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Wednesday, October 19, 2022
If you don’t have at least one rogue mug on your desk at all times, you’re lying. ☕️
If you’re new to DTC, welcome! You’re in good company with fellow newcomers from The Chicago Blackhawks, Bare Necessities, Snuggs, DR-HO’s, and Inkbox Tattoos. 👋
In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇
📦 A timeline for holiday campaign planning on TikTok
📦 What savvy marketers have done to pivot and reassess priorities in the new era of marketing
📦 Nathan Thompson & Stu Jolley, Stories and Ink: Growing with SEO and artist collab content
📦 Capturing new customers with authentic reviews
📦 New TikTok features from TikTok World 2022
Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎
👉 If a pal forwarded this to you, subscribe, so you never miss out.
Planning For Holiday Campaigns on TikTok
Tis’ the season to be jolly, and consumers are getting ready to spend, spend, spend. 💰
According to TikTok’s Holiday commerce guide, the three biggest shopping dates for the holidays are:
Wanna win big on these key dates? Steal these data-driven practices to help you take advantage of when consumers are more likely to be making purchases. 🛍️
⏰ ASAP
Now’s the time to start gathering creative assets ASAP for each shopping period. Remember to use holiday specific messaging.
Plan your prospecting and retargeting campaigns for the shopping event that’s attached to each shopping date!
👻 October 1-15
Launch your prospecting campaigns for lower funnel events like add to cart and purchase.
In this stage, you should be targeting broadly. Allow the algorithm to find the best audiences for your brand!
🎃 October 16-31
Now’s the time to expand your audience targeting with Lookalike audiences and interest-based targeting.
Use the data tab on your ad sets to guide custom audiences.
🎁 November 1-30
In this timeframe, you should start to shift 10% of your budget to retargeting campaigns.
Use top audiences and top creative to maximize the performance of retargeting.
Adjust this budget according to performance.
🎉 Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Holidays & Post Holiday sales
To get the most out of your performance, consolidate spend into top audiences and creatives.
Scale your top-performing campaigns. TikTok advises 20-30% per day.
However, the Pilothouse TikTok team found that campaigns can be scaled rapidly by increasing budgets until performance begins to plateau.
Unlike Meta, TikTok has shown more flexibility with sudden budget changes, with cases of 200%+ spend increases in a single day while maintaining efficiency.
What are top CMOs prioritizing for 2023? Join Wunderkind’s CMO State of the Union webinar to find out
The only constant is change, and this is especially true in today’s pre-recession, post-pandemic (and soon-to-be post-cookie) marketing landscape.
But, change isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
The team at Wunderkind did a deep dive, and found that 94% of CMOs see the last two years as a turning point for marketers, paving the way for a new golden age of marketing.
The best part is Wunderkind’s CMO, Richard Jones, along with industry leaders from Kate Spade and Case Mate, are coming together in a virtual webinar on Wednesday, October 26 at 4pm EST to discuss their findings and what they mean moving forward.
You’ll learn what savvy marketers have done to pivot and reassess priorities, and how you can embrace this new era of marketing to keep on winning.
👉 Click here to save your seat.
🎧 This episode of the DTC Podcast, we got “skin deep” with Stu Jolley and Nathan Thompson. Stu and Nathan are leading the charge at Stories and Ink to provide effective long-term tattoo aftercare.
Stories and Ink is a brand built on culture. 💉
Not only have they completely disrupted the tattoo aftercare market, they continue to challenge public opinion, revolutionize tattoo education, and support the artists who support them to create a self-sustaining powerhouse on the verge of international expansion. 💥
If you already thought getting inked was cool, it’s about to get a whole lot cooler. 😎
Today’s podcast is about:
1️⃣ Addressing all potential consumers
2️⃣ Developing an effective SEO strategy
3️⃣ Using education and culture to drive growth
The Takeaways 👇
🌏 Finding purpose
Anyone of age can get a tattoo, but the industry leans towards a predominantly male demographic. Stories and Ink is challenging industry norms by building a gender-neutral environment to support their artists and consumers.
Education and inclusivity are staples of the brand interwoven throughout their content. Even their product names reflect this mission, like “From Dusk till Dawn” and “Wake and Glow Duo.”
When consumers can understand the brand's vision at every point of contact, you can trust that your retention will grow.
💪 Eating your vitamins
Utilize all the tools at your disposal to understand where consumers are and how they communicate.
Stories and Ink outline the most successful growth drivers this year as:
Nathan says that a 16% increase in paid search spending drove a 26% growth in revenue this year and is a key indicator of its potential.
Outside of ad spend, the ability to “be where your consumers are” greatly influences your reach. That’s why being in tattoo shops and speaking to artists directly are both so integral to the success of Stories and Ink.
🤕 No pain, no gain
Stu thinks the “boom or bust” craze is detrimental to the long-term success of your brand. As the old nursery rhyme goes, “tortoise wins the race.” Moving slowly and methodically provides opportunities to develop a growth strategy and adapt it as necessary in a volatile market.
The full podcast features:
👉 Listen to the full episode with Nathan and Stu here!
Don't Lose Potential Customers For Not Having Enough Product Reviews
You know your products are great.
But the more authentic customer reviews you have, the higher your chances are of capturing new customers.
That's why brands like PetSmart, Lenny & Larry's, and Derma E sample their products to Cohley’s network of creators to receive authentically written reviews, alongside photos showcasing the product in use.
What makes product reviews from Cohley better?
For a limited time, when DTC subscribers purchase a package of reviews from Cohley, they’ll double it at no additional cost. That means if you purchase 250 product reviews, they’ll throw in another 250 on the house.
👉 Sign up for Cohley today to get more authentic reviews (and more customers).
Does TikTok Hold The Keys to The Future of eCommerce?
TikTok World 2022 kicked off last week and showcased future initiatives supporting its continued growth in the eCommerce space. 👍
Wondering what you and your brand look forward to? Let’s dive in: 👇
🎬 Showtimes on Tiktok
Showtimes connects users to ticketing partners to purchase movie tickets directly within the app. Pretty cool.
TikTok will optimize your ads to “improve cost-per-acquisition and overall performance,” drastically extending the reach of leading studios and independent filmmakers who debut movie trailers on the platform.
Ultimately, TikTok is looking for ways to normalize spending within its ecosystem and engage younger demographics.
🔭 Focused view
TikTok drives “brand impact” by connecting the most invested users to their favorite products.
Focused view will target those most likely to take action within the first six seconds or users most likely to view the ad for longer than six seconds. This feature will become available to advertisers on October 20th, 2022.
🔑 More features for lead gen ads
Lead generation has been at the forefront of TikTok’s push into eCommerce since January 2022. ⏩
TikTok’s new approach will contain forms with:
🎨 Updates to the Creator Marketplace
Data from previous partnerships between brands and creators will now factor into the selection process for future partnerships.
The goal is to optimize advertisers’ selection to the most invested creators.
🧭 Creative Solutions Finder
The creative solutions finder consists of a finder and a directory. The finder has a quiz to help plan your next marketing campaign, while the directory offers a self-guided tour through TikTok’s creative tools.
The availability of each tool varies:
Check out this guide from TikTok to help identify the right partners and tools for your DTC brand as the holiday season approaches where many opportunities await.
If you learned something new about how TikTok can benefit you this holiday season, let us know in a reply to this email!
💃 Kim Kardashian SEC charges have influencer marketers on edge.
📱 Kanye West to acquire “uncancelable” social media platform Parler.
🔎 Google updates search display formats to provide more context to users.
💪 Continuous innovation to keep you safe online.
🚫 Facebook announces the retirement of ‘Instant Articles.’
🖋 Nathan Thompson & Stu Jolley, Stories and Ink: Growing with SEO and Artist Collab Content.
🥦 High Performance, Nutritionally Complete Marketing to $150M with Huel's Ben Bokaie.
⭕️ Turn Your Returns Into Exchanges With Aaron Schwartz from Loop.
🧦 Making a 5X Return on Affiliate Sales with Rob Fraser from Outway Socks.
🔋 Two Hacks to Increase Subscriber Conversion by 50% with Tea Drops and Recharge.
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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