Fulya Uygun Of Bowery Boost On How to Effectively Leverage The Power of Digital Marketing, PPC, & Email to Dramatically Increase Sales

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Know how to market yourself. Having the ability to network is just as important as all these other hard skills.

Marketing a product or service today is easier than ever before in history. Using platforms like Facebook ads or Google ads, a company can market their product directly to people who perfectly fit the ideal client demographic, at a very low cost. Digital Marketing tools, Pay per Click ads, and email marketing can help a company dramatically increase sales. At the same time, many companies that just start exploring with digital marketing tools often see disappointing results.

In this interview series called “How to Effectively Leverage The Power of Digital Marketing, PPC, & Email to Dramatically Increase Sales”, we are talking to marketers, advertisers, brand consultants, & digital marketing gurus who can share practical ideas from their experience about how to effectively leverage the power of digital marketing, PPC, & email.

As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Fulya Uygun.

Bowery Boost co-founder Fulya Uygun is a digital marketing expert with 15 years of experience. Throughout her career, she has scaled brands through seed funding to Series B in addition to working as lead digital for corporate companies. Her agency works seamlessly to build teams and profitably scale direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands. Before starting Bowery Boost, Fulya worked as the Head of Digital communications at online retailers and brands, including Dermstore, Briogeo and Winkly Lux, and she was brought on by L’Oreal to launch a new DTC brand. Fulya has a business degree from one of the most prestigious colleges in Turkey, Bogazici University, in addition to a postgraduate degree in Marketing from Baruch University, and an MS in Integrated Marketing from NYU. She is also a member of the Female Founders Fund, The 10th House, and the venture firm The Helm, all dedicated to investing in and supporting women and minority entrepreneurs.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

After graduating college with a business degree, I started working at the brand marketing department of a big corporation in Istanbul. As in many entry level positions, I ended up doing all sorts of marketing activities, including graphic design, copywriting, PR, events, etc. About a year in, they somehow handed over their first PPC marketing campaign to me, and I fell in love with data and watching customer behavior online. I knew that was it for me.

I moved to NYC and went to Baruch for a postgraduate marketing degree to get a better understanding of the digital world — this was back in 2009. Facebook advertising was at its simplest, and only about two years old. We were more focused on PPC & affiliate in those years. After Baruch, I ended up at NYU for a masters in digital marketing, and that’s how everything started. I trained myself on top of the academic knowledge and worked my entire career after that in fashion & beauty digital marketing. I loved and am still loving every second of it.

Can you share a story about the funniest marketing mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?

Sure. But just to say it out loud before even getting started, that mistake was not necessarily funny at the time. Now that over 10 years have passed and I’ve learned so much from it, it’s easier to laugh it off.

Around 2010, I built a jewelry eCommerce business. I wanted it to be different, so with my CTO, we built a virtual dressing room where online visitors could try our products online. It was great, and we became one of the semi-finalists of IBM Smartcamp with our tool. It might have been more gimmicky than providing any value to the customer journey, but it was unique.

During the process of building our company, we spent all of our funds to buy merchandise and build our AI. And eventually, when our super user-friendly and elegant site with very talented jewelry designers and stunning pieces was completed, we had absolutely no money left to market it. That’s how I got deeper in marketing — digital marketing to be more specific.

No matter how amazing your product is, if no one knows about it, you’re not going to last. I always tell this to early-stage startups. Marketing might as well be your biggest expense. Be smart when allocating funds to not end up like me. Believe it or not, I still have a whole bunch of designer pieces in my apartment, and I’m almost certain my friends are tired of receiving jewelry as gifts for their special days.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

Not specifically a person, but a community. Us female founders, we are very well connected and are always ready to support each other. I’m a member of Female Founders Fund and the 10th House, and anytime I need some advice, there are some wonderful female founders there to offer a helping hand. I’m also a member of the Helm, a women- and minority-only investment fund, where we have a community of women that supports each other. I love the community that we have in NY. We are very united and supportive to each other.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Without sounding super cheesy, I’d like to say that we truly care. I care about each and every client, no matter where they are in their journey. We support our partners. We do more than what is stated on our mission. We are an agency that comes up with suggestions. Problems occur, and my job is not to focus on them — to acknowledge them for sure — but work with our brand partners to test alternative solutions to get us through tough times. Digital marketing is an always-changing industry, and I love it for that very reason. Yet, we need to always be aware of what’s to come to be ready to adjust, and we do that well.

One quick example would be, in the very early stages of Bowery Boost, I was introduced to a brilliant young female founder with an absolutely amazing product. But the funds were low, and we were at the testing stages on the ad platforms. This means as a smart company owner and marketer, you can’t be spending too high. Our agency takes a percentage of spend as a form of payment, and when the budgets are low, we might also end up with very low monthly invoices. We didn’t care about that. Eventually after a three-month period of heavy audience and ad creative tests, we figured out what people react to and want to see. After two years, that particular client is still with us, and now they’re one of our biggest clients.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

1. Never stop learning is a big one. Digital is about change, and we need to constantly read and learn to not only follow what’s happening, but to make up our own ideas, truths, and strategies to become pioneers. I read a lot, put together thoughts, build tests, and have fun with it.
2. Don’t be afraid of failing. For sure it’s a cliche, but it’s my biggest strength. I’m never afraid of failing or making mistakes. I admit it if I made a mistake, and find a way to fix it rather than focusing on the mistake. That part is very important, but only after we find a way to make things better.
3. Never give up. As long as you believe your goal is humanly possible, you can find a way to get where you want. I’m a driven person. I don’t mind working hard, and sometimes working not-so-smart, but I still try to make things I believe in happen.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Yes! We have a very fun and exciting project coming up next quarter. As a digital marketing agency, we do see the importance of influencer marketing while working very closely with our agency brand partners. For the last year and a half, we’ve been building a platform that will allow brands to connect with influencers, create content with them for organic and paid social, run true whitelisting ads through our platform, compare results, and scale in a very simple and cost-effective way. Initially, we were planning on using the tool exclusively for our agency partners, but what we built has become way bigger than what we initially targeted.

Ok super. Now let’s jump to the main questions of our interview. As we mentioned in the beginning, sometimes companies that just start exploring with digital marketing tools like PPC campaigns often see disappointing results. In your opinion, what are a few of the biggest mistakes companies make when they first start out with digital marketing? If you can, please share an example for each.

Not running enough research and building goals before starting anything paid digital is a mistake. Digital means data. We have access to so much data with all the advertising and analytics tools out there. Using tools like SEMRush, running a thorough competitor research, and analyzing keyword cost and competitiveness will give you a head start.

In addition to PPC, if we talk about paid social, Facebook has an ad library that you can research ads being run by your competitors. Search for the ads that have the oldest launch date. That somehow might be an indicator that’s a long-term, high-performing asset. We don’t suggest copying from your competitors, as every brand is unique and different in their own way. But it won’t hurt to take some inspiration from them.

Another very important point is building a cost analysis. What are the numbers for break-even? What are the numbers for profitability? Don’t expect them to hit right out of the gate, but build a roadmap with every channel that can get you there and expect improvements each month (except the times of seasonality).

Let’s talk about Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC) for a bit. In your opinion which PPC platform produces the best results to increase sales?

Google Search Ads become more and more important after the iOS14 updates. We saw it coming and started allocating higher budgets on NonBrand Search for our clients to make sure when the data is lost, we have a second channel that supports our growth. We did a great job for many of our clients in finding the least competitive, high-conversion, long-tail keywords to target high-intent, strong ROAS traffic. I’d say definitely Google. And the platform is also coming up with new campaign types like Performance Max, which is picking up pretty well for our certain clients.

Can you please share 3 things that you need to know to run a highly successful PPC campaign?

1. You need to do your research. You should do a thorough competitor analysis using tools like SEMRush and Moz, and find the keyword gaps that might work for you.
2. You need to pay attention to your ad quality score. Google values the keyword x landing page relativeness more than any other platform. You should plan on building landing pages for different NonBrand campaigns.
3. You need to constantly optimize, exclude, and include search terms within your ad sets. You should also not mess with your campaigns during the learning phase. Google takes longer time periods, and it’s definitely less effective during that phase. I won’t say the same thing is true on Facebook. On Facebook, I don’t mind the learning phase that much, unlike what Facebook reps constantly tell us.

Let’s now talk about email marketing for a bit. In your opinion, what are the 3 things that you need to know to run a highly successful email marketing campaign that increases sales?

1. You need to understand your customer’s journey, and not everyone’s is the same. First-party data, especially after iOS14 updates, became more and more important. Run analysis within your customers, and don’t treat everyone the same.
2. If you have a strong product mix, figure out the product many of your first time buyers converts the most with. Then build lifecycle funnels to guide people to your high-retention products.
3. Don’t get spammy and bombard people with lots of email with no value. Email marketing — or any marketing for that matter — is about the customer and how they benefit from your products. Once you build the relationship with your customers, tell them more about your brand and brand values. Brand loyalty is harder than ever to achieve. People would love to know why you’re doing what you’re doing and why your brand matters.

What are the other digital marketing tools that you are passionate about? If you can, can you share with our readers what they are and how to best leverage them?

We use SEMRush for Google Ads analytics. Google Analytics is very important for last-click data. We utilize Supermetrics for our dashboards, and also integrate our Shopify clients to Glew.io for more visual data tracking. We also have a partnership with a creative analysis tool called Motionapp that gives us lots of data about creative performance and next steps for creative tests.

Here is the main question of our series. Can you please tell us the 5 things you need to create a highly successful career as a digital marketer? Can you please share a story or example for each?

1. You need to love reading and constantly learning. Digital will never stay the same. Last year we had iOS14 updates, next year we need to adjust to the cookieless world. Loving the challenge of it all helps 🙂
2. We need to adopt and adapt to newness. New platforms, new data collecting techniques — there’s always something new.
3. Don’t be afraid to test new channels and to be on the lookout for new platforms. We get the best pricing when companies are brand new (when the service makes sense for us to use, of course). Remember the tests, take notes, and learn from them.
4. Data is important, but we should be aware that the creative — and who you are targeting with that creative — is important. You have to be able to analyze and understand creatives.
5. Know how to market yourself. Having the ability to network is just as important as all these other hard skills.

What books, podcasts, videos or other resources do you use to sharpen your marketing skills?

I’m old school. I still have my Feedly feed I built years ago, and I update it every year with all ecommerce and marketing publications. I read about 30 minutes every day to go through important titles in the eCom and tech worlds. I also like podcasts like Work Party, Female Founder World, and The Skimm.

Thank you for all of that. We are nearly done. Here is our final ‘meaty’ question. You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

I would want us to question gender roles and stereotypes around gender. Knowing first hand the opportunities we couldn’t tap into just because I am a woman was dejecting. And that’s just a small piece of it.

How can our readers further follow your work?

We’re active on Linkedin, and IG, and starting to be more active on Twitter now.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!

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Fulya Uygun Of Bowery Boost On How to Effectively Leverage The Power of Digital Marketing, PPC, &… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.