#60 Domantas Zilinskas & Sergei Dolinin – How to Start an eCommerce Business from Scratch and Scale to $100k/Mo in 3 Months

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In this episode, CEO & Founder Kris Sugatan chats with team members Domantas and Sergei about how Sugatan created their own brand from nothing and scaled it to $100k monthly revenue in just 3 months.

At the beginning of 2020, Sugatan decided it was time to start our own eCommerce business and Domantas was appointed to be the lead strategist and media buyer on the account.

In this one-hour conversation, we discuss the important fundamentals needed to start your own eCommerce business, as well as the practicals, such as generating quality content for your first video ad.

We share our mistakes and struggles, as well as our biggest success in this information-packed episode.

Check out Sleekier, our beloved eCommerce business that we started from scratch and scaled to $100k: Sleekier.com

Here’s what we cover during episode #60:

02:25 – The upfront investment and Kris’ involvement in the new business
04:55 – Domantas discusses the early stages of product research and testing
06:53 – Sugatan’s strongest quality as an agency
07:31 – Overview on the early success of Sleekier
08:55 – Discovering there was a problem and how it affected the Facebook account
09:18 – Running out of stock due to scaling too quickly on Facebook
10:18 – Discovering the category and niche for the business
10:46 – Thinking about what kind of audience you want to work with
11:44 – Why advertising on impulse channels affects which product you should choose
12:54 – Choosing the product for the business and what qualifications we were looking for
14:11 – Where AOV and COGS need to be in order to be successful on Facebook to a US-based audience
15:36 – The specific product we chose and the problem we are solving in the market
16:50 – Looking at demonstrability when qualifying brands inside of Sugatan
17:55 – How Sergei and Domantas navigated targeting US-based females and Eastern European males
18:57 – Ways of researching to understand the customer and their problems
20:28 – The importance of researching your customer for an eCommerce business
23:05 – Sergei describes his process for creating highly converting video creatives
29:04 – How we solved for getting the right content to be able to create highly converting ads and committing to an angle
30:03 – Why we work with actors over influencers for creating quality content
37:33 – How we created the first ad for Sleekier
38:10 – Every digital marketing strategy has a shelf life of 3-5 years
40:30 – Traditional marketing principles will always be the evergreen truth. Word of mouth and shared experience in a genuine way will always work.
40:52 – UGC will continue to work for those that are providing high-quality, exceptional UGCs
44:03 – If you don’t take care of the minor issues, no matter how convincing the video is, the UGCs won’t work
44:44 – Is hiring actresses to sell your product inauthentic?
48:34 – Why people are skeptical about reviews and why you should ask for UGC from your customers instead of a review
51:38 – How Sleekier is navigating the post iOS update world
54:43 – Sergei’s recommendation for those creating video ads from the ground up and the relationship between those ads and media buying
56:28 – The importance of getting input from other team members with a different perspective
57:18 – You have to have a system that activates the collective brainpower of your team
58:30 – Needing relational equity and synergy in order to criticize ideas for the collective good of the project
59:47 – The importance of reducing the synergy blocks to accomplish goals faster
1:00:47 – What’s next for Sleekier