Friday, January 20, 2023
That’s a nice shirt you’re wearing today. 🤝
In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇
📦 Simplifying what’s in your pockets with Ridge
📦 Viva Las Vegas! Level up at C-Suite Las Vegas
📦 Making creative iterations with top performers
📦 Do you have the best team for your brand?
Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎
👉 If a pal forwarded this to you, subscribe, so you never miss out.
Welcome to the DTC Brand Breakdown series, where we dive deep into your favorite brands' inner workings like a crime scene detective. 🕵️♀️
This time, we're turning our magnifying glasses towards The Ridge, purveyors of wallets so slim you’ll have to triple check your pockets before running out the door.
Ridge’s goal? To improve the items you carry everyday because, let's face it, we all need a little help in that department.
To start us off, our friends at Pilothouse have an in-depth look at The Ridge’s Facebook Ad library. 👇
👀 Attention-grabbers
The Ridge's video is like a magnet for your eyeballs, and the landing page it leads to is the cherry on top. It's a clever strategy to show you the benefits of their product while leaving you wanting more. ✅
It would be interesting to split test more landing page designs. The imagery we get is kinda basic and uninteresting, but there are lots of styles we’ve run in the past for this type of content. For example, you could try video content for those who prefer to watch rather than read.
We think the headlines in the ad could be stronger, and The Ridge could achieve that through more testing (it always comes back to more testing in many cases, but it helps!)
Running a few tests would help The Ridge discover what consumers actually care about so that every reason listed in the ad is an absolute banger. 🧨
Here’s a mix of unique-selling-point, offer, and testimonial headlines the Pilothouse Meta team would suggest trying:
😎 Okay, this is cool!
This style is like a trusty steed for Pilothouse clients, so it’s fair to assume it’s crushing for Ridge too! It’s even using an extended format for this feed preview. Taking up more space in the feed is a fabulous way to increase a consumer’s chance for engagement.
The headline needs to be more impactful and draw on our natural curiosity about what the offer is. We’d suggest something like “Offer Almost Gone…” for urgency or “Don’t Miss It…” given the limited time offer test above!
The angle about a smarter wallet you won’t lose is powerful enough to drive people through to make a purchase.
The image above is a collage from our last Mastermind in Victoria B.C.
Looking at the mentors we brought together for that event, makes you think:
Where else are you going to have a conversation with people like this?
For C-Suite Las Vegas, we’re going deeper with our mentors, pulling out topic-specific expertise around the big ideas for growth in 2023 like organic content, bundling funnels for meta ads, mobile app distribution, email as mass media, and how to double your conversion rate.
End Q1 with a bang 💥
🚀 More of everything, please!
This ad is like a buffet for the eyes and shows multiple styles for the consumer to choose. The text overlay format is like a siren call, urging us to engage with the video to hear what they say. It's like a lifestyle commercial with a close-up of the product and covers a lot of ground in one ad.
When it comes to the process, we could look at testing ten variations and review the performance of each one. These iterations could include new copy, CTAs, and audio, etc. Like a chef experimenting with new flavors, we can play with different ingredients to find the perfect recipe for success. 🧑🍳
🙅 No more knockoffs
We’d love to know what part of the funnel this ad is running in. 👀
The Amazon knockoffs headline would be better served on a landing page, and we bet they would benefit from testing if they haven’t already.
When consumers scroll through a feed, there’s usually less “squeeze” on sticking with the clickthrough flow than when you get to a page. But hey, we could be wrong! The Ridge would need to test this.
In this case, it’s a savvy ad because fans who see it will likely comment on why it’s better, and that can build up valuable social proof.
The intellectual property angle is a stroke of genius by The Ridge. It plays on consumer emotions like a symphony.
👉 Keeping it simple
Another awesome creative from The Ridge. 👏
The lighting on the text cleverly draws our attention to The Ridge so that it’s the first thing we see. Our brains first thought, “So this wallet only takes my cash, but I can’t fit as much,” which The Ridge can use to boost the ad's performance.
Some tests against this ad could show a card-holding variant or a model that holds both. They could also add a text overlay with some checkboxes to share a few details before driving consumers to the landing page. A simple split test could help determine which variation performs better.
The Right Team Can Make or Break Your Brand in 2023…
💥 2023 is going to be a wild year. Are you confident that you have the absolute best team around you and your brand?
If you feel that:
We should chat…👇
Pilothouse (DTC’s sister company) has a few spots open for Q1 and we’re looking for 3 brands we can sink our teeth into. We’re hungry problem solvers, ROAS generators, and partners in your growth, right down to your bottom line.
🤔 Sound interesting?
Chat with someone on our team now - no obligation. We make money when you do.
🌶️ Spice, flair, and punchiness
We love the way the offer is positioned at the bottom. It doesn’t allow us to get distracted from the benefits listed at the top. Actually, it adds a ‘punchiness’ to the ad.
There’s some natural curiosity at play here because of the product’s design. It looks like a camera case and we don’t fully realize that it’s a wallet until we read the ad copy. This is great because it makes us read the ad!
Overall, it’s a very well-constructed ad that would be interesting to test with different linked landing pages. We’re talking about the performance of a product style page against a UGC-oriented page to measure how different forms of content perform for this audience.
😍 Everyone loves free stuff
A free ring sizer delivered to your door not only brings someone into the funnel but also retains their information for retention. Nice play Ridge. 💍
The creative is pretty strong here, showing us a close-up of the ring. However, jewelry is a saturated market, and this ring looks cool but fairly tame in design. Split testing the unique selling points (USPs) as a checkmark list against the details of purchase benefits would be very interesting.
We’re really diggin’ the creative here. 👏
We can see the material of the ring, and the text inside alludes to a high-quality product and a state-of-the-art manufacturing process.
We could test this as a thumbnail on the top-performing UGC video for the ring against this static image. We get the sense that when they land on some winning copy, they should lean into it for future creative testing.
If this creative is performing well, they could leverage that to test hooks, headlines, and benefit breakdowns to continue finding more winners.
That concludes our first round of breakdowns with Ridge for now. Next up is email and our friends at Pilothouse have lots to say over the coming weeks, so keep in touch with us at DTC for more spicy takes and winning strategies. 🌶️
👕 STPL: Need a fresh wardrobe? STPL Menswear is ethical, affordable and intends to make every day exceptional.
🍞 Pacha: Everybody loves bread. Pacha has a recipe for every diet using a 100% plant-based recipe and regenerative agriculture.
🥤 Rocky Mountain Soda: You know a good soda when you have one. Rocky Mountain Soda ensures that each small batch of soda is carefully packaged, tested, and free from anything that doesn’t taste amazing.
💸 Andrew Wilkinson at C-Suite in Victoria: Bootstrapping vs VC vs PE vs Angel.
😎 Pretty Boy - Ben Feys and Kevin Niehoff: Nailing your Brand Identity and Balling on a Budget.
🥤 Sansorium - Fiona Hepher: Sipping Sober with a 30% Return Customer Rate.
❤️ Rootd - Ania Wysocka: Helping a Million Users in the Age of Anxiety.
💰 Mike Fata - CPG Lessons From Scaling Hemp Hearts + A Trifecta of 9 Figure Exits!
💡 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 and Michael Venditti. Edited by Claire Beveridge and Eric Dyck.
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