It’s never been more important to band together with mentors and peers, which is why we created C-Suite Mastermind.
C-Suite is a 3-day, one-of-a-kind learning and relationship building experience designed to help you grow your business and personal potential. Imagine having 50 other marketers working on your biggest business challenge right now!
September 21st - 23rd in Victoria B.C. Get ready to radically expand your beliefs about what’s possible for your brand, while expanding your toolkit and playbook to crush your goals.
In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇
📦 How to keep up with trends in the DTC space
📦 Build your influencer marketing campaigns on #paid before your favorite creators are taken
📦 Using testimonials to highlight product benefits
📦 Effectively targeting (and retargeting) your customers across most advertising platforms with Black Crow AI
Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎
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We recently asked our new subscribers a pressing question. The question?
What is your biggest business challenge right now?
Guess what? Nearly all of you awesome DTC marketers have been worried about one thing – how to stay up to date (and on top of) trends in the industry.
And boy, do we have some ideas for you! Let’s dive right in.
👀 Lurk on Twitter
While loitering on social media can seem counterproductive, it’s not the case at all for learning the recent happenings in your industry.
Marketers – especially DTC marketers – luuuuuurve Twitter. They love it enough to often post industry trends, marketing tips, hot takes, thought-provoking ideas, and long threads that are literal DTC gold.
It’s not uncommon to hear marketers say things like, “Twitter is more valuable than an MBA.” After diving into a well-written DTC trend thread, this statement rings true.
If you want to learn about recent DTC trends, follow the top DTC marketers, store owners, and publications.
Another idea is to subscribe to Twitter lists.
Lia Haberman advises people to use Twitter lists and Google alerts. “It’s old school, but I get daily emails with top articles based on the keywords I’m interested in,” says Haberman.
📰 Subscribe to industry newsletters
You’re not going to believe this, but your eyeballs are 100% in the right place at this very moment.
Newsletters (ahem… Like this one) are chock-full of industry news. At DTC Newsletter, we don’t talk about trends from 50 years ago (unless it’s somehow relevant to the current conversation).
We talk about what is happening in the present and possibilities in the future – and how these trends can help you grow your business!
Do yourself a favor and subscribe to the best DTC and marketing newsletters. You’ll be so full of news and recent trends we’ll have to roll you out the door.
🎞 Create a TikTok account
You don’t have to post funny videos of you dancing to capture the benefits of TikTok. You just have to interact with creators in your industry and see what they are talking about.
TikTok is growing faster than any other social media platform. It’s also becoming one of the best social commerce apps.
Consumers regularly jump on TikTok to find product recommendations and to make purchases. For real. See #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt.
Spend some time watching videos posted under the #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt section to see what consumers are saying, what they’re buying, and what trends are making their mark in the DTC world.
🤓 Read industry reports
Reading industry reports might not be as fun as reading the latest #BookTok recommendation, but if you’re aiming to grow your DTC business, you should make it a daily habit.
Industry reports are truly a gift from the Research Nerd Gods. These lovely researchers do all of the hard quantitative research and number crunching.
Then, they turn these insights into accessible content that tell you everything about:
The data in these free reports will help you get a better grasp of relevant trends.
💬 Organic conversations
Yes, it’s nice to pour a glass of the latest DTC non-alcoholic wine, hop in the tub with the latest DTC bath fizzy, and read through a DTC trends report. But have you tried participating in organic conversations with your peers?
Sometimes, the best way to get a pulse on industry happenings is to talk to other DTC professionals. Chances are they’re keeping an eye out for trends too, so share what you find!
There are several ways to get in on the conversation. You can try scheduling a good old-fashioned Zoom call, hosting a webinar, participating in a webinar, going to a conference, and/or hitting up networking events.
The more genuine conversations you’ll have, the more trends you’ll uncover.
Do you have any tips for DTC readers to stay in tune with what’s going on in the space? Reply to this email and we’ll share our favorites! 🤝
#blackfridayiscoming 🚨 🚨 🚨
It’s the peak of the retail season, and marketers are gearing up for it.
How?
They’re building their influencer marketing campaigns on #paid before all their favorite creators are taken. Once you drop your campaign goals, #paid matches you with 10 on-brand creators.
Just pick your faves, press a button, and watch the results roll in.
👉 Sign up for up to $500 in credit for your brand today.
When writing a landing page or an ad, you typically start by highlighting the problem the customer may be facing, and then positioning your product and its benefits as the solution.
We all know that the most effective copy is benefit-driven. But if your product has too many benefits, it can make the copy sound stuffy and unrealistic. 🤷♂️
The customer might be reading and thinking to themselves, ”can this product really do ALL of this…?”
Oftentimes, yes it can. But you don’t want to risk sounding braggadocious. You need the customer to believe in your product, without feeling like they’re being lied to.
The captains of copy broke down how to add a little bit of spice to your landing pages without getting overly fluffy.
The key to stuffing more benefits onto your page is to slide them into the customer testimonials. ⭐️
The reason this works so well? It’s coming from the voice of the customer, not the brand’s. People trust other people more than they trust brands that are trying to profit off of them.
According to a study, 88% of consumers said that they trusted reviews just as much as personal recommendations and made them much more likely to spend.
Now we’re not recommending that you completely fabricate your testimonials, but adding a little spice to genuine reviews never hurt anyone – especially if the benefits serve the customers’ best interests.
🤔 How to use this technique:
Write your copy as you normally would, highlighting key product benefits.
Then, when you get to the testimonial section, slide in a couple more customer-specific benefits or use the space to elaborate on certain benefits.
Check out this example: 👇
If you’re a company selling high heeled shoes, your page or ad may read like this:
The body copy is kept relatively high level with features and benefits. Utilize the testimonials you’ve received from purchasers to bulk up the info!
The testimonials:
✨ In closing
The sky is truly the limit with this technique. Just make sure you aren’t overdoing it with your testimonials. Too much sauce in the testimonials can also be a dead giveaway that you wrote them yourself. Balance is key! Try to keep it to one or two sentences for the best results.
Customers are your friends, leverage them accordingly.
The cookie apocalypse is upon us, and your eCommerce campaigns may already be suffering.
But, even if Apple and Google are making it more challenging to track customers, all is not lost. Not. Even. Close.
With the right tools, you can still effectively target (and retarget) your customers across most advertising platforms.
DTC brands like SKIMS, SuperCoffee, and Leesa started using Black Crow AI's one-click platform to identify and reach customers without relying on third-party data.
And…Abra Cadabra…whaddya know? The results were alchemy! 🪄
Black Crow helped these brands:
150 DTC brands have already transformed their performance marketing with Black Crow AI.
🛍 Facebook shuts down its live commerce push, which may reflect broader disinterest in live shopping.
💪 Instagram strongholds influencer marketing despite growing competition.
📸 Qianna Smith Bruneteau wants to destigmatize influencing.
💔 Tinder steps back from metaverse dating plans as business falters.
🕹 Four new NFT applications, from insurance to virtual arcades.
🤓 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].
👽 Dropping a Cool Million in Sales in Ten Minutes with Nell Diamond from Hill House Home and Ricky Choi from Outerspace.
💧 Is the future of DTC free? Dive deep with FreeWater's Josh Cliffords.
🥣 How General Mills is Going Direct To Consumer with Carter Jensen, Global Lead for DTC.
🍫 Tabs Sex Chocolate: Engineering Virality from Day One.
Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple. (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight, Ashley R. Cummings, and Jordan Gillis. Edited by Eric Dyck.
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