Bootstrapping, Authenticity, and Storytelling (GROW NY Summer 2023)

GROW NY Summer 2023 was a fantastic one-day conference to keep appraised of industry trends, learn about platforms and technology, and make new connections. Themes included #bootstrapping #authenticity and #storytelling which really speak to the zeitgeist.

Bootstrapping

With capital drying up, companies have had to rethink their operating models and focus on bootstrapping to survive. This creates a competitive advantage for brands that have a good understanding of their performance marketing fundamentals: customer value and incremental customer acquisition costs across channel mix that can only come from a robust testing program.

True Classic, a men's apparel brand, has been bootstrapped from Day 1, meaning the focus has had to be on profitable growth. President Ben Yahalom explains that their North Star is marginal, incremental, contribution profit. Marginal refers to how much is generated from the last dollar. Incremental means, "If I hadn't spent that money, what would have happened?" In practical terms, overspend in lower funnel channels that cannibalize the same audiences and only enrich media through inefficiency is eschewed.

Through testing and an understanding of full funnel, lead generation activity can also be valued for a fairer understanding of the contribution of non-transaction campaign objectives. Emails, phone numbers (with SMS opt-in), and app downloads all have value in reducing the costs of maintaining communication with prospects and customers outside of paid media. That allows for optimizations, for example, of the incremental contribution margin of an email acquired against the number of emails a certain marketing activity will yield for a given budget.

For True Classic, this view transcends marketing to consider the totality of profit including payment processors and outbound logistics. In apparel, returns are a major cost driver. Understanding the dynamics of customer behaviors, e.g. do they buy three pairs of jeans in different sizes and return two when they buy? helps build out a complete picture of downstream customer value.

Authenticity

At every "Catering to Gen Z" panel, you're sure to hear about the importance of authenticity. For bootstrap haircare brand Bask & Lather, that starts with founder Shaina Rainford, MS, RN, FNP-C's story about her sister's struggle with hair loss and her mother's researched home remedy. As a brand with a purpose of helping women struggling with hair loss, Shaina created social content to tell her story and sold unlabeled bottles out of her kitchen, building a $400 investment into a $10M+ business.

With rising CACs in social media as the business scaled, Bask & Lather needed to find a way to generate an organic following to make platforms like TikTok profitable. She turned to her 15 year old son to run the channel. He says, "Look at what older, middle-aged customers are looking at. Shift from statics to video and follow the trends. For example, we used the hook of reasons not to buy our product like, 'Oh, my hair grew way too long.' Look up exactly what you are trying to do and see what's the most watched in the last 6 months and make 5 variations of that same thing."

To stay authentic, consider what the customer wants to see and where they want you to show up. How can you reach a customer in different ways and share a struggle authentically? "Because we are authentic, people give us a lot of UGC because we make it a safe space where people want to be connected; our IG isn’t pretty and it never will be because we want to be authentic."

Storytelling

Great brands are built on storytelling over time. In a performance marketing context, great storytelling is about consistent and progressive messaging across the funnel. Hero Bread VP of eCommerce, Christina Blaisdell Oyler used to drive traffic to 4 landing page concepts to avoid being penalized by google's algorithm, which limits evergreen and targeted audience campaigns as concepts would have to be rotated for new holidays and occasions. This also creates potential disconnects between ad copy messaging and landing page messaging, hurting the story arch to get prospects interested in the brand.

Hero Bread worked with Fermat to pull in info from the creative to the landing page and testing/building optimizations on functional buying elements (e.g. Apple Pay button location, offer location). With creator content driving to Fermat LPs, CACs were down 40% vs. traffic driven to own landing pages due to consistent story arc and conversion rate optimization on LPs.

Through a regular testing program of 5 content pieces per week, Hero Bread has built up its understanding of storytelling and the audiences certain stories resonate with, leading to a portfolio approach to stories, audiences, and landing pages across which to optimize. This also allows certain stories to guide toward specific products that fit the narrative to drive sales towards more curated offerings to improve AOV or reduce overstock inventory.