Good morning,
The new Mean Girls movie is getting some heat for feeling like a two hour e.l.f. Cosmetics commercial. Savvy audiences are not thrilled with the over-the-top product placements, calling the move “excessive.”
For advertisers, this is a friendly reminder to find that sweet spot between showcasing products while providing value.
Keep that brand authenticity intact, because today's consumers want content that's more than just a sales pitch.
Here’s what you’ll find in today’s DTC:
You’re reading this newsletter along with new subscribers from: Side Hustle Heros, Three Sisters Production, and North Pointe 👋
This newsletter is brought to you…
🧙 It’s a tale as old as time. Reporting suggests that your top of funnel campaigns don’t “convert” as well, so marketers are forced to move all their budget to lower-funnel campaigns.
…Six weeks later, the funnel dries up, and the lower-funnel campaigns aren’t working anymore. 😢
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Break the cycle with first-party data.
With Northbeam’s machine-learning-powered infinite lookback windows, you can attribute revenue to the top of funnel campaigns that generated it.
Long consideration cycle? No problem — with Northbeam, you can show conversions on first touches that happened months ago. No more 7-day windows or fatalistic last-click reporting.
🤑 Understand the true impact of your marketing spend with Northbeam.
☢️ Warning: side effects of using Northbeam include blisteringly fast creative tests, wildly profitable marketing campaigns, and unexpected job promotions. Use at your own risk.
Headlines are important, but that doesn’t make writing them any easier.
Here’s the good news though.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you write a blog post, sales page, Meta ad, or even subject line.
There are proven formulas you can use to write better headlines, faster –and we’ve compiled 10 of them for you (with examples).
Try These Formulas to Write Better Headlines:
Check out the full article to see the formulas above and five more in action (using a product we totally thought we made up but actually does exist)…
Top DTC brands like Four Sigmatic are using Treat's AI to generate high-res on-brand creative for a fraction of the cost (and time) of traditional product photo shoots. 🎉
Brands provide Treat's AI their product images along with a creative brief and receive stunning creative each month. Your ad campaigns, product pages, emails, social posts, and blog content are covered. 👌
With Treat, you can:
Treat's AI learns your brand, then equips your team with an endless stream of captivating creative that'll resonate with your audience.
Join The Early Access Program to Get Started
The Pilothouse Amazon team has audited tons of Amazon ad suites and shared some valuable insights on how you can do it yourself.
While every brand has its own unique naming conventions and campaign structures, one thing remains the same.
Ad reports don’t lie.
To start, head over to advertising.amazon.com and find your sponsored ad reports.
The Pilothouse Amazon team does an analysis to really get to the heart of how things are doing.
Although brands should be doing branded defense on Amazon, your ads should, in the majority of cases, be primarily spent on prospecting, and hopefully getting a decent ROAS (the team finds this is typically somewhere in the 1.0 - 2.5 range for most brands - lower for products with a higher LTV, higher for those that are typically single purchases).
The takeaway?
A lot of brands don’t realize their ad suite is spending primarily on branded terms/ASINs.
These terms are typically hidden because they’re matched through broad match, phrase match, and auto-campaign targeting.
On the surface, these look like prospecting campaigns, but the search terms tell a different story, and the amazing ROAS they thought they were getting isn’t nearly what they thought it was.
Don’t ignore your ad report!
Follow the steps outlined in this guide to auditing your own Amazon ad suite so you have a better idea of your ad performance and where your dollars are going.
Spending mostly on branded terms can impact your ROAS, so it’s crucial for brands to do audits and optimize their ad strategies so there’s a balance between branded and prospecting campaigns.
Want the team to perform an audit? The Pilothouse Amazon team can leave you with actionable insights to improve your Amazon account.
In this episode of the pod, we sit down with Wylie Robinson from outdoor blanket brand Rumpl and Josef Nystrom Baksaas from Houdini Sportswear to talk about their collaboration “The Reconnect Puffy Blanket” and commitment to being climate neutral.
In this podcast, we cover:
👉 You can listen to the full episode with Wylie and Josef here.
🧑🌾 Data shouldn’t operate in silos. Finale Inventory’s ebook can help you understand how to utilize cross-team and organizational data to maximize outputs. Download now and put your data to work. *
🤑 Finally crack profit-first campaigns. SARAL, your new influencer marketing assistant, can help you find untapped influencers, automate reach outs, and track sales. Claim your free access and build your community of brand advocates. *
DTC Newsletter + Podcast reaches a highly qualified audience of Shopify merchants, eCommerce founders, and digital marketers. Talk to our team to learn more.
Take a look at these tips below to improve your ad performance!
Time to diversify your payments! 😂
Have you heard our latest podcasts?
Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight, Frances Du, and Kelsey Hess. Edited by Eric Dyck.
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