17. E-Commerce Growth: Ads and Opportunity with Antoine Gagné, Founder & CEO of J7 Media

Antoine Gagné of J7 Media was born to navigate the dynamic tides of Facebook ads. He hit the ground running while still in school, promoting local clubs through Facebook Events when he was just 16. When he was 18 he started an ad agency.

Four years later, he bought his partner out and beefed up the agency with new creative and media teams that now manage $3 million in Facebook ads a month. He's also the host of the Hypergrowth podcast which is well worth a listen for e-commerce brands looking to reverse engineer the success of the best. He also hosts the Social Selling podcast where he discusses trends and strategies in performance marketing across social and e-commerce platforms.

What to listen for:

• Listen to how Antoine talks about some of the most successful brand campaigns his agency has managed. He explains how brands bringing something to the market that others don't are the ones who see hypergrowth. "There will always be saturation for products that always exist," he says.
• "Companies with success on Google don't necessarily have success on Facebook," Antoine explains. Consumers looking for a service or good on Google are already researching the solution a brand offers, whereas Facebook ads take a different targeting approach. Listen in to hear how Antoine advises brands to bridge the gap.
• Changing regulations (like the new iOS and new tracking regulations on Facebook) have forced brands to re-work their strategies in a big way. "Last year we lived in a bubble where everyone was buying stuff online," Antoine says. "But now, e-commerce brands have hit a wall."
• The recent Facebook crash (those fateful six hours without the platform or the company's other platforms) was a big wake-up call for brands. "Double down on Facebook if it's working for you," Antoine says. "But be ready to shift...put the time in now on other platforms like SMS and email." This agility is what brands need for their long-term marketing strategies to see real hypergrowth.
• Facebook is trying to tap the "Amazon phenomenon," as Antoine articulately describes over the latter half of the interview. Facebook wants the same complete data that Amazon enjoys, where advertisements and final clicks to "buy" are all on the same platform.
• How to drive traffic is one thing, and how to drive qualified traffic is another. "Don't try to outsmart the [Facebook] platform," Antoine assures us. "You don't tell Facebook, 'target the 28-year-old who lives 5 km away,' you just tell Facebook: 'find purchasers.'" Listen to the full episode to hear how Antoine describes what brands should really be doing with their time instead. "You spend all your time crafting a good landing page and the fundamental messaging element of it, then let Facebook handle the targeting."
• Antoine and Nate talk about the impact of the holidays on sales and ad bid costs, too. "It's definitely not business as usual," Antoine says. Q4 is the quarter where advertisers spend most of their money, and it's only well spent if it's strategic. Facebook is a bidding platform, which means everyone else is bidding more in Q4, and what brands were doing before suddenly might not work. Listen to the full episode of how Antoine advises brands to get around that by "creating gigantic retargeting audiences."