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Wednesday, November 23, 2022
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If you’re new to DTC, welcome! You’re in good company with fellow newcomers from General Mills, BuDhaGirl, SentinelOne, and Pet Finn. 🐶
In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇
📦 Using TikTok Audience Insights to understand and connect with your viewers
📦 How to easily produce native TikTok content through influencer partnerships to promote your products this holiday season
📦 Marketing wealth-tech in a downturn with Wealthsimple’s Harry Hothi
📦 Must try visual hooks for Q4
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🔍 Inside Insights
Have you checked your TikTok Ads Manager recently? If so, you may have noticed that a new tool called Audience Insights is now available.
This tool provides detailed information about your current followers on TikTok and how to expand your reach with informed predictions. 📈
TikTok separates Audience Insights into four categories:
1️⃣ Discovery
Learn who is interacting with your hashtag strategy. Take it one layer further by understanding hashtag engagement by creator category or by type of engagement.
For example, you’ll be able to know if males under 40 are interacting with your #MondayMotivation tag or if creators in the beauty category are loving #FoundationFridays.
2️⃣ Validation
Do you have some pressing questions about your following?
High-level metrics for a specific audience are now available to assess. TikTok highlights being able to see “demographics, behaviors, and interests” and then validate that information through “quantitative and qualitative data.”
As a wellness brand, you could confirm health nuts are actually on TikTok and engaging with wellness content.
3️⃣ Inspiration
TikTok suggests that Insights will help you discover audiences based on that very same data used to validate your audiences.
As a wellness brand, you may have avoided marketing to the beauty crowd, but perhaps there’s a select group of creators looking to hydrate properly so that their skin actually appears as radiant as they claim it is!
4️⃣ Interest
Determine ad categories that speak to your audience. You can discover that certain themes, visual styles, or music increases the performance of certain ads.
You can incorporate these insights into future campaigns targeting specific demographics of your audience.
🤯 Knowledge is power
Be sure to leverage every tool available on one of the fastest-growing and competitive platforms out there. With Audience Insights, you’re not only able to generate your own data, but TikTok is giving you considerable access to data generated by users across the platform.
If you decide to try something different and target a new audience, keep it simple. TikTok can transform amateur content into a viral sensation, so a one-off video could be the key to growing your audience in new and unexpected ways.
Have you tried out the Audience Insights tool? Feel free to share your surprising discoveries and reply to our email!
🌟 Harness The Power of TikTok to Boost Sales This Holiday Season
Quick TikTok Facts!
Using Insense, you can easily produce native TikTok content through influencer partnerships to promote your products this holiday season.
Insense is a tool that combines acquiring UGC assets, building influencer partnerships, and finding creators + influencers into one single platform. So you get the power of three tools, simplified inside Insense.
It's not just about the content. Insense enables you to develop vital relationships with creators + influencers through their integrated chat feature!
For DTC readers only!
🤑 Get up to $200 credits for UGC until Nov 30 by clicking here to book a free strategy call!
P.S. Who doesn't love a Christmas bonus?
🎧 Today on the DTC pod, we’re getting fiscal with Senior Product Marketing Manager for Wealthsimple Harry Hothi.
Wealthsimple is one of Canada’s largest and fastest-growing investment management software tools, providing smart, simple investing without the high fees and account minimums associated with traditional investment management. 💰
As the Senior Product Marketing Manager, Harry’s job is to onboard and educate new clients, exposing them to products like crypto trading and more to increase engagement and improve lifetime value (LTV).
The takeaways 👇
💸 Breaking old habits
Using a simplified investment management platform in a world full of complicated finance blather sounds like a no-brainer, right?
Well, Harry talks about how this is actually where one of his biggest challenges lies.
More often than not, people have long-standing relationships with their financial institutions, so adapting to a new platform can be scary. However, Harry discusses his strategy for the more hesitant client.
“I think when clients do experience Wealthsimple for the first time, they really realize how easy and simple it is… That's the strategy, just get them in the door and get them to realize how straightforward it is.”
🏆 A winning formula
Every brand has a unique formula for success, and what’s included in that formula is entirely dependent on factors such as the industry, the audience, and many more.
For Harry, he calculated a few of the pillars of Wealthsimple’s winning marketing formula.
“We're kind of full steam ahead across all channels!”
💰 What Harry would do with an extra $50K $100K:
Harry is looking to learn quickly. You know what they say -- time is money!
“[I would start] putting some money into some of these platforms and start to test messaging [to] get immediate feedback to understand what's the best message to go to market with.”
👉 Listen to the full episode with Harry Hothi here!
Visual Hooks to Leverage This Q4
If the goal is to get scrollers to watch your video content (and convert!) then your visual hooks should be top of mind. 🪝
Just like fishing, you’ve got to show your bait up front. In this case, your bait is your hook!
To stop the scroll (and catch the viewer), try putting your most visually interesting part of your video first.
Here are some examples from the Pilothouse team of best-performing visual hooks this holiday season:
When you think of email, you might not think of video-content, but a gif is a fabulous use of space and a killer way to standout in busy inboxes. Try adding a lifestyle gif in place of your email campaign hero image.
This is not the place to try your self-shot iPhone video. Your email gifs should be professional, polished, and pristine. No DIY jobs here!
Check out this example of a polished email hero gif:
▶️ YouTube
Despite most platforms thriving on visually-flashy imagery, the Pilothouse YouTube team has found that a killer audio hook is winning.
Check out this ad that focuses on a high-quality audio hook that uses a voice actor reading a strong tagline along with relaxing and authentic lifestyle visuals.
Now, check out this ad which uses a much flashier ‘commercial’ feeling ad format.
The ad using an audio-style hook is crushing in terms of viewer retention. 🔥
🅰️ Amazon
Polished product-feature-highlight video ads are high-performing on Amazon right now.
Here’s a hook to test out: Have your content production agency try “reverse fall” technique (example below) to get viewers to stop the scroll and watch your full video.
🎞 TikTok and Instagram Reels
This is where your more traditional visual hook comes into play.
Take the most visually interesting part of your video and put it at the very start, like a teaser to the video.
If you’re TikTok/Insta savvy, you can handle this one yourself; however, if you want to maximize your results, try using creator-generated content (CGC) to get a review-style sales pitch.
Here’s an example from the Pilothouse Studios team where you see a skin therapy wand in the dark for a confusing hook followed by a CGC sales pitch!
Try incorporating dynamic and static content together on a Facebook ad this holiday season.
Split-screen ads hook your attention through movement and can showcase different angles and features of your product at the same time!
Try using two product images and a video (or gif) to show scrollers everything they need to see to click and convert.
Generally, when people think of visual hooks for Google, they only think of high-quality white background images. This year, try testing eye-catching lifestyle images showing people interacting with your product.
Conveying feelings of joy (smiling, laughing) is the best way to capture attention and have viewers imagine the impact the product would have in their lives.
Shoutout to the Pilothouse team for sharing their stellar creatives! 🚀
Have you incorporated visual hooks into your ads? Send us an example of what’s crushing for your brand! 👀
♾️ Meta announces further protection of teens and their privacy on Facebook and Instagram.
🤔 Can you get sued for using a meme?
🐤 Twitter restores banned accounts.
📊 Khoros publishes ‘The 2022 Social Media Demographics Guide’.
📸 Instagram introduces the ability to add music to photos in your Feed.
🤫 Meta’s “Social Series” shares marketing secrets.
🐶 Puppy Dogs and Ice Cream: Jason Kutasi - Performance Marketing Children’s Books (To 8 Figures).
🪄 MagicLinks, Aleks Chojnacka: Influencer Marketing State of the Union (Plus the future of Live Shopping).
👻 Every Man Jack, Troy Petrunoff - Spooky Retention, Segmenting Gift Buyers, and BOOGO Gamified Sales.
📈 Scaling SPF and Finding Your Most Affluent Customers Ahead of the Recession with Supergoop and Lexer.
🏆 VKTRY Gear, Drew Arciuolo: How to Achieve Saturation with Your Target Market.
💡 Listen to the Biggest Marketing News Stories Today.
Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight, Kate Gullett, and Michael Venditti. Edited by Claire Beveridge and Eric Dyck.
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