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Show Notes

Are you feeling stuck in your ecommerce business? Do you want to take it to the next level, but you’re not sure how to do it? Well, you’ve come to the right place. With marketing matchmaker, you can take advantage of listening into a marketing strategy session with my friend Nick. This strategy will show you how to drive more traffic, increase sales, and catapult your brand to success. It’s time to stop dreaming and start doing.

Connect with Nicholas Zellem

Website: https://czarclothing.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CzarClothingCompany

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/czarinaclothing/

Want to Work with Jennifer and her Virtual Marketing Experts Team?

Are you a coach, consultant, or online course creator who are looking to grow your business, increase your income, and scale your impact? Connect with me at YourMarketingMatchmaker.com I look forward to hearing from you.

Jennifer Tamborski 

Hey there, everyone. Welcome back to Marketing Matchmaker. If you have not been following me in the last month or so, we are doing strategy sessions with our audience members, just helping people that are struggling with their marketing, get ahead and get some new ideas and thoughts behind that.

So today I have Nick Zellem on and he’s actually the founder of czar clothing, which is a trademark brand that specializes in high quality athleisure wear for men and women. He moved to Texas and acquired a degree in business, a business degree in entrepreneurship from Baylor University before embarking on a successful career in technology, technology sales. I am having a hard time talking today. Nick conceptualizes czar clothing over 10 years ago, but didn’t formally start the company in 20 till 2016. And I would love to dive in to all things Czar Clothing with you, Nick, tell me a little bit about how did you get started? And why do you get started with dark clothing to start with?

Nicholas Zellem 

Sure. I mean, part of my Eastern European heritage wanted to be able to celebrate that I am Russian. But the concept necessarily is not Russian. It’s really about building your own empire building yourself. And whether you know, you’re a marketing expert that has their own business, or if you’re an astronaut, are you gonna count, we’re a teacher or salesperson, you’re building your empire, right? Your family, your job, your career and your life. And so we really want to align with basically people to help them build their empire and give them some motivation. And obviously, give them some comfortable clothing to wear. Whether that’s around town doing things or going to the gym.

Jennifer Tamborski 

You so before we hopped on you were telling me about your struggles with getting your trademark. And I know that was a long process, but you were really determined to get the trademark Czar. And Zarina. So tell me a little bit about why that’s important to you. What’s the story behind Czar?

Nicholas Zellem 

Well, I think the trademark for a few reasons. Number one, I wanted to be able to when I build the business or as I build the business, I don’t want somebody come and say hey, you’re in violation trademark, he had to shut the business down. Right. So I wanted to make sure that we had that and we were able to get that. We got the Czarina the trademark office of there was a conflict was arena, we actually contacted the person that had the quote, conflict. I mean, some of the things the trademark office thinks is of the same thing. I’m not sure. I think if they saw, you know, a rock and a rosebush, they would say that’s the exact same thing. But that being said, so the first person was Czarena, we worked it out, had a coexistence agreement. The second one was owned by a person that was an NBA coach, and it’d be an NBA announcer.

And basically, his attorney or he were not real flexible to work with us. We tried to reach out and I told him what my goals were. He wasn’t using it. And if you’re not using it, just like abandoning a child, he abandoned his trademark. He showed no effort to use it for 30 years, right? Not now, this isn’t, you know, 10 minutes after he got the domain or I’m sorry, didn’t have the domain. But after he started using it, in any regards, didn’t use it.

We tried probably 40 times for to work together coexistence. I don’t think the messaging got to him. His attorney I think was probably getting five $600 An hour and she’ll go out and she was phenomenal at obfuscating the message for seven years. And so finally, they gave up after seeing how much money he was going to spend.

And I think he just got a little frustrated and they gave up withdrew their withdrawals. But it was kind of an interesting story because it number one, it took long, but the the person that that attorney, she was a little bit crazy. And so it’s kind of a funny story, when she withdrew, and she had a bunch of things that she had said, but when they withdrew, basically they told the trademark office that my attorney and I were working directly with the Russian government and Vladimir Putin to steal their trademark and why would the trademark office provide a US trademark to Russian spies and people who are working with a hostile government. That week, couldn’t they put this this is what she submitted to.

And she also at one point, had said I actually talked to this person on the phone very nice guy we were gonna about ready to work things out. And then as attorney got in the way, and basically when we had the conversation, we were gonna get back on the phone and work everything out. She had told the trademark office. This is probably three or four years ago that my attorney and I had. They’re in their homes, hovering scared, because my attorney and I had threatened them. We had hired Russian hitman to hunt them down and to kill them. I mean, it’s, there’s so many other stories, oh, this lady’s imagination was just beyond. I mean, it was just in my attorney told me at the end of this because you know, Nick, trademark and copyright law. I’ve been doing this for 30 some years, it’s very, very boring.

He’s your case, your most exciting thing I’ve seen in my entire career. I was like, wow, I felt special. But but you know, and he commended me on my determination and persistence. Because I have a vision, you know, we’re where we want to be. I mean, it’s got to be Czar, and Czarina, you know, and so, through some persistence, determination, and a whole bunch of money, I have a law firm working on this for seven years. But I see a goal, but that’s eventually we got it and, and we were awarded the trademark, and we’re moving forward

Jennifer Tamborski 

definitely had the determination for that. So you said you have a vision for the business, tell me what your vision is like, what do you want this, this brand and this clothing line to be?

Nicholas Zellem 

Sure. I mean, I think we have to take baby steps and take things one day at a time. So we certainly want to build this to be, you know, a couple, you know, multimillion dollar business you may have, initially, the goal is, you know, five to $10 million dollars, which I think is very achievable. In what we’re what we’re doing. And then from there, we can kind of, you know, take it from from the next steps and right, could it be 500 million or a billion dollar, multibillion dollar brand down the road?

I mean, if you look back 50 years ago, Nike was making shoes and literally a waffle iron. Literally, have you seen the movie free? And that’s the mean is amazing, because I’m thinking the stuff that we have is way beyond what they did 50 years ago. And if we go from, you know, starting from here, we you know, there’s a lot of things we can do. We were already ahead of where they were.

And so I’d like to initially see it grow to five to $10 million, this potentially because right now, it’s a side hustle, this be my potential, my real job, and then grow it from there. And I think, you know, eventually maybe we look at venture capital and some other things, because I think there is room for I mean, the athleisure market is still growing. It’s three $400 billion. Yeah, and I think there’s room I mean, are we going to overtake some of these other big guys? Maybe probably not. Maybe?

Jennifer Tamborski 

The goal, though, like, is it? Oh, no.

Nicholas Zellem 

Yeah, for us to get our messaging out. But I think I think my my point there was that I think that there’s room for other players, I mean, there’s market share, to be had. And that does, that may not even mean that, you know, some of these other bigger players lose market share. Because just the growth, I mean, even if we just got a fraction of the growth, but that’s really the goal in the near term.

Jennifer Tamborski 

Yeah. Okay. So let’s talk about the marketing that you’ve done. Recently, what has worked in your marketing, like what has gotten you out there? So far?

Nicholas Zellem 

So four years ago, the website went up in 2019. The website went up, and we had 10 shirts, no content, it was like, here it is. And then was like, Okay, where do we go from here. And then we did my first shoot here locally, I have a friend that I met at the gym, and she did some modeling. And so we had her do the first shoot. And that was really kind of my first foray into get getting content, I want to things that I had some challenges with Facebook, with privileges, having some other people work on my account. It got locked for a while. So one of the nine months, and I had to go through some pretty dramatic stuff to get it reopened to open up because nobody can call.

So but my strategy is to proliferate across a lot of different platforms. I mean, we’re on all the major ones. I have Czar Czarina, for most, and then some accounts, I just have a consolidated one. But I mean, we’re on your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, tik, Tok, Instagram, obviously, all of them, the ones that you think of Pinterest, and then we’re on some maybe whole rogue sites or some other sites, you know, bid some video sites like Bitchute, Rumble, we’re on gab. Because there’s a market, there’s people there. And, you know, maybe we don’t get a million people, but maybe we get 10,000 here, 1000 here, 500.

There, you start collecting that up, and we’ve got 20 or 30,000 people and my LinkedIn is extremely mature. So we’re leveraging that. But at first I was trying to proliferate that I figured out kind of a system for content creation, right? A lot of challenges with photographers, lots of challenges with photographers. But what I’ve found is on Fiverr, and a couple other sites, I found models around the world. It does cost a little in some way it costs a little bit more just because of the shipping and some of the taxes, but I’ve kind of a number of great models from Ukraine and they’re actually living in France and Vietnam, in Italy, Belarus, I’ve got models in different parts of the world. I basically figured out what what they’re gonna model we figured out financial how much they’re gonna get paid. And then basically they do the shoot, I send them the clothes, they do the shoot, I pay them and then they send the content.

And that’s that’s worked out really, really well. I don’t know if it’s just I found some great responsible models. And some of them I’ve done six, seven projects with and there’s three or four that we’ve done a bunch. And anyways, but that’s worked out very, very well. The other thing that we started doing about seven or eight months ago is I wanted something to represent and align with some sports. I know that like NBA NFL are pretty heavily sponsored by some of the big guys, right?

Yeah, I wanted to go like Sam Walton kind of go where the other the big guys are not going. And so we really found some connections for amateur MMA. So there’s a number of leaks here locally. We are actually grateful enough to be introduced to a fighter name Omar Amahi, who’s a Palestinian fighter. He fights under James McSweeney. James McSweeney is kind of a legend in kickboxing and MMA. So we started sponsoring him and develop relationship with him and James McSweeney. Now, we’re sponsoring a couple other guys, and a couple of things that we do when we sponsor them as one. But you know, the famous walkout, right when they come out from the gym, they do their walk out there wearing our shirt, right.

And oftentimes, when they when they’ll do a quick shout out, but I get them to do a post. And then I also get them to do a photoshoot, we kind of meet them, typically after they’re working out, we go to the gym, I show up with a videographer, or we get some video and some some footage. And I try to get them to say something like, you know, I’m Tsar Omar, or build your empire or something around building your empire, because that’s the premise for what we’re doing is to encourage others to build their empire.

And I think those couple things have worked really well from a content perspective. And from there, we need a lot of help and other areas, particularly social media, with some of those platforms, because I still haven’t figured out the algorithm and how to be successful on that. But we know in Tik Tok and Instagram, we’ve got some good some good followers, and Facebook and LinkedIn, I’d naturally have built over 20 some years. A good following, but we’re looking for ways to improve there and, and obviously conversion rates.

Jennifer Tamborski 

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So when it comes to like your content, how often are your posting what you know? What are you? Are you posting video? Are you posting just like static images? What are you posting?

Nicholas Zellem 

Mostly video, I tell them models, typically 75 to 80% video. So I get 50/50 Sometimes or 75% pictures. But we really focus because video is the future. Absolutely. That’s why Yeah, Instagram is adapted in now even when the vertical format like YouTube and LinkedIn, kind of using that for that where they have put some stuff on the side. So it doesn’t look just kind of bare, right with the sides of that. So I think they’re, they’re starting to cater for that. And so we’re shooting mostly in vertical for Tiktok, and Instagram and some of the other platforms.

So but I think video is the future, we create posts, some of it’s just an individual clip, you know of them the model. But sometimes I have a number of I can edit, I have a number of editing tools, I probably have about a dozen tools I use to edit and cut video. And some where you just provided 20-30 clips, 50 clips, and that spits out a good clip for 20 seconds. And then there’s some that I edit, I’ll take and editing a 32nd clip sometimes can take four or five hours, if you want to do a really cool job, right?

That’s where some of those applications where you can just feed it to pictures, and video. And I think it’s good to to kind of mix those. Because the picture kind of gives you a freeze frame and kind of focus in on something, the video gives you some movement. And I think when you do that, and I have a background, I have a DJ company and a DJ. So you’ll notice that the music that we aligned with that is usually on par on beat. And you know, maybe when when the song kind of like cuts and kind of changes momentum, you’ll see some cut in the visual, and then try to match it with the beat. Let’s do a lot of house music, electronic music.

So oftentimes when that break beats, then we’ll have a quick change up of a whole bunch of quarter second half second, photos that kind of meet match the beat. But you’ll notice if you follow us a lot of stuff around music and I have a couple sources for music. Some of my friends have given me some songs, I use some of the Instagram stuff that’s it’s pretty good. If you’re allowed. Yeah. And then I use artless.io, which is a great platform. I don’t use their video stuff yet because they offer on a B roll. But their music is really good. I mean, there’s some stuff on there. It sounds like it could be Jay Z or Beyonce or, you know, some of the house music artists, it’s really good stuff. And so we use that in kind of in combination.

I post just about every day if I can typically don’t miss too many days. And I try to do some different things stories are easy to upload. So typically don’t don’t miss that. One of the biggest tricks is with Instagram as getting your clothes in with the catalog in Instagram, so you can tag it. And I’ve had some challenges around that they’ve made some changes. Yeah, yeah. And so, so anyways, but that’s, that’s what we’ve been doing from a posting perspective, there’s still a number of things, some big things that we need to do, that I’m well aware of, we’re going to redo the website at the end of the month, gonna start.

And so with that, SEO, SEO, we SEO, the site and plus the site, four years old, we’ve made some modifications here and there. But some major changes need to be made, mostly aligning with with Google, and then getting the catalog in there. And then SEO is absolutely critical. And it’s just, you know, baby steps right there. It’s, there’s always something there that needs to be done.

Jennifer Tamborski 

So have you because they think your strategy going forward is similar to fixes were in because I, for those that you don’t know, I don’t know if that I mentioned, but Nick was introduced to me by Fitz, who was one of the first people that I did a strategy session for on this. And with him, we were talking about using other people’s audiences. And I think that’s really where you’re going to excel, you’ve already kind of started doing that by sponsoring some of these people in the MMA, but looking for influencers on Tik Tok on Instagram on you know, the platforms that have millions of followers out there that you can sometimes pay or offer free clothing or whatever that is that works for that is going to get you put in front of them, especially if you have an I don’t know the price points for your clothing.

So I don’t know if this is viable or not.

This thought but if you have some kind of affiliate fee, right, so every for every shirt that’s sold under their name, they get $1, or whatever that might break down to that’ll really get you out in front of and start really pushing your brand.

Because I think what you said earlier about not figuring out the algorithms is reality, right? Like the algorithms, nobody’s ever going to figure out, we’re going to be honest here. They’re changing constantly. That’s not something in somebody’s going to figure it out. There are people that are do a really good job of it. But they haven’t, like hacked the algorithm. They’ve just put enough time, energy and effort into growing their audience. Right.

So looking at an influencer, I would say is step one in that step two would be to use some of your content and run traffic to it, whether they’re Facebook and Instagram ads, tick tock ads, Pinterest ads, whatever ads platform, if you run just kind of visibility ads there, because you can run that for really low cost. You can spend like $5 a day and get 1000s of people to see your brand.

Nicholas Zellem 

Does it make a difference? Basically, what your goal is, when you advertise on Facebook, if you tell them I want conversion, it’s one price and visibility. So if I just say I want people to my site, yep. Different price than if I say I want conversion. Yep.

Jennifer Tamborski 

Yeah, it actually is more expensive to ask Facebook to find people who will buy from you. That being said, if you get people to your site, and your site is good, and your product is good, and all of that they’re gonna buy just because they’re getting, they’re finding something that they’re interested in. But yeah, you can run traffic ads, where it’s really low cost per, you know, day of spend of ad spend on each of the platforms. And you can do it on all of the platforms.

I mean, if you’re spending $5 a day, per platform, and you do Facebook, and Instagram is one platform, Pinterest, Tiktok, maybe YouTube ads, like those types of platforms, where you’re going to target your audience more. I’m not gonna say your audience isn’t on LinkedIn, but I have a feeling your audience if you’re targeting people that are following MMA and following your audience is more of a younger demographic. They’re not spending a ton of time on LinkedIn. They’re on Tik Tok. They’re on YouTube, they’re on on Instagram. They’re not even on Facebook, really. They might be on Pinterest.

But the reality is if you can run ads to those you can reach a whole lot of people for not a ton of money. And I think that’s where you’re going to get your biggest bang for the buck the influencers and then just running low cost ads throughout for for a while.

Nicholas Zellem 

Yeah, and with the rebuild of the website, I’m going to make sure that we have the capability to generate codes for anyone, right? The MMA guy we’re sponsoring, I’m gonna give them a code and say, Hey, here’s, here’s the code. It’s under your name. Gonna get 15% off. Yeah, so we’re gonna give you X percent. So You can use it or not use it. And give them that option where they can indirectly make some money. Just by help promoting it. I think that’ll give some motivation, because I don’t Yeah, I’m not really paying close today.

Jennifer Tamborski 

Exactly. If you look at people like let’s just say the Kardashians that have a bazillion followers now, I would not suggest trying to hire the Kardashians, I think it’s like a million dollars for them to post something for you. However, when they post things, they blow up why? Because they have a huge audience that are dedicated to following them.

So that’s what you’re really looking for are those influencers that I have a big audience that follow them that have in the past successfully done influencer marketing and pushed your you push products to their audience and, and that’s really how they make their money influencers don’t. They’re starting to make money via content.

That’s something that Facebook introduced the last couple of years. But prior to that, that wasn’t how they were making money. They were making money by pushing whatever product that they thought their audience would like. And so if you find those type of people, that’s that’s a good way of using other people’s audiences. And the paid traffic is a way of creating your own audience. So those are, those are the two I think strategies that I would suggest that will help to lift your brand and get you out there in front of people.

Nicholas Zellem 

Okay, yeah. And we’ve also done a little bit of sponsorship work for one of the local amateur MMA leagues. You know, that’s somewhat expensive. I’m not sure what the ROI is on that it’s hard to track that. Right. And that’s where I think, you know, sponsoring the individual fighters will still work with the league’s I think long term, we’ll probably still do some things, because it will be cool, we have two or three fighters come out with our shirt, yeah.

And then maybe the corner posts on the ring, as soon as our clothing to help reinforce it. So they’re seeing it maybe on the screen, they see the fighters, they see it in the ring, because people need to see things 5-6-8-10 times, right. Until, until it really

Jennifer Tamborski 

Sometimes more than that. That’s really why part of our strategy with client with our clients is to have multi layers of ads running, those really big visibility ads are just to keep putting people in front of, you know, putting you in front of other people over and over and over again. Because in this day and age, it can take hundreds of times before people are ready to end those hundreds of times could actually depending on how long someone plant spends on social media, it could just be one day. But it’s really about getting you in front of as many people as often as you can. So they’re they’re more prepared to buy.

Nicholas Zellem

Yeah, and more hope and some targeted people, right people who are

Jennifer Tamborski 

very Yeah, it’s very targeted. So you want with the influence use, you definitely want to understand who their followers are. Right? Are they? Are they people that are would be interested in your brand? Like, is this a good marriage? The other side of that is when you rebuild your website, and you have those codes and all of that kind of stuff. Tracking is going to become essential for you long term because like you just said, you don’t know what the ROI is, if you’re not able to track it. And if you’re not if you don’t have those codes or anything, you’re just kind of guessing on where purchases come from.

Nicholas Zellem 

Yep, yep. And again, SEO right, where we can get some traffic. People who are looking for pink sweatshirt or pink crop top.

Jennifer Tamborski 

Yeah, SEO is a long game. Yeah, SEO can definitely help with that. SEO is a long game. So as SEO takes time, it can take six months to a year before your SEO is actually working well enough to start bringing in sales. That’s where we use paid traffic to kind of lift that and and boost, boost it a little bit to get people coming first. And then allowing SEO to kind of over time start doing its magic. Yep.

Nicholas Zellem 

Agreed. I definitely agree with you on that. All those things. So yeah, I think we have something called a pixel on the site where you can do this actually some tracking,

Jennifer Tamborski 

right? Yeah. So your pixel will come from Facebook. So Facebook’s pixel. It’s just a little bit of code that comes from paste Facebook that you put on your website. And then Facebook can track places where you go. If you there’s also code from Google, like your Google Analytics that you also want to embed in there.

When we run e commerce type of ad, which is what your businesses right where people are, they’re buying a product, not necessarily a service. When we run these type of ads. We generally use Facebook’s information and then support it with Google Analytics information. Because one may drop one may pick up like you never it’s not perfect and using the two of them, kind of lets you get an average of, okay, this shirt did sell 15 of them from this ad or from, you know, this code or whatever, it just kind of gives you that, that balance of understanding that, that you’re you’re getting the results that you’re looking for.

Something that you may or may not know is in using Facebook, you can actually run influencer ads. So you can run ads using somebody else’s page and your pixel, which is a whole trick in the backend of things that I would suggest hiring someone to figure out because it is a trick in the back end of things. But like if you’re running ads to an influencer, let’s just use the Kardashians, like you’re running the ads to the Kardashians page. So it’s all going through their stuff. But you’re you’re getting all of the data of the people who are clicking on it and buying and all of that kind of stuff. So there are there are opportunities there as well.

Nicholas Zellem 

Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, might be an area, we need some help.

Jennifer Tamborski 

I would say if you’re getting to the point of running ads to influencers, you definitely want to hire somebody traffic ads, if you’re not familiar with how to set up ads on multiple platforms. Hiring someone is a great way to shortcut that.

Like you don’t even have to necessarily hire someone long term, you can hire someone to have them all set up properly, and then turn back over to you. That’s something that we do for people all the time. So I if you’re uncomfortable with ads, definitely you want to look at at hiring something for that. But I would start influencer marketing, ads marketing and see which ones you know where you come. Now, I would also caution to avoid the influencer marketing until your website is ready.

If you think your website is good enough now to run paid traffic to it, to see what happens. That’s one thing but I wouldn’t send influencer marketing until you can track it because it’s much it’s it’s easier to track ads than it is influencers, right influencers are gonna give out a code if you can’t track that. You don’t know what’s working or what’s not. Right.

Nicholas Zellem

Make sense.

Jennifer Tamborski 

Awesome. Okay, what questions do you have? Or I always dump a lot of information on people. And then I see this this like, look of like, Oh, my goodness. So I always want to, to? Where are you at? What questions you have are?

Nicholas Zellem 

Um, I mean, you can answer some things that I kind of knew about, you know, the influencers and running ads. First time I’ve heard someone say, leveraging someone else’s audience. That’s first time I really heard somebody say that.

And that is a key, right?

And that’s where we’re trying to get with MMA, right, we’re trying to present one an image for the brand, right, and also, hopefully get alignment where because it is the fastest growing sport, people are pretty passionate about that. It isn’t an alpha male sport. I mean, you don’t find a whole lot of sissys with MMA, like that we want we want Czar clothing to be very alpha. And we want Czarina to be, you know, very feminine, although I have some women that have done some shoots and stuff with content, and we will probably look to have some women, MMA fighters.

Jennifer Tamborski 

That’s a fabulous lake. I think if the MMA market is your your target audience, use both genders, you Czar in Czarina in there,

Nicholas Zellem 

and there’s a feedback. Yeah, there’s a few sports that we’re going to probably try to target. MMA being one more on the male side, but definitely on the female too. But Golf I think is great. For a number of reasons, right? There’s a lot of money floating around with golf. But we have some great products as far as shorts and skirts, and polos that you can wear for for golf, also tennis. And I have some like tennis dresses that are alyssum sports dresses that are on there. And they look very much for tennis, but you could probably wear those for golf.

But I think we’re going to align that and then obviously yoga with the leggins you have wood leggins and things like that. I think yoga is really for everyone.

I mean, if you remember lifting weights, recently, and I’ve been in a sling and still going through rehab, but I think had I been keeping up with my yoga and attending yoga, rather than, you know, maybe one or two days less on the weights and change for tear those up for yoga.

I probably wouldn’t have had the issue because it was a pretty major surgery on my bicep. But if I had been stretching out and doing yoga, so I’m definitely a believer of that. I think those are a couple of the sports that we’re going to align with.

Jennifer Tamborski 

I think also if you look at the But isn’t the big leagues like not not the NFL but the the league? That’s like, I know we have one in the St. Louis area that just opened. With just with NFL like there’s a there’s that that secondary League of they’re not quite high end professionals but they’re still playing professional football. The same goes with baseball and, and soccer and all of those different kinds of things. If you look at those smaller leagues as well, that are they’re still professionally run, they’re just not the big, big NFL names.

Nicholas Zellem 

That’s what we’re doing. With MMA, we want to spread out a little bit more and where we’ve been Peak fighting is who we’ve been, we’ve been talking to the fighters there haven’t worked with them direct, but some of these other leagues, and whether they’re here in Europe, there’s there’s leagues all over the world.

And yeah, it’s just really just Peak and XKO and I think there’s a few others. And so we’re going to try to hit those. We just found we have a pretty good bang for the buck for sponsoring the fighters. And it helps them out because they’re severely underpaid, right? Especially the amateur leagues. And so we’re going to definitely do that. And I think, potentially look for maybe even college athletes and golf, I really would like I tend to enjoy watching women’s golf and tennis, for whatever reason. I think just because of their flexibility and stuff, I think some

Jennifer Tamborski 

college athletes nowadays have created an influencer market, like they’ve created, there are some out there that have created brands all wrapped around them. And they’re who they are. And those are great influencers to to reach out to because, again, they’re not so big, they’re not so big that they’re in the NFL or whatever. But they still have a good following in an age range that would probably be attracted to your products.

Nicholas Zellem 

Yes, yeah, I think that’s, that’s good. And there’s actually a company that has a platform specific that I won’t mention their name, but there’s a membership associated with it. But you can go on there, and you can say I want I want a curling athlete in Germany, I mean, yeah, that granular, you can say I want a boxer in New York, female. And you can go that granular I want all female hockey player in Minnesota.

And you could go that, that and because I think we do a great job with swimsuits. So I thought even some swimmers and some men or women given swimmers would be great, especially if they’re athletes and models. And that was doing the college focusing on the college athletes where they could help them out right into, it can allow you to kind of focus in on some geographical areas, here, and I’ve done some advertising in this region.

So it would be great to look at athletes and say, Baylor and SMU and maybe University of Houston and Rice, right, and kind of align because they may have seen some of our pop ups, or they may have seen our ad, right. And so we’re gonna try to focus a little bit on advertising in this area. Because that could be just another way that someone locally had seen our ad or our pop up or some were using other people’s audiences

Jennifer Tamborski 

And that’s really how you’re going to scale. You only have two options, use other people’s audiences, and a, and pay a fee towards that or you use paid traffic and pay a fee towards that it’s just a matter of which one or both is going to work for you right now.

Nicholas Zellem 

Yep, that totally makes sense. Yeah, I mean, how do you see this changing social media? And how do you see the landscape changing over the next couple of years?

Jennifer Tamborski 

So one of the things that social media has been focusing more and more on is like Creator content. So content creation is going to be more and more important videos, all of that kind of stuff. I don’t see I know people have. I’ve heard people say things like Facebook is dead and all of that. They’re not like they’re, they’re still the largest social media platform out there. They have, I don’t know, I think 5 billion people a day using their app.

So it’s not a matter of that it’s a matter of learning to use, what they’re offering you in a way that’s going to be beneficial. And I think that’s what people have neglected to do. They’ve just kind of thrown up their hands and walked away, because it’s no longer free. Like 5-10 years ago, I guess, probably closer to 10 years at this point. When ads first started running, you could make a million dollars on Facebook without running an ad.

That’s not an option anymore.

So you have to have the money behind you to kind of boost you up, even if it’s just to run visibility ads so that you get to grow your audience. I don’t see social media going anywhere. It’s just a matter of how us especially in our generation, because you know, I’m Gen X. Social media, I always say this, I say this all the time. It makes me sound old. But, you know, social media wasn’t a thing when I was a Kid, it’s only been around for 20 some odd years. So my business has grown with the social media platforms. And it’s just a matter of adapting to what we have available to us.

Nicholas Zellem 

Yeah, I watched a lot of Gary Vee, I think he gave me some confidence. Because first when I started doing the shoots, I was like, now I’ve got content.

Jennifer Tamborski 

Now, what do I do?

Nicholas Zellem 

And I think there’s always room for learning. But yeah, he always says, you know, content is king. And I hear that, and I’ve adopted that model. And that’s why I’ve had this success with some of the models as far as content, because I’ve got content coming in. I mean, we did we do some MMA shoots here locally, just because the guys are here, right. But there’s other models that are on Fiverr, or other modeling platforms or just individuals. We’ve had success but I think creating content getting it out there. Some things look great, I think what we’re doing because I, I mix it up and I do some different things. I try to incorporate the house music, things like that.

And as of late, I’ve tried to get like motivational quotes and things aligned with the MMA guys, and have that perception where I’m not necessarily selling a product in there, but the concept of building your empire and confidence and motivation and that there are challenges and obstacles. And so I’m trying to plant that seed I think build your empire is a very good motto for what we’re doing. Because

Jennifer Tamborski 

I love the fact that you’re focusing on the brand as a whole and not just the t shirt or the leggings or whatever not the product itself because that’s what sells brands are what sells people buy Nike they used to just buy the shoe but they don’t buy the shoe anymore. They buy Nike they buy the brand people buy you know the the Louis Vuitton because it’s Louie Vuitton not because that bag is any prettier than anybody else’s. Right? They buy the brands.

Nicholas Zellem

And you think we’re doing some things right there.

Jennifer Tamborski 

Yeah, I definitely do. I think you’re you’re establishing your brand. They also buy your story. So being able to tell your story about why even you know taking it back to why Czar and Czarina is important to you like what that means who they who Czar was or who was Czarina was like really diving into that story. So you can kind of self help to establish the build your empire kind of theme, I think is is also important because that’s yeah,

Nicholas Zellem 

Czar and Czarina. Right, are not necessarily there. It’s used in Russia. Right? And it’s used in. It’s also used in Ceasar. Right. Cesar came from in Germany used Kaiser. Right. And so there’s some been some variations. That’s in Zara is where Caesar is where Zara came from. And I think by doing that, and allowing that, we could certainly come up with some themed shirts around Germany, right, Kaiser and I actually have some other designs on my camera that caught with Caesar. Right. But I mean, it’s whether you’re Italian, your Spanish, Portuguese, German, Chilean, or Chinese or Japanese or Korean, you’re going to be building your empire, right? Whether you’re going to school, building your career, building your life, and building those things. And I think we can align with that I appreciate your positive comments on we’re gonna send on a post on like, Oh, my God, I didn’t tag it. I didn’t tag the clothing. But is it needed every time?

Jennifer Tamborski 

And maybe not necessarily. I mean, if you’re posting daily, people are going to see that post on a every day every other day kind of background. That’s why when you’re talking about organic posting, it’s it’s difficult to grow because Facebook controls the algorithm or tick tock controls the algorithm, whatever. They control who sees it when, which is why like pay traffic helps so much because then you get to push it to as many people because they they control how many people see it in a timeframe.

Nicholas Zellem 

As of late, one of the things that I’ve been doing is taking like motivational quotes and things. Some of them I find on Instagram, or you can use the audio. There was one I think it sounds like it was Denzel Washington. But he said, I woke up one day and stop making excuses. And I all’s I did was just have a video of MMA. Omar with his hands up against the wall. Underneath our banner. We have a banner. Yeah, Jim, but just and that was it. And this music kicks in.

And then I have our a piece of media that just says use our clothing and build your empire with our with Eagle. Think about the Double Eagle I wrote an article on the double headed eagle. But the double headed eagle has been used in all kinds of different Spain and Greece and actually back to the Hittites and Egypt, five to 7000 years ago, 5000 BCE. So there’s a lot of people but it’s symbolized empires. And so that’s what we’re using that double that our formal logo is more like a cross are kind of a crest but the eagle we get a lot of good feedback, especially the MMA guys are like, oh man that this looks so cool on a shirt.

But in any regards, there’s a lot of history aligning with empire building from Ottoman Empire, etc, etc. And so we’re trying to align that. And again, Zara is not necessarily affiliated with any specific ethnic background. It’s really you, me, we’re all trying to build our own empire. Right? You’re a mother at home with kids, you’re still building your own?

Jennifer Tamborski  

Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that’s the story. That’s the brand that you really want to build and you want to grow. And then it’s just a matter of getting enough people to see it, right. So it doesn’t like your visibility content doesn’t necessarily need to be constantly, here’s my shirt, here’s my pants, here’s my, you know, this, whatever outfit it you can definitely be more about the story like build your empire, I love the quote that you just gave with the, you know, never give up like that’s those are, those are things that people run into all the time. So if they can feel good about wearing the clothes, because that message makes them feel good and feel empowered. That’s definitely going to help you sell more.

Nicholas Zellem 

Appreciate your feedback. This is great information. And hopefully a lot allows me to align our marketing message with a lot of things that you had said.

Jennifer Tamborski 

Awesome, awesome. Alrighty, my friend. It was great talking to you today. And I am so glad that we were able to hop on this call. For those of you out there that have watched this episode or listen to this episode and you want to join me on one of these episodes for a completely free marketing strategy, head over to yourmarketingmatchmaker.com and sign up on the website to join me on a call. Thanks for joining me today. And thank you, Nick, for being open, honest and vulnerable about what’s going on with your business. We’ll talk to you soon.

Nicholas Zellem

Thank you for having us, thank you.

OUTRO: Thank you for listening to the marketing matchmaker podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love to hear your feedback. Please head over to Apple iTunes and leave a review so we can hear from you. And if you are a coach, consultant or online course creator who are looking to grow your business, increase your income and scale your impact. Connect with me at your marketing matchmaker.com I look forward to hearing from you.