Aaron Conant  0:18  

Happy Wednesday, everybody. My name is Aaron. I'm the co founder, Managing Director here at BWG. Connect giant networking knowledge sharing group, we've been around for 36 years now. And it's just a blast. We focus on, you know, the digital community, just providing educational networking opportunities across the board. We'd like these opportunities to be as educational and informational as possible. So please, as you have questions, as we go through this, drop them in the chat, drop them into the q&a, and we're going to get as many of those answered today as possible, we can do it real time. So you don't even have to save it to the end. I spend the more majority of my time talking to brands during the day on digital strategy, when the same pain points come up over and over again. That's how we get the topics for these events. I'm also asking everybody, Hey, who's working for you and who's not. So we have a great short list of the top recommended service providers from the 9000 brands in the network. If anybody ever needs a recommendation service provider, don't hesitate to reach out more than happy throw some some time on the calendar and go through that. One of those, you know, top partners and has been for a long time now as a team over at Blue Wheel. They, they have a another company, it was just Retail Bloom, which is another top one they've merged together over the past year or so. So just fantastic people across the board and they've agreed to jump on today and kind of walk through, you know how to get the most out of your ad dollars across DTC and marketplaces. And one of the unique things that they bring is the ability to manage not only marketplaces, but dredge consumer as well. And a variety of aspects when it comes to ads. And it's just unique that in one entity, they have all of that. But anyways, Nicole and Tayler are both on the line today. Nicole, I'll kick it over to you if you want to do a brief intro on yourself and Blue Wheel. Oh, that'd be awesome. And we'll get to Tayler and then we will jump into the meat of it. Sounds good.

Nicole Reich  2:12  

Absolutely. Thanks, Aaron. And Hi everyone. I'm Nicole. I'm the chief growth officer for Blue Wheel. I'm also here today with our VP of advertising Tayler So Tayler, if you want to quick Introduce yourself before we get into about Blue Wheel and the agenda.

Tayler Jaksim  2:27  

Yeah, hi everyone. My name is Taylor Jaksim some of you might have been on other webinars and calls we've done in the past with BWG where I was then known as Tayler Carpenter and kind of doing like a Madonna prints thing with like, you know, aka, but I did get married. So that's why I change her name. But anyways, I oversee all of the advertising teams at Blue Wheel. So whether it's metta DTC marketplace, I'm you know, I'm your girl. So very excited to talk about this. This is something that Nicole can and Erica, both potassium very passionate about. And so before we get into it, Nicole, I'm gonna kick it back over to you.

Nicole Reich  3:02  

Well, as Aaron mentioned in Tayler, if you could please flip to the next one just gave an overview really quickly on Blue Wheel. as Aaron mentioned, we recently went through a merger. So previously, I was one of the co founders of retail Bloom retail and tipping was known for full service marketplace provider so both back end and front end, but very specifically to Amazon, Walmart and eBay. We found we knew that there was an opportunity to find someone else in this space that was also just as good on the digital side. And that's where we came up with Blue Wheel and the new partnerships so to Detroit companies who've officially come together in the beginning of the year. Together Now Blue Wheel are our name going forward. We're an omni channel agencies supporting brands through marketplace management and performance marketing. We help our brands partner scale efforts across the entire customer lifecycle journey on DTC and on marketplaces, as I mentioned, such as Amazon Walmart, in the US and globally. So together we now manage over a billion dollars in revenue for our brand partners. And you can see in the box here with our new branding, if you happen to catch it earlier I think believe last week, our from click Services on the left of that left box that is related to our digital efforts or growth initiatives, right so omni channel advertising, which is the the topic for today, we get into influencer marketing, lifestyle lifecycle. email and SMS is what that's related to SEO creative and then obviously organic social media. We won't touch on this today but just as an FYI, we also have all of the back ends. So catalog management, fulfillment, inventory, planning, customer service expansion again, and then brand protection. So just making sure that when a customer finds your brand online, whether it's on DTC or on marketplaces, they understand your brand vision, your brand voice, the pricing is correct. The inventory is in place. And with our new merger, we're really excited to be able to be experts in all things e-comm So with that, I want to pass it back to you Tayler and explain the agenda and get into the topics for today.

Tayler Jaksim  5:07  

Awesome. So going over, this is what we're gonna be going over today. So we're going to be doing, you know, looking at the relationship between DTC and marketplace advertising, we're also gonna be talking about the new customer journey. You know, the customer journey has historically kind of been a buzzword or a buzz phrase. And so I think it's important for us to really look at what this looks like in 2023. We're going to talk about why creative is so important to your brand success, and also how that relates to utilizing your lifecycle on social media efforts to expand your brand. And then we have you know, at the end, we have a little bit of a case study to kind of show how this is so important how brands are able to scale by maximizing their ad dollars across the board. And so without further ado, we are going to go into the number one thing, if you are to leave this webinar in this call today, I want everyone to know is that marketplaces and DTC are friends. And if you have to think of something to remember this, think of Finding Nemo when the sharks are in their, their little group and they're saying, you know, fish are friends, not food. It's the same thing when it comes to marketplaces in DTC. Historically, we've always had separate budgets for marketplaces and DTC. But what you'll find is that when you switch to looking at them in tandem, and I would say as a whole, this is where you're going to find so much success. And that leads me into, you know, what I was just talking about, which is, we've always had a line in the sand between DTC budgets and marketplace budgets, it would always be we're going to spend, let's say, a million dollars on DTC and we're going to be spending a million dollars on marketplace, we cannot shift that budget around. Looking at your your advertising in a vacuum is actually holding you back in a lot of cases. Now, there are caveats to this, right, there's going to be different margins. When it comes to DTC and your marketplaces, there's different shipping, there's different costs that go in everything, your cogs might be a little bit different. However, when it comes to growing and scaling and maximizing your advertising efforts, when you look at everything in this 360, this 360 view, this is when you're going to be able to see that saying all tides rise ships or high tides rise all ships, that's where this is going to come into play. And here's kind of supporting this. So according to a 2018 google study, the customer journey now consists of 20 to 500 plus touch points. And that 20 touch point area, this one over here. This is really when it comes to b2b, really, the eCommerce site is anywhere I would say between 50 and 500. And this is so important. So think about it right? You can't just give someone an email and expect them to convert, you can't just expect someone to find you on SEO, and then convert and same thing with ads. It's very, very challenging to have, you know, to be able to convert someone on the very first touch on an ad these days, especially because we are I saw a stat recently, like we're literally exposed to 3000 ads a day, there's no way and so if we think of things less than a vacuum, and you're thinking of things as this 500, you know, it takes let's say, let's say 100 touchpoints to get someone to convert, this is why it is absolutely imperative to make sure your dynamic, your ad budgets are dynamic. So throughout this, I'm going to I'm going to say tune in, because we all know we've all been on calls and webinars and it's very easy to get sidetracked. But this is the one I'm gonna I'm gonna say tune in and this is that moment right now everyone tune in. You want to make sure your ad budgets are dynamic and fluid. And instead of seeing them as my ad budgets are over here and my marketplace budgets are over here, and they cannot be you know, change or flexible. They need to be because what we might find is, in the example of Prime Day that just happened, people are not going to shop on your DTC even if you have a DTC promo Prime Day, which it sounds like this was the best one that we've ever had. And we can see that in our data too. People are not gonna be shopping under GTC, they're gonna be taking advantage of those Prime Day deals. So what could have happened in that case or what you could have done as a brand if you didn't was shifted the budgets from your DTC efforts to marketplace you will capitalize on the high shopping propensity that was happening on July 11, and 12. And then that way, you would have seen more growth as a brand versus if you would have just said oh, I can't move my budget and I'm still gonna spend like I would normally on my DTC and then I'm going to spend like I would have my marketplace even if we're seeing higher you know, higher cost and everything. So, if you're tuning in or if you're ready to tune in again, dynamic and fluid ad budgets are absolutely necessary. So really

Aaron Conant  9:49  

quick how many people are doing this and just a reminder to others if you have questions, drop them in the chat drop them into the q&a or email them to me Aaron@bwgconnect.com. But How'd you are actually doing this today? I think this makes sense. I think it's something that people are working on. But do you have like a percentage of a brand? I

Tayler Jaksim  10:08  

would say, Yeah, I would say 25% is the high, I would say 25% is really on the high range. Because so whether it's having, you know, investors, or having, you know, having 500,000 person companies, there's a lot of red tape in some situations and being able to, you know, as an industry, we are still not really, I would say, talking and evangelizing this enough, unless you unless we're on a call Aaron, and you know, we're talking about this. But really, this is the one thing that we have seen time and time and time and time again, with those brands that 25% of brands, who are who are taking this as as kind of the playbook. They are seeing growth year over year, they are 100%, seeing the growth that other brands aren't. And it's so important that that 25% Next goes to 35. Right, and then 50 and then 75.

Nicole Reich  11:01  

Yeah, so I would add to that a little bit Aaron about kind of the the complexities of how this is working and how we're approaching with our brands. So what we find is that those small and medium sized businesses that are even able to pivot quickly, it works really, really well. So as an example, last week, on Prime Day with some of our brands that didn't really well, it was the smaller eComm teams, right where you have one decision maker over both E D to C and marketplace, right, where we're able to work with them and say for Prime Day, for example, we want to drive traffic from influencers and TikTok to Amazon and that worked very well. And it also was very profitable, because instead of relying so much on the Amazon ad budget, we were already kind of nurturing their TikTok audience and allowing some more organic traffic coming from TikTok to Amazon. And Prime Day was a great example of how to do that at that time, because we knew that the DTC website traffic was going to be down anyways. Right? So it's those types of scenarios where Prime Day and maybe potentially Black Friday where you know that the website traffic is already going to be down because of some type of Amazon promotion. And instead of kind of, again, thinking of those as silos, leaning into them and accepting that the customer is going to go wherever they're going to go on that certain period of time. And let's make the most of it. So what we're testing right now, in that scenario on the Prime Day, influencer TikTok is kind of that halo effect, right? We know last week, it works really well. But what we're testing right now is, what is the halo effect? The algorithm, the Amazon algorithm, how has that balanced out after the traffic's gone down? So, so far, we had a fairly strong weekend. But that is what we're most curious about.

Aaron Conant  12:47  

Awesome. So quick. Christian writes in, can you please advise if there will be a recording? Yep. We are recording, we can let everybody know, when it's done, we usually just, you know, kick it out and have the front end and the back end edited out just to pre called chit chat. So yes, we will make sure people get a copy of that. The other one that comes in is inequality. How are you doing? How do you handle customer acquisition when leaning more into the marketplace model and growing customer LTV?

Tayler Jaksim  13:18  

That's actually a really good question. Let's, we actually kind of touched on this a little bit, too. So let me get through a few slides. And then let's, we'll we'll definitely be covering that. Awesome. Awesome. Love it. Cool. Awesome. So we're gonna go through some numbers. So first 36%, of sales that occur on Amazon are actually starting off Amazon. So think of Google Mehta TikTok, like Nicole was saying, it just shows again, when we talk about the customer journey, it's not just you know, it's not just starting on marketplace, right? Not everyone is going to Amazon typing in, you know, vitamin C cream, and then converting, they're actually seeing a publication, maybe like refinery, 29, put something out, they then go to a site, and then they go to Amazon to purchase. And it's something that we've all probably experienced ourselves. And so this is really what this customer journey is starting to look alike. And, you know, this is a very pretty view of it. But if you you know, if you look into the different the different macro views that different publishers are putting, it's very chaotic looking. And so it's going to start in the awareness space and whether that's on organic social, whether that's an influencer, if it's a paid social campaign or a new customer acquisition campaign, whether it's DSP on Amazon, you know, someone is now getting there, they're your brand is getting in front of them, and it's peeking their interest. And then we have the consideration this is whether they go to your website, whether they're being retargeted. After they go to your site, they then can go to Amazon and look for your product. They might even then go to Google and look for reviews or YouTube and look for unboxings or reviews or how tos. And then our fans they're converting and what we actually have been seeing and I think we've all We'll see this in our brands is that they're not just on their DTC to convert, they're actually converting through Amazon sometimes or it's vice versa, they might get a DSP ad and then they actually might go to your DTC to convert. And then it goes into the onboarding phase. So this is while people are waiting, you know, to get their products. And then this is when the growth comes into play. So whether it's, you know, we're able to then upsell them into either subscribing safe, whether that's DTC or marketplace, whether there's a new product launch, etc, we're able to do that. And then LTV and this is the most important thing. And I know this was one of the questions is that how do you grow that and so with Amazon, we have this sort of the Subscribe and Save right? That's a great way to do that. There's different you know, with DSP, you can do a lot of different retargeting, and whether it's a new product launch, or upsell or replenishment, and it's the same thing on DTC too. And, you know, we'll kind of get to that, again, like I said, in a few slides. So we kind of talked about, you know, using TikTok for Prime data and being able to really put the ad dollars that you normally would envy to see to Amazon. But what we actually see too is, the more new customer acquisition, you're running for your DTC, we are actually seeing a relationship and affecting your overall and your Amazon sales, right. And if we think about it, it makes less sense, especially if we just talked about, you know, the customer journey we just saw, so someone sees an ad on Facebook, they go to the site, near DTC site, they then get retargeted, they go back, they might add to cart, and then before they check out, they might see what the free shipping threshold is, or how long it's gonna take, they're then gonna go to Amazon, and they're probably going to check out because it's going to, they're going to be able to get in like two to three days, right. And I think this is important, because, again, when we talk about looking at our budgets and performance in a vacuum between marketplace and DTC, we aren't really being able to see the insights like we are here in terms of how much you're spending on new customer acquisition, and how that is actually impacting in the halo effect of that going on to your Amazon sales, which is such a very important. It's an important nugget and a trend to always be analyzing. All right, now we're gonna go into tactic number two, so it is time to tune in everyone, I think this is very important. So once again, get ready to tune in. And tactic number two is really using Google and meta to drive to Amazon, and then using Amazon to drive D to C. I know this kind of seems a little bit, you know, topsy turvy in a way, because I think we have always been trained that Mehta and Google should always go to your DTC, Amazon should always be driving to Amazon. And a lot of that has been rooted in, you know, tracking issues, etc. But now there are different ways that we can actually track brands, our track conversions, I should say, when you go from Google and meta to Amazon, and even when you're able to do Amazon and DTC we're actually able to track that a little bit more than we used to.

Aaron Conant  17:51  

This is actually awesome. Now just just be from that standpoint of Amazon values, off site traffic onto the platform. Yes, it values it very, very much. And there's a lot of like, these new product launch platforms that leverage that exact thing with micro influencers. So if you're launching a brand new product, and you need the pageviews, and detail page views, and you want to raise your search ranking, Trump having off Amazon off site traffic being directed into an actual product, detail page. It's huge. It's huge. If you don't think that way, I totally agree for the I mean, this is how everything's always continually adapting and changing, right, and the algorithms and everything and no, that's, that's a key takeaway. That yeah,

Tayler Jaksim  18:44  

so again, if anyone didn't tune in, now's the time to tune in, make sure you are able to use your Google and meta channels to drive to Amazon and then using Amazon to drive to DTC. And like you just said, Aaron, you know, think of new product launches, right product launches, that can be very challenging when it comes to Amazon, you don't have the reviews, you just don't have that awareness. And so when you're able to drive traffic from meta and Google, to Amazon, that's going to help with all the the organic side and the ranking that we've you know, we've typically had struggled with. And then on the flip side, you can use Amazon DSP to actually link out to your DTC, which is something that is incredibly underutilized. And I think, you know, in some cases, it's been, I would say, DSP is soul. Amazon DSP, I should say specifically, has been very challenging when it comes to either setting up tracking, or there's just some nuances when it comes to that. And then also, when you aren't able to get the visibility into conversions. How are you able to prove what that ROI truly is? Well, now you can actually do that. And it's, you know, Amazon actually just kind of updated the pixel to even use DSP link out strategies and this is something that is available. And what you can actually use is Amazon's targeting and their their rich data. So one of my things favorite things is like you back in the day this would have been I don't even want to say how long ago this was because it's gonna age me. But back in the day, you could target anyone on Amazon through DSP, who purchased an Oscar winning movie from 2005. Like that is so niche and so specific, that, imagine that if you're a brand and you actually let's say you were working with Clint Eastwood for something and you wanted to talk, you wanted to target people who are fans of Clint Eastwood, you could get super grand like that, which I think is really cool. But anyways, this still is applicable if you want to grow your DTC. So, think of, you know, we are limited and other platforms because Amazon has kind of always had a wall around their data. You know, we now can tap into that to then drive to your DTC because other DSPs in other DSP platforms can't do that. So I have an example here. I know, Barbie Heimer. I don't know if anyone is is, is familiar with that. But that's happening on Friday, which is because Barbie and Oppenheimer are coming out on Friday at the same time. So there's this whole like Barbie hybrid trade. But anyways, so this is a perfect example of how you can do this. So if someone was to go to IMDb or an Amazon own page, whether the Amazon itself or like I said an Amazon property, you actually might search for in this case, Barbie, it's going to give you the information and then it's going to give you a DSP ad. If I was to click this, it would actually take me to the DTC itself and the landing page, I'm putting it. This is an awesome user experience. Because one, we have the same images here, right, we're able to use your creative that you're using across the board for branding, you're able to target again, people who might be looking for they're really into body mists, or hair mist, or cific products you have, or even if you want to try to target competitors, and you know, use their equity. This is very important. And so it's time to kind of rewire our brains from saying we can only use Amazon advertising and tools to only target on Amazon, right. And that's going to go into the thing that we were just talking about airing, which is using Google on meta ads to support Amazon. And so one of the things that we did last year for a few brands during holiday specifically, which is a wonderful time to do this is right leading up until Christmas, right you have people who last minute shoppers, or they find out they have a house guests coming over for the holidays, they didn't have anything for them. We partnered with URL genius, and which allowed us the ability to actually put tracking on our ads. And so if someone did make a conversion on Amazon, we will be able to track that back, which was a nice added ROI effort. But we were able to actually give people an ad that said, hey, last one is stocking stuffers, you will be able to get them before Christmas. And then we landed them on the actual holiday sets in the Amazon saw itself for this brand, which again, we were able to see an increase in holiday set sales on Amazon. Ironically, we also started to see we also saw them on DTC. So it was kind of it kind of the point wasn't necessarily to drive sales and etc. But we still did. But we were able to see that increase in sales because people were able to get it before Christmas, when we would typically have missed out on that and pass because, you know, shipping cut offs on for DTC are typically between the 12th and the 15th of December, we didn't have that same we didn't have that same challenge, I would say last year when we did this. Awesome.

Aaron Conant  23:20  

Just reminder for those who have joined us along the way you have questions, drop them in the chat or the q&a, we'll get to them.

Tayler Jaksim  23:27  

Awesome. So let's talk about creative could because creative, I would say when it comes to marketplaces has kind of been at the back of people's brains, right? It's like yes, you need video you will show this. However creative when it comes to Google marketplaces meta it is now one of the most important things for advertising. It's also very important when it comes to creating your experience, whether it's on your PDPs on marketplace, or on your DTC. And so tactic number three, so time to tune in, maximize your creative by shooting it for multiple challenge channels. So we know photo shoots are incredibly expensive, right? You have to cast model, you have to cast the talent, you have to be able to get the usage rights, you sometimes can only get videos or you can only get statics. And so then, you know if you times that by having to that for every single channel, or whether it's your DTC or marketplace, it is going to be incredibly expensive. There is a world when you plan it, so you can actually use your creative from a 360 perspective. And that is so incredibly important because we talked about how we maximize our ad dollars. If we can find savings in terms of creative photo shoots, which are incredibly expensive, we can now reinvest that back into advertising or other channels that will help drive that incremental revenue. It is so important. And one of the ways you know we have seen brands do this. And so for banana boat, we did a production with them. And it was really cool because it wasn't the typical we need to do this for advertising just for our site. It was how can we maximize this and so Literally everything I have listed here, connected TV streaming TV, paid social product imagery, DTC content, Amazon PDB, content, organic social email, and SMS, we were able to do this entire shoot that was able to check out all of these different channels on our checklist, which is important because now we can make our photoshoot goal a little bit more, because we were able to take it from a 360 perspective. And speaking of that, it also is going to be able to tie in together, so we're not going to have one photo shoot, and assets from one photo shoot that only has, you know, product A, for example, and doesn't look the same as photoshoot number B, right? It is incredibly important when you're going into any sort of a creative shoot, or planning or session or anything like that. How can we make this a cohesive across the board, because when we talk about branding, you don't want to have two different messaging or two different brand fields, whether it's on a marketplace, like Amazon, or Walmart, or your DTC. And so when we talk about, you know, looking at it from a 360 perspective, this is, again, going with looking at your budgets being more dynamic and fluid, because you don't have to worry about, well, we did this photo shoot for marketplace and it doesn't feel the same or doesn't have the same feels or D to C and vice versa. You don't have to worry about that. Because you've already planned for that.

Nicole Reich  26:18  

Well, it's okay. Like I'm like a profitability perspective, or just getting the most out of it. Right. Obviously, creative productions are expensive, but the savings is around planning ahead of time. And then also, I mean, I would hope and maybe you can speak to this, the conversion side, because of these creative assets being so cohesive, it is better, right, the advertising is able to go further for you because you have these cohesive ad creatives that you're tying to the ad campaigns, is that correct? Right. Yeah, it's just, you know, have one image and then the conversion doesn't work because the image doesn't play, it doesn't match the ad, can you speak to that a little bit, because I think that's where the cost savings is.

Tayler Jaksim  27:02  

Exactly. And so when you're doing when you start thinking about from a 360 perspective, and you know, I need to have creative, that's going to convert, right and creative, that's going to be able to get my product across, etc. And build branding, you're able then to shoot also to make sure is converting right or it's shot to be converted. So there's all these different things that go into it, whether it's making sure it's ADA compliant, whether it's stop motion, so can we turn into a GIF whether it's going to be able to use in checkout or lifestyle and be able to have the correct ratio, or an even the correct aspect sizes, this all goes into that. And what we've seen in the past for brands, when you when brands have to get they have to incur additional costs is after they've already wrapped for that shoot, they have to go back and edit these types of things. So if they shot something for horizontal, but it needs to be vertical, because that's how Amazon or other you know, or meta or Google takes those, it takes that aspect ratio, they then have to start paying more now to make sure that they they're able to convert it to that, or they have to have another one or photoshoot to be able to kind of reshoot these things in the correct aspects. And so that is where you're going to be able to one get your, you're gonna be able to save some money because you're planning it from every aspect, you're gonna be using it and to your shooting it to convert on the specific channels themselves. So then you're going to be able to see an increase in return because you're able to, you know, it's being shot to convert versus just being an eCommerce image, that you're going to try to fit into the the conversion that you think it can and it's not going to

Nicole Reich  28:34  

go up and then three times, right, so we go back to the nugget around dynamic and being able to pivot very quickly. One of the things that slows us down the most is when we have this really great idea to build a last minute campaign right before a promotional window, but then we can't launch it because we don't have the right creative tied to it. So just from being able to move quickly. I mean, there's a cost associated to that too, and, and making the most so I think that's really helpful. Thanks to you. Yeah,

Aaron Conant  29:03  

yeah, and really quick, I, I'm gonna drop a link to a podcast I did with Zach from your team. So Zach from Blue Wheel Two episodes ago, on our podcast here, the Digital Deep Dive, we tackled, you know, a lot, we did a deep dive on the complete digital first creative strategy, right, that ties into exactly what you're talking about here. But we can do literally an hour long call on just this. So it's actually there's a podcast episode, I'll drop it in the chat for everybody to see, or everybody to listen to. But yeah,

Tayler Jaksim  29:39  

yeah, I mean, literally any of these topics, we could probably spend hours talking, because there's so much that goes into it, right? And then that kind of takes us to the next to the next step because we you know, we've talked about the importance of dynamic and fluid ad budgets. We talked about the importance of creative and now this is one of the important things too is that there's more to advertising success than ads. And one of the challenges that I have seen with working with different brands is, advertising is sometimes seen as, as a silver, it's a way that it's going to be able to solve all the problems. When in reality, that is not the case, I always like to think of, you know, advertising as being the thing that kind of comes after you have this. And so this is where I want everyone to tune in tactic number four, you need to make sure you have strong and owned marketing or strong earned and own marketing infrastructure. And it's a non negotiable. So you know, what does this mean? So, again, I'm talking about how advertising is sometimes seen as the thing that is going to solve everyone's problems or grow your brand overnight. It is it is really the cherry on top. And I want to see if I have Yes, okay, perfect. I didn't know if this was the next one. But really, advertising is the cherry on top. And so if we look at an ice cream sundae, the things that go into it, you need a very strong foundation, right, you can't have a Sunday, just eat it with your hands, there has to be some things that go into it. So you need the base, the base needs to be your site in your marketplace, you need to have the correct content, you need to have the right CRO and you need to have the right setup on there. Otherwise, people aren't going to convert, you need to have the correct UX, you need to have the right SEO, you have great backlinks and everything, you need to have the correct fulfillment and the three PL right if you if you aren't able to be sold on prime, you're probably not gonna you're not gonna see the same conversion that you would if you are available on prime. If you don't have shot pay on your DTC, you're gonna see less conversions because that is what a lot of people have started to go to when you know when you're a Shopify site. And that is so important. Because before you can move on to that you need to have your lifecycle marketing setup. And so we talked about lifecycle, like we said the beginning, it's going to be email and SMS. So you need to have the correct workflow setup, you need to make sure if you have people, you know, you have to have an abandoned cart workflow, right? If people are adding products to your to their carpet, they're leaving, you need to be able to talk to them. It's also important to make sure like you are using SMS and maybe you're not like your SMS should not have images in every single one that you send. Because there's been issues in the past with MMS is getting, just not being able to deliver it because of the image sizes, etc. So if we're talking about building our ice cream sundae, we need to have the foundation, the bowl that we're eating at it, right, which is going to be again, your, your site, your marketplace, the content, the UX, just everything that goes into it, you need to have the proper workflow set up. So you have your lifecycle marketing in sync, and then that goes into your your, your awareness channel. So looking at social media influencer, right, you need to start building. And this is where I would say we can call it the ice cream, you need to start building the awareness and having creators posting your product, whether that's on TikTok, whether that's on threads, whether that's on Facebook, whatever it is, you need to have your message out there. And if we talk about earned and organic, this is where I would say everything below here is what I'm talking about when I say earned and organic media, because that's really what this is coming from, right? It's people coming to your site, whether it's referral traffic, whether it's organic traffic, you're getting your lifecycle drips going, you have awareness getting generated, because you're working with creators and influencers, you're building that, that awareness. And one of the things that is so incredibly important is that, really, this this part, when we're talking about the revenue that's coming into your DTC, or your marketplaces, this should be making up at least 50% of your revenue, your total sales. And that's a very important stat to kind of look at and go back to when you when you start looking at your reporting. Because that's if it's anything lower than that, if it's 40%, or 30%, chances are at that point, you're really relying on advertising to drive your sales. And if something was to happen, let's say your meta account got shut down, or who knows it CPCs tripled overnight or something like that, you will see an impact immediately. And that's what we absolutely want to avoid. And then kind of going back up to the the Sunday so we'll call this the sprinkles or the whipped cream. That's where creative comes in. Right? Creative is so important because this is what is going to get people to convert when it comes to advertising. It's what is is it's the fun, the fun thing to look at, but it also so much importance into it. And then this is where advertising sits. It's this gorgeous cherry on top. And this is how you as a brand are able to scale whether it's through marketplace or DTC channels, meta Google TikTok, et cetera. This is where you're able to scale because you have such a strong foundation that is bringing in revenue already. It's just adding fuel to the fire, right? It's your you have everything already going for you. And now we're gonna be able to amplify that by reaching new audiences, or testing creative or something like that through advertising. It's just it is this is such an important concept that I always talk to brands about. All right. Fortunately, Canva loves to not show all images, but we have this image here and this is what's important. So lifecycle marketing is is imperative, we kind of talked about this, it's email, it's SMS. But one of the most important things on here is that you are able to get first party data through email and SMS. This is something that's going to you know, we've already learned this with iOS 14, when it comes to meta. The it's going to be harder and harder to get for that first party data in the future, whether you know, it's from collecting emails, or leads or anything like that. I read a stat the other day that 86% of people care about what brands are doing to their data. Now, whether or not they actually know what they're reading the privacy in the cookies, and all that is and I think but people are really prioritizing their privacy. And so what we want to be able to do is how can we make up for that? Well lifecycle is the way to do that. This is going to help you collect leads, emails allow you to communicate with people after they convert, you, you want to be able to promote your new launch, you can do it through email and SMS, you want to be able to talk to people on Amazon, you can use the NYC E or or manage your customer engagement tool on Amazon to do that, you're able to promote your Prime Day sales or your Lightning Deals to your DTC audience. And you can see that with layer eight here, what we were able to do is we sent this to our D to C list, we were showing how we had our Prime Day sale going on, we linked immediately to Amazon and they were able to purchase right then in there, that is going to help drive overall sales, right. But this also shows us that x percent of our list is really interested in purchasing on Amazon. We also know that from there, we can see if people also purchase on the DTC because they were able to get that email. So again, life cycle is absolutely imperative. And if you're like What is life cycle, again, it's your Amazon, it's your SMS in your email. All right. And so when we're talking about lifecycle, a lot of times once someone converts, when someone becomes a purchaser, then the kind of there's, there's this idea that like, Oh, we don't need to do anything to them, it's so important to keep the conversation going and to make sure that, you know, we're nurturing the relationship with them, because that's how we That's how LTV comes into this. I know we had a question earlier about, you know, new customer acquisition and LTV. One of the things I just said, was really being able to use the NYC feature in Amazon. But also when you're doing new customer acquisition, doing things like DSP to retarget people who've either visited your asin or you have converted people who's you know, pushing, subscribe, and save, that is all things that you can do. And it is so imperative to make sure that utilizing the lifecycle marketing aspect of that is absolutely how you do that. And so going into making sure you know, you're re engaging with people, so 50% of consumers that they they buy something from an email at least once a month. And I think we've all been there, right, we get this amazing subject line, and we're like, oh, maybe I do need this, like, incredibly amazing olive oil, that's $20 Like, yeah, I do need that, you know, I am out of olive oil, you buy it, and that's perfect. It's the way to kind of remember people a they need something or it's they haven't purchased yet. And you're like, it's that time when you can wait around whether it's payday or something like that to send the email. But just keep in mind 50% of people said that they actually are purchasing something from email once a month. The ROI for email is $42. So the which is insane, right, for every dollar spent, people are reporting and brands are reporting that they are getting $42 in revenue from that, again, when we're talking about high converting channels, we a lot of times think of advertising lifecycle is very important. And also lifecycle can be very, you can make it not inexpensive, but you can make it a very worthwhile cost, because you're going to be able to get revenue literally after just sending one email workflow. And it's so it again, I cannot stress, stress stress this enough. It needs to be part of everyone's brand like everyone's marketing plans, whether it is for DTC or marketplace and sitting in the middle it needs to be in there. And then another thing that kind of keeps supporting this is that 29% is the average conversion rate for SMS marketing. If we think about the traditional eCommerce DTC site conversion rate, it's 2.6%. Let's talk about adding an SMS via SMS has a 29% conversion rate. So again, in re engaging with customers, nurturing the relationship, being able to you know, push incremental sales lifecycle marketing is the best way to do this. Awesome. All right, we're going into the next tactic which is tactic number five, so it is now time to tune in. Everyone you need to be on TikTok and you needed to be on it yesterday. And this is such an important thing. And you've heard me talk about this I don't even know probably 15 times at this point. But TikTok is so so incredibly important. And as we're talking about how you can expand your your marketing dollars, you need to be building that funnel that earned and that earn and own marketing infrastructure. TikTok is the way to do it. All right, so let's go over some fun, some fun stats here. So 50 million Americans log into TikTok daily 50 million Americans are going to TikTok daily. I am one of them. I can't even tell you the different TikToks. I'm on. But it is. So everyone is consuming their media through that. And so why TikTok a lot of people think that TikTok is you know, for Gen Z, it's people between the ages of like 13 and 18 75% of Tiktok users are over the age of 20 and 52% are over the age of 30. So no, it is not for Gen Z. It is for people who are over 30, which includes me, Aaron, you're in that 20 bucket. I know so you're good Sal, but people have so there is an older demographic on TikTok. We are all consuming media on there, you absolutely need to be on TikTok. So we kind of go over the reach of TikTok, so I'm gonna jump around here. So TikTok has over 1 billion active users and we talked about worldwide, and we have 138 million active users in the United States. So if we think about, there's at least 138 million active users in the US, we also see that 50 million people in the US daily are logging in, right. So again, your audience is there, the average user is on TikTok for 95 minutes a day. That is more than I was reading an article last night and it was saying that TikTok is on the verge of overtaking Netflix in terms of the consumption, which again, blows my mind, but I'm also 100% Part of that, that group of people doing that.

Aaron Conant  41:46  

I mean, people are like, it takes them back for a second. They're like, Yeah, makes sense.

Tayler Jaksim  41:51  

Yeah. Oh, yeah. The amount of times I have gotten the, your thumb, your, your throat, your thumbs are hurting from scrolling too much. The PSAs that TikTok gives you for being on a platform too long, I get that almost every time I'm on it, because it's just so easy to the short video consumption is just so easy to fall into. But again, we're talking about a whole other conversation and we can have that's gonna be an hour or two. But anyways, I think another important thing to think to take from here is that it's a very action oriented platform. So 78% of Tiktok. Users said they were ready to take action after engaging with content. One of the big things that has really been been coming out, I would say the last six months is TikTok shops and TikTok marketplace. So I actually made my first purchase on TikTok shops. About two weeks ago, I did move into a new house and I know you're wondering, did I get something for my house? Absolutely not. I got one, I got a phone holder that I can put on my mirror so I can take videos. Of course it's very Gen Z of me, right? But I was the the checkout service was so simple. I was done in two steps. And I got it several like maybe like four days later. It was so seamless, it was way less clunky than you know Facebook shops or IG shots or checkout. And so this is going to be I would say where we see a lot of people going to in the future and in the future of social commerce. So we'll have this conversation another six months, I think when it's built out more but the moral of the story and if you're coming back here you need to be on TikTok. It is super engaging. We have 130 million active users in the US 50 million of which are logging on daily. And then 52% of the people on TikTok are over the age of 30. So I guarantee your customers on TikTok.

Nicole Reich  43:36  

So Taylor, two questions. The first one is around TikTok shot or just a clarification because I know that's a little bit of beta. Can you explain a little bit what that is and how that would be different than just boosted posts right that directly to other traffic.

Tayler Jaksim  43:51  

So what is the TikTok show? Yeah, so you can also boost posts on TikTok, and that would just be trying to gain your following. So think of boosted posts on TikTok is really just trying to grow your following. You can actually have a shop set up if you can upload a feed onto TikTok like you can IG or meta. And you can actually allow people to shop from that product right from that Tiktok itself and check out from that video itself. So it's a completely separate thing just like you would with IG checkout or Facebook shops. And so to actually allow someone to purchase right then in there, they get a confirmation email and then that is it.

Nicole Reich  44:27  

Well, and then that's what failed, typically out of the DTC inventory, right?

Tayler Jaksim  44:32  

Correct. Yep, that is typically fulfill on their DTC or through the DTC. There is there is TikTok marketplace which has a lot of rumblings which would be a little bit of a different thing. But that has more to come. There's still not a ton of data around it or sell a lot of info but if that actually rolls out, I think then we will be having a completely different conversation. And then you know when that is rolled out Jevon My question, Nikhil.

Nicole Reich  45:01  

Ah, yes, sorry. I was, I was wondering if anyone was gonna ask it.

Aaron Conant  45:05  

Probably thinking the same thing, mine is around, threads just starting to pop up in my conversations. Today. Don't have a lot of people a lot. People are just starting to catch wind of it and wondering, Hey, is it worth it or not? I don't know if you guys are doing anything with threads. And if you want to kind of walk through what threads is, that'd be great. And Nicole, maybe that wasn't yours. But I'm sure you and I are usually on the same wavelength when we're hearing stuff.

Tayler Jaksim  45:30  

That's great. Yeah, let's do that one. Yeah, I liked that you're pulling at the thread of threads. I really like that. I know. Right? Then that is my dad joke quota for the day. But, um, so threads it was released. It's supposed to be very similar. It's kind of a mix between Twitter and Instagram. And I would say Instagram in the early early days. Same thing with Twitter in the early early days, we are testing this actually, with a few brands, right now. They want to be early adopters, they wanted to get on a platform, they sign up as soon as you could. There's still a lot of information. So in terms of kind of what we're doing, we're testing it. There are no imagery, there's no ad strategy, it's still very limited in what it is, it's a great way right now to connect with your community and your customers, right. So if you want to get on it, I would just have the same the same thought process that we have always had a TikTok and that is where you're gonna be able to grow your organic presence, it is the place that you're going to want to be to have conversations with your consumers. You know, you're not going to be able to post images or add or delete creative right now. There's no ad strategy give us probably another year before we even have a beta for ads. It is still a work in progress. So I'm curious to see what this what this actually evolves into. But I think, to me, we are so lucky that in the last three years and four years, I'll say I'll give TikTok an extra year that we have had two channels that have been able to emerge that are absolutely like that have blown up right. If you look at TikTok and now we have the the this idea of threads. Take time tock of the train for TikTok has already left the station. Yes, you should still absolutely be on it. Yes, you should be building your brand on it. But we've already seen cost per followers increase like 100%. So we're kind of you know, the cost isn't the the cost savings is not there as much as it was. Look into threads, see if threads is right for your brand and just start building that presence. Don't expect, you know, to see any sort of incremental revenue coming from it, but just have the conversations, be part of conversations, have them, you know, talk to your community. And then, you know, it'll be interesting to see kind of how it evolves, because there's a chance that this could be TikTok 2.0. And I know like some of you might have heard me talk about that with be real. Listen, be real is still going strong. But I think threads could actually be the next TikTok, if you will.

Aaron Conant  47:59  

So a couple other questions that popped in here. I'm gonna go in reverse order. What do you mean by being on TikTok, quote unquote, being on TikTok, do you mean posting every day? What is the strategy?

Tayler Jaksim  48:10  

Yes. So make sure that you as a brand have an account on Tiktok and you're posting on TikTok. What I have seen and what I still encounter with brands is that they're like, Yeah, we're on TikTok. They don't have an official TikTok account, and they do have influencers posting their products, but there's no way for them to actually connect the dots whether they should go to Amazon or DTC. So if you are a brand and you are not on TikTok, yet, make sure you have an account, you are actively posting to it. And you are you're growing your presence, whether that's growing your followers through a TikTok follower growth program, or your posting TikToks or using Spark ads, you need to have a TikTok strategy, it needs to be part of your strategy no matter what it's a non negotiable at this point. Awesome.

Aaron Conant  48:53  

Do you want us outside? So this is going back to you know, nine minutes ago. So outside of Amazon Marketplace? How do you tackle that issue as marketplaces like Farfetch Bloomingdale's? Don't offer a cool tool like that.

Tayler Jaksim  49:07  

Is that in terms of was that in terms of lifecycle? Or was it in terms of conversion tracking? Remember, I know there are,

Aaron Conant  49:14  

I will say they want to drop it in there. That'd be awesome.

Tayler Jaksim  49:17  

Yeah, if you can clarify that, like we can talk about that. But I know that more and more marketplaces like the Bloomingdale's and the Farfetch, and even Instacart and stuff, there are other platforms like pretty low that you're able to use to be able to reach your consumer. But if it's regarding lifecycle, that's still pretty low, the only thing that you could do is still use that to drive traffic to that marketplace. And then you'd have to do the old school trend analysis of hey, we did this many sins this month. Let's see if that has an incremental increase or decrease in our in our sales.

Nicole Reich  49:50  

The only thing I would add to that is for the marketplaces that you are doing the fulfillment meaning it's kind of more dropship you list the product and then when it's purchased you're you're shipping it to the customer You do have their name and address, right? So you might be able to run something local like or comparison and the back end. It's obviously much more manual than having the actual customer. But you might be able to do a workaround that way. I've seen brands do that when they're shipping directly to the end consumer. That's a good point to call. Awesome.

Aaron Conant  50:19  

Few minutes left here, how much more do we got? This is a ton.

Tayler Jaksim  50:22  

We're getting it. We're getting it. We're getting in it. So I'm going to quickly go over this. All right. So Friday, 2023 and tiktoks. So we had a lot of views. I know this happened a week ago, there were literally, you know, 1.2 billion views for Prime Day. This is if you go to TikTok right now. Again, she's just kind of supporting you need to be on it, especially if you are pushing your marketplaces, especially if you're pushing Amazon, people are going to TikTok to discover things they should buy on Amazon, you should absolutely be on it. And this is just a kind of a little case study of what Braddock cosmetics did this year on their TikTok, they literally posted their prime, their prime deals. They were posting multiple times a day, they were using Alex URL, they were using other influencers who are also going viral. And then what we also did in Nicole kind of references in the beginning as we were actually running TikTok spark ads to promote Amazon and we were able to see that incremental sales live. So there's a lot you can be doing. And definitely just if you take away one thing from the TikTok section, make sure you have an account make sure you're actually posting and have a strategy for TikTok, you must be on TikTok. All right. So the question is, does it work? Absolutely. So I'm going to talk about granny cosmetics again, we've been working with them. Actually, it's over six years at this point. So we last year at the end of 2021 and beginning of 2022, we shifted to looking at things less than a vacuum and more overall in terms of marketplace and DTC. What we ended up seeing is that by looking at everything holistically, we saw a 3.29 increase or 3.29 to M er which is marketing efficiency ratio, we were able to scale our our paid media by 40% We saw almost a 50% of increase in top line revenue on Amazon because of this and then we started 25% growth and due to see revenue so again, we talked about high tides raise all ships this is definitely something that works and there's so many elements to it but when you the very first thing is just look at your your data senior marketplace budgets not in a vacuum but as a whole and you'll see a lot of these pieces fall into place. All right, I have key takeaways and I have like one minute left so gonna get through it. So key takeaways marketplace and DTC are friends they are not enemies. If you need to remind yourself of that think of Finding Nemo and the sharks, your DTC and marketplace ad budgets have to be fluid and dynamic. They cannot be rigid. Utilize Amazon target drive to DTC sales, then also traditional DTC channels drive to Amazon sales, you can actually do that planning a few of your photo shoots be shot for 360 use this will end up saving you money in the long run. Think of advertising as the cherry on top it is not the whole Sunday. And then last thing I think I've said this five times at this point, but you absolutely need to be on TikTok as a brand, making sure you have an account you're you know, actively posting, you're gaining followers, etc. And that was it. Aaron, I think I just went through five slides in one minute. So that's pretty that's a new record for me.

Aaron Conant  53:19  

Yeah, it says here, we got a lot of wholesale department stores are going through marketplace route dropship. So just curious on your view for it, especially for contemporary luxury fashion with a founder who's still involved. Amazon Marketplace is a tricky proposal as we don't want paper towels being in the same box as a wrap dress.

Tayler Jaksim  53:37  

Absolutely. I don't know, Nicole, do you want to take this? Or do you want me to?

Nicole Reich  53:40  

Um, so I think I might have? Claudia, if you're if you're tying this comment back to your first question. I actually think that the answer related to being able to get that customer information because you are shipping, your drop shipping could be benefit beneficial. So I think about how you can get those lists. Now I do believe that there are marketplace rules, in a sense, very similar to Amazon of how you can contact and what you can do with that information. But at a minimum, you could do some type of local, local like campaign as it relates to the shipping Amazon marketplaces as we don't want. Okay, so I'm reading this as there's, there's definitely a premium shopping experience that you want to have for your customers. And because you go through Amazon, you have to rely on their shipping, if I'm understanding that correctly. So in those scenarios, I don't really necessarily have a workaround for you for FBA. I will say that if you do fulfillment by merchant and you ship those products, you list the products on Amazon, but ship them from your warehouse, you can still provide that type of experience because you're the one shipping the product so whatever add ins that you put in the boxes when you ship them out of your warehouse. Those are pretty much fair game outside of driving traffic to your website. But that might be a potential option. Unfortunately, when you do that, most of the time if you don't have Seller Fulfilled Prime, you're not getting the prime badge. So you have to really be, I guess realistic and your potential growth potential because you're limiting that that prime badge. As another note, though, seller fulfilled prime, they are opening that back up. So if you were able to get into that program, that could be a solution where you are prime and you're still fulfilling the orders on your warehouse. Hopefully that that is the answer to the comment or the question. I was inferring a little bit there, Claudia.

Aaron Conant  55:29  

That's all right. And we are right at time. So this has been so much fun. Nicole Tayler, you guys are absolutely awesome. And just really appreciate you and everything you guys do and help out all the different brands in that work. And with that, we're gonna try to end here one minute early. Look for a follow up email from us. We're going to send out a copy of the recording at some point in time, if you'd like it, just let us know. I'd love to have a conversation with anybody on the line today. Just want to just pick your brains on digital strategy, what's going on? Obviously help out with partner selection. If you have any needs in any of these areas whatsoever. The Blue Wheel team is just fantastic. I encourage everybody have a follow up call with them. And with that, we're gonna wrap up hope everybody has a fantastic Wednesday everybody take care, stay safe and look forward to having you at a future event. It's gonna cool thanks, Tayler.