We see you, we are you, we’re trying to change 🥲
If you’re new to DTC, welcome! You’re in good company with fellow newcomers from Cometeer, healthybaby, Molekule, VIP Bottles, and Asuwere.
In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇
📦 5 examples of effective DTC copywriting
📦 Are retailers doing enough to personalize?
📦 Increasing your ROAS by 120% with Black Crow AI
📦 eCommerce SEO in three simple steps with Kevin Miller from Gr0
📦 Why you should be using labels on your Google ads
Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎
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Don't miss the extra dollars that other brands have been snatching up because your personalization game is weak.
71% of brands and retailers think they excel in marketing personalization, but 34% of consumers think otherwise.
Don't like those percentages? Ask yourself:
Have you personalized SMS, loyalty programs, and email channels to maximize your customer's shopping experience?
If not, it's time to cater to your individual buyers’ entire shopping journey, from discovery to point of purchase.
The result: much higher conversion rates 🎉
Sailthru's recent report will provide you with insights on personalization strategy and data privacy to help squeeze every last dollar.
Don't miss out on the opportunity to personalize your customer's experience. Get the report here.
Copywriting is one of the most important investments for a thriving DTC brand. Great copywriting is a combination of art and psychology and is a key driver for customer acquisition, conversion, and retention.
Unfortunately, most DTC companies still treat copywriting as an afterthought. If this is you, have no fear…
In this article, we’ll highlight five examples of effective copywriting and break down why they work, so you can apply them directly to your own business.
Ready? Let’s dive in.
1️⃣ Create contrast
Creating contrast lets you showcase your product against a less favorable alternative.
By using a common complaint to draw a distinction between their product and other healthy, but bland sugar-free cereals, Magic Spoon created a clever piece of copy for their cardboard shipping cartons.
2️⃣ Get specific
Being specific in your copywriting is crucial, especially when measuring benefits and impact.
Qualitative descriptors like “a lot, tons, more, and faster” should always be replaced with concrete quantitative statistics. Specifics pull readers in, enhance credibility, and ensure that your company walks the walk or you’re a liar.
This is why Bite Toothpaste uses a single, specific line of eye-catching copy to tell you exactly the problem they’re working to solve. It’s impossible to read this statistic without taking a moment to acknowledge how alarming it is… and that’s exactly the point.
Imagine if it read, “A lot of toothpaste tubes are thrown out each year.” It wouldn’t hit nearly the same.
To get even more specific, Bite’s sustainability page features a real-time counter to amplify the severity of the issue and create a sense of urgency among shoppers to find a solution: doing away with their traditional toothpaste tubes and switching to a more sustainable alternative like Bite.
3️⃣ Let your customers write your copy
With 31% of shoppers willing to spend more on a business with excellent reviews, it’s second nature for companies to use customer reviews to increase product page conversion.
While most DTC brands use reviews as a final push to get shoppers over the finish line, Jambys uses them as their primary sales tactic.
Their site is covered in compelling, lighthearted, and authentic customer testimonials, many of which read (and likely convert) better than any meticulously engineered site copy ever could.
Even their in-house copy uses a review-related hook.
To bring it all together, Jambys dedicates the first option in their nav bar to a page solely for customer reviews. That’s prime real estate.
4️⃣ Make it relatable
When selling a premium product, your copy should always educate customers on why you’re better than the cheaper alternative.
Well aware that the average Open Spaces site visitor will balk at the $50 price tag for a wire basket, their site copy follows these three steps: spark curiosity, emphasize the benefit, and give the consumer a relatable “aha!” moment.
Want to see more examples of DTC brands crushing the copywriting game? Read the full article here! 🚨
iOS14.5 🙄
We know. You know. Your mom's mom knows.
The infamous Apple update left DTC brands struggling to find and market to the right audiences. Bearaby, an award-winning weighted blanket DTC brand, was one of them…
When Bearaby was faced with crazy ad costs and lower conversions, they installed Black Crow AI's plug-and-play platform into their website to help them utilize their first-party data to create high-value audiences for retargeting and prospecting. 🎯
The results?
Bearaby increased its ROAS by 120% and generated 100% more conversions!
We love a success story 🥲
Black Crow AI helps DTC brands unlock the power of their first-party data to supercharge their performance marketing:
⏰ Don't just sit around and wait for the right customer–click here and find em!
🎧 We had Kevin Miller on the pod this week, co-founder and CEO of Gr0 , a fast-growing digital marketing company that helps DTC brands succeed with SEO.
With the costs of advertising rising pretty much everywhere, investing in SEO is more appealing than ever as it creates the opportunity to bring in a steady, reliable stream of organic traffic.
So if SEO is on your mind (and it should be), you’ll want to tune into this one!
We discussed the biggest SEO mistakes brand makes, how to generate backlinks, how to structure your pages, if you should worry about Google algorithm updates, and a whole lot more.
The Takeaways 👇
☹️ The biggest SEO mistakes:
1️⃣ Giving up too early
“[Brands] will invest for a few months, and then they give up on the channel…when in reality, it was probably just about to work. SEO is like an iceberg coming out of the water… But results might not happen for 12 months.”
2️⃣ Looking at lagging metrics too soon
Many people put too much emphasis on lagging metrics like clicks, traffic, or revenue when they first start investing in SEO.
“I think if they knew the right place to look, they would see that they are having some success underneath the water… and that success is impressions.”
If your impressions improve day by day, that’s a good sign. Impressions → Higher rankings in Google → Clicks → Revenue.
3️⃣ Not investing in high-quality content
“If you invest in SEO…make sure you do a good job with the writing. Find a writer that you feel really understands how to speak to your audience, and make sure they write thorough articles. The articles need to be 1200-1500 words in length to adequately explain a topic in a way that’s robust on thorough enough to earn the top spot in Google.”
📈 How to rank for competitive keywords:
If you’re just getting started in a highly saturated market (like supplements or protein powder), ranking for your ideal keyword may seem impossible. 😤
Instead of throwing in the towel, Kevin suggests taking a long-tail keyword approach with quality content:
Over time, as your individual pages get traffic, Google will start to recognize you as an authority on your keyword, and you’ll climb in the rankings.
🚀 A simple, 3-step SEO strategy that works:
SEO can get really complicated, really fast. But it doesn’t have to be.
Here’s Kevin’s three-step process for SEO success:
“That’s it. That’s an SEO strategy that works for eCommerce really, really well. It’s just those three things and making sure you do them well. We try not to overcomplicate it.”
👉 Listen to the full pod/SEO Masterclass with Kevin here!
One of the most overlooked ‘basic’ features of Google Ads is the ability to use labels at every level of the hierarchy: campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords.
The Pilothouse Google team says when used correctly, labels provide the ability to easily produce reports for things that need to be aggregated together.
For example, campaigns specific to a particular location or are at a designated part of the marketing funnel.
Another great use for labels, in conjunction with rules, is to pause and enable ads specific to a specific promotion or time period.
Labeling ads that are specific to a promotion with a common label allows you to enable and pause your ad set for the duration of the promotion with a couple of simple rules.
In addition, labeling any ads that were previously running with a
common label means that they too can be paused while the promotion is running and then enabled when the promotion is finished with another couple of simple rules.
If you want to add labels to your Google ads but don’t know where to start, reach out to the Pilothouse Google team! 🚀
QUICK HITS
👁 See how top brands drive sales and collect zero-party data with product recommendation quizzes.*
🤑 Fintech giant Stripe jumps into crypto with a feature that lets Twitter users get paid in stablecoin.
👀 Instagram is updating its ranking algorithm to put more focus on original content.
🌎 What Gen Z wants to see from brands as metaverse attachments grow.
👻 Snapchat adds 13M more users in Q1, sees steady increase in revenue.
📦 Amazon opens up Prime delivery service to other retailers in its latest move to compete with FedEx and UPS.
🎯 Ecommerce SEO in Three Simple Steps with Kevin Miller from Gr0
🍑 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.
Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight, Jordan Gillis, and Randy Ginsburg. Edited by Claire Beveridge and Eric Dyck.
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