Cody Plofker

Alright, you really like TikTok shops as a topic? I got a lot of questions in my DMs about merchandising and marketing. Let's start by talking about Merchandising. Merchandising on TikTok shops is complicated. Want to know what the #1 product currently is? A 14-day Colon Cleanse for $14. All of the top products are low-cost quick fixes. Luckily, at Geologie we actually have a few hero products that fit that description, but most of our products are average price range, high quality skin, body and hair products meant for consistent long-term use. Knowing what is working certainly influenced which products we want to make our hero SKUs in the channel. SKUs that are a very different selection than our best-sellers on DTC or even Amazon. Are your hero SKUs different in TikTok Shops than other channels? Guess what our #1 product has been by far? The Zit Zapper Pimple Patches. An overnight quick fix and our lowest priced SKU in our catalog. A perfect segway into my next series of topics covering how we are creating a full-funnel approach to the channel. Because while it's great we can bring in a high volume of new to brand customers with this product, we want to ensure we are turning them into great long-term customers for the brand.

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I’ve fixed 4 struggling 8-Figure DTC Brands over the last 24 months, It’s Easy, But not sexy 🥵🌶️ →Steal my 3-3-3 Step process for making an unprofitable brand profitable in less then 72 hours. Guess what the problem almost always is? No, it’s not the marketing…It’s poor fiscal Discipline + and a lack of intimacy with their books. (oh yeah I went there.🥵🌶️) STEP 1 - Do We Need Scale? Or Do We Want Scale? →The point of this step is to determine if a brand has have LPMs (Large Minimum Payments) to debt facilities that they CANNOT stop paying. →OR if they desperately want to have high revenue numbers because the decisions of cutting costs are uncomfortable or unfamiliar (they’ve never had to do it). →Examples LPM’s = SBA Loans, Inventory Loans, Owning The Building, Contracts that can’t be broken. →VS →Uncomfortable Costs = Overstaffing, Shiny Software, Low Margin Retail Deals, Founder Retail Therapy. STEP 2 - Map it All Out. →Take every expense in your entire business, ALL of them Occurring/Non + Staffing. Separate them into 3 categories. →Group 1 - This is nice to have but there are cheaper alternatives that do 99% of the job. →Group 2 - This would hurt to lose but ultimately it wouldn’t stop the business from functioning and from a customers perspective they likely wouldn’t see a difference. →Group 3 - My Business will cease functioning if I remove this expense. STEP 3 - Create 3 Paths. →Now that you’ve mapped it out, You probobly already see where i’m going with this. →Your going to take your last P&L and see what your last month would have looked like if you did the cuts →1 - Did Nothing = EASY, you lost money… Ouch. →2 - Got rid of Group 1 = Not Fun, but this is usually enough for most businesses to go from negative to positive, →3 - Cut Group 1+Group 2 = Pretty much all your problems go away. STEP 4 BONUS - RIP The bandaid… HARD After you do this exercise the number one concern I’ve heard from the CEO’s of these companies is “I’ll need to move this persons workload to someone else + I’ll need to do XYZ to make this new software work. →Just do it (Nike), Because it’s not working and if you continue to follow the same process of whats not working it’s the definition of insanity. I have seen stores doing 8-figures with three paid apps Statlas Analytics LLC / Skio / Yotpo →I break it down the same way every time. →You are ALREADY stressed that the business isn’t working, It’s much easier to be stressed that your extremely profitable but your teams have increased workloads, or you don’t have the best shiny software. I’m doing something i’ve never done before, I’ll do this entire analysis process for you FOR FREE, One catch. You have to do it with me, I love teaching people and I want to know i’m helping your company but also MAKING YOU. a better CEO. Drop a comment or DM if your interested.

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You can’t Improve what doesn’t get tracked and you can’t Prove what doesn’t get tracked correctly. At Tact, we focus on Retail Retention with a set of metrics we collect manually every week to verify it is absolutely correct. Why? This data gives us huge clues into the leaky bucket of retail customer experience. We take those clues and investigate further to uncover what’s really going on with a store’s customers. Then we make decisions and take immediate action to improve it. We track the results and prove the effectiveness of our decisions. The data nerd inside me spends hours diving into customer data. I love it. Few do, but the passion my team and I have for data and results is 🔥 ➡️ Having trouble retaining customers? Let’s chat.

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DTC brands, this forgotten "Ghost Segment" could be costing you big. I’ve audited 50+ DTC brands this year. Every single one had this issue. I’m talking about your "Inactive in 90 Days" segment. This segment includes subscribers eligible to receive emails. But haven’t been emailed in 90 days. Imagine the sales slipping through your fingers: - New leads falling off the radar. - Loyal customers missing your latest campaigns. - Hot prospects not being re-engaged when they should be. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Here’s how to turn this "Ghost" segment into profit: → Identify the "No emails in 90 days" segment → Discover why they aren't receiving emails → Launch targeted re-engagement campaigns → Review your segmentation strategy monthly Don’t let this "ghost" segment keep costing you sales. And remember - this isn’t a one-time fix. You need to change how you send your campaigns. The problem happens when brands use the same segments over and over. Without changing how you segment, you’ll keep missing sales.

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Do NOT turn off your Black Friday discounts. Here’s $1.2 million as proof not to do it. I’m seeing so many brands ramp down spend and promotions now that BFCM is over. This is a mistake in 2024: → Consumers are saving discretionary spend for discounts due to market conditions. → You're hurting your media buying efficiency. → You're affecting both short-term AND long-term sales. Shoutout to Noah King for the post idea—his data corroborates what I’ve been seeing.

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I bought some stuff for my kids last night on Tik Tok Shop and my feed immediately became a marketplace. It is now an affiliate commerce platform with a little bit of social media sprinkled in. A few thoughts here… 1) How the hell are companies making any margin by selling on this thing? Everything is 100% off essentially. A lot of these products don’t even scream “retention” or “LTV”. Cheap one time purchase trash. So can it even be used as an acquisition channel if you’re selling garbage that people aren’t going to buy again? What are your thoughts here? 2) There’s not a chance that Tik Tok Shop can survive this way. I don’t even want to open my app again. It’s that bad. 3) Tik Tok Shop (as currently structured) will last about as long as MySpace did. There I said it. 4) Get ready for Shopify x YouTube because in my opinion, within 5 years that will become the biggest social commerce platform on the planet. One that you can actually sustain and make margin on. Anyways, I gotta go, my four year old just opened up the front door and threw her breakfast on the front stoop. P.S. Episode 2 of ASOM drops in a few hours… 👀

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In the past week, I've spoken with two beauty brands facing 𝖋𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖘𝖆𝖑𝖊𝖘 & 𝖉𝖊𝖈𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖗𝖆𝖙𝖊𝖘 😑 They're both struggling to identify the root cause and are scrambling to get back on track. One brand hired a CRO agency to assess their UX design against best practices. They then took these suggestions and conducted testing. They implemented 85% of the suggestions, which unfortunately led to an even further decrease in conversion. The other brand hasn't taken any specific action yet to improve the website but has been experimenting with different paid marketing campaigns, trying to pinpoint what's driving the reduction. While both brands share similar challenges, it's easy to generalize solutions based on a surface-level analysis of their websites. However, there's a lot of nuance involved. If we end up working with these brands, our approach will start with a deep understanding of their customers and how the brand fits into their lives. While both brands play in a similar space, their customers are quite different. This involves analyzing competitors and evaluating their historically strong channels to see where they've had the most success with acquiring customers. Although both brands clearly need website improvements, it's never that simple. Understanding the entire customer journey and how folks interact with the brand outside of the website is just as important. These external touchpoints are like the doors customers enter through, so optimizing them and creating synergy is just as important for driving conversions online.

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Wow, breaking news from the world of DTC / e-commerce. The FTC is implementing a new rule to ban fake reviews and deceptive testimonials in an effort to crack down on misleading advertising practices. They're going to hold companies accountable for fabricating or manipulating reviews to influence consumer behavior. It's called the "Final Rule" and it could lead to hefty fines for businesses that engage in such practices. This step is part of a broader initiative to ensure transparency and honesty in online reviews, which are increasingly influential in consumer decision-making. If the fact that consumers have become extremely well versed at sniffing out fake reviews wasn't motivation enough for brands to take product reviews seriously, this should be. Platforms like Moast will lead the charge at helping brands collect and display honest and authentic testimonials from real customers.

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How to make better ads? Don't talk about your brand! Instead, try this: 1. Tell a story about your customer 2. Showcase how to solve a problem (like doing their hair in the morning) 3. Just so happens to be using your product TL;DR don't talk about yourself, talk about your customer #ecommerce #dtc

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If you’re a D2C founder, here’s 1 of 4 lessons I have after taking my peptide company to over $2MM in 90 Days. Lesson #1: Match Your Funnel Assets & Format To Your Market’s Awareness Stage For Example:  We’re selling to a target market of women in their late 40s, 50s who want to lose weight. These women are highly aware about what products like Semaglutide, Ozempic, etc., are and already want to try it. Demand is also very high due to celebrity news about how well these medications work. (Oprah even did a huge special on it recently.) High awareness + high demand means we don’t need to do as much educating to sell our products. The target market already knows the product, and wants the product. So when they land on our page, we just need to show them why they should buy from us. This means instead of longer sales arguments, we should use more social proof and trust driven angles for our marketing. With that, we were able to scale to over $2MM a month with short ads and a shorter, 800-word eCom landing page! So if you’re trying to grow your own D2C business, remember this: For sales to happen, you must understand where your market is currently and adjust your marketing to meet them at that place. _____________ I share more of these insights at CA Pro, where I help D2C founders and their marketing teams increase sales from their campaigns. If you want to join, click my link in bio or send me a DM for more info. Will be posting the next 3 lessons in the next few days.

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A few new influencer marketing stats from CORQ.'s October data review which went out to subscribers and clients this morning... 💡 Influencer campaigns by tech brands generated the highest audience engagement rate (the average was 11.6%). 💡 Beauty brands accounted for the largest volume of top ads. This is mostly due to "last minute" easy Halloween makeup looks and hacks. 💡 Representation is sliding back across the board. Our data suggests creators of colour are getting approximately 10% less work than they were in H1. 💡 Regional representation is also in decline. 76% of October's ads were produced by London-based creators - the monthly average from H1 was 65%.

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Scaling DTC brands involves two seemingly opposites. 1. Stealing what works from winning brands. 2. Innovating and being authentic. These aren’t actually opposites. They go hand-in-hand. Top brands figure out how to balance both. I’m giving away a free 117-page guide on this. It’s called “Copycats to Innovators”. It teaches you how to pick up tried and tested strategies while still staying true to your brand identity. Soar With Us partnered with Videowise to produce this resource. 31 ecom experts collaborated to put it together… Inside, you’ll get 61 growth strategies to increase: - Conversion - AOV - Retention 1. Want it? 2. Like this post 3. Comment “INNOVATORS” Make sure you’re following so I can send a copy.

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Back from the vacay with a banger Brandslane case study!!! Monthly rev marks become weekly rev achievements Niche: Skincare Growth: Scaled from ₹12L/month in January to ₹65L/month in May ( That is more than 500% revenue growth) Comment SCALE if you want the case study!

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We audited 500+ accounts over the last 6 years. Here are the most common mistakes DTC brands are making: 1/ Not testing enough creatives Creative is the biggest lever brands can use to improve performance. Best-performing accounts are testing a high volume of creatives. At the end of the day, creative is your targeting. 2/ Overcomplicating account structure Brands are running way too many campaigns like it's 2018. Gurus think they can beat Meta's algorithm with media buying strategies. In reality, the more aggregated your account is, the better your performance. 3/ Ignoring demand trends If there is no demand for your product, you won't be able to get a positive ROAS. Like selling dog clothes during summer. Sometimes, you have to pull back your ad spend and wait. 4/ Not leveraging landing pages Most brands drive traffic to PDPs or collection pages. Leveraging dedicated landing pages like listicles or advertorials can drastically improve performance. 5/ Overlooking tracking issues Almost a third of the accounts we audit have tracking issues. It could be overreporting or underreporting. Fixing that is our first priority before we start spending money on ads. TLDR: 1/ creatives 2/ account structure 3/ demand trends 4/ landing pages 5/ tracking

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Often times I'm asked by store owners, "If our website is wrong, who is doing it right?" Here are three stores in different verticals doing a fantastic job: Fashion: Huckberry Cosmetics: Jones Road Beauty Supplements: AG1 Despite each site having vastly different target audiences, they all share similar characteristics that make them great. 1. Selling Visually: People need to be able to visualize the result of buying your product - especially in clothing and cosmetics. The hero banner, PDPs, and visuals should all reflect the outcome. Jones Road does an incredible job with this by showing their product on different skin tones and backgrounds. 2. USPs that Appeal to their Audience Different audiences care about different things. The best brands find out what their ICP cares about and doubles down on it. For example, Huckberry's primarily middle-aged male consumers care about buying American-made goods, which is why "Made in the USA" is included in almost all of their product photos. 3. Easy-to-Navigate Landing Pages: It shouldn't take more than three clicks to get to a product page. People should be able to get where they want fast. All of these brands have smart menus, products located directly under their hero banner, and clear CTAs to help users funnel down. 4. Incentives, Gifts, and Up-Sells There should be an incentive to add more to the cart. This can be something as simple as free shipping or even a physical gift related to the product. AG1 gifts new subscribers a free welcome kit (shaker, canister, etc.). 5. Integrating Product Label & Badges Integrating the right tags (eg. "Best Seller" "New Release") on products can have remarkable impacts on conversions. These tools are also super easy to implement and dirt-cheap, here are some reccos for Shopify: BSS Product Labels & Badges from BSS Commerce or DECO from PieLab. But remember - every store is different. The data and voice of the customer should always pave the path for new changes. --- If you'd like me to send you a one-minute face-value audit of your store, shoot me a DM or click the link in my profile. #Shopify #CRO #UX

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There's a first for everything... We just had to implement a sales freeze on bringing on new clients until July 15th because of the demand we've seen for our influencer-affiliate and TiKTok Shop services With Meta performance declining for most brands, we're seeing more marketing leaders then ever before invest into influencer as a growth channel We're working with clients to build influencer-affiliate communities of 1000's of influencers creating content performance basis while building a pipeline of creative that outperforms their standard UGC ads We're launching TikTok Shop strategies by recruiting 200+ creator-affiliates a month that have have driven high GMV in there category, producing 40+ pieces of content for spark ads, running Live's, and leveraging top performing content to drive performance on Meta It's exciting to see the Social Commerce space growing so fast And thankfully because of our background at Shipt we've been working with influencers to drive growth for almost a decade If you're looking to unlock growth in Q3 through an influencer-affiliate community or TikTok Shop shoot Connor Rodriguez a DM to learn more about our process Ps. We're going to be limiting new client launches each month to ensure we have the proper resources needed to launch and scale these programs Let's chat before July's new client launches fill up 🙌 Also -- we're hiring world class influencer talent! If you have experience working with influencers to drive revenue let's talk! Send an email with your resume to [email protected]

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3 pieces of advice I gave an agency I’ve been coaching for 1.5 years. These guys have grown from $20k/mo to their biggest month last month of $104k at 55% margins. (they’ll hit $129k by Dec/Jan) I see a lot of agencies doing the same wrong things… Here's the 3 things they're doing... 1. Move away from invoicing (ASAP) Auto-bill or don’t work with them. The # of “good-intentioned” people that don’t pay is mind-boggling. It kills your cashflow Wastes your time chasing money Too easy to let late payments get behind Freebie: if someone gets 45 days over due 9/10 times they will end up bolting. So save yourself and stop work early. 2. Your Margins are #1 biggest priority Get as crafty as you can to keep good margins. Before you feel like you have to hire the next person prove to yourself there is no other way. You can do more with less people Be as affective without that SaaS Still work without that office. The more cash you have and get the more resilient your biz is AND more options you really have. 3. Be a firefighter CEO (I’ll get shot for this.) I’ve changed my opinion on this recently. There is a time for war. And a time for peace. In biz IT'S ALWAYS WAR Either you're fighting - to keep it healthy - to keep it alive - to grow it That means as the founder you firefight the most important fire. Not sit back and let others do it. You think Elon Musk doesn’t dive into the weeds on the most important parts of his biz? i.e. one agency I coached fixed lead gen. I told them it’s the single biggest risk and breakthrough facing their agency. So the founder dove in for 4 months to crack it. Now in the last 1.5 months they figured it out and it’s booking 5 calls a week. vs another agency I said something similar and their COO has been "working on it for 5 months." It’s not rocket science guys.

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The best investment DTC brands can make? It’s not ads. It’s not landing pages. It’s not email flows. It’s hiring a full-time creative strategist (or becoming one yourself). Someone who lives and breathes the organic social ecosystem. They know what’s trending, what people are talking about, and how to create content that cuts through the noise. Look at Mini Katana. They built an 8-figure brand by pumping out great content—without spending a dime on ads. Here’s the bottom line: If you figure out how to produce engaging, cost-effective content at scale, you’ll win. Every time.

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