Kara Mjones

Instacart not having negative keywords as an option is the best example of what "machine learning" actually costs brands to support. The best solution I've found? Take their auto applied keywords and make their bid the lowest possible (30 cents). I built a really solid ads structure supporting each of our Target sku's and woke up to us bidding on "Ben and Jerry's" as a "optimized auto applied suggesition" for our Vanilla Ice Cream Whey. Gee, I wonder what sophisticated dev team decided "auto bid on product title". Yeah, in the world of CPG there could neeevvverrr be issues with that. Who leads this team and how much do you make. (Hint: too much). Happy Friday to everyone except overpaid leadership that don't actually understand what they're building and get paid boat loads of money for it.

11

4 Comments

I sat down with Cherene Aubert and asked her to share her complete playbook for offer testing in DTC brands. Here are 5 game-changing tactics most DTC brands completely miss: 1. You think your marketing is driving demand In reality, your offer could be the biggest driver. At Bobbie (infant formula brand), Cherene discovered: ↳ Turning off ads didn't slow demand ↳ Removing the welcome offer cut demand by more than half "The advertising wasn't driving the demand... It was the offer." 2. You force subscriptions on new customers Instead, focus on low-barrier introductory offers. Bobbie's approach: ↳ Offered a small "starter bundle" for first-time customers ↳ Didn't force subscriptions despite being subscription-focused "Every business has a different offer or introductory offer that is unique to them." 3. You prioritize business goals over customer needs Align your offers with how customers actually make purchases. Cherene's advice: ↳ Conduct customer research (surveys, focus groups) ↳ Think about your own buying behavior "You have to think about what the customer ACTUALLY wants." 4. You rely solely on discounts Consider alternative offers that don't cut into margins. Examples: ↳ Free merchandise ↳ Product samples ↳ Slow-moving inventory "Having a big discount can cut into your margins a lot more than having, say, a piece of merch." 5. You expect instant results Offer testing is a long-term strategy that requires commitment. At Bobbie: ↳ Spent 6 months on offer testing ↳ Had weekly cross-functional team meetings ↳ Tested new offers every 2-4 weeks "We made it a priority. We said we're going to make testing a priority for the business." - - - TL;DR 1. Effective offer testing can dramatically improve customer acquisition and reduce CAC. 2. Focus on customer-centric, low-barrier introductory offers. 3. Prioritize testing, involve cross-functional teams, and be patient. 4. Finding the right offer takes time. 5. Start by creating a prioritized list of offer ideas and systematically test them using the ICE framework (Impact, Confidence, Ease). Watch the full episode here:  https://lnkd.in/eXjpsYfX

67

I love this time of year in ecommerce. Right before BFCM- pressure is on. Timelines are tight. Stress levels are elevated. There’s high urgency all around. It forces people into ACTION. Mamba mentality I checked in on our #first-sale channel in Slack, where we track how long it takes for a brand to get their first sale using a Rebuy feature and saw an epic streak of Shopify brands generating their first sale super quick with Rebuy Engine: 13 days🚀 6 days 🔥 3 hours 🤯 Big stores, medium stores, small stores. In many cases Done > Perfect Shout out to all of the go-getters making it happen! BFCM 2024 here we comeeee (Secret sauce for anyone interested in Rebuy in the comments) 

45

5 Comments

A couple months ago we profiled 102 life science eCommerce websites for companies between 51-10,001+ employees. The key findings with my commentary are as follows: - Amongst smaller to midsize enterprise companies, Adobe Commerce, or Magento was one of the most commonly used eCommerce platforms. Most of these are legacy Magento open-source free license because Adobe Commerce is far more expensive with still a weaker value proposition to Magento. - WooCommerce was commonly used in companies with less than 200 employees due to open-source free license. - As organizations get larger, we see the ERP system they use often times driving the eCommerce platform selection likely due to perceived advantages or strong enterprise software upsells (e.g. SAP Hybris). - We start seeing more usage of modern composable eCommerce solutions based on MACH (Microservices, API, Cloud, Headless) and JAMstack (JavaScript, APIs and Markup) such as commercetools and BigCommerce. - Then we see a ton of legacy custom solutions which are either super dated and scary to refactor/upgrade. Other custom solutions in principle are similar to what commercetools and other composable eCommerce solutions provide, but are largely homegrown. Overall, my recommendation is to take this data with a grain of salt. It shows you proven solutions that can work at different company sizes, but I generally will say that you should be moving towards headless, composable platforms. There's a number of them out there. It's vital to have a game plan also on how to chunk out your migrations and upgrades into prioritized steps that mitigate risk but allow for swifter deployment cycles. Also, don't be too pressured into using something like SAP Hybris just because you're on SAP ERP, etc. There's often times much more perceived value than true ease of integration. I believe when it comes to eCommerce and technology within the life sciences industry, Supreme has the most experience of any agency in the world by a long shot. Feel free to reach out if you'd like to chat more (www.supremeopti.com)

65

7 Comments

Some solid advice here!

7

Here’s my own top 3 reasons more DTC brands are moving to Amazon. 1. New customers - Amazon has its own set of shoppers that don’t even consider things that aren’t sold on Amazon. I’ve seen very little overlap of .com and Amazon for my clients 2. Diversification - Having fewer channels means your more susceptible to disruption, a Google SEO algo change, a new buyer that doesn’t like your brand, etc- just limiting risk 3. Traffic costs- it’s not 2014 anymore where Facebook and Instagram ads can print money with even kind of decent creative. Google search is so saturated. CPCs are far higher now. Amazon has traffic flowing to it already, yes you need ads there too, but Organic rank is achievable for an established brand with a good product and proper strategy. Two of my most recent clients have DTCs that are multiples larger than Amazon but they understand they need to win on Amazon hence doubling down. #ecommerce #amazonfba #digitalmarketing https://lnkd.in/e77YmySW

12

3 Comments

I’ll always take good messaging that’s used consistently over great messaging that gets used sporadically. In the early days of a previous role, we were a team of four. When a new team member joined from a FAANG company, they told us their market perception studies indicated that we were the “competitor to watch.” Us - our tiny little team that was 1/10th the size of theirs. Why? Messaging consistency. Punch above your weight: Consistency makes your company appear larger and more mature, even if you’re still in the early stages. Faster customer feedback: Consistent messaging allows you to quickly gauge market feedback and make informed adjustments. Easier training: A unified message simplifies the onboarding process for both new customers and new team members. When your entire organization is saying the same thing, the belief in that message grows both externally and internally. Would I love to have both killer messaging and consistency? Absolutely. But I'll take consistency over perfection every time. Big thanks to Dave Gerhardt for having me on to chat about messaging and including Sales throughout the building process. If you’re a B2B marketer and aren’t part of the Exit Five community, I’d recommend you spend some time there. It’s like Reddit for B2B marketing—and I honestly can’t think of a higher compliment than that. :)

64

4 Comments

Real growth in DTC is rare. Here’s how 50+ $100M brands achieve it. 1. Know their category     - who they're competing against     - what competitors are getting wrong     - how they can do it differently In positioning the product/brand it needs to be different.  In CPG "better/cheaper/fast" isn't enough. 2. Closed loop on creative feedback    - a system to analyze top creative    - reflexively circulate those back into the editing process    - avoid over-optimizing a "local maximum" in their testing landscape Your team is lost if they don't have a process to measure creative results towards inputs into their editing process... same for teams that don't have a cadence for retesting styles that previously failed but have not been tested in { X } days (𝘐𝘵 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘥). 3. Margins on specific customers    - AOV per offer per channel    - 60-180 LTV per offer per channel    - how those 👆 translate to gross margin None of these marketing numbers matter if it doesn't translate into gross margin.  Too many times we see affiliate commissions and discount codes crush cohort values to the point where were companies are loosing money on their "best performing" campaigns.  If you don't have someone internally tracking these numbers find someone who can. 4. Strategic plan for retail expansion     - their "ideal" ordering for account expansion     - plan to support new locations with DTC advertising     - try before you buy (in-store) offers so customers recognize you on shelves No point in getting into a big retailer if you are going to get bounced right out.  Retail expansion requires a strategic plan to use DTC channels and other retail locations to build up your word-of-mouth marketing in specific geographic areas in service of those all important "sell through" metrics. What else? ... If you like this, make sure to share and repost for your DTC/CPG friends!

24

19 Comments

I guess I missed something here. If Facebook grows 10% its a finite place and doesn't actually mean that big of a change. 3% in the open market across the entire web is a big deal. That means more people have shifted to either including programmatic as a part of the strategy or eliminated a walled garden entirely. As PMAX continues to get bad press and poor results along with cat slowly coming out of the bag about how Meta's algorithm only takes audience inputs as "suggestions" because it knows best. Advertisers will be looking to other platforms where they feel like they have say in where ad dollars are spent. The article also calls out the number of DSPs (8) compared to the 21 to 30 SSP partners as a bad thing. I disagree, there are only 3 main players in the game right now though: The Trade Desk, Google's DV360 and Amazon's. All 3 leverage pretty much all 21 to 30 SSP partners in some capacity but only 1 is innovating right now and that's Trade Desk. DV360 has issues with targeting and multiple reviews will tell you YouTube is the only big draw right now. I can't even target zip codes, seriously? Amazon is great for wanting to leverage their shopping data but they have strong limitations with inventory to serve on if you don't want to rely on their 3rd party exchanges, which everyone else has access to, and the reporting is something to be desired. Moreover, the builder is very archaic for a company who bought several to get into the game. Hope you have a spare ram cause I'm using 1.5gbs sometimes to build a campaign in it compared to the 200mb or less in other builders. Meanwhile, Trade Desk has access to retail marketing data, UID2.0, AI optimization through KOA and more in addition to having control as the buyer and access to conversion attribution modeling. All this to say while the jury is literally still out on what will happen to Google, it should be a reminder that we are living in a time where innovation and iteration is needed and that just snatching everything up and becoming complacent will be called out. What are your thoughts on all this? #programmaticmarketing #digitaladvertising #programmatic #DSP

2

3 Comments

So, cookies are not going away. Google announcing this a day before their Q2 earnings reports says something. My take: Ad spending is front and center and marketers need solid attribution so they can continue to grow ad spend - Well, cookies help with that. Tomorrow we'll see a bit deeper into how the advertising business is doing but I don't think it's a question anymore: the reign of search advertising is indeed being challenged. #cookies #advertising #google

8

3 Comments

Pssst. Marketing leaders. Nervous to ask questions about data clean rooms? Here’s a cheat sheet for you. More of a guidebook, really. We laid out “12 essential strategies for marketers” to help wrap your head around how and why you should be using clean rooms and data collaboration. All 12 are important to understand, but here are my Top 4: 1. Build Richer Audience Profiles Leverage data clean rooms to go beyond basic demographics, combining your first-party data with retailers' email datasets and purchase histories to increase your first party data and better understand your audience. That way, you can compare match rates across channels while keeping personal data anonymous, in order to discover and refine your most relevant audiences. With these insights, you can tailor ad content and campaign strategies to specific interests and lifestyles, driving higher conversion rates. 2. Personalize at scale Now that you have increased the size and wealth of your, you have a better understanding of the specific needs and desires of different segments. That allows you to craft messages that speak directly to your customers. This level of personalization not only captures attention but also fosters a deeper connection with your brand, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates. 3. Retarget high-value, in-market buyers Imagine identifying users who visited your site, downloaded your app, added a product to their cart but didn’t convert. By matching your first-party behavioral data with retailers’ audience segments, you can precisely re-target these potential buyers with a special discount or related product recommendation. Example: Mondelēz International, a large US food and beverage company, collaborated with Pinterest and Albertsons’ Media Collective to enhance their targeting for a new charcuterie board campaign. By reaching in-market consumers who had purchased other brands of crackers, they saw a 16% sales lift and a 19% lift in new buyers! 4. Verify the reach of your campaigns Keeping track of your ad campaign's reach across numerous media channels can be a real challenge. By collecting impression-level data from each media partner through a data clean room, you can get a clear view of your cross-channel delivery and start measuring the quality of your audiences. Precise targeting, with robust data, is only valuable if it's driving results. Ensure you have a solution that is providing you with robust measurements so you can quickly optimize your campaigns. Download the full guidebook and check out all 12 strategies and reach out to LiveRamp with any questions!

20

Insane. Let’s talk about Rhode ❤️. I've never seen growth like this at this scale. ❤️ July, Rhode was #1 in skincare at $42M in US EMV. Rhode almost TRIPLED the second best brand. #2 brand = $17M EMV. ❤️ 2024, Rhode was #1 in GLOBAL skincare up 435% YoY (❗). $260M in total EMV. It is nuts 🥜. ---- Take a look at these numbers (2024 global): 📈 15.5k Creators, +188% YoY 📈 67.4k Posts, +262% 📈 176M Engagements, +462% 📈 2.8 BILLION Impressions, +356% HIGHLIGHTS ✅ FANTASTIC retention: 172% annualized retention. The same group of Influencers that talked about them last year, ~tripled their contribution this year from $67M->$181M in EMV. 35 of Rhode’s top 50 EMV-driving creators posted about the brand during the prior 12 months ✅ Rhode’s EMV breakdown during this time is evenly distributed across follower tiers: 31% by Micro, 22% Midtier, 25% Established, 22% Powerhouse **We love to see this! Brands with top-heavy EMV breakdowns don’t typically see sustained growth. ✅ ORGANIC love: Notably, only 1% of Rhode’s EMV total during this time was sponsored. It’s clear that people genuinely love this brand’s products—and love to organically post about them. --- 🔢 Top 3 Creators 2024 1️⃣ Mary Chau: $3M EMV, +59%, 123 posts 2️⃣ Caroline Granger: $1.9M EMV, +1.2k%, 148 posts 3️⃣ Matilda Djerf: $1.8M EMV, +9%, 33 posts 📸 Top Channels: 📸 Instagram: $167.6M EMV, +352% YoY 📸 TikTok: $86.4M EMV, +815%❗❗❗ 📸 YouTube: $5.1M EMV, +255% Those Tiktok numbers are insane. Both the growth and volume. --- 🏆 Notable Activation: While the brand’s Peptide Lip Treatment is a fan favorite, Rhode launched its Pocket Blush line in June, which quickly caused a frenzy online, and in the streets of NYC—where the brand hosted a “pocket-sized pop-up.” Creators and consumers rushed to get their hands on these mini blushes to do color swatches, first impressions, and wear tests. #RhodeBlush ranked among the brand’s top 10 hashtags in both June and July, driving a total $8.4M EMV across 1.7k posts from 872 creators. ---- The LA-based skincare brand founded by Hailey Bieber in 2022 is certainly on the Rhode* to world domination 😉. Nice work to everyone involved!!

184

16 Comments

Have you seen this? Search Engine Land has published a great summary of the DOJs closing statement in the Google antitrust trial. It had been clear throughout the trial how much pricing manipulation has been done, but seeing it summarized in one place makes it so much more striking. It's clear Google has not lived up to their "don't be evil" standard. And yet, here we are as marketers with no viable alternatives to the investments made in Google paid search. https://lnkd.in/eq2caTQi #paidsearch #cpcs

5

The #1 problem I solve is helping eCommerce brands break through a sales plateau.   I’m often told the problem is that “we’re stuck and can’t grow.” That is not the problem, it is the symptom. When your marketing team or external partners are struggling to identify or solve the real problems that cause these symptoms, I can help. A major differentiator with our eCommerce agency is that I often personally work with eCommerce CEO’s and CFOs in addition to the marketing team. Usually this involves strategic planning, consulting, and education around topics like; “Why marketing reports don’t align to the P&L” or “why scaling ad spend seems to lead to a loss.” This is done in a non-threatening way to the marketing team.   Why would they lean on me instead of their in-house team?   I have some unique experiences in my background that cause me to think differently than most. ·        I was a CPA and CFO for 10 years ·        I’ve been in eCommerce for 15 years ·        I’ve started 4 companies and sold 3 of them successfully            (2 were marketing agencies) ·        I invented an algorithm to do keyword bidding in Google Shopping, something I have not seen replicated over the past 7+ years, and it beats PMax while restoring data visibility and advertiser control ·        I helped grow an ecommerce software company (as the CFO and CMO) and we sold it within 18 months ·        I spent 8 years solving the biggest problem in ecommerce marketing: attribution and incrementality, After countless iterations, I finally cracked the code on a solution that is effective and most importantly, practical for retail and eComm brands. I funded and built the software that now drives the marketing strategy for all clients. ·        I have an amazing team of experts that serve our clients, we’ve been in business for 13 years exclusively growing ecommerce/retail brands. Unlike other agencies, our measure of success is not broken marketing reports – it is moving the needle on your actual P&L.   In my content, I try to provide a glimpse into some of the ways that my firm thinks differently, and our service is very different than the standard agency model. We get outstanding results for companies that fit our client profile, but we don’t go for volume, we have 40 clients and only 2.4 clients per operations employee. Our average client tenure is 4.2 years. Those stats are well above the norm.   If you are an eCommerce executive, I’d love to meet with you. No expectation, just get to know each other a bit, maybe we can help each other at some point. When you aren’t getting satisfactory answers on how to break through from your marketing team or partners, I can help. It’s the #1 problem I solve when eCommerce brands face a sales plateau.

10

2 Comments

This summary of the DOJ's closing deck during Google's trial *really* hits home how much more expensive Search has gotten over time and how YoY metrics might not be the best comparison (esp since they've raised their floor pricing UP TO 15% HIGHER for some searches over time) 🤯 . MoM comparisons and average increases or decreases between months could be something to compare against. The DOJ calls out the missing search terms from search term reports, but there's a lot of other unknowns in the Google blackbox (i.e a list of their search partners, where your PMax ads show, etc) that they could have included. Read more: https://lnkd.in/e9XQMNwA

5

Looking for a #LoyaltyPlatform? Try AirBaton™ Watch this short video explaining why in 51 words…if we counted right. If you’re a beer or CPG marketer who wants to up your sales AND collect valuable consumer data WITHOUT adding work to your plate, DM me. I could help.

16

2 Comments

3 in-the-trenches lessons scaling a CPG drink brand 300% (so far). from $47k in June to $167k last 30 days (steal it or AMA) 1. Biz model or bust CPG is one of the hardest niches to scale IMO. We’ve done many over the years and it rides or dies by the biz model. This particular brand was selling a single pack + running ads. Their contribution profit per order was 2% No ad or strategy will fix a broken model No one can scale that profitably. Something has to change So naturally the only thing to do is either sell more per order raise prices bundle In this case we did price increase and then changed th default first order from a 1pack to 2pack. That increased contribution profit 10x to 22%. Now that we scaled. 2. Throw the brand book out the window for ads Having worked with 15 CPG brands I can confidently say in many cases branding guidelines gets in the way more than helps. I know. I know. Sue me. My team is hired to scale brands and make them money. THE MOMENT we were able to say “let’s ease up on the branding just for ads and see what happens” things starting working better + the increase in CM. It worked so well they were 100% cool with making any ad we wanted because they saw it working better. 9/10 when a founder sees it making more money they never go back. lol The less on brand the better. I think everyone should consider keeping branding loose for advertising. It usually works better in my experience. 3. Positioning In CPG land, this is so hard to land. Unless you have a truly uniqueness to the product you’re kinda just in a shouting match with the next CPG brand like yours. In this case, the thing that is working for them is Positioning less on what’s in it Positioning less on branding Positioning more on who it’s for Positioning more on ideal outcome desire i.e. drink with Dandelion root, ginger, chicory, etc vs i.e. This slimming drink took me (a plus size girl) from a 16 to 11. Feeling proud they are up 300% and it’s not ever Black Friday yet. Christmas is coming early!!!

22

8 Comments

This is worrying. I like the cookie, I believe they were an elegant solution - and they still will be in the 1PD world. However, as the article rightly points out, once Chrome releases whatever consent mechanism they will deploy, we’re going to see a big or dramatic drop-off in available cookies. Now is not the time to lose focus, now is the time to invest in exploring the new and not so new solutions for both targeting and measurement. Thoughts?

52

7 Comments

There's a bigger play happening in podcasting than I think most of us in the industry realize, or willing to turn our eyes to. There are three companies that you should pay attention to more than you have been: Spotify, Amazon, and YouTube. I wish I could add a forth to emulte Scott Galloway's "The Four" (one of my favorite reads). Here goes: Spotify has essentially completed their multi year acquisition plan to build the next "Meta/Google" ads platform. If you look at their pod-related acquisitions, very few were profitable on their own. Content acquisitions (JRE/Call Her Daddy), Hosting (Anchor/Megaphone), Measurement (Podsights/Chartable)... but what do they have as a result? They have, in essence, built the "Google Ad Sense" of Podcasting--I bet they will eventually dismiss the idea of "buying podcast ads" and refer to what they do as "Spotify ads." SPAN, SAI, SPAA... it's all come together, and they don't need the IAB anymore, I guess. Amazon has a different leg up. They have content, but not as much as Spotify and definitely not the quantity of in platform listening. What do they have? They have the biggest database of buyer behavior at their disposal, and the ability to integrate their Amazon Ad tech into their podcasts to create a compelling ad market for buyers. https://lnkd.in/gnRjWgEx YouTube is a bit late to the podcast arms race, but it doesn't matter since their infrastructure is solid. YouTube already has accumulated so much pod listenership, and they are working on integrated search functions from Shorts to RSS (via YouTube Music). They're already the leader in pod discovery, and they already have one of the biggest ad ecosystems running via "ad sense" on pods--they can now optimize and continue to rob the others of their video opportunities. Plus, with Shopify integrations and on screen clickability performance tracking for brands is cleaner and already integrated into a platform they're familiar with at scale. The area it lacks is data sharing. No pixels, no clean visibility for brands. Here's what each are missing (IMO): Spotify: Trust. Amazon: Volume. YouTube: Measurement. Under these three giants, there's many other contenders to make industry changing impact, but I just don't see it happening unless serious efforts are made to keep up. In my view, Spotify and YouTube are neck and neck and Amazon is a silent underdog. The next 5 years are going to be exciting.

42

14 Comments