Sharma Brands: Slashing Customer Acquisition Costs with Nik Sharma

This week on the pod we spoke to DTC legend Nik Sharma – CEO of Sharma Brands.

Sharma Brands has had a hand in developing, launching, and scaling some of your favorite brands (Hydrant, Lalo, Judy, and Super Coffee).

This podcast is a masterclass in growth concepts. ‍

Nik breaks down the history of the DTC industry, where it’s at right now, and the future of it. 

Listen to the whole thing and share it with your team.

The Takeaways. 👇

🏆 DTC 3.0

Nik’s been in the mix for 1.0 and 2.0 and his assessment of 3.0 (where we’re at now) is stark.

“DTC 3.0 is very much focused on function and relevance. Does this brand have a reason to exist, or is it just an arbitrage opportunity?”

Nik sees the window closing for eCommerce as a pure arbitrage opportunity as ad costs rise, or “normalize to where they should have been.”

Many brands will fade slowly in DTC 3.0, Nik predicts. 

The ones who succeed will have a brand “glow up” where they build a community who’s excited to repurchase their product without seeing an ad. 

Easy right? 😬

😎 What is performance branding?

Nik uses Facebook Ads to test aspects of the brands’ personalities that resonate more with customers, and hones in from there. 

First set the demographic you’re targeting – say male and female 24–44 in cities x, y, z. 

Now all you need is a feedback loop. 

Create a landing page with 20 headline variations. 

Test against your demo to see which tone and subject matter resonates with your audience and refine from there.

🔑 Drop customer acquisition costs by 30–40%

The best thing a brand can do to lower CaC is build a simple landing page.  

Tell a story about your brand, answer questions, compel the reader down the page and increase their chance of conversion. 

For examples of these pages, check out Orgain or PooPourri. 

Also check out Nik’s newly released landing page guide.

🚀 Be bullish on organic TikTok

Nik believes TikTok Ads is a monster, but on the organic side he sees massive opportunity currently. 

“If we send our product to even just 50 creators between 50–250k followers, and they put out 50 pieces of content… 10-15 are bound to get a million views. It’s a simple numbers game.”