A Very Scrappy Halloween

Banter

Monday, October 31, 2022

Boo! The spookiest costume of them all 😂

Have some chocolate or candy today – it’s a must! 🎃

In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇

📦 Combating high Meta costs with scrappy content

📦 The magic of bundling for your business

📦 Personalizing your ads preferences with Google’s My Ad Center

📦 How to automate every aspect of your customer analytics to be faster, more efficient, and more profitable

Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎

👉 If a pal forwarded this to you, subscribe, so you never miss out.

Meta

Getting the Most Out Of Meta

Struggling to gain traction on Meta and want some tips to reinvigorate your ad account? Keep reading. ✅

With visibility into 170+ Meta accounts, the Pilothouse Meta team is seeing an increase in cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and decreased conversion rates (CVR) in their top four geographics (USA, CA, UK, AUS).

While cost-per-click has only increased by 4%, click-through-rate has increased by 10.4%. Together, they bring a higher overall cost-per-acquisition (CPA).

Here’s the top four things the team thinks are impacting high CPAs and decreased conversion rates:

1. Higher ad costs. It’s no secret that ad costs are increasing – from iOS 14 to skyrocketing prices in Q4.
2. Reduced tracking. Visibility into your audiences and ad accounts isn’t what it used to be. Across the board, we’re seeing brands with 10-50% visibility.
3. Less qualified users. With less data to go on, your brand (and Meta) has less data to leverage qualified audiences.
4. Decreasing purchase intent. With fears of a looming recession and increased cost of living, shoppers are less likely to click ‘buy now’ on a whim.  

So how can brands win? Let’s find out 👇

🧨 It’s time to get scrappy

When looking at winning trends across accounts, one thing is incredibly clear: scrappy content is working!

People are looking to social media for entertainment, and scrappy content interrupts the scroll pattern and invokes audience curiosity.

For example, reaction style, BeReal-esque, TikTok trends, and reveals are very hot right now! 🔥

Pick a theme, match it, and create an ad that doesn’t stand out as an ad. Additionally, look at what your target audience is looking for in terms of entertainment and mimic it.

Two simple formats to test right now (that are consistently top performers in Pilothouse ad accounts):

1. 3 reasons why video – record a video of your product being used, tell your audience the top three reasons why they need your product, and overlay text using native formatting on Instagram.

Keep scrolling for another top performer and scaling on Meta based on your budget! 👇

Sponsor

Work some bundling magic!

❤️ You want customers to love your products. Your customers love picking their favorite products. They love it more when you give them a discount for doing so!

So….🎵 Put 'em together, and what have you got? 🎵

Bibbidi-Bobbidi—BUNDLES!

That’s right! Customers see immediate value in product bundles—from the discounts they receive to the time they save sifting through your website.

But Bundles aren’t only magical for your customers. They’re magical for your DTC business as well.

Imagine selling fully customizable product bundles. Imagine seeing 9% less churn and a 7% average increase in LTV 😮

So—what can you do with Bundles?

• Combine multiple SKUs into one product, saving customers time and effort through the value of your curation expertise.
• Offer pre-set or customizable bundles, with options to strategically discount pricing.
• Allow customers to adjust items in their bundles after checkout via the customer portal, empowering them with ultimate order flexibility.

👉 Ready to create fully customizable bundles for your store? Enable Bundles today.

Meta – Part 2

2. Product in packaging shot – this one is timeless and 100% worth a test, especially heading into BFCM. Take a product in it’s packaging (box included) and run that image without any editing.

🤓 1 creative test? No thanks

If you’ve got the resources… test, test, test!

Pilothouse’s highest-performing Meta accounts are deploying remarkable numbers of creatives all the damn time.

The market is becoming more and more saturated, so ensure your product, offer, and creative strategies are on lock. 🔒

Here’s what the team suggests:

1️⃣ If you’re on a tight budget ($500 ad spend/day):

Build a pilot test, take your ad set budget, and segment! Think 20-30 ad sets per campaign with low budgets on each. Generally, this looks like approximately $10 of spend on each ad set per day optimized for conversions.

Look for front-end metrics (and hopefully some conversions!), but really what you’re finding is what works with your audiences.

Only test one ad per ad set. This way, you see which variation works best for your brand!

2️⃣ If you’ve got cash money

Run evergreen campaigns and test pretty thoroughly. The team suggests testing across the entire funnel with a combined campaign (three top-performing ad sets that are prospecting and one that is retargeting).

Once you figure out what’s performing best for your accounts and audiences, build the creatives into your scale campaigns!

👀 Whatcha looking for?

Don’t just look at view data to understand how your campaigns are doing! Optimize your campaigns to the data you’re actually getting back from campaigns.

Test 7 day click, 1 day click, and use Google Analytics to look at your click data. Relying on only in-platform reporting isn’t going to get you far these days.

Remember, lean into where you’re getting clicks, not view attribution!

For more information on building campaigns that scale on Meta for your brand, third-party brands, and darkposting listen to the full episode here!

Sponsor

No tricks. Less Stress. One Platform.

⌛ Don't waste valuable time in Q4 sorting through endless data from spreadsheets and applications.

Handle it all on one platform with Peel!

Jones Road, Ministry of Supply, Kitsch and 100s of other DTC brands use Peel to automate every aspect of their customer analytics to be faster, more efficient, and more profitable.

With Peel, you can:

• Access easy-to-use retention tools to hyper-target your customers.
• Learn more about your customer's behaviors with comprehensive datasets.
• See 100+ crucial eCommerce metrics and segmentation options, all in one place.
• Get a deep understanding of taxes, refunds, and churn rates, for easy reporting.

👻 Don't be scared of your data! Peel handles the complexity of your modern data stack by offering you the most advanced retention analytics for your Shopify store.

👉 Start your free trial and get 20% off your first three months on us!

Google

My Ads, Your Brand

Google has rolled out “My Ads Center” for consumers to personalize their ad experiences on and off the platform. We’ll break down what you need to know about the program to ensure you build or maintain a high level of engagement.

🤔 When and where

Consumers can now choose what brands they’d like to see ads from. First impressions are (still) everything. One negative transaction can lead to a complete halt in advertising with that customer even though they’ve enabled ads in your field.

Consumers can also select what platform is used for ad tracking. For example, a consumer can select YouTube for ad tracking, where they mostly watch beauty content.

In this case, ads from other industries like tech or finance will be limited for this user. Since Google’s ecosystem believes this consumer is highly invested in beauty content, ad campaigns for your tech business won’t reach this person as often.

🛠 The toolbelt

Education, relationship status, and occupation can influence ad recommendations, so be sure to target the right demographics within these categories.

👉 So, what isn’t used for ad targeting?

🚫 Health

🚫 Race

🚫 Religion

🚫 Sexual orientation

🚫 Gmail content

🚫 Photos content

🚫 Drive content

There are a couple of ways to navigate the My Ads preferences to ensure that your ads won’t be significantly affected.👇

1. Engage with your community

Stay tuned to social media platforms and other business profiles to know the crowd you’re speaking to. What visual and branding choices could you make to ensure that your audience leaves your brand’s ads enabled?

Some areas to consider in ads are:

• 🎧 Audio: What audio cues would keep your audience engaged? Should music be introduced first or should you go straight into a narration? Should you include specific music? Loudness isn’t always the key here.

• 👀 Visual: Abstract or conceptually driven ads can be very successful for select audiences. If you are working within a niche, communicate in a way that only this group of devoted consumers would understand.

• ↔ Length: If an ad is too long or unskippable, it could work against you. If you have a long ad, present something other than your products and tell a story. Humans are natural storytellers and want to engage with interesting people.

2. The right business at the right time

Consumers can choose the specific business category they want to see ads from. If your field of work isn’t correctly identified in the Google Merchant Center or Ads account, consider reviewing these details.

You want your ads going to the right people!

3. Quality over quantity

You’ll engage a more specific consumer base. People have chosen to see your ads because they want to participate in the industry. This leads to a potential higher engagement and conversion rate with ads, but the sacrifice will be your reach.

Make every sale count as the people seeing your ads are passionate about your products and will spread the word.

💪 Google frames this update in a way that provides the consumer with more control over the ads they see. In other words, you are speaking to invested people.

Use this update to grow meaningful relationships with your consumers and build retention and credibility. The goal isn’t to appeal to everyone but to care for your community and make the most of every relationship you nurture.

Let us know the impact these changes have on your marketing strategies by sending us a reply to this email! 🦻

Quick Hits

‍

🐥 Twitter deal to close by Friday, according to a new report.

∞ Meta Offers New Insights to enhance ad performance amid privacy and system changes.

💰 Amazon now allows customers to make payments through Venmo.

🇨🇦 Bank of Canada increases policy interest rate by 50 basis points.

👟 Adidas cuts ties with Kanye West.

🏷 Department store foot traffic is down but recovering.

‍

🔊 Have you heard our latest podcasts?

‍

💧 Bryan Alston, Greater Than - How Greater Than Became Inc’s #198th Fastest Growing Company In the US.

❌ Attribution is a Dead and What To Do Instead with SegmentStream’s Constantine Yurevich.

🖋 Nathan Thompson & Stu Jolley, Stories and Ink: Growing with SEO and Artist Collab Content.

🥦 High Performance, Nutritionally Complete Marketing to $150M with Huel's Ben Bokaie.

⭕️ Turn Your Returns Into Exchanges With Aaron Schwartz from Loop.

Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)

DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight and Michael Venditti. Edited by Claire Beveridge and 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!