Interview With Shopify Expert & Digital Marketing Consultant, Ben Zettler

Author: Swati Maheshwari
Published: February 28, 2025
Category: Interview

About Ben Zettler

Ben Zettler is an eCommerce, digital marketing, and social media consultant who is a certified Shopify Expert and Facebook Marketing Partner. He operates his own consultancy called Ben Zettler Digital Media (https://benzettler.com/), where he has worked with over 100 brands, athletes, and public figures on optimizing their eCommerce and digital marketing strategies.

Interview Questions and Answers

1. What was your journey like until you started your own consultancy?

Ben Zettler's first digital marketing and eCommerce experience came through a brand he started called Brooktide Sunglasses in 2013. He chose Shopify for building the website, and it was store number approximately 41,000 at the time. Now there are well over 1 million merchants on the platform. He sold Brooktide in 2018, and that business served as a springboard for building a client portfolio.

When he started working with various businesses, he first offered to build websites and then expanded to other services including:

Professional Milestones:

Steiner Sports Experience:

In addition to owning his own business, Ben worked at Steiner Sports for over five years. Prior to the company being bought out in 2019, Steiner Sports was the largest autographed sports memorabilia company of its kind in the world.

At Steiner Sports, he first headed social management. Within his first two years, he grew the company's cumulative social presence from 50,000 to 2.5 million cumulative followers. His role expanded to overseeing all aspects of digital marketing and eCommerce for the business.

As of June 2019, Ben has been a full-time consultant and has worked with many clients including athletes, retailers selling luxury goods, jewelry, consumable products, and more.

2. How do you help Shopify store owners set up their business? What services do you offer?

Ben offers a full suite of services for businesses of all sizes, from someone out of college starting a business in their parents' basement (as he did with his sunglasses company) to Shopify Plus businesses doing seven or eight figures per year in sales.

Services Offered:

3. Tell us about eCommerce optimization. What does this service mean?

According to Ben, there are many steps any company should be taking in establishing its presence online. He often sees companies making the same mistakes in terms of:

Optimizing not just a website, but the entire digital presence of any business is important because you have to be able to answer the question: "Would someone actually buy from this website?"

Ben notes that this is a question that a lot of new online business owners are not as focused on as they should be. He helps businesses answer that question.

4. What are some marketing tips you'd like to give new eCommerce business owners?

Ben recommends that someone starting a new online business should answer five questions:

  1. Who is your ideal customer? Don't say, "Everyone should buy this." Really think about who you are trying to serve.
  2. Who is already doing what you plan to do?
  3. How do you plan to acquire customers?
  4. Do you have a content strategy?
  5. Would you buy from your website?

5. What are your future plans?

Ben is looking forward to growing his business further with the great clients that he has been fortunate to work with over the last several years.

He does not have full-time employees by design, but has built a great network of specialists that he works with by pulling folks into various projects based on the needs of clients. He is always open to expanding the team.

Key Takeaways