

DTC Podcast
DTC Newsletter and Podcast
Weekly discussions between disruptive direct to consumer ecommerce brands and our amazing team about marketing, funnels, and everything scaling related. Subscribe to our newsletter for highlights and step by step tactical insights 👉🏻 📦 directtoconsumer.co
Episodes
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Dec 15, 2020 • 35min
Ep 59: The Power of Pinterest with Pins 4 Profit's Lindsay Shearer
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📌 Pin Ads 4 the Win! 📌
With 2020 being a year of unpredictability & madness, a surprising contender for traffic & sales in Ecom has consistently shown up in Pinterest Ads!
As the algorithm continues to mature on Pinterest, we’ve been getting some powerful results that are def turning heads.
Here’s a snapshot of what we’re seeing:
✅ 83% of people on Pinterest have made a purchase
✅ 700M Users & growing on the platform
✅ $100K + the average household income of a :us: Pinterest user
✅ Crazy :arrow_up: ROAS opportunities on TOF & Retargeting
✅ Super :arrow_down: CPMs $.50-$2.50
✅ Maturing algorithm
In the midst of the:
❌ volatility in both the world & consumer buying behavior
❌ unpredictability of almost all ad platforms
❌ account shut downs
❌ radically changing cross channel ad landscapes
How are you filling your funnels?
If you’re looking for another source of consistent high-quality traffic Pinterest has some serious power💥 !!
Eric sat down with Lindsay Shearer who has one of the largest & industry-leading 📌 Pinterest ad agencies in the world called Pins4Profit and asked a ton of hard questions! Check out her deep dive into 📌 Pinterest ad strategy for Ecom brand owners & agencies.
It’s time to expand your traffic sources!
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Dec 12, 2020 • 36min
Ep 58: Stop the Scroll with Performance Driven Creative
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This week’s All Killer No Filler features the Pilothouse Creative Team sharing their top tips & tricks for creating scroll-stopping creative and balancing performance with polish.
Take a listen for key insights on:
🗝 Standing out on socials
🗝 Data-driven creative
🗝 Intentionally breaking from design best practices
🗝 Easily applied creative hacks
🗝 How we structure our creative team
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Dec 8, 2020 • 59min
Ep 57: Neville Medhora: How to Make Content & Copy Stand Out in a "Sea of Same"
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Our pod guest this week is Neville Medhora, the brain behind copywriting agency and training business Copywriting Course. He’s also the author of three books, and an advisor to AppSumo, The Hustle, and swipefile.com.
His training videos have been viewed by thousands and he currently advises numerous companies on how to make their copy awesome and increase conversion rates across all the materials they produce.
We know we have some big-time copy nerds in our audience - this one’s for you. 🤓
Take a listen for:
✏️Why you should write exactly as you talk
✏️The not so secret sauce for building your audience
✏️Creating content that pops
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Dec 5, 2020 • 27min
Ep 56: AKNF Black Friday Cyber Monday Retrospective with Pilothouse
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As promised, we sat down with a full panel of heavy hitters from Pilothouse to break down their Black Friday/Cyber Monday 2020 experience.
Listen to the pod for quick hits on:
💥 2020’s record-breaking Black Friday
💥 Starting sales early & extending to Cyber Week
💥 Our inventory strategy & plans for next year
💥 Balancing prospecting & retargeting over BFCM
💥 Our two-pronged creative strategy
💥 How to approach “gifters” by building a 🔥🔥🔥 Amazon storefront
Save and share with your team so you can activate these strategies next year 💪
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Dec 1, 2020 • 45min
Ep 55: Mission Marketing for Hypergrowth with Tru Earth's Ryan McKenzie
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Today on the pod, we have Ryan McKenzie, co-founder of eco-friendly laundry strip brand Tru Earth - Canada’s 2nd fastest growing startup.
Tru Earth has seen a two-year revenue growth of 8408% from $0 to a current run rate of over $30 million.
Listen to this pod for insight on:
📦 Mission Marketing
📦 Starting Strategically Small
📦 Thinking of Retail as a Partner
📦 Influencer Strategies
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Nov 28, 2020 • 28min
Ep 54: 🔪 🚀 AKNF - Building a Content Machine
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The Pilothouse team is slammed hustling for Black Friday - they’ll be back next week to debrief on highlights from the big day, so stay tuned.
In the meantime, we’re checking in with Eric and Kyle on how things are going in the DTC world and what they’ve learned while building a content creation business.
If you’re looking to enhance your content - this one is for you. Take a listen for:
📦 How to develop a content machine
📦 Building a quality audience
📦 The power of 3rd party brands
*** Note: We had some technical difficulties on this one. Apologies for the less than ideal sound quality! We have AirPods on order so it won't be an issue next round.
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Nov 24, 2020 • 1h 2min
Ep 53: Media Buyer Showdown (In House vs. Agency) with Smart Marketer CEO Molly Pittman
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We’re going head to head into our latest DTC podcast debating agencies vs. in house media buying teams.
Our guest this week is powerhouse Molly Pittman. Molly is the CEO of Smart Marketer and Train My Traffic Person, a training program for in-house media buyers. She’s the author of Click Happy, and she recently launched a new podcast, Smart Marketer. I’ll have what she’s having.
Here are some highlights from the pod:
So what’s the deal? Agency or In-house?
We may have lured you here with a clickbait-y title; it’s less about in house or agency, more about relationship building. There is no one size fits all response; different businesses have different needs.
The wheels fall off agency partnerships when business owners pass the buck; it’s naïve to hire an agency, hand over ads, and expect to be hands-off from that point onwards. Joint accountability, collaboration, and hyper-communication are essential. With minimal information or insight into your business, an agency partnership is unlikely to thrive.
It is the agency’s responsibility to insist on visibility into the business, and it is the responsibility of the business owner to maintain open lines of communication with the agency.
When it comes down to brass tacks house vs. agency, Molly will pick in-house as that’s her background. Her take is that there is something special about having a team in touch with the day to day, who intimately knows the company’s voice.
Again, there is no one size fits all response. If you’re just starting, you'll need agency support before you start buying ads. Some folks know they aren’t good at marketing - get yourself an agency! Maybe you need scale support or to delegate a specific element of your strategy? Time for an agency.
Molly’s 6 Steps for Effective Campaigns
The Offer
Who
Ad Copy
Creative
Campaign Structure
Everything Else
Listen to the full pod for predictions on the future of agencies’, why you should hire candidates with service industry experience, and a reminder to monitor your screen time.
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Nov 22, 2020 • 23min
Ep 52: 🔪🚀 AKNF - Comment Moderation Can Add 20% On Your Bottom Line
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Today we dove in with Pilothouse's Comment Moderation team, where we handle clients' ad comments with wit, style, and grace to improve ads, audiences, sales pitches and ultimately, your bottom line (up to 20%).
📦 How to use comment moderation during the onboarding process to improve early results
📦 How to arm your comment moderators with the tools and resources they need when taking on a new account.
📦 The nuances behind when negative comments should be hidden, deleted, or even left in plain sight for everyone to see.
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Nov 20, 2020 • 30min
Ep 51: The Evolution of 3PL with Hook Logistics
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Next up on the pod, we’re talking 3PL with Fraser Kinsley, CEO of Hook Logistics and Jacob Sussman, Head of Marketing.
Hook knows that logistics and fulfilment can be a full-on nightmarescape, and they are here to help with DTC-friendly solutions.
We talk about their origin story, building brand voice, and the future of fulfillment on this logistics-focused pod. Here are key takeaways:
Meet your customers where they’re at
Separate your brand from the pack
The key to good copy
DTC is here to stay
The future of DTC
It’s time to think about how you will compete and stand out. Are you more interesting? Are you fostering a deep connection with your community? Do you have innovative distribution? Find your thing, and lean in.
Take a listen to the full pod for a behind the scenes peek at how the Hook team is re-imagining 3PL for the DTC market.
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Nov 17, 2020 • 37min
Ep 50: Ops for the Win, with Brenda Mendez
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Looking for growth support? Building a brand? Need an ops overhaul?
Talk to Brenda Mendez, former COO of Snow Teeth Whitening and Branding and Marketing Specialist.
This force to be reckoned with problem solver and ops mastermind is ready to roll up her sleeves and help. She specializes in building ops to alleviate pain points utilizing her lived experience and no-nonsense analytical approach to streamline your business.
She’s basically business Mary Poppins. She wants to set up your business for success - so much so that you don’t need her anymore. Maybe a business Ghostbuster? 👻🚫
(...we’ll work on our analogy.)
Here are the key strategy takeaways from our podcast you can try on your own ops stack.
Approachable Ops
3 Pillars for Growth
Whether you’re growing a product, persona or service, Brenda uses this three-pillar framework to develop and elevate brands.
Brand Equity
Community
Associations
Bypass Burnout
Creating and scaling a DTC business is a major undertaking that requires serious mental stamina. Prioritizing your mental health is a must. Here are some tools Brenda employs (based on personal experience with burnout after a significant push when taking Snow to retail)
Self Audit
5 Non-Negotiables
Communication Waterfall
Listen to the full pod for more, including how not to be a bottleneck, how to best activate different influencer tiers, and why rebrands aren’t as scary as they sound.
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