Monday, December 26, 2022
The days after the holidays and before the new year are for treats, relaxing, and ample couch time. Enjoy your clog! ☕️
In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇
📦 A bat signal for collections ads
📦 Giving your customers the warm, fuzzy feeling of a top-notch shopping experience
📦 What happened and what’s next for TikTok in 2023
📦 Say goodbye to mediocre and hello to some seriously killer content
📦 An air purifier that fits your aesthetic
Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎
👉 If a pal forwarded this to you, subscribe, so you never miss out.
What Do You Collect?
As we wrap up 2022, we’re sending you our strongest bat signal to NOT sleep on collections ads.
The Pilothouse Meta team ran a collection ad for an apparel client and it’s safe to say it’s crushing. 🚀
Collections ads feature your primary image or video and three smaller images in a grid below. Curious scrollers can click anywhere on the ad and be taken to a page to learn more or buy now!
Over a 7-day period, this ad had a 2.9X increase in conversion rate when compared to account average.
The Pilothouse Meta team will continue sharing their tips and tricks with you in 2023, but try this one now and let us know how it goes! 🔥
Expand your marketing channels with a mobile app this winter
🥶 Winter's here! And shoppers are bundling up with their mobile devices. You know (and we've said) the fastest-growing DTC brands get their competitive advantage from mobile apps.
Don't leave your marketing game out in the cold this season. Add an additional marketing channel with Tapcart and give your customers the warm, fuzzy feeling of a top-notch shopping experience.
🛠️ Tapcart is the easiest way to build and launch your own fully native app in only two weeks! With no coding required! How?
📲 Not only will a Tapcart mobile app enhance your brand's legitimacy, but it'll also boost cart value with features like:
🔥 Crank up the heat by adding a mobile app to your marketing mix. 🔥
*DTC reader bonus! Get your first month free!*
It’s a Ten, But Does it Filter?
You’ve seen those big clunky air purifiers at the hardware store boasting about how well they work and how much space they cover, but… You shouldn’t have to compromise your aesthetic.
Mila cleans the air and the bad reputation of ugly air purifiers. Specially crafted for families by three loving fathers who themselves have suffered from smog and chronic coughs, Mila set out with a vision to provide clean air for everyone.
The brand’s approach to advertising is conversational and contemporary by excluding the technical jargon of air filtration. It simply lets you know that yes, your air is clean.
Feel free to dive into the nitty-gritty if you want, but check out this sample of how a typical interaction with Mila goes:
Mila loves posting testimonials because the brand’s language matches that of their consumers. With Mila being so in tune to their audience, their social proof and UGC game are miles ahead of the competition.
Look no further than Mila for an intuitive and attractive little box to help reimagine air filtration for your family.
Awful Imagery is No Longer a Problem. Enter Today to Win a Free Content Shoot
It's almost the new year, and it's time to say goodbye to mediocre and hello to some seriously killer content! 💥
To help you kick off the new year with a bang, Pilothouse Studios is offering $20K worth of free content to level up your Amazon, Shopify, or Meta creatives.
Why Pilothouse Studios? They offer:
So why wait? Make this the year you level up and excel with Pilothouse Studios.
👉 Contact Pilothouse Studios now to learn more and schedule your free shoot.
📸 Here's to a successful new year!
🤔 So, About Last Year…
After a year of brands, creators, and communities sharing their passions and messages on TikTok, you may be wondering where we possibly go from here. How can we predict what’s next on one of the fastest-growing platforms today? We went through TikTok’s 2023 Trend Report to give you all the deets on what happened, what’s next, and why. Check it out! 👇
Now on its third consecutive year, this annual report is aimed at marketers and highlights the “wants and needs” of consumers. With little surprise, they’ve concluded that fun and functional is the talk of the town across TikTok’s diverse portfolio of niche communities. Here’s how we’ve been communicating, according to TikTok:
You should be delivering this fun and functional message by building it directly on the platform. Platform-specific content addressing each of the aforementioned points lets consumers know you went the extra mile for them. It shows that you care about your audiences and it should be one of your first considerations when building your community.
🤵 From the top…
Sofia Hernandez, the Global Head of Business Marketing for TikTok, very graciously provided her two cents on the potential for discovery on the platform:
2022 was the year people realized they didn't have to live their lives as they always have done…our What's Next report indicates people will be seeking new ways to achieve success, happiness and wellbeing - and TikTok will be a tool to help them find it.
In short, don’t be afraid to take risks and be an innovator! Give your community the confidence to ask questions and seek out answers in your products. For example, you could start popularizing a new life hack only possible with your product. Even if it wasn’t the original intention, it’s another problem solved – with your brand as the solution! Remember when cutting baked goods with dental floss was cool? It’s an old post but it gets the point across.
As we mentioned, TikTok’s predictions for 2023 were broken down into three categories. These are said to “define” TikTok for the coming year. So let’s dive in to see how we can leverage these pillars to grow a brand for the next year:
🎬 Actionable entertainment
TikTok talks a big game after a study concluded that 4 in 5 users find their platform “entertaining” or “extremely entertaining.” Making relatable and informative content that also entertains isn’t easy but it’s a great way to keep your audience engaged.
No one will sit through the first 5 seconds of a boring ad to get to a really good product. Entertaining ads capture an audience before the product is even pitched! Create ads to earn your customers’ time by providing value through entertainment first. It’s what content creators do and it’s what you should be doing too. Look no further than e.l.f. Cosmetics for a case study on how to drop acquisition costs by 56%! A strong use of copy with a relatable narrative solidified this campaign in the hearts of their audience before the product was introduced 10 seconds into the ad!
😁 Make space for joy
The data doesn’t lie and concludes that TikTok generates happiness. By focusing your brand messaging on empowerment or relaxation, you can use these in-demand themes in all your campaigns.
Joy and stress relief both play a huge role in contemporary marketing practices. EA’s Sims Sessions is a perfect example of engaging content that taps into a love of music. People are dedicating more time than ever to their self-care, so finding a way for your product to fit into this positive environment is nearly guaranteed to make it a household name.
🤝 Community-built ideals
TikTok communities thrive because they are niche and specific. Communities are 1.8X more likely to get discovered through TikTok compared to other social media platforms because they are built on shared ideals and interests led by innovative creators.
When brands understand their community’s niche interests, they can amplify those interests to empower their communities. A consumer’s sense of belonging has never been so integral to the integration of a brand into their lifestyle. People got quite lonely during the pandemic, so this whole trend makes a lot of sense.
With a focus on bringing people back together and connecting over common interests (*ahem* your brand!), a good word can spread quickly. More or less, this has always been true – but it’s good to know that TikTok is on the same page.
📈 So, what’s next?
All of this is to say that people seek to enjoy the things they love with other people. If your brand can bring that joy or excitement to one person and draws people closer to them because of it, you’re on the right track.
All of these are starting points to begin something truly amazing in the next year. 2023 is the year your brand can safely think outside the box because people are hungry for creativity. Formality might be taking a backseat in favor of satisfying the need to just connect once again.
We know your brand can make it happen, so send us your thoughts on what your next steps are. Sometimes just talking it out is the best place to start!
🔨 OpenAI releases Point-E, an AI to generate 3D models.
🎥 Video footage of TikTok’s new fullscreen mode.
🪙 Google hires a former crypto executive.
📢 Quora launches Poe, a tool to speak with chatbots.
📸 Tumblr chooses Livebox to power its live streaming economy.
🎶 TikTok now shows you why a video is recommended.
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