Before we get started today… 🥁
We’re extremely excited to announce our first ever REAL LIVE DTC Meetup, on May 12 in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Building this digital community has been a thrill, but we can’t wait to meet up IRL and start networking with the best brands Vancouver has to offer, like Tru Earth, DUER, Blume, Monos, Casca, Aritzia, Lululemon, BestBuy, and many more who are already confirmed.
Spots are FREE but limited, so only sign up if you intend on joining us in person!
Join our first ever meetup in Vancouver on May 12
In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇
📦 Brand Breakdown Part 4: Brightland (Google Suite)
📦 Balancing trust, data collection, and privacy with Sailthru
📦 Creating elevated UGC and tapping into a community of micro-influencers with Minisocial
Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎
👉 If a pal forwarded this to you, subscribe , so you never miss out.
If you thought you were in tune with your customers, you might need a wake-up call. ⏰
Sailthru's new report, Balancing Trust, Data Collection and Privacy, features the research behind this year’s Retail Personalization Index.
They surveyed 5,000 consumers and 260 retail marketers and found that there’s a huge gap between what consumers want and how brands think they’re delivering on those expectations.
Now is the time for retailers to understand their customers’ preferences and deliver a consistent experience no matter when and where they choose to shop.
Learn more about:
Think you know everything about your customers?
👉 Find out why 5000 consumers think you don’t.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve analyzed Brightland’s Facebook ads and email marketing and learned that this team knows what they’re doing.
To dive deeper into their success, we tapped the Pilothouse Google team to run an external analysis of Brightland’s Google strategy, including Google Shopping, SEM, and SEO insights.
👀 The Premium Option on Google Shopping
Brightland is active on Google Shopping using both generic and branded search.
Looking for olive oil can bring on feelings of decision fatigue – so many options with little known differentiation.
Brightland is spending aggressively on Google search, targeting generic keywords that describe their product and ranking at or near the top for many.
The keywords are accurate, but when your product is nearly 3x the price of its competitors, it might put Brightland at a disadvantage to cheaper alternatives.
Google’s algorithm uses price point to assign a quality score, so if your product is on the pricer side, your cost per click will also be higher.
Whereas cheaper competitors might get 10 clicks for every $200 spent, premium options like Brightland may only get 1.
Standing out in the field as the premium option among cheaper alternatives might work wonders for Brightland, but they’re paying a lot more than their competitors to be featured alongside them.
📢 Google Ads (SEM)
As per Pilothouse’s analysis, Brightland has taken an aggressive approach to branded SEM, and to no surprise, they’re doing it very well! 👊
They utilize most ad extensions, including Google review, but are missing image extensions.
Google image extensions allow brands to upload relevant images alongside their text ads.
When users see an image extension on the SERP, it shows potential customers:
Using Google image extensions is a great way to bump Brightland’s CTR, ultimately resulting in cheaper clicks.
Brightland also has the opportunity to utilize YouTube for top of funnel awareness generation.
There is so much great gourmet cooking content on YouTube, we see this as a missed opportunity to feed the Google machine!
Say hello to minisocial!
The go-to platform for creating elevated UGC while tapping into a tight-knit community of micro-influencers.
With minisocial, the proof is in the pudding 🍮
Imperfect Foods knows what's up on paid. They regularly produce dozens of unboxing/testimonial-style assets so they can strike gold on acquisition.
Care/Of produces authentic, reel-style content. Showing how their vitamins fit into your daily routine—all while using minisocial, ofc.
KRAVE Jerky shared curated customer stories. The food brand launched fully-licensed UGC assets with their latest minisocial campaign to help build authenticity on social.
Want to find out how other top DTC brands leverage minisocial for their marketing goals? Check out their HUGE library of case studies.
Questions?
👉 Learn more about the process here.
DTC readers get 15% off their first campaign! 🤫
📈 SEO Future is Bright
In recent months, through some clever content strategies, Brightland has grown their organic traffic from almost nothing to over 60K monthly uniques since Q3 of 2021👇
Their website is well constructed with no major technical flaws (404’s, meta tags, h1’s, etc.) and Brightland uses an ongoing SEO strategy to fuel their traffic.
Brightland ranks well for their main organic keywords: Brightland and Brightland Olive Oil.
However, Brightland’s highest-ranked positions come from avocado and sesame oil – products they don’t even offer.
SEM-wise, Brightland doesn’t bid on either avocado or sesame oil, so how do they rank so high for these keywords organically?
🛢 The Great Oil Heist
Googling “avocado oil vs olive oil” results in Brightland’s blog post on the subject as one of the top search results.
Their blog uses external links to fuel the message (with the research to back it up) that not only is olive oil the healthier option, but tastier too!
Brightland then utilizes internal links to offer readers the opportunity to visit their olive oil ‘shop’ page or sampler pack PDP.
As one step further, Brightland offers readers two different olive oils to add to their bag from the blog post. 👇
A simple search of “sesame oil vs olive oil” yields a similar blog post with the same options to shop on page. Brilliant 👏.
Own your brand’s couponing experience
Premium brands know that when people shop for products, they’re most likely doing a quick Google search for a discount code.
To stop users from being diverted to discount sites and browser extensions (we’re looking at you, Honey), Brightland has created their own page dedicated to educating potential shoppers about their discount strategy that ranks at or near the top for all discount and promotion keywords.
Brightland kicks things off by explaining their premium ingredients, small team size, and company value, so you understand how rare and special discounts on this premium product are.
Then they urge you to join their community and opt-in to email and SMS directly to get notified when promotions occur.
Brightland is leveraging most of Google’s tools to considerable effect, and in particular, their use of landing pages on topics, such as alternative oils, and discounts, are worth noting.
What keywords are not exactly related to your brand but are just to the side that could be driving you tens of thousands of new customer interactions per month?
👋 That’s a wrap on our Brightland Brand Breakdown! Reply to this email and let us know if you enjoyed it.
Catch ya next week with a pop of colour 😉💄
BRANDS
🐶 The Farmers Dog : Have you ever been cooking dinner, and you meet your pup's eyes? You share a prolonged stare? A sad lil doggy tear rolls down his furry cheek, knowing that the recently trimmed tenderloin isn't for them? Dogs deserve to eat as well as us human folk! Farmer's Dog offers a wide range of tasty human-grade food! It's real food for your real pup.
🛀 Sundae : Is your partner disrupting the peace in the shower with an absolutely horrid rendition of Adele's Rolling in The Deep? Distract them with Sundae's soap! It’s body wash that dispenses out of a whip-cream-like can. It's like everyone's inner child's dream.
☕️ Jibbycoffee : Nothing is more comforting and calming than a morning cup-a-joe. The only thing is, a couple of minutes later, the caffeine content has you bouncing off the walls. Jibby's innovative CBD cold brew will counteract the jitters while keeping you caffeinated.
🧽 Scrubdaddy : Stress cleaning? Trust us, you're not alone. Make things easier on yourself with Scrub Daddy's Scrubber. The round shape is ergonomically designed for a comfortable grip and the most thorough cleaning of everything from measuring cups to salad bowls.
🍑 Building a 7-Figure Business in Sub-Two Years with Peachy Shapewear's Corey Nicholson.
💬 Dreamday and The Quality Edit’s Lauren Kleinman Pioneers a New Model for Performance PR and Publishing.
🍭 100 Million TikTok Views Slapping the Marshmallow with TheMarshmallow.co's Joel Twyman.
👀 If You Shelve It, Will They Come? With Fractional CMO Bryan Holladay.
Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight and Jordan Gillis. Edited by Claire Beveridge and Eric Dyck.
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