#91 Ronnie Teja from Branzio Watches: Scale Your E-Commerce to 8 Figures with SEO The Ecom Show

#91 Ronnie Teja from Branzio Watches: Scale Your E-Commerce to 8 Figures with SEORonnie Tejais the Founder of Branzio Watches. With over 15 years of experience in digital marketing all around the world, Ronnie knows a thing or two about building marketing strategies, building a business, and perseverance.
Tune in to hear Daniel and Ronnie discuss:
✔️ Ronnie’s Path to E-Commerce
✔️ Discovering the Importance of SEO
✔️ Is SEO Worth the Time?
✔️ The Value of Email Marketing
✔️ Advice for Entrepreneurs
Ronnie’s Path to E-Commerce
Ronnie is a ‘self-taught’ digital marketer, leading online marketing strategies for businesses around the world. After moving to Canada, Ronnie harnessed his marketing skills in work for HSBC, BestBuy, and SoftwareKing.
At 29 years old, Ronnie decided to invest his time in the watch market. Once he read that watch profit margins are ‘phenomenal’ he jumped right in!
“My focus from day one was to find the supply chain, the suppliers, the ops, and run a team that is far more efficient than I could be as an individual.”
Branzio Watches hire leading watchmakers and designers from around the world. Ronnie’s job is to harness global talent as efficiently as possible.
“I’m a generalist who is surrounded by extremely capable specialists.”
Discovering the Importance of SEO
Ronnie learned all about SEO through networking. If you’re in e-commerce, Ronnie highly recommends going to the yearly Chiang Mai SEO Conference in northern Thailand.
“You will be surrounded by some of the best people around and the friendliest people who are happy to talk about SEO.”
The Chiang Mai SEO conference is especially valuable in bringing together so many perspectives on SEO from different spaces in digital marketing. Ronnie’s self-taught SEO knowledge was based entirely on Google Paid ads, but over the last 7 years, he’s acquired several websites in the affiliate space. Learning about SEO in the affiliate space showed Ronnie what he needed to scale.
Ronnie favors a holistic approach to SEO. Networking with digital marketers across industries to explore how different platforms present different opportunities for SEO.
Is SEO Worth the Time?
To put it simply: yes. You just need to be patient.
Just as you need to have a paid strategy, a social media strategy, or an influencer strategy, you need an SEO strategy.
And if you’re worried about things taking too long? 4 years ago, Branzio Watches were getting 5000 visits per day, today they have around 2 million. And that's free organic traffic. That’s a lot of revenue. If you want to be an entrepreneur, Ronnie advises, you need to think of the long-term.
While prioritization varies from store to store, Ronnie says that paid ads, influencers, SEO, and email should be at the foundation of any e-commerce business. No one element of digital marketing (such as paid ads) is a get-rich-quick solution. A lucrative marketing strategy uses multiple channels. And it takes time.
The Value of Email Marketing
“Email is basically like free sales.”
Like Daniel, Ronnie is in love with Klaviyo. He’s even on their customer advisory board. 12% - 13% of total store revenue in Branzio Watches comes from email.
“So always keep an eye on how to grow your email list.”
A fantastic way to do that is through a quiz. If you’re looking for an example of what a great Shop Quiz looks like, Ronnie recommends checking out Beardbrand. Their quiz recruits 600 - 1000 subscribers a week.
Advice for Entrepreneurs
“Perseverance, man, you need to persevere, don’t give up.”
Ronnie says that he truly found focus last year. He gave up drinking, started waking up at 5 am, and his life changed. He doesn't work 80 hours, he works a normal 30 - 35 hours a week, but his efficiency has skyrocketed. Ronnie isn’t a fan of the “100 hour working week” hustle culture.
Ronnie advises that people often make the mistake of thinking that if they follow one golden rule