Wednesday, September 28, 2022
Alert! This is NOT a meme. 🚨
If you’re new to DTC, welcome! You’re in good company with fellow newcomers from Google, Janie and Jack, Aldo Group, and Panasonic.
In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇
📦 Thinking in billions with Josh Elizetxe, founder of Snow Oral Care
📦 Meet the customer marketing platform that builds connections between consumers and the brands they love – Okendo
📦 Growing your Facebook retargeting audiences for Q4
📦 Invest in scroll-stopping user-generated content from minisocial for the holiday season and beyond
📦 Building a killer top-of-funnel landing page
Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎
👉 If a pal forwarded this to you, subscribe, so you never miss out.
🎧 On today’s episode of the DTC pod, we’re 🦷brushing🦷 up on creating a balanced and success-focused mindset with SNOW Oral Care CEO and DTC icon Josh Elizetxe.
SNOW is an oral care and cosmetic company that offers a variety of premium, best-in-class, and award-winning products, including teeth whitening kits, serums, toothpaste, mouthwashes, and more.
The takeaways 👇
⚖️ A balancing act
The idea of prioritizing a work-life balance is a relatively recent concept.
People are beginning to recognize the importance of taking care of themselves in order to take care of their business and how easy it is to neglect yourself when trying to “get ahead.”
For many people, work is the main focus, and life revolves around it, leading many to feel unfulfilled or unhappy because they don't have the time or capacity for anything else. However, Josh discusses that there is a line between investing in yourself and distracting yourself.
🤑 Billions on the brain
The million billion dollar question is: Why do entrepreneurs need to be thinking in billions these days?
Entrepreneurs are often told that they need to think big to be successful. But what does that actually mean?
Successful entrepreneurs are always thinking about how they can make the biggest impact possible. They don't limit themselves to what they can do right now… Instead, they look at how they can grow exponentially in the future.
“Thinking in billions really comes down to… thinking bigger. Your job as an entrepreneur is to architect opportunity for consumers… and use that opportunity to do something incredible.”
💰 What Josh would do with an extra $500K:
Josh is thinking outside of the oral care and cosmetic industry. He sees value in getting affiliates on board from other markets such as skincare and haircare in order to create programs with them that aligns their incentives with SNOW’s.
“We’ve been doing a lot of work on our affiliate program and reaching out to as many bloggers, vloggers, content creators, but mainly on the SEO side of things.”
👉 Listen to the full episode with Josh Elizetxe here!
Show off what your customer BFFs are saying about you
What if you had a solution that easily captured everything (obviously positive) customers had to say about your brand?
What’s that? There IS a solution?
Trusted by 6,000+ of Shopify's fastest-growing brands, Okendo is the customer marketing platform that builds connections between consumers and the brands they love.
Okendo Reviews is the most advanced reviews solution. With customizable review widgets, best-in-class integrations, and affordable month-to-month pricing, brands that use Okendo generate an average of 3.4x more reviews and an average of 32% more UGC.
On Monday, Okendo launched the first-ever customer intelligence solution -- Okendo Connect. Okendo Connect enables brands to collect customer insights via onsite surveys, post-purchase surveys, and shareable links so they can deliver more personalized and frictionless commerce experiences. 🤩
With Okendo you'll:
🚨 Join SKIMS, Feastables, Magic Spoon, and over 6,000 other Shopify stores that already use Okendo and receive your first 30 days free!
Growing Facebook Retargeting Audiences for Q4
How our Facebook team over at Pilothouse wants to look this Q4. 👆
And to get there, they’re working on audience building.
“Audience building???” 🤔
Audience building is an important part of Q4. The 2-3 months leading up to it (AKA now!) are prime time for building a hot retargeting audience using the Facebook pixel.
Sitewide, these are the main audiences to build with the Facebook pixel:
In addition, the Pilothouse team looks to grow audiences based on:
But how can you build these audiences? Get NEW traffic to your website. Here’s what we suggest: 👇
And, what do you do once you’ve built up your audiences?
👉 Retarget
👉 Retarget
👉 Retarget
The bigger and hotter your audience heading into Black Friday, the better.
A large engager and site visitor audience
+
Black Friday Offers + Intent
=
💰Sky high CVR 💰
So, start audience building now and reap the benefits through Q4. 🚀 Need a hand? Don’t be afraid to reach out.
Is your content holiday-ready?
Are you ready to put a little holiday magic into your content strategy this season? If so, it’s time to invest in scroll-stopping user-generated content from minisocial.
minisocial is already the favorite holiday helper of some of the top DTC brands across 🇺🇸 🇨🇦 🇬🇧. Why? They produce the highest quality UGC while also activating dozens of micro-influencer posts on TikTok or Instagram.
Brands like Huel, Imperfect Foods, Care/Of, and Native love working with minisocial because:
1️⃣ All the content is fully licensed right out of the box.
2️⃣ Campaigns are fully managed and designed to take 10 minutes or less to spin up.
3️⃣ Activations on Instagram or TikTok match or beat traditional influencer activations in terms of reach and engagement.
And, in the spirit of the season, minisocial is giving DTC readers a holiday discount!
👉 Ready to spice up your content this season with awesome UGC? Learn more about minisocial here!
Taylor Fraser, Marketing Director at Outway Socks, took to Twitter to spread the knowledge of building new top-of-funnel landing pages.
Here are some elements Taylor outlined in his tweet that you can steal for your own pages today! 👀
🤔 Viewport content
Your visible or loaded viewport is the portion of the screen shoppers see currently visible in their browser. Use your viewport to its full advantage and flaunt your stuff!
Shoppers make decisions within seconds of being on your page, so ensure you give them a well-thought-out and clear customer experience.
Your initial viewport should contain:
🏆 We’re #1, we’re #1
Your landing page is not the place to be humble… Show shoppers why your products are leaps and bounds ahead of competitors!
Explain why your product exists, share technical features, and use imagery to show how and why your product is better. 💪
Here’s how Outway has it covered:
🚨 Readers aren’t going to read every word on your landing page. Make the content easily readable, digestible, and skimmable. Check out the bolding they use to draw your eyes to key points.
👏 Options people, we need options
Potential shoppers may not fall in love with the first product of yours they see, so ensure they know that options are on the table!
For Outway, they show design options. If you’re a clothing brand and your landing page is focused on a t-shirt, you may show all the color choices you have available.
🤯 Is this the real life, is this just fantasy?
Most are skeptical of buying from a brand that has no reviews and no real people seen using your products…
Utilize your landing page to show (1) real people use them in their everyday lives and (2) they love them!
Long-winded reviews aren’t needed. Grab a few sentence reviews to show personality.
If you’re able, add trust and validity to your brand by showing your trusted partners (if you don’t have ‘em, get ‘em). If that’s not an option for your brand right now, add links to articles that talk about or mention your brand.
🌟 Your product does WHAT?
Grab your greatest product's unique selling points and highlight them! Taylor suggests 2-4 consumable schools of thought.
Outway created custom icons for each selling point and made the titles descriptive enough that shoppers don’t actually need to read the copy below to get the gist.
🤩 The one where shoppers click ‘buy now’
You’re educating potential shoppers, but the ultimate goal is conversions! Every few flicks of the thumb down a page, add a CTA.
As you near the end of your landing page, direct users to other product categories on your site. Taylor also suggests adding reminders of shipping and return policies, warranties, product guarantees, etc., to reduce shopper uncertainty. 👍
Include a section covering your brand's key frequently asked questions, pop in a final CTA, and voila! A killer landing page that gives scrollers all the info they need to go from potential shoppers to shoppers.
That’s a wrap! Looking for more details and examples? Check out Taylor’s full thread here. 🧵
✍️ TikTok announces a huge increase to its video descriptions as it leans into discovery.
⏰ Instagram Stories under 60 seconds are no longer broken up into clips.
🍺 Drizly launches new ad network to lure alcohol brands.
🎯 Google: Country targeting update for products in Content API for Shopping and Google Ads API.
📦 Amazon is holding a Prime Early Access Sale on October 11 and 12.
🦷 Thinking in Billions with Josh Elizetxe Founder of Snow Oral Care.
👟 Retail Giant Steve Madden on Retention at Scale with Hannah Sinclair and Bluecore's Sarah Cascone.
💄 Growth vs. Customer Experience: Cody Plofker and Eli Weiss from Jones Road Beauty Weigh In.
🕺 Disco's Benjamin Smith on Nailing Your Product Market Fit With Creative, Offer, and Landing Page.
🆕 Overcoming the New Normal With a Content Creator Network, Crossrope's Srjdan Popovic Returns!
Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight, Kate Gullett, and Jordan Gillis. Edited by Claire Beveridge and Eric Dyck.
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