Aaron Conant 0:18

Happy Thursday everybody. My name is Aaron Conant. I'm the Co-Founder and Managing Director of BWG Connect. We're a networking and knowledge-sharing group with 1000s of brands who do exactly that we network and knowledge here together to stay on top of the newest trends, strategies, pain points, whatever it might be that shaping the digital landscape today, I connect with 30 or more brands a week as one on one kind of an advisory strategic just conversation as a whole as to what's going on across the digital landscape and more than happy to have a follow-up conversation with anybody that's on the call today. I really love those one-on-one conversations and it's actually where we get the topics for our calls as well so also a quick note where we're starting to do more and more in-person events again in Tier One cities across the US so if you'd like to you know catch any of those or seeing upcoming events just go to bwgconnect.com and just you know, check out the events page there and you'll see upcoming events but we're also trying to post a lot of content post-event as well. So you can go back if you missed anything you can hear a recap you can see key takeaway so just check out the website we were making some updates there were a lot of content so sometimes it slows down as a lot of people hit that couple housekeeping items as we get started today is number one we're starting three to four minutes after the hour and we're going to wrap up with three to four minutes to go as well so we're gonna give you plenty of time to get to your next meeting without being late. The other thing is we want this to be as educational and informational as possible so at any point in time in this during this call if you have a question please drop it in the chat drop it in the q&a section there or you can always email me Aaron aaron@bwgconnect.com we'll get questions answered that way you know for the email that includes an hour after the call tomorrow next week you forgot to ask a question or you have any questions in the digital space, always shoot me an email we have 1000s of brands in the network and we can usually get you a response in a pretty quick timeframe in a day or less usually. With that I'm going to go ahead and kick this off you know So what have we seen as he noted talking about 30 plus brands a week a huge shift in ad dollars I think there was a lot of money that was poured into Amazon as a huge place for money to go I think a lot of brands are like whoa whoa I'm kind of over-indexed on Amazon now. They've dialing it back I mean Walmart tried to jump into it and make it for a bit I know they're still working on a bunch of stuff on the back end including their bid strategy and how it works. And so there's been a lot of questions I hate like emerging channels where should ad dollars go? How should they be spent? What should the product mix look like? And so we just had enough questions in this space we got some great friends great partners of the network over at Blue Wheel Media they've helped a lot of brands out in it they have a unique standpoint that they're able to not only the top you know paid media driver for Amazon pay media but also all the channels off from Amazon as well so it's rare that you get both of those underneath one roof and so they have a very neat and innovative perspective on how ad dollars are being spent so you know just to kind of kick it off you know Tayler I'll kick it over to you if you want to do a brief intro on yourself and Blue Wheel and then we can kind of you know I know we have some people on the line you know leases on as well from the ground day side you know kick it around Lisa for a brief intro on herself in the company and we can kind of jump into some of the data so

Tayler Carpenter 3:48

I'm good Yeah, sounds great. Hi everyone. My name is Tayler Carpenter. I'm the director of advertising at Blue Wheel. We are an eCommerce agency helping brands you know with their performance marketing across digital, social you know social media and all of those fun things and I've been at the company for several years now I I've been involved in the digital marketing space for almost a decade my past lives have been in automotive I even worked on a cat litter brand lots of fun things but on this call we also have Lisa Trombetta who is the Director of Marketing at Grande Cosmetics and I actually have a slide that shows our face as well so let me go to that right now. So now you can actually see what we look like as we're talking but Lisa I'm gonna kick it over to you. Lisa Do you want to tell everyone about you?

Lisa Trombetta 4:41

Absolutely Thank God my webcams not on because it would be a catfish. No, I'm just kidding. Um, so my name is Lisa is Tayler intro. Thank you so much, Tayler. So I've had the pleasure of working with Tayler for I think it might be four or five years at this point. I've been with the company for a little over five years and Back when Facebook advertising was just emerging Blue Wheel had reached out to us and we really hit it off from the start. So I really I helped kind of build this area with Tayler and team. And we are so excited to see just like how far we've come and all the new opportunities that exist in this space. I mean, it's endless every day we wake up, and there's something new being thrown our way. So it's really, really an exciting space. Um, I can't wait to talk more about it.

Tayler Carpenter 5:24

Yeah, and it's it's funny that you say that, Lisa, we have been working together, it'll literally be five years in a few months, which is, which is I don't even know what that equates to. And like dog years or pet years, like What is that like 40 years and you know, in the advertising space. So that's, that's pretty amazing that that we've had a partnership for that long.

Lisa Trombetta 5:41

Yeah, it's basically marriage and marketing.

Aaron Conant 5:48

That's awesome. So the full track from awkward eighth-grade dance to being married? I love it.

Tayler Carpenter 5:53

Oh, yeah. He's the best dance partner I've ever had. So I think.

Aaron Conant 6:01

Too funny. So, Tayler, we're gonna kick it over you just a quick reminder to those who have dialed in, you have any questions along the way, don't hesitate to drop them into the chat. The q&a section there, email them to me, Aaron aaron@bwgconnect.com. But, Tayler, do you want to kind of, you know, jump into it? No, you have a few slides here. And we'll just jump in with questions as we go. And then you know, Lisa, as well, we will kick some your way. But you know, feel free just open conversation jump in whenever it's needed.

Tayler Carpenter 6:29

Yeah, absolutely. All right. So some of the things that we are going to learn for the next, you know, 50 or so not 5040 minutes or so that we're talking. So really kind of the overall state of advertising and how it's changed in 2021. There is literally multiple TED talks that we can do about this. But it's changed so much, even from q1 to q3, and tomorrow is the official start of q4, it's changed so much already this year, how rising costs and data limitations have led brands to different channels. This is one of the this is one of the common denominators across all of our brands that we're seeing is that rising platform costs, they're just continuing to go up every quarter. Typically, you see that with seasonality, but we'll kind of get into that a little bit later. What are the new core channels and how they have changed, especially in the digital landscape and best practices for dedicating ad dollars within each ad channel. So where should you be putting your ad dollars, and then how to set yourself up for future success, as data ability becomes less viable, there's going to be less data, we have so many different data, you know, it started with GDPR, back around Cambridge Analytica, then it was ccpa. Now, you know, we have the infamous iOS 14, and 14.5. And the gift of iOS 15, which has already started to come up, but really will be hitting at the end of this year. So going into this, so let's talk about the current state of advertising. So one of the things that we are seeing as advertisers across multiple platforms, whether it be Google, whether it be Bing, Amazon, Facebook, and Instagram, we are seeing just increased costs overall. There's many reasons for this. And there's again, you know, so many different things. But when we're specifically looking at social channels, which is what we'll be looking at, you know, for the next few slides, so what does this mean? So brands are paying more to reach their target audience than they were previously. Which means that you're not able to see as many conversions or get as many eyeballs on your brand that you were able to, even when it comes to q1 of this year. So what we've seen is we've seen cpms on Facebook and Instagram increase anywhere from 4% to 92%. And the CPM is really the cost, how much does it cost to reach 1000 people in your target audience? So 4%, pretty similar, right? No, no real, you know, significant difference. But when you talk about 92%, if you in q1 or in q2, we're able to reach people interested in let's say, beauty products, or outdoor apparel, or they were interested in kayaks that might have only cost you we'll say, $7 to reach 1000 people, but seems pretty good. Now, we've seen with the rising costs on platforms that that can cost you anywhere from now it's $10 to $14, which means that you're not able to reach as many people as you were before and get as many conversions and that's going to affect your overall site revenue that's going to affect you know, the awareness that's going to affect so many more things than that were previously kind of going against us in q1 and in 2020. So really, what's causing this? What is really one of the biggest issues that we're seeing, or why is this rising? So one of the biggest things that we have seen on our end is 14.5, iOS 14.5. It's what we've all heard, we have the emails in our inboxes we hear it on podcasts, there's you know, Apple commercials on TV, talking about privacy. This is one of the biggest things that we've seen. Now if we take a step back in the last year and year and a half, we have been through a lot, there has been a pandemic, we are having, you know, we saw people going and buying more online, brick and mortar sales started to go down. So we saw the increase of DTC becoming bigger and more advertisers bidding on that, and you know, really targeting a lot of people, and then layer that on top of iOS 14, and privacy regulations happening. And you have yourself a really great high-cost mixer, essentially. So iOS 14, it allows the option for people who use iPhones to opt-out of being tracked by apps. So if you think about Facebook and Instagram, those are apps on our site, like apps on our phones, and, you know, there's always been rumblings of, can we, you know, users will be able to opt-out of anything. And Facebook has always kind of hidden that ability in the in the platform. But the way that this changes it because of Apple is, as soon as you open up an app, whether it's the Google app, whether it's Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, you know, Canva, anything, it's now asking you, you know, do you want the app to track you? Or do you want to block them from tracking you. So it's kind of in your face, and this is why it's become a very large thing. And there's no actual stats out there, no one will actually, you know, send stats, but the stuff that has kind of been going around is that when this first came out, when iOS 14.5, first came out, the stat was at 96% of people had opted out, which is a pretty significant number. So if you apply that across the board, you know, assuming that most most brands who are eCommerce and DTC focus, see that 60 to 75% of their traffic from their site is coming from mobile, which the majority of that is iPhones that can have a larger, a larger, you know, reach, in effect a lot of what we are able to see.

Aaron Conant 12:01

Would it be funny if that remaining 4% was all like digital marketers?

Tayler Carpenter 12:07

Oh, right. Right. I mean, it would be

Aaron Conant 12:10

All on a quick side note, I'm trying to figure out who the 4% was an accidental or were they digital marketers were like, actually need this data?

Tayler Carpenter 12:19

Right? Yeah. They're like, no, if I want to be tracked, please track me. So I can help my fellow digital marketers, right?

Aaron Conant 12:25

Like, no, that didn't help out, you know, how the the wording of it was right? Do you want these people to follow you everywhere and track everything you do? Yes or no? Right. Right. It wasn't quite that I suppose. But that's how it came across? Like, do you want us to be incredibly creepy nonstop. And they know, it don't want to be?

Tayler Carpenter 12:45

No, the thing that was really interesting, too, is that Instagram took a very interesting approach before it really came out was that by allowing us to track you, it helps keep our platform free, which I thought was very interesting. Because I'm like, Hmm, okay, that's an interesting take on it. Because everywhere else says, you know, it's okay to opt-out of tracking, it's fine. And then Instagram took that approach. And I don't know how long they actually did that for, but I got some, like, you know, a notification when I log on to Instagram, and it said that, and I was like, yeah, you. I don't like that approach. So we're going to kind of just keep going. But yeah, I'd be really curious to see what that who that 4% is. And so one of the questions I always get, and one of the things I always think about is why does this make our platforms go higher in terms of costs, because the more people that opt-out of tracking, the less data is available, and then now we're seeing platform costs, right? So So why is that? And really, what's interesting is, if you have three brands in theory, you know, we're all let's say, all three brands are targeting skincare, we'll just use skincare. And because Facebook and Google and a lot of these platforms are an auction model. So think of eBay in 1997, you're trying to get that cool thing, maybe something from your childhood, and you're trying to get that childhood post or maybe new kids on the block, because you're going through a nostalgia, you know, the soldier phase. And now there's people bidding on this new kids on the block poster, and you know, you have $1, they have $1.20 kind of keeps going up. And then eventually someone wins that. The same way as being that's how Facebook is ran. That's how Instagram is being ran. That's how Google and all these different auction-based platforms are happening. So if we have three brands, let's say brand, A, B, and C, they're all targeting skincare audiences, and they're all trying to get someone in the audience to purchase. We don't actually know how much that cost because Facebook controls that and we're gonna try to outbid each other to make sure that we're showing up for that demographic or that target audience in their feed. It's all auction-based. This is why we're seeing the platform costs rise. Now. You know, iOS 14.5 is a big you know, it's a big proponent of that. The other thing because we are able to reach we're unable to reach as many people as we were before. For in q1, we're seeing Amazon costs rise, we saw the shift of you know, everyone going from brick and mortar purchasing to eCommerce last year, people are trying, there's more and more advertisers joining Facebook and Instagram and Google because they're able to reach the masses, right? Those are still the top used platforms every single day, from a user perspective, you log on to Facebook to see what's going on with your friends, you might go to Instagram to see you know, what stories people are posting what restaurants they went to, or what was their outfit of the day. And then you go to Google to search for what is the best hiking boots, or what is the best shoes to play basketball and more and more brands are getting in on those searches, because they're unable to reach as many people causing more people on those platforms cause the cost to go up, come, you know, throw in that there's an auction and a data, you know, a data list world that we're going towards. And this is why platform costs are just going up. So with this conundrum that we have as marketers right now, how do we combat iOS? 14.5? How do we figure out to get around iOS? 15? How do we still continue to grow our COMM And our DTC businesses, with all of this in mind? Well, the answer is channel diversification, which this is a very fun graphic, it makes me very happy. And it's the truth. And it's what we've definitely seen, you know, from grenades perspective, well, in our five-year partnership, we've seen with a lot of our brands, and a lot of other brands are doing this as well. So what are the benefits of these emerging channels, and for our conversation, today, we're really going to focus on Snapchat, Pinterest, and Tiktok because what we've been able to find is that there's a lot of room here for conversions, and impressions, and all of those good things help growing your brand. So benefit number one, there's less brands advertising on these platforms, which means it's more cost-effective inventory, Snapchat, Pinterest and TikTok the usage on those platforms from a consumer perspective is still there. TikTok, just what Tiktok just across 1 billion unique users on a monthly basis a few weeks ago, which is pretty insane, right? People are using TikTok people are they're your target audiences there. Pinterest has been around for a very long time. And it's one of those platforms, that is discovery. People go there for a specific reason, whether they're planning their wedding, or they're looking for fall outfits or healthy meals, people are they're looking for solutions and looking to have conversations about something that's going to fit in with their life. And then Snapchat, Snapchat is very, you know, it's very Gen Z people think it's always a Gen Z young millennial platform. You know, we've all done the dog filter where your tongue goes out, if you open your mouth, and the ears come up, you know, but these, these platforms have less and less people advertising on them, when you look at compared to Facebook, Google and Instagram, which is pretty incredible. So long story short, less people, less brands advertising on these platforms means more more people that you can reach at a lower cost. The perfect example of this is for some of our brands on Snapchat if we're targeting, let's say, a beauty audience or an apparel audience, we're able to get a cost per swipe up, which is the equivalent of a cost per click on Facebook or Instagram, for as low as 11 cents, which is pretty incredible, and they're also qualified. So that's why when I say it's more cost-effective, this is what we're literally seeing right now. So if we go to the next point, benefit number two is TikTok, Pinterest and Snapchat have native integrations with many platforms like Shopify, which makes it so easy to set up two years ago. And Lisa, you might remember this, when we were kind of testing Pinterest, it was the biggest challenge just to get the pixel on the site and to have the events set up. Gone are those days thankfully, if you have a platform like Shopify, you just install the app, you click a few buttons, you throw in your pixel ID, and you're good to go. The same thing can be replicated with Snapchat, and TikTok, which is fantastic, as you want to make sure that you know, just like the Facebook pixel, and just like with Google and Google Analytics tracking, you want to make sure that you have your pixels, you know, on the site so you can measure your success of your campaigns. And the best way to do that is to make it very easy for us advertisers to be able to do that. And all of these platforms have made it incredibly easy. And one of the other benefits is that you can nurture your lower funnel audiences and reach new audiences that might be very competitive to target on Facebook. It's important for me, you know, what we always do with grani is we want to start conversations with someone who might be our target demographic, and continue those conversations going. It's kind of like if you have a friend right you want to talk how is your day? How is everything going? Oh, you might like this. I just got this out of store. Oh, did you see that this just came out? Maybe you'll like it. This will look good on you. It's important to have real conversations with your audiences versus just kind of cold calling everyone And you're able to do this on these platforms. Like I said, Pinterest is a discovery platform, it's people who are searching for problems or solutions to their some of their problems or some of the things that they're looking for. Like I said, with healthy meals, maybe 30-minute healthy meals, or fall wardrobe. staples. TikTok is one of those platforms that everyone is using, because they want to see what is the latest dance trend, what our I've been recently on a lot of like cleaning TikToks. So I'm learning how to clean things more efficiently than ever, which is amazing. And that there's a really good market audience there that you can go to. And then Snapchat, people still use Snapchat as a means of communication. And there's people there who are either looking through the different content that's available through the different publications, I think, Allure and all of these, all of these brands have these like quick stories that you can go through on Snapchat saying like, you know, the best ASMR videos or watch, you know, people are really interested in like pimple popping, and all of that. There's a lot of content and go that can go on there. And there's a lot of room to play on all these platforms. Great. So how do you allocate budgets to these and this is kind of always the question as marketers that we have to face is, how do we identify where you know what goes to where, how much budget do we actually give to Pinterest or TikTok or Snapchat. And if you ask reps, they will give you how you should really test $100,000 on TikTok this quarter. And as marketers, that's not very, that's not an easy sell. Some brands don't have that type of budget to work with. And some brands can't bet on a platform that they've never ran before doing that much of an investment. Because how do you report that to your CFO or your board or your CEO or your founder that Yeah, TikTok just kind of talked me into this, I did it and we don't really know what's going to happen. So these are some of the best practices that we kind of follow when it goes to allocating budget. So one, just isolate a test budget. In the case of grand aid, this is what we did, we really just said, okay, we want to test Pinterest this quarter. This is the budget that we're going to test it with. Same thing with Snapchat and same thing with TikTok. That way, we were able to measure the effectiveness of each of the platforms, keep an eye on costs. And then that way you're able to say okay, we've dedicated budget for these, we're not really taking away from some of our more core channels, like a Facebook and an Instagram and Google are still able to reach audiences and test them in a different way. To just identify where your audience is interacting if you are a Gen Z brand or a young millennial brand, and you're on Facebook, and you're not seeing that, that traction that you could be, try Snapchat, we have a few brands who are really struggling on Facebook just because of the price point and the competitiveness of the platform. And we tested the same or similar audience on Snapchat, and we have seen significantly better performance which is which is positive, right? Our audience is on Snapchat, so we're gonna stay there. Maybe you have people maybe have some introductory products, maybe a $25 discovery kit or a sample pack or anything like that. And you just want to get new brand like new people just trying your products. TikTok is a great place for that it's really an awareness platform, very little lead generation right now or conversion right now, just because it is so new. And the feeds are so different from person to person. But that's a good opportunity for it. And then there's Pinterest. How does Pinterest fall into this? Everyone that uses Pinterest is there again for discovery. I'm a broken record with this, but they're looking for something whether it's a mood board, whether it's you know how to fall asleep faster, whatever, there's people there who are looking for that. One of the best things about Pinterest that I love personally, is that it combines a social platform with your interest targeting with a search platform with keyword targeting. So you can literally target people on that platform and have conversations with them. If they're searching for a DIY lash serum or a DIY, you know, like, like I was saying healthy 30-minute healthy meals, or if you're looking for protein bars, or whatever that is you can you can target a lot of those people and have conversations with them. Three, I already talked about this, but set up channel pixels for full measurement you need to be able to prove what's happening with you, when you whenever you have any sort of an investment, whether it's just we're seeing an increase in sessions on-site, we're seeing a lift in email subscribers, we're seeing more people following us on Instagram. Just make sure you have the channel pixels just just set up on your site. So you can track events. And yes, I just talked about a few slides ago how iOS 14.5 is making this a little bit more challenging. But the nice thing about these platforms is that they are mobile-first. So they have you know a little bit of an edge on Facebook or Facebook might not be designed for mobile-first. And remember, if you are on Shopify or a larger platform like that a lot of these channels have integrations and apps in the stores that you can just easily plug and play Then the last thing I have is just really give it time, make sure you're able to measure it, because we all know there's different attribution windows, we all know that depending on your product, that it might take a longer buying cycle than maybe 24 hours, it might take a week, it might take three weeks, it could take 60 days, depending on what your service or product is. So really give it time. If you're measuring data off of just two clicks, and maybe $100, that's not really enough of a sample size to kind of get an idea of, of what you should be spending. We recommend, you know, either quarterly budgets or looking at a monthly budget, and we might kind of prorate that monthly budgets a little bit higher, just so we can get data. Are people interacting with it? Are people at least are they clicking? Are they at least viewing is our click-through rate really low? Is our view through rate really low? We're looking at all of those things, then we're able to kind of say, okay, maybe we need to tweak creative or maybe we need to change the landing page that they're going to because it's not as interesting as what they're hoping to get. Alright, we're rolling right through this. I know Aaron, just interrupt me if there's any questions. But I'm gonna we're almost we're almost at the end of this. And we can have more fun conversations.

Aaron Conant 26:07

Yeah. All right. The you know, as people are sharing my news, we're halfway through here, you have any questions, drop them into the chat, drop them into the q&a, you know, section there, you can email them to me, Aaron aaron@bwgconnnect.com as we get through here, you know, we'll kind of stack those up, and then just tackle the questions as we get to the end.

Tayler Carpenter 26:28

Awesome. Alright, so in the case of what did Grande Cosmetics do? So likely. And I said, we've been working together for about five years. And there's been a lot of marketing tests, a lot of lessons learned over that time, but kind of taking a look at, you know, emerging brands and emerging channels, and how are we, you know, testing those, I'd like to take a look at our budget. So last year, we had about 6% of our ad spend, go to emerging channels. So going on to Pinterest, TikTok, and Snapchat, specifically, this year, we're going to hit around 10%. And all of that only looks like a four percentage point increase. When you take into account, you know, channel, you know, budgets going up and all that, we're able to kind of see that Pinterest, TikTok and Snapchat are now becoming more of our core channels, because that's where we know our audiences. And it's a pretty cool thing to see. Because we took those those, you know, those steps on the previous slide, to have the test budgets, make sure we had the pixel setup, make sure we were giving it time to report and we were able to say, Okay, here's what we know works, let's keep doing that, or here's what we know, isn't really doing that, well, maybe we can try it on this channel. And, you know, Lisa has been a fantastic marketing partner, because she's always, you know, let's try this. Let's see what we can do. Because as a director of marketing, she's responsible for making sure that we're always getting new people to the site, that we're able to grow our brands, and we're able to grow our reach just across multiple channels, but also across, you know, multiple multiple retailers that there are I don't know, Lisa, if you had anything that you want to share on this?

Lisa Trombetta 28:02

Yeah, no, I think I think now more than ever, we can think of it, think of diversifying the channels much like almost like a stock portfolio, you know, you don't want to dump it all in one because something like an iOS happens. And now that's no longer reliable platform. So we really, really should take strides in, you know, trying to find what's the next biggest platform next to Facebook, that's kind of like the comfortable platform for most marketers, but how do we push the needle? What's going to, you know, really make a splash, even if it's not something that we directly see return in right away? Because obviously, like new channels, like TikTok advertising is still very much new on their platform. But how do we just keep pushing it? And seeing you know, how we can continue to build different audiences on all these different platforms?

Aaron Conant 28:47

So a couple questions that come in, and one is around. Where did the 4% come from? So did you pull that from Facebook? Did you pull it from Amazon? Did you pull it? You know, where did that 4% come from?

Lisa Trombetta 29:00

Yeah, it was it was a study that was done, I believe, by one of the brands that Verizon owns. It was if you can, I think I forgot that the I forgot the article that kind of came out with that. But that's definitely something that if you Google it, you'll be able to kind of see, and it was very fascinating. Facebook did last week come out with their biggest news was that 15% of conversions and platform are being underreported across the board due to iOS 14 14.5, which was the first time we had Facebook ever acknowledge a number. And basically that saying across their entire brand advertiser portfolio, because of iOS, that they are, you know, acknowledging that there are a lack of conversions in platform. And that can range from accounts as well. So if you are a very desktop, heavy traffic and conversion based brand, you're not going to see as much of the underreporting because you don't have people converting on mobile, whereas you're a brand who might be like 90% Mobile conversions, you're going to see a higher underreporting just because of people being opting out.

Aaron Conant 30:08

Awesome. So another question comes in, what's the estimated amount of monthly spend needed to get a good read and how Snapchat or TikTok is working for you? Right? And so I'm going to lead into another question with that as well. So you know, what's the right amount of spend? to have it register? But then, you know, how are you preaching it? And this maybe is for Lisa, internally, you know, when there's this increased scrutiny on, you know, return on adspend? I think in 2020, there's kind of like, you know, the pandemics hitting and everybody's, you know, shifting to digital, and there was kind of like this grace period, around how much you're spending results you're getting as everybody's trying to deal with a pandemic, and then in 2021, now, you know, a lot of executive teams want you to have it figured out and they're having a high pressure on an actual international row as or, you know, performance KPIs. But, you know, I like the way you put it because you're kind of saying like, even on TikTok, it's almost, it's like an r&d channel almost right. It's a don't pay attention to, you know, it's not that don't pay attention, but don't necessarily count it out. Because, you know, money's not being made there. Right now. We're testing and learning. So, first one is what's an estimated amount of monthly spend needed to get a good read on how Snapchat or TikTok is working for you?

Tayler Carpenter 31:27

Sure, sure. So Lisa, I'll take this. And then I'd love to get your perspective on kind of how you report that internally and the conversations you have. So this is really going to depend on your budget, what we find is if you test and like I said, we have quarterly, you know, we typically will look at kind of like a quarterly perspective, you're going to want to do something significant. So if you're going to do only $1,000 test, that's not going to be a significant enough test, what we kind of are looking at as a minimum of $5,000 a month, or at least, like a 20 $500.02 week test that you can do, because you're going to be able to get a lot more data upfront. But really, $5,000 is like the minimum and you're only going to really be able to test a few audiences on a platform. So if you want to go in and you say, Hey, I have a $25,000 or $50,000, quarterly test budget, then you're going to kind of be able to do more with the platform and say, Okay, I want to test maybe with you a traffic campaign, and we do a conversion campaign. We do an awareness campaign. And we can do all these different funnels and platform that's going to allow you that, but just going off of that initial question $5,000 is the absolute minimum, I would say, if you want to do a full test per channel. There's what you were saying, Aaron? So yeah, I think one of the other important things to look at is how does each channel affect my marketing stack? So one of the things that, you know, we've really talked about the last year is channel row as is slowly dying. And if it's not dead, mainly because platforms are getting rid of row as are other metrics like that. The attribution window for some platforms is 90 days, which is incredibly bloated. Think of all the different advertising, think of what happens in 90 days, can you even, you know, who can actually say what they did yesterday? What are the five ads you saw yesterday, you're not going to be able to remember? So you have that you have the privacy, you know, data coming in, where you're not even able to get that data, you're not able to really kind of see the connections between all the platforms. So it's really looking at how does TikTok and Pinterest and Snapchat, how are they helping my overall site revenue. So you know, that TikTok is really going to be a great awareness channel, you know that Pinterest is going to be a problem solution channel, and you know that Snapchat is going to be one of those channels that you're able to target if you have a younger demographic, and maybe it's conversion. And what I can tell you is that what we've seen, being performed a performance marketing agency, what we've seen is that Snapchat and and Pinterest are having much, they're converting way more better than they were previously. And we've actually seen Snapchat have some incredibly strong row ads and return on adspend performance for some of our brands. Same thing with Pinterest. It's not as I would say, strongest Snapchat. But if you are a performance brand you're looking to, you know, how do I what channels can I go on, that are going to give me a strong return on adspend Facebook and Instagram is going to be the one that you can get the most reachable touch on in a little bit. But then it's Snapchat and then I would do Pinterest that would kind of be my top how I would rank those three. TikTok I don't have in my top three because it's really just an awareness tool. And it's one of those really strong platforms that if you want to get a lot of people kind of seeing your brand, and if by chance that goes viral by a creator, that's going to do so much for you. They are making I would say platform advancements that allow you to make it more of a conversion channel. So they just have their they just I think launch like a lead generation aspect of it. So you can kind of grow your email list through TikTok, they have a, like a dynamic product ad that you would see like on Facebook, they have that on TikTok, now you can actually show your catalog in your shopping features. So they are making it more conversion-based instead of 10 TikTok or Snapchat and Pinterest have that as well. They have the same functionalities that you would do in Facebook, on those platforms. So it's pretty cool to kind of see how that is going. So that kind of leads to Lisa, knowing all of this, how are you? What are the conversations that you're having internally to kind of, you know, speak to why you should be targeting these these new plant these new channels?

Lisa Trombetta 35:37

Sure, yeah. Thank you for that. I think that was a great like segue into, you know, my think, I think, part of tanzer part of that I think, you know, when you know, you're running on a platform like TikTok, where it's much like an awareness channel, how do you gauge that maybe that ad is returning or not, it's not necessarily the the direct row as that you'd see from the app. Because to Tayler's point, it's just not that sophisticated. But maybe we see increase in web on-site website traffic, we see our product being searched more on Google, and there's no, you know, the TikTok effect is real. So whether that be through paid or organic virality, I think that's some ways to gauge if it's working. I also think it's really important while you're testing these newer platforms, like Snapchat, Pinterest, TikTok that you're testing them, I would say almost simultaneously, because you really want to be able to, you know, take a look at all your efforts, in my opinion, going all in at once is probably the best effect when you are testing these new platforms. Because if they saw it on Facebook, then all sudden, they're going on Pinterest, and they're seeing it. And then it's like, Third time's the charm. I'm Snapchatting, my friend and I see it there. It's like, okay, what's the spread, so now I'm gonna probably take it upon myself to go look into it. And he might have a conversion there, although it's not directly attribute it through that, you know, that swipe up row, as I think there is still like this domino effect that does happen. So it's just, you just have to kind of think of it in that way, I would say and that's really how we tackle those commerce tackle those conversations internally, where we know Facebook and Instagram that's kind of like the tried and true ro eyes channel. But when we're dabbling in Snapchat, Snapchat, Pinterest, and TikTok like, there's more at play here. And we have to kind of see the whole picture of you know, is it uh, is it impacting our search, our sales increasing? So something's happening there? And something good is happening?

Tayler Carpenter 37:31

Yeah. Yeah, really goes in, it really goes into as well, because that's a great point. Lisa, you know, you also have an email infrastructure with trips, and you're optimizing your landing pages to make sure they're there as you know, as informational as is conversion first. And that all picks up, the people who are coming through Snapchat or Pinterest, right? Likely says that it's not going to be direct necessarily. And neither is Facebook and Instagram, a lot of times the one channel that you can really talk about, you know, his direct might be Google organic, or Google paid, right, those are the two that you could argue are potentially the ones that are going to be the most direct, just because typically, they get, you know, the last click revenue if you're looking at Google Analytics, but the way to also make these channels work is having that infrastructure internally of your email, your what your web pages, it's very easy to buy on your site, that's also going to support the success of these channels, just like with Facebook, and Instagram, and Google and Bing, and all of those other ones.

Aaron Conant 38:35

Yeah, great. And, you know, Johnson got dropped a couple comments in here, you know, as far as a, you know, a trial in jumping in with with TicToc, you know, dropping in, you know, 100k over two months. Right? And that kind of goes along with what you were saying. He says, You got to go, all right, you can't just dabble in these, because the reality is, everything's interconnected now, right? And you can't just dabble here and there and see, try to you can't get enough data points, you can't get enough performance out of it. Right. And this is, you know, the other thing, you know, he talks about here is just, you know, saturation standpoint on Facebook, well, if you really know your user, right, you can really target them on TikTok at Snap, right? If you know your market and who you're targeting, you can you can use these to grow efficiently. You can't just dabble around in it and try a little one thing or Tuesday here or there, right? It's putting together a full-blown plan, executing the plan, and then getting the data out the backend to say hey, this worked for us or it didn't. We love to hear your thoughts there and how you kind of looked at it.

Tayler Carpenter 39:43

Yeah, so yeah, so I think you know, we we work very closely like Lisa and I on their marketing plans as well. And so really, it's always kind of going in because like you said, everything is interconnected. And you know, what we like to do, too is is look at what are the marketing campaigns that we're Pushing overall because Grande does have, you know they are sold in a few different retailers are sold on Amazon. So there's a few different ways so how do we make sure that people are understanding and seeing that Grande is, you know, whatever campaign that might be. And so we did that earlier this year with one of our with one of our campaign themes and every platform had their they played their part in this overall message that we want to, you know, what we want everyone to see, which was really just about owning your natural beauty. And Pinterest had some very interesting kind of cost comparisons and before and afters because you We all know that Facebook is very, very picky on before and afters when it comes to images on Snapchat showed you know, kind of why and how easy it was and also how it can be very cost-effective as a consumer as well. You don't have to pay 15 $100 for maybe a filler or anything like that. You can do something with this and X, Y, and Z and it can work for any demographic, Facebook and Instagram do a lot of the heavy lifting typically. Right, because you have the larger reach there, you can have more videos, you could have just more content that you can kind of sequence out, then you have TikTok where you're doing a lot of native creators giving you content that's really talking about how they, how they fit how grani can fit into their routine. And the biggest thing you know, with all these platforms is that they are there are very specific ways that you have to execute creative on these platforms. You can't run the same image across all you can't take you know, your A-plus content on Amazon, repurpose it on Facebook and then repurpose it on Snapchat and TikTok, you have to really you know, you have to make it very platform specific. But that's one of the ways that if you are going to go all in on these platforms to test is do one of these larger marketing programs, whether it's a product launch, or maybe you have, you know, a promo or whatever that is, or maybe you just want to highlight some, you know, just re-establishing what your heroes skew is, it's going in and making sure that you have the consistent message across all of your all of your presence, whether that is on Amazon, or Facebook, or TikTok. Or maybe it's a Sephora thing no matter what that is, you just have to have a consistent marketing thing. And I think that's what's also going to really help make these emerging channels even more beneficial to your marketing mix. Lisa, did you have anything else to add?

Lisa Trombetta 42:16

No, that was spot on. I think to your point about the creative and content that you use per channel, I would say that is probably one of the larger challenges on this because you have to really kind of study what works just from an organic perspective and tie that into how you market on these platforms through creative and storytelling. For example, you won't run the same thing on Facebook as you would on TikTok. So I think really making sure you're kind of analyzing the platform's what's working like what's going viral on TikTok, do we recreate that in an ad? What goes you know what goes viral? Or has a ton of pins on Pinterest? How do we recreate that aesthetic and an ad. So really making sure not only it's carrying consistent messaging, but it's still cater to each individual channel, I would say, that's probably the biggest thing, especially with these newer channels, since it's not a one size fits all.

Tayler Carpenter 43:11

Yeah, and we've tested, learn from our mistakes where we have tested just running the image that we did on Instagram stories, or Facebook on TikTok on Snapchat, on Pinterest, and you don't have the same you don't have the same just engagement, you don't have the same conversion as you do if you make it specific. And one of the cool things about TikTok because we know that the platform is one of those viral platforms is that now they have a feature called spark ads. And so if there is a video that a creator posts, whether they're paid or not, and they're just showing a routine, if that video goes viral and gets, you know, 500,000 likes, and it has millions of views, you're able to actually get the code from the creator and then kind of boost it in a way kind of how Facebook does. They're able to continue the virality and kind of put it behind, which I think is pretty cool for brands. You know, we've had a few We've had a few creators go viral, Lisa with grace, they haven't we were like wait, like we'll send we'll like text each other. We're like, did you see this TikTok that someone just posted and we're like, oh my god, like we got to see like, how we can get them into like our like ambassadors, like we love this, you know, and, you know, that's the that's the stuff that's gonna go viral on TikTok, it's not going to be a very editorial, you know, shots like in a studio-like very well like, it's not like TikTok. The way to do it as a creative has to be really authentic and real and raw. That's what kind of goes well on TikTok, which we've we've started to integrate into our campaigns more.

Aaron Conant 44:39

Yeah, on that note, just a quick question that comes in around content, like how are you generating it goes right in line with kind of what you're saying is how are you generating all the content that's now needed? Yeah, I mean, every additional platform you add on you're like, you're kind of noting there takes a different type of content. Yeah, you've been reading that. much that's as big a concern that I'm getting for a lot of brands that I'm talking with as well is the amount of content how quickly is being consumed cost of creating content the writer content AV testing.

Tayler Carpenter 45:13

Yeah, it's it's gone past AV testing at this point right it's now a to z testing and if you know you open up an Excel book you have A through Z z right columns that's kind of where we're at. Lisa this is this is right up your wheelhouse. This is this is you know, you are like the queen of content.

Lisa Trombetta 45:32

Sure, thanks. Tayler. Yeah, so we take pride and really recognizing that content is king especially in the space that we work within which is beauty so I mean, TikTok it's like nonstop content of my skincare routine this this this so in order to answer that question, it's kind of like you have to establish Are we a brand that storytellers if we are you need to support that through content and in order to support that you need to really get those resources whether it be internally or externally we have we were lucky enough to have built a really sophisticated team in house and we're so proud of that and we really take pride in that where it allows us the flexibility to see things and say okay, we need to do that we need to pump this content out. Oh, this campaign is coming up. Guess what, we need to create not only Facebook ads, but Snapchat TikTok, Pinterest, you name it. So to really make sure we're capitalizing and never missing a beat on the content, we've we've really seen the importance of that and how it helps you know, drive our channels and you know, we take we take ownership and we do it all in house for the most part, with the exception of COVID it was a little challenging. We did have to work with some amazing external partners, but we still got it done and everything else is his house and hugged in internally.

Tayler Carpenter 46:52

Yeah, and the thing that we like to do to you know, Grande a lot of our brands is if we see something on one of our four you pages, or Snapchat or Pinterest or Facebook, we like Lisa like I'll literally dm her on Instagram, I'm like, did you see this like, we should definitely do this. And that's how we like to have an open communication because they like the design team at Grande like their creative thing content team is just like fantastic and they always have the top-notch creative that we're able to do and we're very they're very agile, which is fantastic as you need this in the digital space. There's also a lot of other brands that you can look to as in sort of say, Oh, this is what they're doing this is really interesting. Maybe we can try this like with our spin on it. I think that as as marketers, we're able to kind of push the boundaries with each other as well because it's kind of like okay, this person is doing this How can I do that in my way that might be a little bit better right? And it's kind of this cool little I don't want to say this competitiveness that's happening but that is happening I think when we see like oh herbivore just dropped this really cool like prismatic photoshoot, hey, Grande can we do something like this? And I'm, you know, Lisa's, like, Yeah, let's do this. And then we do the next thing. And then another brand sees what we did. And they might take it up a notch. And there's just always like, how do we do that across, you know, one, our brand. And like Lisa said, it's all about storytelling, and then to how do we do this across all their platforms? Because, you know, that's one of the biggest things and costs can be a very big challenge. Obviously, creative is not cheap content is not cheap. But you know, I think that if you have a really solid creative plan, a content plan, where you're able to say, okay, we're going to do a shoot once a quarter, these are the assets that we're going to get how can we kind of repurpose them? How can we repurpose them across multiple platforms, whether it is Amazon, whether it is, you know, YouTube or display, or Snapchat and Pinterest and Facebook? How can we repurpose them across the board? There might be has to be some resizing? How can we utilize all of those things? So there, there are ways to do it. It is expensive, but it is is also incredibly important.

Aaron Conant 48:54

Yes, so another question that comes in is curated content a thing of the past? And if not, what ad channels does curated content perform well for?

Lisa Trombetta 49:03

So I'm gonna ask a question back to that. So when you say curated content, is that like, pre-planned content that you do a shoot for? Or is this more so like, do you have to live in the moment when it comes to content?

Aaron Conant 49:16

So we'll just wait for-

Tayler Carpenter 49:17

Yeah. waiting. There is one more slide left. I know, we have about three more minutes. So I'm gonna go to that. And then I will speak on that.

Aaron Conant 49:25

More than connects, you're more than happy to connect you shortly afterwards as well.

Tayler Carpenter 49:28

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. All right. So I just kind of want to go into the best practices going into 2022. Again, tomorrow, unbelievably is the start of q4, which I still am not able to wrap my mind around. I feel like it's q two, but we're going into q4. So that means that you have to already not only be preparing for all of the cyber craziness and the shopping moments, but also 2022 has to start planning soon as well. So just some of the best practices that you know We recommend kind of going into this is one, just plan it out, have specific budgets per platform and tactic and maybe look at what are we going to do for awareness platforms? Maybe we want to integrate, maybe we want to allocate, let's say, 30% of our overall budget to awareness platforms. Okay. What do we see as an awareness platform? Is it Snapchat? Is it TikTok, Facebook, Google, non branded? What are we looking at it like that, just make sure you plan it out. Don't forget Google and Facebook and Instagram, these are still the top used sites and apps every single day. Yes, Tiktok is getting up there. But Facebook, Instagram and Google are really just the ones that you still want to have, we still you know, you saw the stats, 10% of our budget, this year will probably go to an emerging channel, that means 90% is still going to go to our core channels, we might say that Snapchat is now the new core. But still don't don't forget about Facebook and Instagram, they've been around for a while Google has been around for a while, they still have incredibly important parts to play in your marketing stack. And then lastly, we just tried to talk about this, but content is really key. You know, we went through a whole thing about you know, why, why you need to have TikTok specific creative, but this is, you know, you really want to plan it out. Lisa said this best when you know, it's all about storytelling across all the channels, and making sure that the story matches up, no matter if they're on Snapchat, Pinterest, you know, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, podcasts, you name it, they're all there. So it's just incredibly important to just make sure that you have the right content across the board. All right. That was it. I have this fun little graphic that says thank you because I appreciate everyone sitting on the call today and going through this with us. But yeah, I don't know Aaron, did that person get back to you with with-

Aaron Conant 51:43

100% this is, you know, highly produced content versus UGC shot in a studio scripted, you know, etc.

Tayler Carpenter 51:52

Yeah, so so I don't know, Lisa, do you want to take that? Or do you want me to?

Lisa Trombetta 51:56

I love this question. Yes, I will start the question. And if you want to jump in, feel free to tell her. So the good news is, I mean, it's bad book, good news, depending on how you want to look at it, I think it's a combination of both. The good is you don't have to necessarily overthink to test to try to go on to these emerging platforms, because quite honestly, they're more scrappy than we're used to seeing in the past few years. TikTok videos, for example, I mean, that's a great, that's a great example, someone talking about their skincare, or whatever this new product they got could go viral could get millions of views, and it's just the girl in her bedroom, just talking to her camera. So that is, in a way a big Pro. But there of course, is still the need for that more curated content, I would say and of course, it would have to be on-brand with your brand, the storytelling you want to do, I do think there will always be a need for that for certain placements, like, for example, on your website, emails, things like that, I think that people still like to see that more sophisticated content, because it kind of builds that, you know, that customer loyalty and that base of Okay, this brand, I could trust them. They're not just like this TikTok brand, right? It kind of establishes this client trust. So I would say that it's a combination of both, I still think that there is the need for that more curated content. But I think we're also seeing how the last curated content can be just as impactful, if not sometimes more impactful.

Tayler Carpenter 53:28

Yeah. And in terms of your curated content, don't forget, you still have to have content for your emails and your in your flame. your Instagram feeds your website. So you still need to have curated content from an advertising perspective. You know, UGC is still relevant. UGC is still very good for your feeds, and it's good for your emails, it's still it's still important. But I think looking at the channels that you're going to run on, and if you are planning on doing a TikTok or more of that social awareness, TikTok II feel, you know, go to go to more of the UGC and the more of the raw, there's a lot of different things that you can do in that space. So it's not a matter of is, you know, is curated content dead? No, not not at all, it's still needed, because it still has to power a lot of your, you know, your website, your eCommerce, your A-plus content, all of that it still is going to have to power but really, depending on the platforms that you're going to run on, it's going to be you know, it's going to kind of dictate, what should you focus on and maybe it's, you look at it from a quarter perspective, maybe you're going to spend two quarters out of the year really focusing on UGC and maybe more of those raw, those raw assets versus maybe the other two quarters you focus on curated.

Aaron Conant 54:40

Also, I know the other part is, you know, I've seen a lot of new players pop up in the space from a CGI aspect to being able to take everything you've done in the studio, but then amplify it and you know, change that there's one set of assets into 1000 set of assets that you can just drag and drop and move and change backgrounds and you know, in everything can be so photorealistic now you know the the eyes fool that they think it's actual content that flip one is you know also you know different software that monitors all these different platforms like social media listening on steroids that's then you know pulling out who the who these new trendy they maybe it's something going viral on TikTok on an unboxing and being able to pull that and then immediately connect you with them so then you can amplify it and or you know turn them into an affiliate or influencer but no awesome fantastic conversation today. You know, Tayler, Lisa, thanks so much for your time. We're going to wrap it up right here again, anybody you have any additional questions on this you need any help across the the paid media space, the advertising space, on both, you know, direct to consumer side, any of this performance marketing or on Amazon. The team at Blue Wheel is great friends and partners and supporters have a ton of brands in the network and come highly recommended 100% worth of follow-up conversation. They're Tayler, Lisa, thanks for your time today. Look for a follow-up email from us. I'd love to have a conversation if anybody wants to talk digital strategy was taking place across the digital landscape. I always love setting aside time in my calendar to have those conversations with that we're going to wrap it up. hope everybody has a fantastic Thursday, a great Friday and weekend. hope everybody take care stay safe and afford to have you at a future event. Alright, thanks again, everybody. Take care now. We'll be in touch for sure.