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Monday, October 10, 2022
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In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇
📦 Amazon defense: smart branded ASIN targeting
📦 Offer your customers fully customizable product bundles for increased retention, higher AOV, and a decrease in churn rates with Recharge
📦 How to find content inspo for your brand
📦 Keeping up with the latest marketing trends is made easier with this tool. CEOs of top brands use it to stay current.
📦 Hire 1 to hire 1000 – Andrew Wilkinson on hiring the right CEO
Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎
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Would You Play a Sports Match Without a Goalie?
The majority of the strategy talk in the Amazon world is centered around being offensive. This includes getting aggressive to build organic rank and owning the search results for your target keywords.
But offense is only half of the equation… no strategy is complete without a killer defense. ⚽️
It’s no surprise that Amazon caters to ‘their customer.’ They want to show the most relevant options so a buyer can shop around and choose the product that‘s right for them.
What do we want? For the customer to buy ours! 🎉
Good defense is essentially smart Branded ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) Targeting.
👉 The goal is to ensure that our own listings take up as many ad placements on our listings!! This prevents potential customers from jumping to a competitor listing and helps secure a sale for our brand.
Chances are, your brand has already paid for the click to get the customer to your listing, so keeping them on page helps both revenue and efficiency.
Smart branded ASIN targeting is a fantastic opportunity to cross-sell or upsell your other products! When possible, tailor your ad space to feature your most relevant complimentary items or substitutes. ✅
However, taking up screen real estate is the initial goal, so these campaigns don’t actually have to drive a lot of revenue. Their sole purpose is to prevent the competition from moving in. The only place a customer should be able to go from your listing is to their cart, to your store, or to another listing from your brand.
🧐 How exactly do you defend your product page effectively on Amazon?
There are two main ad types that do this job:
1️⃣ Sponsored Product ads on the product page are typically shown within carousels (with a very small “Sponsored” in the top left corner). 👇
Want in on a huge key about using branded ASIN targeting that most advertisers don’t know? Product targeting ads can follow a product around the website.
For example: if you target the ASIN of Lululemon Align Pants, your ad may now show in search results for the keyword “Lululemon”, and any other search results those pants display in! This is a massive deal because these campaigns only give ASINs as matched search terms, so you’re in the dark about what keywords you’re spending on.
The Pilothouse secret tip is to ensure your ASIN targeting campaigns stay on product pages and ONLY product pages.
Set your bids at ¼ of what you think they should be set at, and change your Product Page multiplier (found under “Placements” in the ad group) to 300% or more.
This means a bid of $1 can go as high as $4 when displaying on a product page. This way, you can set bids low enough to never win an auction for search results but still cover the product pages you’re targeting.
2️⃣ Sponsored Display ads can take many different forms (a few examples shown below) and can now have a headline and custom image.
If you want to take it up a notch, segment out your branded ASIN campaigns so your cross targeting Sponsored Display headlines do the job of upselling that customer on your other product.
Typically you are very relevant to your own brand, so these campaigns will be relatively efficient and won’t jack up your spend too much.
🚨 The Pilothouse suggestion? Test it out, play some defense, and see if you can track a bump in listing conversion rate or in pay-per-click performance. 🔥
Make a Bundle
Customers have mentioned time and time again that they want more.
📦 More products.
💰More discounts.
⏰ More time saved browsing the products they love on your website.
Ultimately, they want the option to save money by bundling products they always buy from your DTC brand.
That’s why Recharge introduced Bundles. By offering their customers fully customizable product bundles, merchants are seeing increased retention, higher AOV, and a decrease in churn rates.
Even more, merchants saw a 47% average increase in customer LTV with bundles compared to individual products.
With Bundles, you can:
Ready to give your customers more of what they want?
👉 Enable fully customizable bundles for your store today.
Has Your Creative Well Run Dry?
You’ve heard content marketing is a surefire way to grow your business, and, it’s true! Investing in content marketing is the same as investing in:
You know content is king, but there’s a problem… You’ve been staring at a blank page and blinking cursor for the past three days, wondering what the heck you’re going to write about. 😰
If this describes you, don’t worry. You’re not alone.
Finding new ideas for content is one of the top three challenges content marketers face, according to HubSpot.
To help you out, here are some proven ways to get those creative juices flowing. 🧃
1️⃣ Steal
“Good writers borrow, great writers steal.” -Oscar Wilde
Struggling to come up with a topic? Look at what other high-performing content is doing and steal. 🚔
Now, let’s get one thing straight: This does not mean copying. This does not mean plagiarizing.
It means you take trending topics and add your unique take, voice, expertise, and thoughts on the topic.
It means you bring value to the conversation in a way that only you and your brand can. 💭
2️⃣ Research
Brilliant writing doesn’t typically happen by getting struck by lightning or having your muse bring you ideas in a dream. ⚡️
Most excellent writing is a byproduct of deep dives into the research.
For DTC marketers, research can mean:
When you need inspiration for new articles, shift your focus to the research part of the process, and comment on what you find.
3️⃣ Social media
Social media isn’t only a place to catch up with friends and promote your DTC business. It’s also a largely untapped treasure trove of information from subject matter experts.
Start with the thought-leadership platforms, LinkedIn and Twitter. 🐦
Look for the subject matter experts in your industry and follow their accounts. Then, read their most popular posts, and read all the comments.
You’ll find supporting ideas and opposing opinions galore!
The comments section might not be the best place for a celebrity to linger – but it’s the perfect place for writers to get information.
4️⃣ Repurposing other creative projects
Here’s a wild statement: Writing doesn’t have to be completely original. You can *and should* repurpose your other creative and business projects into written content. ✍️
If you have a popular podcast, you can turn the podcast episode into a blog post. If you made a popular YouTube or TikTok video, find a way to take the topic and write about it in your newsletter.
Your creativity can stretch beyond the bounds of a single platform. Wherever you create content, think about how you can repackage it for other platforms – especially where you’re doing content marketing.
5️⃣ Hire a writer
Not all of us were born to be writers. 🤷♀️ We all have different talents and different strengths. Sometimes the opportunity cost of writing your own content is greater than if you were to hire someone else to do it for you…
If you’re constantly struggling to come up with content, don’t.
Hire a professional writer.
(You can even hire them to ghostwrite for you, so people think you wrote it. It’s a win-win.)
🔥 Use these tips to fuel your creative inspo for your brand. When you get stuck in a creative rut, what’s your process? Reply to this email and we’ll share our favorites! 💌
Can’t take the marketing heat? Get out of the kitchen!
There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a marketing know-it-all. 🤷♀️
Sure, back in the day, it might have gotten you a swirly or two, but now being the most up-to-date person in the room could land you a promotion or a swift high five from your C-suite buddies.
Scouring the internet for all that news and information can be extremely exhausting! But if you have The Daily CTA in your inbox, all your news and information will be localized into one place, summarized into 5 point-form briefings concluded with your call to action!
And hey, if you’re eyes get tired from your computer, you can tune into The Daily CTA Podcast to get your news on the go! 🎧
💡Be ready for anything that marketing has to throw at you! Sign up for The Daily CTA.
A New Captain ⛴
You have a business and it’s growing. This is your machine built with countless invested hours, and you’re ready to take it to the next level. The next step? Hire a CEO.
Andrew Wilkinson, cofounder of Tiny, published a Twitter thread that details his experiences in handing over a business to the care of a CEO and how this can 10x your growth.
The key takeaway here is to hire one to hire 1000. A CEO needs to:
There are infinitely different ways to lead a company, and choosing the right type of leadership to lead your growth is essential. 👇
🛠 The right tool for the right job
There are four types of CEOs Andrew lists, and of these, you’ll want to hire scalers or optimizers. These are the people who focus on growth using their tools. You can’t provide a CEO who uses hammers with a screwdriver. They will only look for nails anyways.
Your list of candidates should possess all of these traits:
1️⃣ Expertise in your industry
2️⃣ Operated a similar business
3️⃣ Involved with a business that is double the size of yours
4️⃣ A positive reputation
Most importantly, you need to reflect on the personality of your candidates. Does something not add up after speaking with them? Would you entrust the care of your loved ones to them? These are difficult questions to ask, but ensuring that these expectations are met is key to continued operation and growth.
🗺🧭 The new direction is their direction
Do you find yourself nodding along to everything they say? If so, you’re on the right track! This person will be the captain of your ship. They will steer it in the direction they want, care for your crew, and ultimately dock the ship where they feel it should be.
Your job is to sit back, as hard as it may be, and watch what happens next. Choosing the right candidate can be one of the best business decisions you’ll make.
Quick Hits
✍️ Twitter launches first stage of the live roll out of tweet editing.
🎶 TikTok’s turnover in Europe surged almost six-fold in 2021.
📰 Meta shuts down Bulletin newsletters, moves resources to its discovery algorithm.
👀 Google: Acquire users who are more likely to engage with in-app ads using Target ROAS bidding.
💰 It’s official, Elon Musk is buying Twitter.
⭕️ 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.
🦷 Thinking in Billions with Josh Elizetxe Founder of Snow Oral Care.
👟 Retail Giant Steve Madden on Retention at Scale with Hannah Sinclair and Bluecore's Sarah Cascone.
Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight, Michael Venditti, and Ashley R. Cummings. Edited by Claire Beveridge and Eric Dyck.
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