Tuesday, July 25

The 5 things in DTC you need to know today

July 25, 2023

#1 - 📈 How this brand scaled from $1M to $10M in sales

📰 TL;DR - This piece takes a deep dive into how OpenStore scales up the brands it acquires. OpenStore is a Shopify aggregator that has scooped up more than 40 brands and works to grow them at a rapid pace. An example in here is Jack Archer, a menswear brand, which they grew from $1M in sales to $10M. Some changes included adding a sizing guide that reduced returns and experimenting with video creative. They also launched a dedicated app for the brand. And they did it all very quickly — like in nine months.

💡 Insight - Aggregators like Open Store are a fascinating part of e-comm and this story really shows the power they have to accelerate a brand. But that’s not to say there weren’t growing pains. This piece also notes that the rapid growth also led to some stock shortages, which customers weren’t pleased about. But the changes mentioned here are something anyone can pull off — it’s just that OpenStore has the financial and people power to make these things happen quickly. Definitely a few lessons in here you can take away for yourself.

#2 - 🔥 Power up your content strategy

📰 TL;DR - Here’s a great tweet (x? xpost? xost?) from Keval Shah about how to get a content strategy off the ground. It’s a simple guide that goes over how to do keyword research to generate content ideas. He gives the example of gaming desks. People preparing to buy one will be doing research like deciding what size it should be or other factors. If you have content on your store’s site that targets these keywords, that brings shoppers right to you. It also powers up your SEO along the way. He offers two keyword research methods — AHREFS and Answer the Public.

💡 Insight - I’m personally a huge believer in the power of SEO-driven content marketing. In fact, using Shah’s example, I googled “best size for a gaming desk” and immediately found content from Wayfair, Newegg, and Leetdesk. It works! What has made it more complicated is that media publishers are also chasing these keywords. Magazines and the like with affiliate links are posting their own content on these topics, which makes your job harder. That’s why a good content strategy isn’t just posting a few blogs and calling it a day — it has to be a complete content program backed by solid SEO. If you’re not a confident SEO writer, this is something that can be easily outsourced on a freelance market site.

📣 If you want to reach our audience of 10,000+ DTC store owners, tap here 

#3 - 🙋 TikTok adds post-purchase surveys

📰 TL;DR - TikTok’s ads department has added a new tool — post-purchase surveys. The app is partnering with KnoCommerce and Fairing to offer this. It’ll give you a new layer of data to see if your TikTok campaigns are doing what you actually want them to.

From the announcement: “TikTok is the fastest-growing channel for brand discovery, but many current measurement tools provide limited views on where customers are first learning about brands.”

💡 Insight - Click data is all fine a good but to be able to ask customers how they heard of you or other insights is a great new offer. I’m also very interested in this because I’ve seen reports about how shoppers in the US specifically don’t think of TikTok as a shopping tool. So if you do get conversions coming from TikTok, it would be very useful to ask more about that shopping journey.

#4 - 🛠️ Things worth checking out

🧠 EXPERT EVENT - Automate CRO and deliver authentic personalized shopping experiences by combining Predictive AI + Generative AI. Last chance to register here.

🤝 AGENCY - Storia has become the go-to agency for countless e-commerce brands post iOS14, thanks to their unique creative testing process & ad creative + media buying flat monthly fee. Learn more here.

 TRENDS - AdAge’s latest roundup of DTC trends, movers, and shakers is up here.

👕 APPAREL - Apparel and accessories are a hot commodity in e-commerce, according to this survey.

💬 TIKTOK - Something new to try as Twitter/X does its thing — TikTok now has a text post option. Read more here.

#5 - 🔎 Does your search suck?

📰 TL;DR - A new survey found that e-commerce search is pretty mid. To be fair it was a small survey of just 460 US customers, but it found that 3 in 10 people say it takes at least three minutes to locate an item they need on a e-commerce site. Only 28% said it was “quick” to find what they’re looking for. Another third said that although they got technically relevant search results, they didn’t get what they were hoping to find. Also in here is what customers said they actually want from online search.

💡 Insight - With so many ways to discover products that don’t involve the search bar on your site, I can see why it doesn’t feel like the biggest priority. But it’s also true that out-of-the-box search tools from e-commerce platforms aren’t stellar. Pretend you’re a customer and give your own search bar a test, if you find it lacking, there are apps and tools out there to improve it. I think it’s also only a matter of time before e-comm platforms beef up their default search tools with AI.

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