Maximize Your Digital Marketing Spend (Video)
Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash
The key early on is to emphasize quality over quantity says Ora Organics Will Smelko.
I moderated an amazing conversation with two change-the-world founders a couple weeks ago. Will Smelko of Ora Organics and Mimi Millard of De Lune discussed how to get the most out of your digital marketing spend, and their unequivocal advice — near and dear to my heart — brand building.
“For early stage startups, digital marketing should be focused on building your brand,” Will said. “Reviews are an important part of that brand. We try not to get too far ahead of ourselves in thinking about how we can capture more customers if we’re not responding to every five star review with a thank you and trying to turn every one-star review into a five-star one,” Will said.
Will cautioned against the temptation of “jumping the gun” and focusing disproportionately on spend and customer acquisition cost and scale at the early stages, while paying short shrift to one of the major benefits of being a DTC company: the relationship you forge with your customers. At the early stages of a startup, you’re building your content and your brand story and your narrative and trying to work through the loyalty of each individual customer journey, building loyalty through nailing that journey.
With this as your major focus, Will explored several ways to incrementally build your audience. Here they are.
Always have passive acquisition streams turned “on.” Your best prospect is usually somebody who has visited your website, even if they didn’t buy. Nurture your inbound stream through retargeting programs, email capture, paid advertising and SEO to engage these prospects for 20 to 30 days before going after new customers.
Match your influencers and press to your audience. Influencers are great resources for building credibility. But, recommended Will, “before you start worrying about rapidly scaling an influencer program and trying to reach 100 influencers or potential leads a day, figure out who your audience listens to the most, who has a very actively engaged audience that talks about or listens to topics that directly solve a need your brand directly relates to.” Then, invest in building a couple of those relationships as far as you can.
Learn how good influencer marketing works before delegating it. Will strongly recommended that founders or valuable members of the team go through the process of engaging influencers before assigning this role to an employee or outside agency. “Be careful about any outside agency or group that promises you quick six- or 12-month wins without diving deep into your company,” Will cautioned. It’s not a knock on all the good agencies out there, but doing it early on is the best way to learn.
Think about hiring an email expert. “If you know that your product or brand will be best supported by email, bringing an email expert who understands lifecycle marketing in house could be a great hire. Thoughtful use of email can turn a $50 customer into a $500 customer,” Will said. Once a customer receives your product, throw the kitchen sink at them in terms of content. “When you eat a great meal at a restaurant, you want to share the love, right? The same thing can happen with your customers,” Will noted. “Once they’ve bought something from you, follow up with a useful, detailed email that enhances their enjoyment of your product.”
Don’t try to be like others. There’s a ton of pressure on early stage founders and it’s easy to heap more pressure on yourself by comparing yourself to other, seemingly more successful founders. Resist, said Will! “Everybody tries to look successful, but don’t be fooled. Yes, they may have let it be known they raised $15 million and their ads may be everywhere. But they may also have spent $15 million just to get a not very loyal customer base, while you’re sitting on gold, with a super powerful, super loyal base of people who just adore your brand because you focus on it.”
These bullet points barely scratch the surface of Will and Mimi’s deep dive. But the messages for founders at the early stage emerge quite clearly: focus on quality over quantity, relationships over metrics (at least to start), and mastery over out-of-the-blocks growth. And just keep coming back to the basics of why being a DTC business offers value to yourself, your team, your customers, and your investors.
What are you doing to drive lifetime value and customer loyalty in your company’s digital marketing? I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas on the topic, as always.
Sincerely,
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All credit to my ghostwriting partner, Dave Moore, who is instrumental in getting my thoughts out in a coherent manner & into these blogs. Thanks Dave!