Adding puns to our resume skills section 🤣
If you’re new to DTC, welcome! You’re in good company with fellow newcomers from Avaline, Spärkel, Red Bull, Funko, XMONDO HAIR, Live Nation Entertainment, and Reebok. 🤘
In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇
📦 Kuru Footwear scales Meta ad spend 350%! Sean McGinnis shares how they did it.
📦 Using Storyblok to empower your team to create the best digital experience across all channels.
📦 8 pro tips for crushing podcast advertising – Part 2.
📦 Simplify how you create, share, and use your visual content with Dash.
📦 Editing background music with AI-powered vocal isolation.
Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎
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🎧 Today on the DTC pod, Sean McGinnis, president and integrator at Kuru Footwear, returns with new marketing insights and updated eCom strategies.
Kuru Footwear is fighting foot pain in style. They’ve come up with an innovative way of solving the problem of foot pain with the mission of helping its sufferers regain confidence and live their lives without limitations.
The takeaways 👇
⬆️ Climbing the paid funnel
Since we last spoke to Sean, he and his team have been exploring their paid social strategy even further. With an already problem-aware audience, they were asking themselves the question: How do we move up the funnel and into a demand-generation mode?
The answer? A multi-touch attribution model.
This type of model is designed to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and channels, ensuring trustworthy third-party data that, among other things, can inform the real contribution of paid social for a DTC company like Kuru.
This model can help marketers understand which paid touchpoints are most effective in driving conversions, what channels they should invest in, and when/how much they should invest in them.
“Once we got Rockerbox up and running, and they built the models for our business, we [saw] that there was a runway ahead of us where we knew we could hit the gas. So that was the data and information that we needed to make those bigger decisions and bigger investments.”
🙌 Simplifying strategies
These days, there is no “one size fits all” eCom strategy for DTC companies. Every brand will take its own approach to what works best for its eCom business. For Sean, he felt that Kuru could use some simplification.
“eCommerce just doesn’t have to be hard. Build a great brand, build a great product, take care of customers, remove friction, [and] make it easy to do business with you. All these custom software and custom applications are just making it harder on yourself… We want to spend our time building great experiences for customers.”
A classic case of working smarter, not harder!
💰 What Sean would do with an extra $50K:
Sean is staying steady on his path to greener (paid social) pastures.
“I think we would just pour more fuel into the fire and get more creative done… As much as we are aggressively pursuing paid social, we’re still at the very forefront and still want to accelerate those learnings at this point.”
👉 Listen to the full episode with Sean McGinnis here!
🕰️ Consumers spend nearly eight hours online these days. Doing what, you ask?
Immersing themselves in the wonderful world of digital content – like the kind you create for your DTC brand.
While consumers love digital content, you and I both know not all content is created equal, and people will only engage with content that rocks.
So, how do you make your content stand out in a content-saturated digital world?
Storyblok is the content management system that empowers all teams to create the best digital experience across all channels.
🚨 Storyblok comes with all features to create anything and publish everywhere:
So whether you're a developer, marketer, or content editor, creating beautiful content is easy with Storyblok.
👉 Find out how you can level up your content game on Storyblok.com.
On Monday, we brought you the first four pro tips for leveling up your podcast advertising strategy.
The party isn’t over yet – keep scrolling for four more tips on maximizing your pod ads! 👇
5️⃣ Send the host your product to try.
You know what they say: experience breeds authenticity.
And when it comes to ads, authenticity sells. 💰
A podcast host who actually used your product (and had a great experience with it) will be able to speak organically about it in an ad, which will be more appealing to listeners.
So don’t forget to send the host the goods – and if you can, go above and beyond to really wow them!
6️⃣ Keep your ads as unscripted as possible.
Generally speaking, organic, unscripted ads perform best on podcasts.
They tend to come across as more genuine to the listener and let the host’s personality to shine through (AND make it easier for brands to scale).
💡 In fact, the whole appeal of podcasts is that they’re organic and unscripted, right?
However, you’ll still want to provide the host with a high-level list of messaging points:
Podcast ads are definitely more of an art than a science, so give the host the space to be an artist! 🎨
7️⃣ Use custom landing pages.
Trust us, the juice is so worth the squeeze here.
A custom landing page not only creates a seamless and authentic experience for the customer, but it also allows brands to track the performance of each podcast much more easily.
For example, Athletic Greens uses custom LPs for all of their major podcasts:
But don’t worry, it doesn’t need to be complicated. Even AG just uses a templated page and swaps out the hero image and quote for each podcast. Easy peasy. 👌
8️⃣ Know how you’ll measure success – and be patient.
Measuring ROI on podcasts can be a frustrating endeavor for data-driven marketers.
The average podcast listener’s path to conversion is often complex and nonlinear.
Most people tune in while doing something else – like driving, walking, or working out – which means they’re less likely to take action on an ad right away. This makes it tricky to attribute purchases, and even harder to know if your podcast ads are paying off, or if you’re just throwing money into the ether. 👋💸
While it’s impossible to be 100% on this, here are a few ways to beef up your tracking on podcast ads:
And one final word of wisdom…
🎧 Podcast ads may not always be a high ROI play, especially at first. Reframe your mindset to use them as a tool for brand awareness and exposure. And if you’re doing all the things on this list, you might be surprised by how much growth they lead to down the road!
DTC brands need a ton of visual content to succeed. We're talking Shopify images, marketing graphics, and product photos. The list goes on and on.
But clunky shared drives can slow you down. 🐌 Who has time to sort through tiny thumbnails to find the assets they need?
It's time to say goodbye to the chaos and use Dash. Dash simplifies how you create, share, and use your visual content.
Leading DTC brands use Dash:
🍕 Pizza oven pioneers Gozney speed up the time it takes to get content in front of customers.
🤿 Swimwear brand Orca simplify how they supply product shots to resellers around the world.
🪑 Homeware company RJ Living use Dash to hit their ambitious growth targets.
👉 Ready to start? Save 50% on your first 3 months/
(P.S. It won't break the bank either – plans start at $74 monthly).
Editing videos is not for the weak of heart. One wrong cut and your smooth flowing message is now a choppy mess. 🎬
Editing a video with background music? 1000x worse.
If you’ve ever received a video back from a creator or client that needs an edit and has the ever-so-dreaded background music, your editing struggles end here.
Our creative calvary is giving you their top three free tools to eliminate choppy and unprofessional video content.
🔑 The key? AI-powered vocal isolation.
Try these out:
Utilize free online tools to take your video and audio production to the next level. Or when in doubt, lean on a team to help your brand image be smooth and polished. 👌
📸 BeReal is now posing a clear threat to Instagram's growth.
📺 Netflix’s ad-supported tier could cost between $7 and $9 per month.
🎙 Twitter rolls out podcasts in the Spaces tab, expanding its audio content focus.
👀 Widely viewed content report: what people see on Facebook .
🤯 Instagram just quietly added QR codes for posts.
👟 Kuru Footwear scales Meta ad spend 350%! Sean McGinnis on how they did it.
📈 Are you measuring your actual growth? Rockerbox's Ron Jacobson on true incrementality.
🤝 Blume Banks on Community – Taran Ghatrora on Community Building Through In-Person and Digital Events. [C-Suite Mentor Preview]
📱 Building a high-quality content empire with tech influencer Justin Tse.
🗓 Driving 25-month average subscription LTV (so far) with Kabo and Chargebee.
Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple. (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight, Kelsey Hess, and Jordan Gillis. Edited by Eric Dyck.
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