Wednesday, December 8, 2021
Moiz Ali, Founder of Native deodorant, with a much needed reminder…
We all start at square one and the best is yet to come!
If you’re new to DTC, welcome! You’re in good company with fellow newcomers from Every Man Jack, Aditi, Huel, GREYSON, Greater Than, mymuesli, hint, and Ivy’s Tea Co. 🫖
In this newsletter you’ll find: 👇
✅ How to ace your Amazon store.
✍️ 5 things you NEED at the top of your landing page.
🍕 Scroll-stopping creative from Snow Days.
🥜 Crunch differentiation in CPG with Daily Crunch Snacks founder Laurel Orley.
👉 If a pal forwarded this to you, subscribe so you never miss out. And be sure to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Acing Your Amazon Store
Amazon stores are the only location on site that will not showcase competitors’ products.
Your store is the best opportunity to showcase products, get customers relating to your brand, and guide them through the purchasing process without interruption.
How users find your store: If a brand has a store, it's usually displayed on a product detail page (see below) but that’s pretty small and not obvious.
To drive more traffic, utilize sponsored brand-to-store ads like the example below.
Clicking on the headline, logo, or left image takes the shopper to Poppi’s store. These ads are the primary way to drive traffic to the store on Amazon.
🚨 Reminder: The entire shopping process can be done from a store page, so customers can add to cart or "buy now" right from your store.
This is why shoppable images and product placements are essential.
If anything sends the customer off the store page to the product detail page, they will immediately be bombarded with competitor products again.
What makes a good store?
👀 Check out Poppi’s Amazon Store:
Why it works:
Reach out to the Pilothouse Amazon team with any questions!
Upgrade your personalization strategy
Even successful, fast-growing DTC companies like NOBULL struggle to capture customer loyalty.
NOBULL’s product recommendations didn't take into account shopper preferences — or worse, offered products that were out of stock — leaving shoppers with a poor experience. 😟
But together with Bluecore, NOBULL was able to unify shopper and product data, leading to:
That's a massive loyalty lift. 🚀
5 Things to Have Above the Fold/At the Top of Your Landing Page
Before we get ahead of ourselves, you should know the term "above the fold" has become a bit of a misnomer.
See, back in the day, "above the fold" was the top half of the newspaper where the main story was placed. When things moved online, it referred to the content that was displayed without requiring a user to scroll.
Today, the size of the "fold" varies widely across all our devices, making it hard to distinguish.
Recent data shows that most users will scroll upon arriving on a page, regardless of what’s "above the fold" (and sometimes even before the page fully loads).
Many people still use the term, but it’s not always a literal phrase. More often than not it refers to the top third of the real estate on a lander.
This is actually good news for marketers: You don’t have to squeeze everything into a tiny header at the top of your page!
(Shhhh… Hear that? That’s a big sigh of relief from all the UX designers. 🥳)
What’s most important today is making sure the first part of your LP accomplishes the following:
Five things to have above the fold/towards the top of your landing page! 👇
1️⃣ Clear, Attention-Grabbing Headline:
Typically, the very first thing you’ll want at the top of your landing page is a headline that not only grabs your reader’s attention but also clearly describes your offer.
"Message match" is critical here.
Does your headline line up with the previous message the user saw, whether it was an ad, social post, or email?
Be crystal clear with your message.
This headline by Codecademy Pro is the definition of clarity. Who doesn’t want to learn something hard the easiest way possible? 🙋♂️
2️⃣ Short, Explanatory Subheadline:
Next, your landing page should have a short subheadline that adds more color to your offer.
It should explain your headline, introduce your product/offer, and entice people to read more – in three sentences or less.
Short and sweet is the key here. 👌
OLIPOP’s subhead is a perfect example of saying so much in so few words.
A soda with only 2-5 grams of sugar… and did they say fiber?! What is this sorcery? (*keeps scrolling*)
3️⃣ Intriguing Visual:
The next element of a great landing page is an intriguing visual that shows your product in action (if possible).
Your visual element can be a photo, video, or GIF, depending on what highlights your product/offer the best.
InVision makes great use of professional, polished GIFs throughout their landing page.
These help to visually explain the features and capabilities of their app, which also allows them to use less copy on their page.
Hoomband absolutely nails the use of photo AND video.
Not only do they have a clear photo of their product in use, but they also managed to squeeze in a video thumbnail above the fold (in the literal sense).
The video further explains how the headband works – and it’s done by a real user.
4️⃣ Strong Social Proof:
Shoppers love social proof. 💚
Whether it’s testimonials, 5-star reviews, or FOMO tactics, social proof adds credibility to what you’re selling, which is critical on a landing page.
Here are a few different ways you can incorporate social proof into your LP. 👇
Highlight celebrity endorsements (or just regular user testimonials), like Athletic Greens.
If you’ve got PR like OLIPOP, flaunt it.
Utilize the "wisdom of the crowds" tactic like we do in the DTC Twitterbio, by displaying well-known companies who subscribe as well as the amount of subscribers.
5️⃣ Direct, Actionable CTA:
And finally, make sure you’re telling your customer what to do next with a call-to-action, ideally as high up on your page as your design allows.
Your CTA will vary depending on what your product or offer is. But most importantly, it should be clear and actionable.
Above and beyond the usual "Shop Now" or "Learn More" CTAs, consider taking the opportunity to highlight your brand voice, overcome objections, or highlight value.
Some examples include:
In summary, while you don’t have to fit all five of these features above-the-literal-fold…
The top third of your landing page should, at the very least: grab attention, build trust, show proof, and invite action. 🎤
Create killer UGC
📸 We all know that UGC is by far one of the top-performing types of content, but as a DTC brand, finding organic UGC can be hard.
Enter: minisocial ✨
Brands including Native, Jot, Imperfect Foods, and Bite all turn to minisocial to generate UGC via micro-influencer campaigns that are fully licensed so you can use them in your social media, ads, email, and everywhere in between!
Why does DTC love minisocial?
As a fully managed service, they designed their platform for founders and marketers who can't spend hours on dashboards combing through an endless list of creators and managing the nitty-gritty of a campaign’s back and forth.
😉 Also, don't forget as a DTC Newsletter reader you get 15% off your first campaign, just mention this ad.
👉 Campaigns for January are filling up fast so get started now!
Check out this scroll stopper from Snow Days.
The POV shot, "Don’t eat fake sh*it," and the angle from inside the trash can is a perfect way to grab someone's attention.
🎧 This week on the pod we chatted with Laurel Orley, Co-Founder, and CEO of Daily Crunch Snacks, an award-winning health snack company.
Daily Crunch offers a range of uniquely crunchy, beautifully flavored sprouted almond snacks for the mindful eater.
OK, crunch time. Here’s what we learned from Laurel!
Non-GMO, Gluten-free, Certified B-Corp…
Certifications take time and money, but going through the process can pay off for small businesses and startups.
Daily Crunch got certified as a Women-Owned Business, and it’s opened a number of doors as a result.
"We actually got an email last week from Starbucks, and they learned about us through the Diversity Supplier Program… They would have never found us if we didn’t go through the Women-Owned cert."
Certifications also show consumers how you’re different from competitors, and can lead to an increase in sales.
"People are 10x more likely to buy a new product if you put the Women-Owned label on your packaging."
"Amazon is the #1 site people are searching for CPG brands over Google."
Here are some ways that Daily Crunch is using Amazon as their ultimate growth channel:
When they first started out, Laurel sent their product to a batch of different influencers to try. But she never heard back…
A few months later, they mysteriously sold out of all their Amazon inventory in four hours! 💥
Turns out, one of the influencers they had sent product to (Hungry Girl) had highlighted Daily Crunch in her newsletter that day… To a humble 1M email subscribers.
"That’s when it really, for me, it was that lightning in a bottle… I realized that we were going for the wrong type of blogger or influencer at that time."
Since the newsletter’s success, Daily Crunch has continued to crush it with Hungry Girl collabs.
Sometimes sending that shipment of free product pays off!
👉 Listen to all the crunchy goodness here (and learn why you need some sprouted almonds in your life).
🚨 PS: DTC readers get 20% off their first Daily Crunch order with code ‘CRUNCH’ (expires 12/31/2021).
📸 Use Archive.ai to automatically save your branded content from Instagram before it disappears. Use this killer content in paid campaigns to increase conversions and lower CPCs. *
👀 Why EyeBuyDirect refreshed its customer referral program
🎁 TikTok expands creator tipping and video gifts, providing more monetization and marketing options.
👉 Thanksgiving weekend shoppers decline for the second year in a row
💸 Why companies like Amazon, Walmart, and Target have taken a new approach to returns by letting customers keep what they bought, even after issuing refunds.
🔎 YouTube is testing a new 'Search Insights' tool to help guide your content efforts.
*Sponsored
🥜 Crunch Differentiation in CPG with Daily Crunch Snacks Founder Laurel Orley.
❄️ How Josh Elizetxe Would Build Snow Oral Care if He Was Starting Today.
⚡️ Real Talk On The Supply Chain Crunch, World's Best Checkout Experience, and the Future of NFTs with Bolt’s Ian Leslie.
👟 Vessi’s CEO Tony Yu’s Q4 Lead Generation Brilliance (40K+ New Leads in 24 Hours With THIS Contest Strategy).
Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
DTC Newsletter is written by Thomas Schreiber, Kesley Hess, Sadie Evans, and Rebecca Knight.
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