I’m a CMO (and former Googler) helping DTC brands and online retailers make sense of the things that matter. Subscribe to my newsletter for my unique perspectives, relevant data, and ways to grow your business.
C-R-WHOA
Sending this a day late, but I heard that time is just a social construct... so who really cares?
Before I forget, since a lot of you has expressed interest in buying a business. Here's an interesting one I just found. Absolutely beautiful drop shipping website in an interesting niche. The listing claims all you need to do is "add marketing" soooo what are you waiting for?
I needed a bit of time to polish off the first edition of a new YouTube video series I'm starting, Teach Me Marketing, where I'm inviting experts to literally come teach me (and the world) their digital marketing expertise. As a "Googleboy" I have a lot to learn and am excited to learn from experts in email marketing, SEO, third-party logistics, landing page design, Meta, TikTok, etc etc...
I challenge you to find a better guest to kick this off than everyone's favorite Shopify PDP Page Guy, Rishi Rawat. While athletes lift weights, this guy lifts conversion rates and I guarantee this video will give you at least one idea to apply to your business right away:
The best content I consumed this week was a rewatch of my new favorite marketing personality, Mark Ritson, who provides a compelling and hilarious spin on the age-old debate of short-term vs. long-term marketing. If you know me, you know I'm obsessed with Les Binet and Mark builds on his great work by showing how all pieces of marketing are really doing both.
So I have a good thing going with the Magic Pop Mic, and as you know, the main purpose of starting this business (besides paying for my nanny) was to learn and have my own store to play around with.
I had lofty dreams of becoming the greatest PMAX and YouTube marketer in history but sadly haven't been able to run Google Ads due to some policy shenanigans so I've been forced to use the two ad platforms that I've sold against for the past four years.
That's right... I'm running this solely off of Meta and TikTok ads.
I'm sure there's plenty of search volume for "ways to improve sound quality" or "best microphones for creators" but those terms are likely loaded with competition and would be hard to convert in a single session.
How quickly things change right?
With Meta and TikTok, all I had to do was upload some creatives (see the ones I'm using in last week's newsletter) and a budget and we were off to the (relative) races.
I'm still unfortunately in a learning phase and limited to $50 in daily ad spend with Meta but here are my cumulative results from the last 7 days:
With some very basic ads, broad targeting, and a product that serves people's needs, I've been able to generate +$2k in revenue and a little lover $500 in profits this week. Sadly, this isn't enough to pay for our nanny yet but the credit card points ain't bad.
I know good things don't last forever but I'm shocked at how "easy" it was to spin up a profitable business that is on pace to drive over 6 figures in top-line revenue.
To me, the beauty of these ad platforms lie in their simple but extremely powerful ability to find relevant users who are willing to take out their credit cards and make purchases.
My campaign structure would probably be considered a joke to many media buyers but I think there's an advantage in an approach that ditches efforts to control and force these algorithms into doing specific things. Just make me money lol.
Now, while I wait for my Google Ads account to be reviewed by policy a third time 🙄, I'm continuing to work on increasing my conversion rate and average order value. Small increases to either of these important metrics will generate more margins which I can put right back into marketing to drive more volume and overall profit.
To do this, I finally got around to launching a post-purchase upsell mechanism with ReConvert where I'm hoping to trade people from buying a single mic into a double mic pack. This could boost order values by ~15% which would mean more money in my pocket.
I'm also going to start crafting some pre and post purchase email flows to get back in front of potential and existing customers. I'm going to try and approach email a little differently here but catering my content to what I think the target is, creators. Perhaps including links (affiliate offers) to video creation masterclasses, tips, and relevant examples of how upgrading sound can improve video quality.
Question for the DTC marketers here: has anyone used email as a way of "seeding" influencers? I'm thinking this could be a really effective (and inexpensive) way for me to find more people to post video reviews. Good idea?
Also, have you touched grass recently?
Thanks for reading! Reply any time, I'd love to hear from you.
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Hi! I'm Ben
I’m a CMO (and former Googler) helping DTC brands and online retailers make sense of the things that matter. Subscribe to my newsletter for my unique perspectives, relevant data, and ways to grow your business.
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