2X eCommerce Podcast

We’re seeing a lot of technology coming out now that lets you segment your audiences. So, coming from a specific ad set or specific area, you can give them the content that resonates with them. If you look at brands like Athletic Greens, which we both mentioned earlier on this call, they actually have different versions of their landing pages. And this isn’t because I have insider knowledge—you just go through their website, and you can see it. They actually have three to four of their pages segmented. If you’re in the wellness category, you get certain content, versus if you’re in the athlete community, you get different content. It’s a slight differentiation based on who you are and what you represent.

So, make sure you do the work to segment your audiences, because you’re doing all that work to segment during your ad sets. Why not put in the same effort on the website experience and the content you’re sharing? The content that comes afterward should make people feel like they’re being more personalized to. And I’m not talking about full-on personalization—just take a step back and focus on segmentation.

Get the people first. That’s what I picked up from that. Yeah. Alright, smart people at that. Okay, okay. So, the second point, we’re talking about UX—investing in UX before I caught you. Yeah, invest in UX in terms of storytelling. I feel like so many brands are still missing the mark on telling a really good story and guiding users to the experiences they really want—from the app all the way to the landing pages.

Luck is opportunity meeting timing and preparation meeting opportunity. What do these brands do differently from the other 80%? The brands that come to mind—one of them, which was mentioned by Harley from Shopify during their Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales, is Brunt Workwear. I love the brand. Not only are they part of our roster of amazing clients we get to work with, but they’ve been a pure-play DTC for quite some time. Their marketing and the way they build a community of customers is solid.

I haven’t seen many brands with such an amazing channel in terms of having both brand and growth. They do a great job on the brand side as well as on the growth side. When brands can do both really well, they can weather these storms. A lot of brands in the 80% category were either very good at branding or very good at growth, but not necessarily good at both. So, when macroeconomic challenges arise, it’s hard to keep the ship steady. But the brands that can balance strong brand value with community engagement and try out new things on the growth side are the ones that can weather tough times.

I’m not saying they were all flourishing or growing at a crazy rate—some were, but very few. However, some managed to do well, which meant 10% to 15% growth, even if previously they were at 50% year-over-year growth. It’s okay not to hit 50% growth every year, but knowing what your expectations are and being able to meet them by keeping a steady ship is what differentiates the top 20%.