Use this simple hack to own the items of your dreams!
🎉 P.S. Congrats to our sister company Pilothouse’s client Songfinch who just hit 166 among the fastest growing companies in the US!
In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇
📦 9 copywriting tips Amazon gives their employees to write compelling copy.
📦 Modernize and supercharge your supply chain with Outerspace.
📦 5 consumer angles to test when your creative juices have run dry.
📦 Supercharge your word-of-mouth marketing with Groupshop.
📦 Leveraging affiliate marketing for your DTC brand this holiday season.
Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎
👉 If a pal forwarded this to you, subscribe, so you never miss out.
We spend hours each week scrolling the Twittersphere so you don't have to (although we recommend you do!) 😉
Alex Garcia outlined the 9 tips Amazon uses to teach their employees how to be better copywriters. Here at DTC, we’re big advocates for leveling up your copy skills, so we thought we’d share the tips forward.
Let’s jump in:
Becoming a better writer is a fabulous way to expand your marketing skillset. 🏆
Be sure to check out Alex’s full thread for examples of how to implement each step and examples of taking your copy to the next level. 🧵
🤔 Consider this: Marketing, Customer Service, Sales, and Operations all touch the warehouse. Separating your integral departments into silos is a thing of the past at best and a disorganized mess at worst.
But, there’s good news, Outerspace has built a 3PL dedicated solution that services—not one—but all of those essential departments.
With Outerspace, you get:
✋ No more living in the 3PL past!
👉 Modernize and supercharge your supply chain and try Outerspace.
We’ve said it once and we’ll certainly say it again, the customer perspective should be centric on your creative angles. 👈
If you’ve run the well dry on unique creative ideas to help sell your product, no need to worry. Our cherished creative team formed five questions to help generate new creative angles to attract your audience.
Angles will help you create memorable, relatable, and hopefully high-converting ads!
Remember that although you as a brand owner know your product best, what you think customers want to know and what they actually want to know might differ.
You may think your color options are your greatest selling point, but your customers are more interested in how they fit or wear. 🤷
When looking for new angles, try phrasing it as a question from the customer’s perspective.
1️⃣ What can your product solve about people’s lives?
Is it saving them time? Money? Why was their life painful or a task slowed down or monotonous before your product came along?
For example, if you’re a toothbrush company constantly seeing, “I want a toothbrush that will give me whiter teeth in less time,” your angle may be focused on before-and-after pictures and customer reviews showing how easy it was to incorporate your product into their lives.
2️⃣ What do people enjoy most about your product?
Take a look through the comments on your current ads ad and reviews. Search for patterns as well as unique points to showcase your product’s versatility.
For example, if a review says, “I never thought canned water could taste so good and be recycled after.” You may want to consider an angle that focuses on sustainable products without sacrificing taste!
3️⃣ How were things being done conventionally before you came along?
Before dishwashers, there was only manual dishwashing. Before washing machines, clothes were washed in a basin.
If you’re a company making a robot vacuum, you could highlight that before your product, people had to:
Create an angle around how your product eliminates the pitfalls of how things used to be done!
4️⃣ What is a common complaint that can be spun to positively market your product?
Pop back into your comments and reviews and search for something people may not like about your product.
For example, if you’re a company selling premium socks, some reviews may say their multipack from the big box store is cheaper and works just as well. Use your ad angle to showcase the benefits of premium socks – they last longer, they don’t get holes, are more fashionable, etc.
5️⃣ How can you compare your product uniquely to another product in a similar market?
Sometimes, consumers don’t know they have pain points until you show them! Sell your alternative product against the basic version that’s been on the market forever.
If you’re selling an automatic dish scrubber, you may consider an angle that makes consumers think, “I’ve been using sponges for years not realizing the benefits of…”
If you’re not testing different angles and messaging in you’re creative, you’re missing out.
Are you crushing the advertising game with an angle we haven’t listed? Send us the angle and we’ll feature our favorites!
74% of consumers rely on word-of-mouth referrals to discover new brands – so how do you incentivizing customers that already love your brand to share it with their friends?
That's why we want to introduce you to Groupshop ✨
It's the first word-of-mouth sales engine that's reinventing affiliate marketing and incentivizing your customers to shop together.
When your customers shop from your store, Groupshop creates a personalized shopping page post-purchase for them to share with friends. Customers curate their shopping page, allowing friends to get special discounts and earn cashback every time someone shops with them.
🚨 They're offering the first 100 DTC brands that sign up 3 months free and an exclusive lifetime discount.
👉 Supercharge your word-of-mouth marketing with Groupshop.
August and September are peak months for retail marketers to plan their holiday campaigns. P.S. Did you know Black Friday is less than 100 days away?! 🤯
While big box retailers spend millions on TV ads and printed circulars, there's a powerful channel DTC brands should consider: Affiliate marketing.
DTC businesses, particularly the digital native type, have succeeded because they’ve owned the customer journey nearly from the beginning to the end. These companies sought marketing channels that gave them the most possible leverage.
Often those channels were:
While no DTC brand should ignore these growth channels (they’re the foundation of success), the holiday season may be a good time to add affiliates who can generate significant additional revenue.
The creator affiliate
Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards an affiliate for each sale they deliver. Repeat: You only pay when a sale is made.
Athletic Greens, who are killing it as a foundational nutrition brand, use affiliate relationships with many of the podcast and newsletter creators they sponsor.
The deals are designed for affiliates to help promote the company's AG1 product and reach new audiences.
These are not your grandpa's affiliate programs. You’re not posting about your brand on an online marketplace in hopes that some person working from their babushka's basement will put up a one-page website, slap on your banner, and magically increase sales.
Modern affiliate marketing is built on the creator economy.
Economies arise to address scarcity in the market. In the early 20th century, the economy solved the lack of consumer goods.
Once the economy produced an abundance of goods, the consumer economy emerged to address the scarcity of demand. Futurist and thinker Paul Saffo described this in a presentation for the Long Now Foundation. Interested to learn more? Click here to watch on YouTube.
According to Saffo and others, the creator economy is here to solve for engagement. We have ample opportunities to find information and entertainment, but we only focus on or engage in relatively few things. Often, those things were made by creators – the engines of the creator economy.
Take a look at this example! 👇
MrBeast's channel surpassed 100 million subscribers on YouTube in August of this year. To celebrate, MrBeast reportedly gave away a private island during a challenge. Shopify funded that challenge – at least in part.
MrBeast has an engaged audience. Shopify has a product to sell. This is modern affiliate marketing through the creator economy.
Modern, creator-driven affiliate programs seek to partner with creators or influencers to either:
🎁 Gift-giving season
For many DTC brands, sales soar during the peak holiday shopping period – October to December. Loads of customers are buying gifts for family members, friends, lovers, and even coworkers via the office gift exchange. Some will even self-gift.
In 2021, for example, America's National Retail Federation (NRF) estimated that the typical adult in the United States would spend $998 on holiday shopping – thereby collectively spending $886.7 billion during the 2021 holiday season.
With so much revenue at stake, DTC and retail marketing can be like a slugfest from October through the end of the year, as brands and shops compete for valuable keyword phrases and audiences.
Here’s why affiliate marketing could be a powerful holiday channel for DTC brands:
1. Affiliate marketing is performance-based.
This means that marketers only pay when a sale is made. This aligns perfectly with DTC brands' focus on ROI and customer acquisition costs.
2. Affiliate marketing could help DTC brands reach new audiences.
During the holiday season when everyone is looking for gift ideas, reaching new audiences is pivotal. Creator-affiliates already have shoppers' attention. Remember that engagement is what they offer, so you can partner with them to promote your product.
3. Affiliate marketing can be a cost-effective way to drive sales.
Marketers know that performance marketing spend during the holiday season increases. However, because many affiliate partnerships are based on generating actual sales, your brand only pays when actual revenue is earned.
4. Affiliate marketing can help DTC brands tap into the creator economy and work with creators who have engaged audiences.
If you are a DTC brand looking for a holiday marketing channel that is performance-based and can help you reach new audiences, affiliate marketing is definitely worth considering.
🚨 Want to save your time and money? Give your subscription business the charge it needs with Upscribe. Deliver an amazing customer experience and grow with out-of-the-box tools.*
🔎 Google: More content by people, for people in Search.
✍️ Apple: Search Ads can now be edited in bulk.
📈 Bed Bath & Beyond: surges again, continuing August meme rally.
🛍 TikTok: launches new shopping ads as it continues to push ahead with its eCommerce integrations.
*Sponsored
📱 Building a high-quality content empire with tech influencer Justin Tse.
🗓 Driving 25-month average subscription LTV (so far) with Kabo and Chargebee.
💸 “Six Figures in Revenue, Five Figures in Profit Every Day Throughout Q4" Ridge Wallet's Sean Frank Returns! [Free C-Suite Mentor Preview]
🤓 Subscription Program Masterclass with Rashad Hossain from Ryze Superfoods and Upscribe's Dileepan Siva.
🌎 The incrementality mentality with Ryan McKenzie from Tru Earth. [Free C-Suite Mentor Preview]
Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple. (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight and Jordan Gillis. Edited by Eric Dyck.
Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.
NEED MORE DTC?
🚀 Advertise in DTC Newsletter.
💰 Check out our course on Facebook and Instagram ads!
📥 Work for The DTC Newsletter: Send an email to Rebecca, rebecca@directtoconsumer.co, if you’re interested in writing for us!
DTC 2023. All Rights Reserved.
DTC is fueled by Pilothouse company registered in Victoria, BC, Canada.