasure. See you next year.

Matt Edmundson (46:52)
⁓ yes, absolutely. We should do this again. But ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us. That's it from me. That's it from Alex. I hope you have a phenomenal week wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.