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Monday, April 10, 2023

*Buys new phone for more meme storage space*

In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇

📦 Why your founder should be in front of the camera

📦 The key ingredient for top 1% ad performance

📦 Is LinkedIn in your marketing toolkit?

📦 How to hit your goals with less time and effort

📦 Developing brand authority

Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎

👉 If a pal forwarded this to you, subscribe, so you never miss out.

Meta

😎 Pretty cool, Pretty Boy

Every brand has an origin, and that story is what we call the founder’s story. It is the core reason your product exists. And when it comes to advertising on Meta, it’s a must-have in your content strategy.

But, what is often overlooked is the power of founders getting in front of the camera to film content. It’s cheap, it’s fast, and can be done without the headache of wrangling content from creators. Plus, who knows the product better than you (the founder)?

Integrating your founder(s), their experiences, their expertise, and their voice into your ads can help increase your returns and decrease your overall costs per action. 🪄

Historically, the Pilothouse Meta team has seen incredible success with ad campaigns leveraging content filmed by founders or about founding stories. This variation of the founder’s story ad from Pretty Boy is no different.

One of the brand founders presents common issues with skincare products that they and their target audience have likely experienced. It’s a founder’s story with a side of great product features.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑Make it accessible

Another highlight of this ad is its accessibility with the offer callout in the headline and branded captions throughout, which helps generate hype without reiterating the same information in the video content.

This is a massive favor to the audience that respects their time, and those who can’t hear the video also gain the same value from the ad.

📈 Results matter

This founder comparison ad (when compared to monthly averages) saw:

• A 127% increase in return-on-ad-spend
• A 55% decrease in cost-per-action

👍 You’ve got this!

Having a founder show confidence in their product like Pretty Boy does is a tremendous generator of social proof and credibility. 🔥 The content feels genuine in ways other formats often struggle to achieve.

The Pilothouse Meta team strongly believes that if you have a smaller, highly engaged audience, now is the time to jump in front of the camera and tell people why they need your product!

Sponsor

Top 1% ad performance starts with this key ingredient

Quiz time!

❓What do Imperfect Foods, Plant People, and Ceremonia all have in common?

✅ Answer: They leverage high-performing UGC content for their acquisition channels.

UGC is a valuable asset to brands. As you are reading this, Plant Peoples UGC assets from minisocial are performing in the top 1% on TikTok.

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LinkedIn

Not *Just* for Networking: Here’s Why You Need to Add LinkedIn to Your Marketing Toolkit

Is your LinkedIn account gathering dust?

Well, consider this your call for some spring cleaning! 🧹

Thanks to recent updates targeting marketers, LinkedIn is no longer just for professional networking and headhunting.

With the right strategy, this growing platform can be a powerful channel to get more eyes on your content, increase traffic to your website, reach quality leads, and generate brand awareness.

Grab that Swiffer and crank up your favorite cleaning tunes (Livin’ On a Prayer, anyone?).

We’ve got three reasons to dust off your LinkedIn account and add it to your 2023 marketing strategy. 👇

1️⃣ Reach a larger audience with native content posting

LinkedIn is arguably one of the best places to position yourself as an industry expert and thought leader.

So, how do you do that?

One way is to create high-quality, informative, relevant content. Good content helps you establish authority in your industry. Authority = credibility and trust with potential customers!

Until recently, most LinkedIn users shared links to external content, such as a blog post on their website.

However, a better strategy to test in 2023 is posting your content natively on LinkedIn.

With LinkedIn's publication feature, you can create and share articles, images, videos, PDFs, PowerPoints, and more directly to the feed.

The cool thing about native posting is that it gives you greater visibility.

For example, if your post gains traction, the LinkedIn algorithm may highlight it so more people can see it.

Additionally, LinkedIn has recently added SEO titles, descriptions, and tag features so that the content you publish on their platform can also get picked up in internet search results, too.

So, posting your content natively on LinkedIn can increase your chances of going “viral” and potentially reaching thousands more readers. 🚀

And if your content is valuable, getting it seen by more people is always going to be a win, right?

2️⃣ Generate engaged followers with LinkedIn Newsletters

If you publish articles regularly, consider creating a LinkedIn Newsletter. This newer feature is a curated feed of your content that your audience can subscribe to, similar to an email list.

Since its launch two years ago, 29 million members have subscribed to at least one LinkedIn newsletter. So it’s definitely a budding opportunity!

Followers of your newsletter will get notified whenever a new “edition” comes out, increasing the potential for views (compare this to just posting articles on your profile, which your audience will only see if they scroll through their timelines or visit your page).

The people who subscribe to your newsletter are also more likely to engage with your content, comment, and share it with others. 👀

Plus, since it’s a newer feature, LinkedIn will likely reward you for having a highly engaged newsletter and promote it to more people outside your network!

However, there are a few caveats to LinkedIn Newsletters:

• You have to be in Creator Mode and meet LinkedIn’s Newsletter Access Criteria to use newsletters
• Your account can only create one newsletter at a time
• You can only send out one newsletter every 24 hours

If LinkedIn Newsletters are available for your profile, and you regularly produce content, it’s a great feature to start using to build more authority, grow your audience, and generate more leads.

Sponsor

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LinkedIn — Part 2

Not *Just* for Networking: Here’s Why You Need to Add LinkedIn to Your Marketing Toolkit

3️⃣ Get quality leads with targeted advertising

If you aren’t already a savvy LinkedIn Nerd, you may be surprised to learn that it houses a pretty powerful advertising platform. 🤓

Before you get the nervous sweats about adding yet another ad channel 😅 to your budget, consider a few stats:

• LinkedIn Cost Per Lead is 28% lower than Google Ads
• LinkedIn generates leads 227% more effectively than Facebook and Twitter
• It’s projected that LinkedIn will capture 25% of all digital ad spending by 2024
• 73% of buyers are more likely to consider a brand if the salesperson reaches out via LinkedIn
• Among the 900M professionals on LinkedIn, 4 out of 5 have the power to drive business decisions

So not only are LinkedIn ads seen by a lot of highly influential people, but they can also be more affordable and effective than other channels. 💰

There are also some nice features within LinkedIn advertising that may tickle your fancy.

1. LinkedIn has some robust targeting features. You can narrow your target demo to granular details like job title, company size, skills, interests, and education.
2. They also offer a tool called “Matched Audiences” that enables you to retarget custom audiences on LinkedIn, such as website visitors.
3. You can test several unique ad types, from sponsored content to lead gen forms to direct messages.

⚠️ But before you get those ads a-rollin’, a word of caution…

LinkedIn is a different beast from other social channels. While its marketing features are expanding, most members are still there to grow their professional network or make connections — not to buy things.

However, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for DTC brands to advertise successfully on LinkedIn. You’ll just need to rethink your strategy.

Ads positioned as educational or helpful — especially to a business or a professional — tend to perform better than direct selling.

For example, check out how this Magzter ad specifically targets business owners:

Advertising on LinkedIn is a bit trickier, but it can pay off. According to LinkedIn, when brand ads are done well:

• 50% of respondents view the brand as higher quality
• 92% say it appears more professional
• 74% say it is more intelligent
• 59% say it is more respectable

✨TL;DR?

• LinkedIn is no longer just for professional networking. New features have opened up opportunities for marketers to reach qualified audiences more effectively.
• Instead of sharing external content, posting content natively on the platform can generate more views and engagement.
• If you publish content regularly, consider starting a Newsletter page where you can reach a more engaged audience.
• Advertising on LinkedIn can get you better results than other channels, but it requires a much different strategy for DTC brands. Instead of direct selling, angle your offers as educational, informative, and beneficial for business professionals.

Will you use LinkedIn to scale your biz in the next few months? Any strategies you’re seeing that drive growth for DTC brands? Reply to this email and let us know! 📧

The March vs February final comparison:

With March fully wrapped, we have a final look at month over month performance. ROAS on Pinterest (-15.59%) TikTok (+1.42%) and Meta (-4.50%) finished the month down, either from previous highs or even lower than they started. CPCs are up across the board on all channels, our second reporting period in a row with this result. CPMs have stayed high on TikTok (+11.10%) and Meta (+3.51%) mark several consecutive weeks of downward performance, closing a month that proved to be several percentage points less efficient on most metrics.

Quick Hits

🔎 Google is to let Android users delete their app data. This feature will allow users to remove their information from accounts created with third-party app developers without reinstalling the app on their device.

📱 iOS 17 is imminent and will reportedly dro support for iPhone X, 8, and more. The new update brings design overalls to the Control Center as it’s notable feature.

🤖 Google has released plans to add Bard to its search engine. This push will expand the capabilities of the search engine far beyond its current language limitations.

🐥 Twitter prepares to show half of the amount of ads to Blue subscribers. This will not affect the amount of ads shown in profiles, replies, promoted accounts, and events.

♾️ Meta previews generative AI to create ads. This will allow the efficient creation of diverse ads to bolster brands’ portfolios and expand target audiences.

🔊 Have you heard our latest podcasts?

‍

🌲 TAXA Outdoor, Garrett Finney: Digital meets dealership, NASA Architect goes out of home for real.

🐶 Pet Health Comes Home with MySimplePetLab's Jen Hagness.

☠️ Liquid Death Mountain Water: Hamid Saify - Death, Beverages, and the Attention Economy.

🟥 Mid-Day Squares: Jake Karls and Nick Saltarelli - Rainmaking, Fundraising and "One word: F&%^ng Crazy."

🧖‍♀️ Bushbalm's David Gaylord goes B2B, Enters US retail bigly, and rides the Vajacial wave on DTC.

💡 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, Kelsey Hess, and Michael Venditti. Edited by Claire Beveridge and Eric Dyck.

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