Wednesday, January 18, 2023
Coffee, tea, a DTC branded seltzer, a comically large vessel of water… We know at least one of them is on your desk right now. 👀
If you’re new to DTC, welcome! You’re in good company with fellow newcomers from Tyson, Metalbird, Make Bake, Gentlemen's Scrub Club, Neo Financial, and Uniball Co. ✍️
In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇
📦 Narrating your TikTok vids with the ‘Trickster’ voice
📦 How to produce fully-licensed UGC to catapult your TikTok to new levels
📦 Andrew Wilkinson at C-Suite in Victoria: Bootstrapping vs. venture capital vs. private equity vs. angel investors
📦 Set yourself up for 2023 at C-Suite Las Vegas
📦 Five types of landing pages to boost conversions
Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎
👉 If a pal forwarded this to you, subscribe, so you never miss out.
You Trickster 🃏
Have a creative that’s performing well on your organic or ad account and want to iterate on it without re-inventing the wheel?
Try the TikTok Trickster voice to narrate your text-to-voice! 💬
A Pilothouse client saw killer results by simply using this narration, so test, test, test!
The Pilothouse team doesn’t sleep on little account hacks, and neither should you. Keep your eyes on this space, there are many more tricks up their sleeve to come. 🔥
*When compared to account averages.
Want to find yourself among the top 1% of DTC brands?
DTC brands are crushing it on TikTok, performing in the top 1% 🤯
The secret? Stop telling everyone your product is great. Let others do it for you!
Check out how top DTC brands worked with minisocial to produce fully-licensed UGC to catapult their TikTok -
How'd they do it? It’s not rocket science. You just need the right creators and the right team to manage the process - that’s minisocial.
👉 Start working with minisocial to level up your UGC today.
*DTC reader BONUS - get started and take 15% off your first campaign!*
🎧 Today on the DTC pod, we’re featuring the fireside chat we had with Andrew Wilkinson, co-founder and CEO of Tiny Capital, at our last live event, C-Suite Mastermind: Victoria.
Andrew, who the Hustle dubbed "The Warren Buffet of Startups," is one of the most successful and well-known young entrepreneurs in the world, having built a portfolio of 40 businesses that operate in and around the DTC space including Metalab, AeroPress, Dribbble, Girl Boss and more.
Attendees at C-Suite got to spend the day with Andrew, asking him specific questions, with more than one attendee getting to chat about investment/partnership with Tiny. Wild!
Don't miss your opportunity to join the next C-Suite Mastermind in Las Vegas, March 23-24!
This talk is wide-ranging and covers Andrew's entire career, ranging from starting one of the top design firms in the world, Metalab, to starting Tiny, taking companies public, hiring and firing CEOs, and everything in between — so tune in to hear the full podcast.
The takeaways 👇
🤔 To buy or not to buy
Andrew's approach to company acquisition centers around the opportunity to build long-term value.
His recent acquisition of AeroPress provided a perfect example: a family-owned brand with minimal marketing spend that has international brand recognition in the same way Kleenex or Jacuzzi do.
Where consumers might refer to any pour-over coffee accessory as an “AeroPress,” Andrew knew that a brand with this much value could be massively enhanced with his and his partners’ digital marketing know-how.
Additionally, he mentions that a huge factor in determining what to invest in is the relationship between the founder and the team.
“I think the number one filter I use is if I go in to meet the founder and I wouldn't let them babysit my kids, then that's a bad sign.” 🧒
Andrew discusses how his philosophy has evolved throughout his career, but here are seven key values that he currently looks for when acquiring companies:
♻️ Network, connect, leverage, repeat
From the beginning, Andrew’s business journey was comparable to a steeplechase: littered with hurdles and barriers to success. In addition to being a 19-year-old web designer working from his parent's basement, he faced challenges like being an unknown freelancer and one that had yet to be taken seriously by big players in the industry.
After finding success with his company MetaLab, he began to attribute that success (and more!) to networking. From then on, he started leveraging his network and connections to grow his business.
“I just started asking every single client that I had, ‘Hey can you introduce me to one more person?’ and over time, I went from working with these… small startups to working my way up to working with bigger startups and getting to know venture capitalists. Before I knew it, I knew partners at all the top venture capital firms, so I was constantly getting introductions to new work.”
👉 Listen to the full episode with Andrew Wilkinson here!
(And see you in Las Vegas, where you can join in on the next conversations like this!) 🎰
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 💥
🚀 Landing Sequence Initiated
We’re sure you’ve seen them out in the wild… 👀
We’re talking about those landing pages with flashing lights, crisp gifs, and top-notch animations. They spark inspiration and creativity, but are they practical? Not sure what we’re talking about? Check out some examples on Dribbble!
There is little data on most of these pages unless otherwise published by the creator, but let’s dive into how you can interpret that creativity and inspiration into something that converts.
First and foremost, your landing page is an opportunity to convert.
Persuade your audience to take action. Eliminate everything that doesn’t lead to a conversion. Consider removing unnecessary navigation, links, and design elements that distract viewers' attention from the desired action (like, ya know, making a purchase!) 🤑
Landing pages with a clear and concise goal are the most successful.
📢 TMI
It is possible to have too much information on a page.
Your brand doesn’t need to reveal everything right away. Play your cards close to your chest and leverage your audience’s curiosity to drive attention toward your product or service. Get people invested for a higher chance of conversion.
Too little information is also a problem. If your audience doesn’t know what the landing page is for or what you want them to do, you might as well not have a landing page at all.
Address potential questions in a way that speaks directly to your audience and show that you take the time to care about what they want. Feeling seen, heard, and understood are some of the first steps to supporting that relationship and making that sale. 💝
A clever balance of ‘just enough’ is difficult to achieve but deciding what kind of landing page you need will help. Check out these five landing page types to start. Expand or refine as you see fit.👇
🥇 Lead generation pages
Use these to gather information about your audience. Give your audience a reason to stay updated with your brand with potential exclusive offers, updates, or first-in-line privileges.
➡️ Click-through
Tell your audience why your brand is so great and why they need to sign up for whatever you’re offering.
Click-through pages prompt users to take action, like booking a demo or scheduling an appointment to find out more about your brand and why they need your stuff.
Zillow asks an interesting question, prompting you to get a free estimate in a simple and intuitive way:
⚾️ Pitch
These are more refined click-through pages. A sentence or two can describe a product or service and a single button for your CTA will suffice here. These pages are great for generating hype or getting Kickstarter supporters in on the action.
Muzzle does this in a light-hearted and comedic way to make this page relatable:
🙏 Squeeze
Put ‘the squeeze’ on consumers by offering desirable content in exchange for information. You’ll find a version of these pages present on certain news outlets that offer a single article to read but require an account for further reading.
Ultimate-Guitar are squeezing experts who always have some sort of limited offer going on. This time, it happens to be a special holiday offer with 10 hours left to take advantage of it.
🤑 Sales
Prompt the audience to make a purchase right away by offering a discounted price available through this page only. The audience needs to feel lucky they got to this page just in time to capture that sweet deal that only a limited number of people have.
Check this one out from Great Jones:
✨ Conclusion
Whatever type of landing page you decide to use, always consider how and when your audience purchases your items.
If your AOV is quite large, your consumers likely won’t appreciate being rushed through a conversion with a Sales page. Consider using a Lead Generator to target and retarget a consumer and provide your brand with the best LTV.
Draft up some or all of these pages to use this year to explore areas of marketing that you haven’t tried yet. Several of these options open the door for acquisition opportunities that may be new to brands just starting out or small businesses. Let us know how you get on in a reply!
🐥 Twitter’s gold ticks.
🙊 Microsoft’s new AI can clone a voice.
🍔 McDonald’s “exceptional” branding achievement.
∞ Meta files a lawsuit.
🤑 Why snow is so expensive for Americans.
😎 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!
📕 Hero Cosmetics - Ju Rhyu: Reversing the DTC Playbook and the $630MM Hero CPG Needs.
💡 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, Kate Gullett, and Michael Venditti. Edited by Claire Beveridge and Eric Dyck.
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