Hosted By

Rabah Rahil
CMO at Triple Whale

Guests

Ash Melwani
Co-Founder & CMO of MyObvi
Shray Joshi

Seasonal Marketing Playbook, Retail's Relationship With DTC, and More

In this episode of Adspend we go over holiday marketing and seasonal marketing, how to increase aov, and the science of landing pages.

Notes & Links

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ā€Shray's Twitter: https://twitter.com/shrayvj

ā€Why Attribution Tools Are NEEDED in DTC Marketing.

Transcription

Ash Melwani (00:00):

I think the biggest thing people are trying to say is like, you have to use an attribution tool or you're completely dead in the water. It's like it, Facebook is still the ad platform. It still needs to get the data back. It still needs to read that data to optimize, to push it to newer people or similar people that are purchasing, you know, there's that whole, like that feedback loop that needs to happen for Facebook to be Facebook. Okay. Attribution tools is more for the marketer to understand and validate what is happening on these platforms, right? You shouldn't live and die by it, but at least validate the, the events that are happening in platform so that you can make better informed decision.

Rabah Rahil (00:47):

We're back with another episode of ads. And as you can see, we have a new guest we're actually gonna be taking on a different little format with a rotating third chair. We're gonna be bringing in crushers. And I'm with my main, with the plan as always in the fancy new studio. If I might add with the fancy new gear from the geek out Miami that he attended, let's go Ash Mowan and then fun guys. We got the man with the plan also at geek out. Also one of my favorites, we actually, we double geeked out. Now I think about it. Cause we met at geek out proper didn't we? Yeah, I totally forgot about this. Oh my gosh. But we have here to drop Dyna. What do we talking about? Dynamics the categories, a whole bunch of craziness. We're gonna talk about what to do in these kinda times. Trey, Josh. See everyone. <laugh> see that shit. We're getting professional here. We're getting professional. Here're getting we're better. We gots. We got crazy guests. Yeah. Season two. Exactly. <laugh> it's a sequel kids. Um, but I'll joking you aside, Trey, thank you so much. Um, for people that don't know you, which they should, um, kind give people kind of your background, your specialties, uh, what you've done in the past. So, um, I think the kids call this credibility indicators. Um, and then we'll start GM.

Shray Joshi (02:02):

Yeah. I don't have any issues flexing for 30 seconds, so yeah. <laugh> um, so yeah, I'm Shree, uh, founder and CEO of a company called good pees. So we're a full stack, full service marketing agency for CPG brands, you know, food beverage supplements, alcohol, uh, that are trying to scale both on digital and in retail. So I think D to C think Amazon think E retail as well as then think traditional retail. Uh I'll I'll give you the puncher soon. Not, not yet. Um, prior to that, uh, I actually used Brandside um, because most agencies actually sucked. So I used to be Brandside. I used to be the, um, head of digital and growth at a company called healthy kombucha. We just recently got acquired before that used to be the head of marketing and growth at a company called NUS, which is now simulate that like plant based chicken nugget brand. Uh, and then before that was head of digital at a company called chop Chacha that like super Vivy mantra spot that you can go to in LA and in New York. And then now, um, you know, our clients kind of range from, you know, supplement brands like cage muscle to, you know, alcohol brands like flying numbers. So, you know, we do everything in the, the better for you wellness category.

Rabah Rahil (03:12):

Amazing. Amazing. Well, thank you for coming on the show. We are super happy to have you, where do you guys wanna jump in?

Shray Joshi (03:21):

I mean,

Ash Melwani (03:21):

We see in right now.

Shray Joshi (03:23):

Yeah. <laugh> yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ash Melwani (03:27):

Uh, show you right away. I mean, I think, I think the consensus this week, I mean the week before Memorial day weekend, um, a lot of marketers are seeing some iffy performance. Um, I know we are, I mean, it was almost night and day from like Sunday to Monday and usually Mondays are like the slower days, but it was like really bad. So, I mean, what are you guys seeing? What do you think people should be focusing on? Because, I mean, I have my answer, but I wanna would love to hear what your, what your thoughts are.

Shray Joshi (03:56):

So we're, we're actually seeing like a complete split between our two like types of companies. So I think it's all about like consumer perception for how they react to Memorial day for your category. So a lot of products that are let's call it supplements, let's call it food, let's call it, um, you know, things that are more general lifestyle or house, like, you know, home products. Everybody's kind of getting ready for that like big sale moment where it's like, I'm just gonna go drop the credit card, you know, get as many points as I can and spend every single dollar that I I have. And then there is the alternative where we're actually seeing better performance, like significantly better performance for some of our like alcohol beverage stock up products where, you know, we've really shifted a lot of our messaging to two day delivery, same day delivery, you know, get it before Memorial day.

Shray Joshi (04:47):

And that's actually been kind of flipping the, the switch of like, everybody's now doing their stock up, uh, you know, earlier in the week versus when the sale drops. So, uh, that's what we're seeing, but for the brands that are hurting, uh, it's definitely not, um, helping with let's call it like all the market dynamics, CPM, skyrocketing, um, as well as just general consumer behavior, let's say like kind of pulling back a little bit, uh, cuz they're getting inundated with talks every six seconds that the market is crashing. So yeah. I mean, that's what we're seeing right now.

Ash Melwani (05:17):

So basically you're saying it's not the platforms it's truly just buying behavior right now.

Shray Joshi (05:25):

I think it's everything stacking at once. Like I think that even for the brands that are doing well, like their CPMs are still increasing month over month. Yeah. You know, quarter over quarter. I think that the, you know, those platforms are still getting more expensive. Like Snapchat earnings just came out, you know, that's gonna go and hurt Facebook. That's gonna go and hurt Google. That's gonna go then, you know, increase the, those company's objectives to try to scale revenue, which will then have them, you know, bump up their CPM. So we'll be on the receiving end of that side. Um, but I think that you guys are now running into this added layer for certain categories on the consumer pullback, um, in general with market and then even more pullback for other smaller categories or let's call 'em more niche categories for, uh, sale. So I, I would say, yeah, if you're out accounts aren't doing too hot this week, uh, kind of put through those couple of filters before you go and like freak out, thinking your business is gonna fall apart.

Ash Melwani (06:20):

<laugh> yeah, yeah, no, I mean, for us, like we were gonna launch our, I mean again, right. For those of you don't owe me, um, run a health and wellness brand collagen protein bunch of supplements. So this week was a little tough, uh, for us and, and it makes sense, right? Buying behavior is a little bit different add on market conditions and this and that and macroeconomic factors and unfortunate stories that are happening in the country right now. Um, I think the biggest thing that, like you said, to kind of make sure we're plugging up these holes where ideally we were gonna launch our Memorial day sale on the weekend. Right. But it almost seems like everyone already started like over the, over this previous weekend. So literally yesterday we kind of round up the team and said, all right, well, we need to kind of put the sale out now.

Ash Melwani (07:07):

Um, obviously everything that was due on Thursday needs to be due four hours ago. So kind of, you know, rushing and, and getting things set up. But I mean today, like honestly even switching over to the sale, like it's just not, it's not that much better. Um, you know, it's, it's still not as good as previous week and it, and, and that's the thing like even Monday, like I, I spoke to some of you guys it's like, we're seeing like a 30% drop in like conversion rate and like revenue and it, and it sucks because we're also gearing up to spend more with, you know, retail efforts and this and that. And yeah, like seasonality plays into, you know, the part of it where like, all right, it's summertime. Yeah. This is like, you know, the summer after COVID people are getting out, doing things like they don't really care about their, their health and as much anymore.

Ash Melwani (07:56):

So it's like summer is that lull for supplements. But you know, we thought we would, at least with the processes that we've put in place, um, you know, testing more creatives, landing pages, this and that. We thought that maybe we would see a little bit of like a, a dip, but not that much of a dip. So now it's a little bit worrying, but I mean, it, it total makes sense where, where it's like one thing after the other, after the other, after the other, you kind of have to like, well, what do you, what do we do now? Right. Like in your opinion, like what, what's the best way to kind of go about it if media buying, like there's only a certain amount of things you can do to hack your way not, and that too, not even hack your way, but like what can you focus on in this time?

Shray Joshi (08:36):

Yeah. So I think you said something that was really important to call out, which is like, and I think what you're seeing in Memorial day is simply a copy and paste of what was happening during black Friday last quarter. Right. So what happens at black Friday ads started way earlier. Everyone was spending more aggressively on black Friday and the impact actually for the first time ever. Um, you know, in 10 years, did black Friday do less revenue year over year. Um, and this was the, you know, lowest, I think it had been in like two or three years before that. So I think that you're starting to see that during these big sale periods, I think that consumers now that they've just been inside for so long, there isn't that like build up behind these like big, like, oh my God, I can't wait for Memorial day weekend because like, what are most of us doing?

Shray Joshi (09:23):

Probably hanging inside, maybe going for a walk, maybe hanging with some friends. So I think that those big, like, you know, spike peak moments of sales, I think we'll, we'll need to shift the way that we kind of think about 'em, but we're actually plussing up on a lot of our brands from a influencer organic product seating, activations perspective, meaning that what we're actually seeing a lot of, uh, success on is that like we have like an awesome affiliate program for, uh, one of our other program or one of our other brands. Um, these guys are in the, the beverage space. And so we just, we shipped as much product as we could to these guys to really cut through the kind of like noise and frequency and Memorial day ads to just saying like, Hey, there's this really cool thing that's going on from this brand.

Shray Joshi (10:05):

Every single cool influencer is talking about it. And like that did this for us where it's like, we're, we're taking advantage of things, like still TikTok, virality, taking advantage of things like, uh, really getting segmented with our emails and getting, you know yeah. Um, a little bit more, uh, deeper with kind of more behavioral retargeting or kind of hitting them with emails. And that's, what's like really helped. I think that, and we've actually done this for a couple of our other brands switching off of sales or switching off from the strategy of like, do we have these big, like peak moments from these big Memorial day sales and things like that and moving into like, how do we scale our evergreen acquisition as much as we can. Um, and then during those inefficient periods scale actually down, cuz we don't, we don't have to make up revenue. All of a sudden we're focusing on like what our accepted row as is, and then just spending against that as much as we can, um, while it's there. So yeah.

Ash Melwani (11:02):

Got it. So at least for us, we should probably just focus on profitability at the moment.

Shray Joshi (11:07):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fair enough. Because if you're, if you're gonna be fighting it, what it also does. Right. And like, this is the thing that I hate and love about sales is that it completely fucks up your retargeting, uh, and remarketing audiences for like the following weeks. Like you go through these like huge refractory period where now, like everybody who would've been in that purchase intent, if they didn't buy from a 20 or 30% off sale with a couple of free products, they're not going to want to with evergreen messaging. So then performance is gonna look even worse. So it's like, and, and that's not gonna help like anybody here where it's like with, with the way that we're going about it. It is just keep it up green. And like if there's those moments on email and SMS with our engaged consumers that we can pump sales, let's go for it. Or if it's a big moment for the category new year, new you, uh, things like that. That's where we'll show up big. Like that. That's where we'll go in.

Rabah Rahil (12:00):

I love that. Yeah. And just to interject Ash, sorry to cut you off. But, um, I really like the idea of that cuz when I always think about these sales, uh, in a way you're just pulling sales forward, right? And so a lot of times, not only are you gonna pull the sales forward, you're gonna pull 'em forward at a discount. Furthermore, the C is gonna be higher because you're competing against people that can actually just dump insane amounts of money into ads that don't really care. They just wanna be Omni present or so on and so forth or just have budgets that you can compete against. And so you just like when you start to do the math, it just doesn't work out. And then a lot of times the cause I love the black Friday analogy. Cause a lot of times the worst thing I see is like you give their biggest discounts to your best customers.

Rabah Rahil (12:44):

And so just like, what are you doing here? Well, what's going on. People wanna give you way more money and you're taking less money from them and you're stocking them up, which then perverts the sales cycle. So now they don't have to buy from you for another three months. And so it just totally distorts all of your economics, not to even touch on all the targeting that you're talking about of like everything just gets perverted and for what, you know what I mean, a baby bump of this and then you're so I'm with you. I think that sales are okay and promotions are great, but you really need to understand what the goal is. And like if the goal is to move top line revenue, you just need cash flow. Hey, whatever that it is, what it's, you know, every, there's no judgment there. But um, I think understanding how this impacts your profitability, um, not only now, but in the next business cycle is really important to understand how you're deploying paid media capital, and then how you kinda pricing these types of sales promotions and so on and so forth because I I've just seen so many people just go in and like, oh my God, look how good I did.

Rabah Rahil (13:43):

And then like December like to do the black Friday analogy, you know, I did so great in black Friday and then December is the worst month ever. It's like, okay, that's fine. But like, you know, make sure that you understand what you're giving up and what you're getting.

Shray Joshi (13:56):

Yeah.

Ash Melwani (13:57):

I know one point to that is what you said, right? It's like, you're literally offering a discount to people who are ready, loyal followers and VIP customers. So one thing that we wanted to do is instead of a discount, we're just trying to maybe create bundles of other products that are a little bit, probably lower movers. Right? So, uh, things that kind of resonate with the summer. So we have a detox product, a car blocker. So it's like fight the summer blow or like indulge, but at least block some carbs. So it's like, it's, it's going with the theme of what's upcoming. But then also you're not devaluing the entire, like your entire customer base where it's like, all right, well, 25% off. And it's like, well now you're gonna expect that from now till forever. So <laugh> definitely a great point there.

Rabah Rahil (14:44):

And you didn't cut into your main killers of collagen where you're moving other products where it's great, cuz like if you don't sell the product product, that's fine. And if you do sell the product in a way you're happy, cause you're moving inventory, then you probably wouldn't move otherwise. So I think that's big brand energy there.

Ash Melwani (14:58):

Yeah. Yeah. And, and the other thing I kind of mentioned this on Twitter yesterday is like, so we're always running evergreen offers. So the, the main one is 20% off and uh, two to three free gifts. Um, again, the way that we do it is that we're marking up the product price on the landing page so that when the discount hits, it's technically the same amount if you find it on the regular website, right. So we're not, we're not devaluing it in a way, whereas like people will still get it at the same price. But all we did was, is we went from special offer today to like Memorial day sale with that same offer. So one, the messaging is still tailored towards a sale, but then it's also suited for this week's theme of MDW. You know what I mean? So that's, that's the other thing that we tried to do, but obviously acquisition on that front is a little tough. Um, it helped slightly, it's obviously not gonna move the needle that much, but I mean, unfortunately we have to bring back budgets and then just focus on the retention part of it right now.

Shray Joshi (15:56):

Have you guys tracked what happened to LTV against um, slashed price, new customer intro offers versus um, sale week, same offer, same line item, price.

Ash Melwani (16:10):

Yeah. I mean this, I mean, this is where we'll figure it out, right? Yeah. So for example, last year we were running with like zero discounts, like at all, no offers, no nothing. And it was like a really good time, like up to where iOS update happened. Right? So every launch, so our whole strategy last year was we dropped a product every two weeks, new flavor expansion, this and that. And each launch did very, very well right up until our customer acquisition rate started decline in like Q4. Um, so now Q1, Q2, we're ramping back up and we're hoping that the next product launch we'd start to see those big bumps from like product launches. But again, I think that would be our test because we've all we've been acquiring customers at that like mentality of like offer. So we'll see how it does, but I mean, I have a feeling that it'll probably still do decently well, um, regardless

Shray Joshi (17:06):

You guys are also running into like seasonality where it's like mm-hmm, <affirmative>, you've probably been ripping for the past two quarters on like, uh, stock up moments, new year, new you, and now it's getting into summer and it's like your accepted Roaz should probably have like some seasonality to it to allow you guys to scale. So yeah, those are all things that are just stacking. Yeah.

Ash Melwani (17:27):

But then you change up your marketing angles, right. It's just like be summer blow, you know, like see if you can still get people to somewhat consider their health during the summer, you know? Yep. Um, but I mean, you go through it. That's, that's pretty much it and, and it really comes down to also the ads too. I mean, especially during this time, influencer marketing is so key for like these seasonal seasonal bombs, because like it's, it's not, it's not based on an algorithm. Right. It's fully based off of like, here's my referral, here's my, like, here's what I'm doing with my life. And like, I wanna share this with you. Then people are like, oh shit. Okay, fine. Like I can still incorporate this into my daily routine through the summer. And I think people need to see that happen. Whereas like the algo is like, all right, we're probably pushing right better suited products and ads to consumers at the moment.

Shray Joshi (18:16):

Something that we did on one of our brands that I'm going to try to pitch. This was not my idea. Somebody at one of those brands pitched it to us, which was we calculated the cost of doing Memorial day. So with that 20% off what we thought the CPAs would look like and what we knew our repeat rates would look like three, six months. So we know what we would know what our loss in payback would be because of that first promo, but the lower repurchase rate. And we took all of those dollars into a really big YouTube and influencer our campaign. And right now we're gonna, we're gonna beat revenue targets, um, and not having to use promos for Memorial day, which is just like it unlocked additional capital. We know that people that are coming in through influence or have a higher LTV. And so we were able to just prove that off with LTV six month payback, cuz that's how their business was working. That let's just lean in here, cuz we know that we could do a quick little sprint and that, that cut through a lot of the Memorial day noise. Pretty, pretty well.

Ash Melwani (19:12):

That's awesome. This is probably for the beverage, uh, brand, you said? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's awesome.

Rabah Rahil (19:20):

Yeah. That's super strong. I love that. I'm actually going through some analysis right now with some brands to do basically the LTV stuff coming up with, uh, I mean obviously it's a little way out, but understanding how the, uh, kind of same, same but different, but how black Friday discount, like how do those people actually materialize into LTV? Like people that use the black Friday discount codes, like are they group honors or are they literally just buying that November stock up and like, and again, it's not good or bad, it's just to your point straight, like if you can mobilize this budget and it's the same amount of budget, but one, you don't give up any sauce and you're inter penetrating another channel. And that other channel that you're getting distribution on is actually a higher LTV channel. Like it's like net, net, net, net win.

Rabah Rahil (20:04):

Like you're starting to really be able to combat some of this like Pearl clutching that we're seeing because of the, the macroeconomic headwinds. And then to your point to seasonality like the old joke of the best marketers are made in the summer because you actually have to be good. Like in the third and fourth quarter, it's such a bull market that the, as long as the fundamentals are, there're usually gonna do decent. Like there's a magnitude of decent to great, but you're usually not doing bad because the there's just so much purchase intent that you just get your butterfly head out and start grabbing.

Shray Joshi (20:34):

What are you guys doing Ash from? Like what we've been able to start to pull some more interesting data behind is like with digital, there's so much now mystification with, you know, all of our first party data, second party data. But what I think a lot of people forgot was that your retailer data is so rich, right? Basket, infinity data, uh, kind of competition data, uh, or competitor brand data, stuff like that. Uh, what we've actually been able to do with some of our other guys to, to drive some efficiencies is, uh, actually figure out what our basket affinity for our products are and then integrate that into our advertising, into the landing pages in some way, Hey, if you're stocking up for Memorial day and the image and the signage has, it's called our protein powder, uh, we'll have a couple of other things that might be in your basket that we know that your basket affinity has. Uh, like how are you guys up until this point using retailer data to kind of help, um, for you guys on D to C?

Ash Melwani (21:35):

No, it's a really good question. I mean the biggest thing with, and it's tough because like we just launched, so it's like, I don't have too much data to kind of back this up, but I, I think the biggest thing that we're trying to do right now is, and this might be kind of like away from the question, but like even bundling, right? So like the, the data that we're getting from like triple where it's like, you can see like the most like commonly added products together, what we're doing right now is at least testing, how do we one increase our AOV. Right. Um, and is the best way to do that through bundling or is it offering more of the same product? Right. So one of the tests that we're doing right now is, um, we're, we're doing a few talks where it's like, oh, I just got my AV hall.

Ash Melwani (22:24):

And instead of just talking about one product, we're gonna talk about 1, 2, 3, and it's like, this is really good for hair, skin and nails. This is really good for bloating. This is really good for sleeping. Right? Yeah. And then that going to a landing page, like you said, which is a collection of everything. So one, I mean, but again, it'll be based off of what the products people have been purchasing together and have, I guess also, you know, triple showing us, you know, these certain products have a higher LTV, but then also these products are being bundled together with this. So it's like, you get, you have like the, the answer right there where it's like, all right, well, put these together, showcase people, buying it a, you know, example on TikTok and then send 'em to a landing page, bundle builder quiz. And then that's probably probably the best bet to do it.

Shray Joshi (23:14):

You can also pull what your IRL bundles are through vitamin shop through GNC. Like we just ask our buyers, right. It's like, Hey, what are you seeing? People buy more and more of together? And like, what we're seeing is that like, Hey, a lot of people are actually now treating, uh, their supplements and kind of two let's call it buckets. One being their like total body wellness. And then two almost being like a gym wellness, you know, category of product. And so like we know that for us on like cage front, our total body wellness, wellness, like stacks are like our greens powder. Our glutamine for recovery are, you know, some of these like total wellness things. And like, we never thought of that until we just asked GNC, um, you know, our person there and they, you know, we're like, yep, we're just seeing, you know, these types of bundles just naturally happening now, more and more. And so we're, we're not gonna bring that into our creative.

Ash Melwani (24:06):

Is that something, do you see the similarity between like the retail and D TOC or I think retail kinda validating it,

Shray Joshi (24:15):

It gives you good seeds to test out on D TOC front. Um, I think that like, there's some, you know, stacks that you can only kind of like, there's like some form to that retail experience between like a vitamin shop and a GNC where like you also have that person that's there, that's kind of like pushing other products. Right. And kind of pushing those kind of bundles for you either through incentives because they genuinely just like the product. Um, so I think that that adds some amount of it, but, um, what we do is just, we, we just focus on like, what are the things that you guys are just naturally seeing happen versus what are your kind of like pushed on promo products? And we ask them to say like, what are you guys seeing, being pushed on promo more versus what's naturally occurring so that we can just try to use those as like little indicators to see if there's success. Sometimes we'll see some awesome, like, you know, success, but sometimes, you know, if I get an idea from somebody saying that they're, you know, starting to see like more herbal supplements, get bundled up together, um, I can use that as like an inspo point, but for some of our bundles, but, uh, that one failed for sure.

Rabah Rahil (25:22):

I've loved that. I've never heard of that. I'm, I'm super not hit to, I know what an end cap is. And that's kind of like the extent of my retail knowledge. So can you, for the kids out there, uh, asking for a friend, explain what basket affinity is?

Shray Joshi (25:36):

Yeah. So basket affinity is, uh, there's, there's a couple types of it, but the one that everyone, um, uses in our category is like, if you are in a grocery store and you have like your basket in hand, or like your cart, what are the things that you are throwing in your cart when you are buying, let's call it like an Avi protein powder? Like yeah. What are the things that, that people are buying? Are they buying more produce than normal people? Are they buying more, uh, like bars and wellness products? You know, whenever they're going to those retailers, uh, like what are those products that they're buying your products with? And it gives you a bunch of ideas of like number one, who that consumer is, right? Yeah. If you know that it's somebody that's buying, uh, let's call it a protein bar and those people are buying like a shit ton, more meat, more protein, more total kind of, uh, let's call like higher protein diet. Like, you know, how to message that. And you know who that consumer basis is versus let's call it your collagen protein powder, which might have more of a basket infinity towards like, produce towards, uh, like total wellness products. So yogurt,

Rabah Rahil (26:34):

Stuff like that,

Shray Joshi (26:35):

Something exactly. So tracking, it gives you ideas for how to market to people. Also, it gives you ideas of what brands should you be like partnering up with and doing activations with. Cause if there are, if there is a basket in affinity between two products, it's a no brainer. Um, and then it also gives you an ability to understand your competition's basket affinity and see how your basket infinity differentiates against those. And that then has to do a lot with like your marketing, your branding, your product positioning. So yeah, we use a lot of retail to indicate what we should be doing online.

Rabah Rahil (27:08):

And is there third parties or do you like if you have a, okay. Is there any third parties that you like that people should reach out to that have like a decent retail presence? Or how would you integrate this,

Shray Joshi (27:20):

That if you don't have a direct buyer relationship, which I would always say that those have been the most powerful for us. Okay. Numerator has been a awesome data source numerator. What it is is that it basically gets a couple million people's worth of surveys. Uh, and then it then kind of just is like a huge data dump on like every single retailer in America category brand. So long as the brand's doing like a significant amount of revenue, and you could understand who their demographics are age, uh, you know, gender income, uh, what they're buying, what other basket affinities that they have, and like also like media insights. So like we actually then use a lot of that data on top of that to then target when we are doing like geo targeted retail, uh, support. So like paid, we'll actually use that numerator data to then just give us the, uh, you know, kind of some of our buckets of like, who are the current consumer is who competitors' consumer is and then who our category consumer is. And then those will be the, the kind of, uh, let's call it data points that we use one with them, throwing those up into Facebook for geo targeted, paid social support.

Rabah Rahil (28:22):

That's incredible. Two more questions and then I'll stop being annoying. Um, one, do you ever use it inversely? Do you ever use DTC to inform retail?

Shray Joshi (28:32):

Yeah. Uh, I think we use a lot of the time DTC acts as a let's call it like weapon for us in retail. A lot of the times, number one, just to show a lot of like, uh, who our consumer is, cuz we just know who it is at this point, um, to then unlock like secondary displays, other displays, other promotional things, other like marketing and, you know, merchandising op like opportunities. So it's really just used there more as a weapon to get us better placement position, uh, or integrations with our retailers,

Rabah Rahil (29:04):

Amazing

Shray Joshi (29:04):

Or in the instance of, or selling in, then it helps us as shit to, with selling in, to set retailers.

Rabah Rahil (29:10):

Amazing. And then, um, the last question was when you have bundling at stores, are the products together or do people have, are, are the products categorical, so like would people have to go to different spots in the store to bundle or is the whole brand together? Does that make sense? What I'm saying?

Shray Joshi (29:28):

Like if it's in the instance of, um, like a big retail store and you're thinking about like the bundles that, that relates more to basket affinities in a big retail store. Okay. It's like, whether what's everything that they're buying and then if you are in like, let's call it like a GNC or like a, a wellness store like that they'll either have their own internal merchandise bundles that they're pushing or you'll just see that there are these like, Hey, I'm coming into the store because I have this problem and it's okay. What are the, the, what's the set of products that then gets pushed onto that consumer. And that's another type.

Rabah Rahil (29:58):

And then physically are the products by like, like for you Ash, are all your Avi products together or are they separated by category? Like your greens are in this category, your proteins are here and your collagens are here. So creating that bundle is a lot more friction. Does that make sense? What I'm saying?

Ash Melwani (30:15):

Yeah. Yeah. No, definitely. They're. I mean, sometimes it's spread out, right. So like hair, skin to nails college. Right. But then weight management will be on the other side, you know,

Rabah Rahil (30:24):

Tracking. Okay. How fasting, what a, what an interesting beast. Incredible. Okay. That's all, that's all my retail questions. I, I, I, I knew you were the retail beast, right. So I wanted to make sure I, uh, I hate this phrase, but pick your brain.

Shray Joshi (30:38):

<laugh> I hate,

Ash Melwani (30:39):

I got, I have one question on the retail side, right? How are you guys, or at least what are you guys doing on the digital end to support retail? Um, cause the bit, the one thing that we were doing is like, um, and I mentioned this a couple times on the pod where it's like, we're still pushing sales online, but we're giving awareness to our partners, like vitamin shop through the creative. Right. So it's like picking up, um, Avi at a vitamin shop, bringing it home, making a shake, explaining the benefits, this and that, but then obviously directing to the landing page. But like there's still that awareness of like, oh, I can still go and get it from vitamin shop. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. So I'm curious, like what are other strategies that might be great to kind of give, give us so that we can strategize too?

Shray Joshi (31:29):

<laugh> so on the paid social front, I think like continuously like scaling on the DDC front and just seeing where your GOs like land up is like a solid, um,

Ash Melwani (31:38):

Like just in general, just scaling up.

Shray Joshi (31:40):

Yeah. And I think, I think it's also like a reverse situation where you now also understand what cities you're doing well in. So use that as ammo to then go and unlock, um, you know, retailers in those specific areas because you're like, Hey, we're organically crushing here on D TOC where we look 10,000 times bigger than we actually are. And you know, let's call it ninety four, ninety 5% of people aren't buying when they go to our website. And so like let's, let's kind of fix up that leaky bucket and let's get them over. The, the reason that I say that in general is because, uh, what happens that, like, if you were to run, like let's call an upper funnel metric on paid social, let's call, you know, awareness or, you know, uh, anything engagement Facebook's now optimizing towards getting the, the right audience, right? It's it's just gonna go for frequency and it's gonna go for that CPM optimization.

Shray Joshi (32:32):

So like say that you were to do geo targeted, paid social for GNC. Like you're not gonna necessarily want to run a bunch of awareness ads over a specific area because it's just going for as many eyeballs as possible versus as many qualified eyeballs as possible. And that's where your D TOC conversion targeting will continue to do that thing for you where it's like, Hey, Facebook is optimizing towards finding the people that are most likely to buy versus optimizing the campaign objective for a number of eyeballs. So it's a quality of traffic situation. Um, but we then use other platforms. Like it's, it's not as sexy to say on a podcast with triple well, but, um, things like out like things like OTT, O L V uh, online video, Hulu, addressable, linear, those actually do super well for us in a lot of our mass chains, because I can guarantee eyeballs and I can guarantee geos and a certain specific frequency, and you're not able to skip a lot of those units. Right. So it forces that moment. Whereas like, if you're trying to, you know, if you're trying to blast that up on paid social, I'm just gonna swipe to the next thing. But on those things, you can, you can force time.

Ash Melwani (33:40):

Are you doing like specific videos for specific retailers or is it branded? And then just saying like, Hey, find us specific this, this and this

Shray Joshi (33:49):

Specific at like now at target now at Walmart now at this. Um, and then another thing that we're doing that's at like, absolutely crushing is we do have some paid social funnels where we work with like a blog, like account or a blog channel where it's like, got it. Let's think of like, uh, target fines, Costco fines, whole foods. Does it again, target does it again, uh, you know, mom accounts that focus on like healthy products for their kids, white listing their accounts and their journey of the new product that they found in there. Holy shit just drives through like just crushes on engagement. And we drive to a landing page that is extremely experiential focused. I think for some reason, a lot of people, when they thought about, uh, the, the retail funnel, they think about it as just being like a, let's have a cool ad that has the retailer and then drive it to a store locator. None of the three of us have probably ever used a store locator and

Ash Melwani (34:44):

It's guilty.

Shray Joshi (34:45):

<laugh> <laugh>. And so, like, I, I don't know why people are necessarily optimizing towards that. We're really optimizing on like engagement and time on page. And really just trying to like earn trust in the exact same way that you went through D TOC funnel, but introducing more validation as a way to keep engagement on page to then hopefully drive that in store, um, purchase.

Rabah Rahil (35:09):

I love that. And let's jump to questions, but I have one last one for youre. Do you ever use store visits? Do you ever mobilize company budget to run store, visit campaigns that are gonna get people to come to? Like, like for example, like Ash running, you know, store visits to the vitamin shops to buy collagen or something like that, where the economics aren't necessarily great, but they could net you like, you move more product there. So maybe you get a better relationship with the retail or there, there's kind of some knock on effects of that budget, but it's not as like the crack to the top line as a, a DTC purchase. Can you gimme some color there? Yeah.

Shray Joshi (35:45):

Efficiencies definitely happening from a paid, uh, search perspective when we're doing that. Um, okay. But from a paid social perspective, I think that it it's too like niche of a like campaign objective to really focus on like single store. Because if you think about the radius that you might need to throw in that guy, five to 10 miles, you're just hitting like a huge market for like a single store. You're probably overspending to drive an additional 10 units per store per week, maybe. Um, so we, we just hit total areas and then focus more from a retailer after that, with our targeting.

Rabah Rahil (36:19):

I love it. Uh, you guys wanna go to some questions?

Shray Joshi (36:23):

Yeah, let's do. Yep.

Ash Melwani (36:25):

All

Rabah Rahil (36:25):

Right. Fantastic. All right. Let's do quickly Shree. What's your ideal checklist when creating a landing page? What are the things you need to go? Absolutely. Ready? Where, what are the check boxes that need to be checked to make sure you want to go live and you're happy with it.

Shray Joshi (36:43):

Um, first page load speed. There's nothing worse than a landing page. That's slow or janky in any capacity. Two it's like make it so easy for my thumb and my small hand to be able to click on a CT on the top, right? Or like a sticky add to cart. Like tho those two things are like the things that have the biggest impact on our Landers right off the bat. Um, and then from there it's just a healthy amount of product offer. And social validation is what does it for us. But we're seeing that like right now from a land's perspective, the content buckets, like our Listal are still doing well, advertorial is doing well, offer pages are doing well. Uh, but the, the, the, the threads through all those guys are just like page load speed, usability, easy to add to part.

Rabah Rahil (37:27):

I love it. Ash, would you add anything?

Ash Melwani (37:30):

Uh, in addition to that, I'll probably talk more about content wise, but, um, the biggest thing for, for us is following this flow of like, alright, does the traffic feel the congruency from the ad to lane page, like on the immediate load? Right. So does the banner match the angle that's on our ad? Um, do we have an offer that people are like, all right, let me get to it and see what's going on. Um, do we address the problem that people are facing that was originally why somebody clicked on the ad? Um, does we, does we, do we have the, uh, the solution? Why are we the solution? Um, do we have a lot of social presence, right. Testimonials this and that, um, while we can, for the time being, getting away with before and afters, um, and then just, just the value props, right? 30 day money back guarantee. There's a community of 50,000 people, um, free shipping and then boom, like offer. Um, and then just going straight to checkout and just kind of making that whole experience as frictionless as possible. No popups, no chat, no nothing. Um, just you click on the ad. Boom. Here's the story. Ready to go check out.

Shray Joshi (38:42):

I have a question based on that question for Ash, um, the way with which you guys are approaching landing pages, content requires so much more innovation, creativity, flow structure, you know, volume. How are you guys looking at Landers? Is it if it's not broke, you know, don't try to fix it situation where it's like, Hey, we know these landing pages are tried and true. Are you guys trying to innovate on the experience in any capacity from a design, uh, you know, experience, you know, tech stack platform? You know, how are you guys thinking about Landers in general?

Ash Melwani (39:12):

Yeah, yeah, no, that's a great question. Um, so what I do is I will kind of look around, do some like competitor analysis. See what some of these Landers are looking like across the board, put together something on our end. Um, I'll build it out on show gun, right? I mean, show gun's great. It's easy to use for me. I'm not, I'm not a coder, I'm not a developer. I can literally drag and drop a bunch of shit and create a landing page. Right. Once I try this format, right. I, I like to keep it as formatting. So like different blocks in a specific order. So that goes through, it takes the, the consumer through a journey, right? Mm-hmm, <affirmative>, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, if I'm happy with that and it's converting, right, I'm gonna move it towards the next stage of development, which is our designer is gonna make it look branded.

Ash Melwani (39:55):

Um, and then once that's done move it to development where we're gonna build it out on an actual page on trap, where speed is the biggest factor that you're changing there. Right. So once we have those finalized versions, I think then I start making iterations on show gun, where it's like, like, I'll put it up on Twitter. Like, Hey, who's got suggestions for our page. And like, I'll just take a few of the things that I like. People are mentioning, like somebody mentioned, um, smaller buy boxes where you can see all three offers on one view. Yeah. Versus right now I have one and you scroll and then another, and you scroll. And then another. So like, those things that I feel like are big enough changes to be on like version two I'll, then go and recreate on show gun. But these like try it and true.

Ash Melwani (40:41):

I try to keep it as I try to keep that. The only thing I'll probably change is maybe the main banner just refresh the, the graphic that's there, same or same like call outs and everything. But just like if one day, you know, it's, it's more of like a purple vibe or like a pink vibe. So that like 30% of our, uh, the traffic that comes there is returning, right. There's a, there's a level of retargeting happening on top of the funnel. So those are probably the more high intent people anyways. So at least give them a, a little bit more refreshed, look on the page, you know? So, I mean, hopefully that answers your question.

Shray Joshi (41:15):

That's awesome.

Rabah Rahil (41:17):

That's awesome guys. Um, okay, sure. We'll start with you. Cause you're the retail guru, um, once you're nine figures, how do you balance retail in ACOM? Are there ways that you're kind of attributing or like, how are you understanding what's moving? What for the business?

Shray Joshi (41:34):

Yeah. I think

Shray Joshi (41:36):

You run into this like leaky bucket conversation across like all accounts retailers, D to C eCommerce. Like I think it's the same thing that a lot of like, let's call it more mature eCommerce businesses deal with, which is just like, how do we deal with leaky buckets with like cross channel, um, you know, issues, which is just like, we're constantly looking. And this is like such a shitty answer, cuz it's like super obvious, but like we have just been looking at it from like a total dollars in total dollars out. Are we building total new, uh, customers? And like, what are we seeing happen from like a total marketing efficiency ratio? So not necessarily like our D to C Mer, but like what's our total cost of sale and what is that doing to our top one? We can go much deeper into it, but yeah, like we, we're seeing a shit ton of channel, like channel swapping, right?

Shray Joshi (42:25):

Like if you're a much more mature let's call retail brand, the moment that you launch in Costco, uh, a huge amount of your consumers in a majority of your revenue is gonna be coming through there cuz you just simply got it. You know, you, you're gonna always go stock up cuz of the price. It's just so good there that like especially protein, right? Like you see that the moment that a brand goes and hits that retailer, it, it completely shifts their pricing power ability across like other accounts. So you know, that you really need to lean in on that, that channel. Um, so we're, we just constantly look at T TOC as like, how does it plug in against our, our retail business? And we know that it's gonna be the thing for like all of our new product, uh, innovation, all, you know, all the fun, new flavor launches and all that stuff, but like continue to use D TOC as a thing that is like our data hub. Um, and really then just building our LTV customer bases. Once we start to lose efficiencies on like what our row as is, we're not gonna try to pump it up just for no reason. We'll really then focus it on being like a, a big LTV profitability play and then slowly scaling up just to make sure that we're winning in the key markets that we want to and then building acquisition for where it makes sense.

Rabah Rahil (43:32):

Yeah. Spot on man. Living up to your guru, your resale name. <laugh> um, let's close one more and cause I know we're both push everybody's pushing up against a hard stop today. So, um, how are we supposed to let platforms optimize if we can't trust them? If the in platform metrics are modeled in? So of course I would put this at the end drop Obama on you guys. Um, you know, Facebook's modeling all this and so on and so forth. Uh, this is from, uh, one of my faves, Jess, a hire fire team, but, uh, Taylor had a, uh, uh, interesting tweet as well on this about estimated action rates and, or basically bear bid estimated action rates and ranking in terms of how you win auctions in the total value. So, um, you guys have any thoughts here?

Ash Melwani (44:18):

Yeah, <laugh> um, I think the biggest thing people are trying to say is like, you have to use an attribution tool or you're completely dead in the water. It's like it, Facebook is still the ad platform. It still needs to get the data back. It still needs to read that data to optimize, to push it to newer people or similar people that are purchasing, you know, there's that whole, like that feedback loop that needs to happen for Facebook to be Facebook. Okay. Attribution tools is more for the marketer to understand and validate what is happening on these platforms, right? You shouldn't live and die by it, but at least validate the, the events that are happening in platform so that you can make better informed decisions. Right. So I think Jess mentioned like, oh, a CBO kind of like does or what was, I think it was like, does does triple whale kind of like make CBO nonexistent?

Ash Melwani (45:15):

And it's like, no to a degree, because one, if you are spending, if, if a CBO is spending towards one ad asset, right. And then within that ad asset, it's spending towards two ads. Okay. In platform, does it say it's doing well? Okay. Now on, on triple does, triple say it's doing well. If the answer is yes, then you've validated the fact that Facebook is doing what it's supposed to be doing. Right. If that's not the case, then you'll have to go in and probably make a couple changes so that it is in sync, right? So you're using attribution tool to validate the results that are happening in platform. And when you can sync those two up, that's when you can win. So I don't think it necessarily stops the effectiveness of CBO. Like it's a great tool to, you know, test and showcase different angles and, and use it as a way to, to run your ads. But to say that it's, it's broken now, it's, it's, it's almost like you're just, you're just using both things to validate each other. And if, if things are online, then I think you're, you're kind of, you're good. So yeah,

Shray Joshi (46:24):

That's a pretty strong answer. What would you, what would you add? Try, um, the only, yeah, the other way that we go about validating our, you know, ad platforms to outside of things like triple well, is that, you know, Ash already had talked about this. He has a, a, a new product that's or he has a product that's blacklisted, that's running towards a landing page. That's focused on new customer acquisition. And so like, we'll be able to from like an me's perspective, just see what's going on from Facebook of like, Hey, if we're, if we're scaling up, what does new customer look like day over day on that product? Like, that's been like a really awesome directional supporting line for us. Yeah. Like, yes, there's the, all of the campaigns, the model AOV, the modeled CPAs like day, like day to day, like if I went scaled up 10%, 20%, 30%, what am I seeing from a revenues perspective on that single skew? That's always a really good source of truth for us. And like what we've also been doing to really look at channel impact, um, is really doing some of these things that we call like scale up weeks where one week will really just bring up, spend on our, you know, platforms and seeing what that does to our total funnel. So it's like the, the things that you would've been doing to test new channels, you're kind of doing those things to test your day to day, um, you know, marketing your CPA and your smart.

Rabah Rahil (47:38):

Yeah. I mean, so essentially OG incrementality testing, either turn it off or turn it up and see what, what actually like people are buying. And then you can understand those channel impact, especially if you have, uh, you know, fairly, uh, uh, consolidated architecture where you don't have a bunch of variables. It's pretty, you can get a pretty good read. Now. I, I love both of those answers. I think it's spot on. The other thing that people have to remember is like, the conversion is definitely important, but the engagement rates, a bigger function of clicks and comments and so of on platform metrics. And so yes, to get them to do the terminating event is really important, but the estimated action rate isn't just purchases or signups or whatever, the off platform metric it's actually clicks and comments. So I dunno if you guys ever seen, but like you put like a dog picture.

Rabah Rahil (48:23):

I used to run ads for company called wa and we made the mistake of putting a puppy in an ad and like, it blew all of my budget, cuz people were commenting, liking it, sharing it, all these in platform metrics got zero signups. And so like the estimated action rate, isn't just the kind of terminating event. It's also gonna be those on platform signals. Um, and so, uh, you have to be kind of careful in terms of that as well, but I think your guys' answers were a little more eloquent. Um, we're pushing up against, and I promise to get you guys off sore will go to you first, let the people know where they can follow you. How can they get more involved? Are you taking more clients this time? Yours? My friend.

Shray Joshi (49:02):

<laugh> yes, we are a couple more. And then just, you can find me on Twitter, Shree VJ, S H R a Y VJ.

Rabah Rahil (49:09):

Okay, cool. And how can they get more involved with that, your agency? Where can they reach out?

Shray Joshi (49:12):

Um, it's really just, you find me on Twitter. Find me on LinkedIn that I beautiful is the two easiest ways to, to slide in

Rabah Rahil (49:19):

Getting those DMS people and then Ash with the fancy new right. Go ahead and sign off. I see, I see you mentoring everybody. Oh, you sound

Ash Melwani (49:27):

Yeah. Mentor pass has been, has been doing really well. Um, really cool calls. So, um, if you are in need of understanding what a good creative process is for your company, how to kind of put that entire thing on autopilot from, from start to from creation ideation, to setting up ads, you know, on your guide to kind of help you maneuver that. Um, but yeah, you can find me on Twitter at, as you can find Avi at vitamin shop. If you are buy one, go check it out, send me a picture. You don't have to buy it. Just send me a picture. And um, yeah, I think that's it for me

Rabah Rahil (50:09):

Two, my favorite people. Thank you. So for taking the time, um, if you do wanna get more involved with triple, we are tri triple.com and then we're on the bird at at tri or at triple geez. I'm slipping here. Um, and then sure. Are you on Metro pass yet? We need talk to Kenny. I'm

Shray Joshi (50:24):

Not, I know. Yeah, him and I, Kenny, we're having a

Rabah Rahil (50:26):

Dance off the last time we saw each other. Oh, come here. <laugh> uh, and that should have went. I have my, you should have saying it. Jason, Jason threw me the invite and I, I just snubbed him. Unbelievable. Shout out Jason Long, let pub, um, but yeah guys, and then we also have a fantastic goes out Tuesday, Thursday called well mail. You can subscribe right on our Twitter, uh, profile. Um, and that's it. That's another episode of ad spent in the books again, Trey. Thank you so much, man. We need to get you out to Austin. We'll we'll do this in person next time. It'll be fun. It'll be a good time. Awesome. All right, guys. Thanks so much for the time, Ash. We'll see you on the flip and that's it. Everybody. If you enjoyed this episode, go tell your friends to subscribe and um, if you wanna see us in person also on.

ā€

Podcast

Seasonal Marketing Playbook, Retail's Relationship With DTC, and More

March 18, 2024

51:25

Hosted By

Rabah Rahil
CMO at Triple Whale

Guests

Ash Melwani
Co-Founder & CMO of MyObvi
Shray Joshi

Episode Description

In this episode of Adspend we go over holiday marketing and seasonal marketing, how to increase aov, and the science of landing pages.

Notes & Links

šŸ“§Subscribe to Whale Mail for exclusive industry insights and in-depth marketing breakdowns: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/tripl...

ā€šŸ¦ Follow us on Twitter for Industry insights: https://twitter.com/triplewhale

ā€Follow the people featured in this episode here:

Rabah's Twitter: https://twitter.com/rabahrahil

ā€Ash's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ashvinmelwani

ā€Shray's Twitter: https://twitter.com/shrayvj

ā€Why Attribution Tools Are NEEDED in DTC Marketing.

Transcription

Ash Melwani (00:00):

I think the biggest thing people are trying to say is like, you have to use an attribution tool or you're completely dead in the water. It's like it, Facebook is still the ad platform. It still needs to get the data back. It still needs to read that data to optimize, to push it to newer people or similar people that are purchasing, you know, there's that whole, like that feedback loop that needs to happen for Facebook to be Facebook. Okay. Attribution tools is more for the marketer to understand and validate what is happening on these platforms, right? You shouldn't live and die by it, but at least validate the, the events that are happening in platform so that you can make better informed decision.

Rabah Rahil (00:47):

We're back with another episode of ads. And as you can see, we have a new guest we're actually gonna be taking on a different little format with a rotating third chair. We're gonna be bringing in crushers. And I'm with my main, with the plan as always in the fancy new studio. If I might add with the fancy new gear from the geek out Miami that he attended, let's go Ash Mowan and then fun guys. We got the man with the plan also at geek out. Also one of my favorites, we actually, we double geeked out. Now I think about it. Cause we met at geek out proper didn't we? Yeah, I totally forgot about this. Oh my gosh. But we have here to drop Dyna. What do we talking about? Dynamics the categories, a whole bunch of craziness. We're gonna talk about what to do in these kinda times. Trey, Josh. See everyone. <laugh> see that shit. We're getting professional here. We're getting professional. Here're getting we're better. We gots. We got crazy guests. Yeah. Season two. Exactly. <laugh> it's a sequel kids. Um, but I'll joking you aside, Trey, thank you so much. Um, for people that don't know you, which they should, um, kind give people kind of your background, your specialties, uh, what you've done in the past. So, um, I think the kids call this credibility indicators. Um, and then we'll start GM.

Shray Joshi (02:02):

Yeah. I don't have any issues flexing for 30 seconds, so yeah. <laugh> um, so yeah, I'm Shree, uh, founder and CEO of a company called good pees. So we're a full stack, full service marketing agency for CPG brands, you know, food beverage supplements, alcohol, uh, that are trying to scale both on digital and in retail. So I think D to C think Amazon think E retail as well as then think traditional retail. Uh I'll I'll give you the puncher soon. Not, not yet. Um, prior to that, uh, I actually used Brandside um, because most agencies actually sucked. So I used to be Brandside. I used to be the, um, head of digital and growth at a company called healthy kombucha. We just recently got acquired before that used to be the head of marketing and growth at a company called NUS, which is now simulate that like plant based chicken nugget brand. Uh, and then before that was head of digital at a company called chop Chacha that like super Vivy mantra spot that you can go to in LA and in New York. And then now, um, you know, our clients kind of range from, you know, supplement brands like cage muscle to, you know, alcohol brands like flying numbers. So, you know, we do everything in the, the better for you wellness category.

Rabah Rahil (03:12):

Amazing. Amazing. Well, thank you for coming on the show. We are super happy to have you, where do you guys wanna jump in?

Shray Joshi (03:21):

I mean,

Ash Melwani (03:21):

We see in right now.

Shray Joshi (03:23):

Yeah. <laugh> yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ash Melwani (03:27):

Uh, show you right away. I mean, I think, I think the consensus this week, I mean the week before Memorial day weekend, um, a lot of marketers are seeing some iffy performance. Um, I know we are, I mean, it was almost night and day from like Sunday to Monday and usually Mondays are like the slower days, but it was like really bad. So, I mean, what are you guys seeing? What do you think people should be focusing on? Because, I mean, I have my answer, but I wanna would love to hear what your, what your thoughts are.

Shray Joshi (03:56):

So we're, we're actually seeing like a complete split between our two like types of companies. So I think it's all about like consumer perception for how they react to Memorial day for your category. So a lot of products that are let's call it supplements, let's call it food, let's call it, um, you know, things that are more general lifestyle or house, like, you know, home products. Everybody's kind of getting ready for that like big sale moment where it's like, I'm just gonna go drop the credit card, you know, get as many points as I can and spend every single dollar that I I have. And then there is the alternative where we're actually seeing better performance, like significantly better performance for some of our like alcohol beverage stock up products where, you know, we've really shifted a lot of our messaging to two day delivery, same day delivery, you know, get it before Memorial day.

Shray Joshi (04:47):

And that's actually been kind of flipping the, the switch of like, everybody's now doing their stock up, uh, you know, earlier in the week versus when the sale drops. So, uh, that's what we're seeing, but for the brands that are hurting, uh, it's definitely not, um, helping with let's call it like all the market dynamics, CPM, skyrocketing, um, as well as just general consumer behavior, let's say like kind of pulling back a little bit, uh, cuz they're getting inundated with talks every six seconds that the market is crashing. So yeah. I mean, that's what we're seeing right now.

Ash Melwani (05:17):

So basically you're saying it's not the platforms it's truly just buying behavior right now.

Shray Joshi (05:25):

I think it's everything stacking at once. Like I think that even for the brands that are doing well, like their CPMs are still increasing month over month. Yeah. You know, quarter over quarter. I think that the, you know, those platforms are still getting more expensive. Like Snapchat earnings just came out, you know, that's gonna go and hurt Facebook. That's gonna go and hurt Google. That's gonna go then, you know, increase the, those company's objectives to try to scale revenue, which will then have them, you know, bump up their CPM. So we'll be on the receiving end of that side. Um, but I think that you guys are now running into this added layer for certain categories on the consumer pullback, um, in general with market and then even more pullback for other smaller categories or let's call 'em more niche categories for, uh, sale. So I, I would say, yeah, if you're out accounts aren't doing too hot this week, uh, kind of put through those couple of filters before you go and like freak out, thinking your business is gonna fall apart.

Ash Melwani (06:20):

<laugh> yeah, yeah, no, I mean, for us, like we were gonna launch our, I mean again, right. For those of you don't owe me, um, run a health and wellness brand collagen protein bunch of supplements. So this week was a little tough, uh, for us and, and it makes sense, right? Buying behavior is a little bit different add on market conditions and this and that and macroeconomic factors and unfortunate stories that are happening in the country right now. Um, I think the biggest thing that, like you said, to kind of make sure we're plugging up these holes where ideally we were gonna launch our Memorial day sale on the weekend. Right. But it almost seems like everyone already started like over the, over this previous weekend. So literally yesterday we kind of round up the team and said, all right, well, we need to kind of put the sale out now.

Ash Melwani (07:07):

Um, obviously everything that was due on Thursday needs to be due four hours ago. So kind of, you know, rushing and, and getting things set up. But I mean today, like honestly even switching over to the sale, like it's just not, it's not that much better. Um, you know, it's, it's still not as good as previous week and it, and, and that's the thing like even Monday, like I, I spoke to some of you guys it's like, we're seeing like a 30% drop in like conversion rate and like revenue and it, and it sucks because we're also gearing up to spend more with, you know, retail efforts and this and that. And yeah, like seasonality plays into, you know, the part of it where like, all right, it's summertime. Yeah. This is like, you know, the summer after COVID people are getting out, doing things like they don't really care about their, their health and as much anymore.

Ash Melwani (07:56):

So it's like summer is that lull for supplements. But you know, we thought we would, at least with the processes that we've put in place, um, you know, testing more creatives, landing pages, this and that. We thought that maybe we would see a little bit of like a, a dip, but not that much of a dip. So now it's a little bit worrying, but I mean, it, it total makes sense where, where it's like one thing after the other, after the other, after the other, you kind of have to like, well, what do you, what do we do now? Right. Like in your opinion, like what, what's the best way to kind of go about it if media buying, like there's only a certain amount of things you can do to hack your way not, and that too, not even hack your way, but like what can you focus on in this time?

Shray Joshi (08:36):

Yeah. So I think you said something that was really important to call out, which is like, and I think what you're seeing in Memorial day is simply a copy and paste of what was happening during black Friday last quarter. Right. So what happens at black Friday ads started way earlier. Everyone was spending more aggressively on black Friday and the impact actually for the first time ever. Um, you know, in 10 years, did black Friday do less revenue year over year. Um, and this was the, you know, lowest, I think it had been in like two or three years before that. So I think that you're starting to see that during these big sale periods, I think that consumers now that they've just been inside for so long, there isn't that like build up behind these like big, like, oh my God, I can't wait for Memorial day weekend because like, what are most of us doing?

Shray Joshi (09:23):

Probably hanging inside, maybe going for a walk, maybe hanging with some friends. So I think that those big, like, you know, spike peak moments of sales, I think we'll, we'll need to shift the way that we kind of think about 'em, but we're actually plussing up on a lot of our brands from a influencer organic product seating, activations perspective, meaning that what we're actually seeing a lot of, uh, success on is that like we have like an awesome affiliate program for, uh, one of our other program or one of our other brands. Um, these guys are in the, the beverage space. And so we just, we shipped as much product as we could to these guys to really cut through the kind of like noise and frequency and Memorial day ads to just saying like, Hey, there's this really cool thing that's going on from this brand.

Shray Joshi (10:05):

Every single cool influencer is talking about it. And like that did this for us where it's like, we're, we're taking advantage of things, like still TikTok, virality, taking advantage of things like, uh, really getting segmented with our emails and getting, you know yeah. Um, a little bit more, uh, deeper with kind of more behavioral retargeting or kind of hitting them with emails. And that's, what's like really helped. I think that, and we've actually done this for a couple of our other brands switching off of sales or switching off from the strategy of like, do we have these big, like peak moments from these big Memorial day sales and things like that and moving into like, how do we scale our evergreen acquisition as much as we can. Um, and then during those inefficient periods scale actually down, cuz we don't, we don't have to make up revenue. All of a sudden we're focusing on like what our accepted row as is, and then just spending against that as much as we can, um, while it's there. So yeah.

Ash Melwani (11:02):

Got it. So at least for us, we should probably just focus on profitability at the moment.

Shray Joshi (11:07):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fair enough. Because if you're, if you're gonna be fighting it, what it also does. Right. And like, this is the thing that I hate and love about sales is that it completely fucks up your retargeting, uh, and remarketing audiences for like the following weeks. Like you go through these like huge refractory period where now, like everybody who would've been in that purchase intent, if they didn't buy from a 20 or 30% off sale with a couple of free products, they're not going to want to with evergreen messaging. So then performance is gonna look even worse. So it's like, and, and that's not gonna help like anybody here where it's like with, with the way that we're going about it. It is just keep it up green. And like if there's those moments on email and SMS with our engaged consumers that we can pump sales, let's go for it. Or if it's a big moment for the category new year, new you, uh, things like that. That's where we'll show up big. Like that. That's where we'll go in.

Rabah Rahil (12:00):

I love that. Yeah. And just to interject Ash, sorry to cut you off. But, um, I really like the idea of that cuz when I always think about these sales, uh, in a way you're just pulling sales forward, right? And so a lot of times, not only are you gonna pull the sales forward, you're gonna pull 'em forward at a discount. Furthermore, the C is gonna be higher because you're competing against people that can actually just dump insane amounts of money into ads that don't really care. They just wanna be Omni present or so on and so forth or just have budgets that you can compete against. And so you just like when you start to do the math, it just doesn't work out. And then a lot of times the cause I love the black Friday analogy. Cause a lot of times the worst thing I see is like you give their biggest discounts to your best customers.

Rabah Rahil (12:44):

And so just like, what are you doing here? Well, what's going on. People wanna give you way more money and you're taking less money from them and you're stocking them up, which then perverts the sales cycle. So now they don't have to buy from you for another three months. And so it just totally distorts all of your economics, not to even touch on all the targeting that you're talking about of like everything just gets perverted and for what, you know what I mean, a baby bump of this and then you're so I'm with you. I think that sales are okay and promotions are great, but you really need to understand what the goal is. And like if the goal is to move top line revenue, you just need cash flow. Hey, whatever that it is, what it's, you know, every, there's no judgment there. But um, I think understanding how this impacts your profitability, um, not only now, but in the next business cycle is really important to understand how you're deploying paid media capital, and then how you kinda pricing these types of sales promotions and so on and so forth because I I've just seen so many people just go in and like, oh my God, look how good I did.

Rabah Rahil (13:43):

And then like December like to do the black Friday analogy, you know, I did so great in black Friday and then December is the worst month ever. It's like, okay, that's fine. But like, you know, make sure that you understand what you're giving up and what you're getting.

Shray Joshi (13:56):

Yeah.

Ash Melwani (13:57):

I know one point to that is what you said, right? It's like, you're literally offering a discount to people who are ready, loyal followers and VIP customers. So one thing that we wanted to do is instead of a discount, we're just trying to maybe create bundles of other products that are a little bit, probably lower movers. Right? So, uh, things that kind of resonate with the summer. So we have a detox product, a car blocker. So it's like fight the summer blow or like indulge, but at least block some carbs. So it's like, it's, it's going with the theme of what's upcoming. But then also you're not devaluing the entire, like your entire customer base where it's like, all right, well, 25% off. And it's like, well now you're gonna expect that from now till forever. So <laugh> definitely a great point there.

Rabah Rahil (14:44):

And you didn't cut into your main killers of collagen where you're moving other products where it's great, cuz like if you don't sell the product product, that's fine. And if you do sell the product in a way you're happy, cause you're moving inventory, then you probably wouldn't move otherwise. So I think that's big brand energy there.

Ash Melwani (14:58):

Yeah. Yeah. And, and the other thing I kind of mentioned this on Twitter yesterday is like, so we're always running evergreen offers. So the, the main one is 20% off and uh, two to three free gifts. Um, again, the way that we do it is that we're marking up the product price on the landing page so that when the discount hits, it's technically the same amount if you find it on the regular website, right. So we're not, we're not devaluing it in a way, whereas like people will still get it at the same price. But all we did was, is we went from special offer today to like Memorial day sale with that same offer. So one, the messaging is still tailored towards a sale, but then it's also suited for this week's theme of MDW. You know what I mean? So that's, that's the other thing that we tried to do, but obviously acquisition on that front is a little tough. Um, it helped slightly, it's obviously not gonna move the needle that much, but I mean, unfortunately we have to bring back budgets and then just focus on the retention part of it right now.

Shray Joshi (15:56):

Have you guys tracked what happened to LTV against um, slashed price, new customer intro offers versus um, sale week, same offer, same line item, price.

Ash Melwani (16:10):

Yeah. I mean this, I mean, this is where we'll figure it out, right? Yeah. So for example, last year we were running with like zero discounts, like at all, no offers, no nothing. And it was like a really good time, like up to where iOS update happened. Right? So every launch, so our whole strategy last year was we dropped a product every two weeks, new flavor expansion, this and that. And each launch did very, very well right up until our customer acquisition rate started decline in like Q4. Um, so now Q1, Q2, we're ramping back up and we're hoping that the next product launch we'd start to see those big bumps from like product launches. But again, I think that would be our test because we've all we've been acquiring customers at that like mentality of like offer. So we'll see how it does, but I mean, I have a feeling that it'll probably still do decently well, um, regardless

Shray Joshi (17:06):

You guys are also running into like seasonality where it's like mm-hmm, <affirmative>, you've probably been ripping for the past two quarters on like, uh, stock up moments, new year, new you, and now it's getting into summer and it's like your accepted Roaz should probably have like some seasonality to it to allow you guys to scale. So yeah, those are all things that are just stacking. Yeah.

Ash Melwani (17:27):

But then you change up your marketing angles, right. It's just like be summer blow, you know, like see if you can still get people to somewhat consider their health during the summer, you know? Yep. Um, but I mean, you go through it. That's, that's pretty much it and, and it really comes down to also the ads too. I mean, especially during this time, influencer marketing is so key for like these seasonal seasonal bombs, because like it's, it's not, it's not based on an algorithm. Right. It's fully based off of like, here's my referral, here's my, like, here's what I'm doing with my life. And like, I wanna share this with you. Then people are like, oh shit. Okay, fine. Like I can still incorporate this into my daily routine through the summer. And I think people need to see that happen. Whereas like the algo is like, all right, we're probably pushing right better suited products and ads to consumers at the moment.

Shray Joshi (18:16):

Something that we did on one of our brands that I'm going to try to pitch. This was not my idea. Somebody at one of those brands pitched it to us, which was we calculated the cost of doing Memorial day. So with that 20% off what we thought the CPAs would look like and what we knew our repeat rates would look like three, six months. So we know what we would know what our loss in payback would be because of that first promo, but the lower repurchase rate. And we took all of those dollars into a really big YouTube and influencer our campaign. And right now we're gonna, we're gonna beat revenue targets, um, and not having to use promos for Memorial day, which is just like it unlocked additional capital. We know that people that are coming in through influence or have a higher LTV. And so we were able to just prove that off with LTV six month payback, cuz that's how their business was working. That let's just lean in here, cuz we know that we could do a quick little sprint and that, that cut through a lot of the Memorial day noise. Pretty, pretty well.

Ash Melwani (19:12):

That's awesome. This is probably for the beverage, uh, brand, you said? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's awesome.

Rabah Rahil (19:20):

Yeah. That's super strong. I love that. I'm actually going through some analysis right now with some brands to do basically the LTV stuff coming up with, uh, I mean obviously it's a little way out, but understanding how the, uh, kind of same, same but different, but how black Friday discount, like how do those people actually materialize into LTV? Like people that use the black Friday discount codes, like are they group honors or are they literally just buying that November stock up and like, and again, it's not good or bad, it's just to your point straight, like if you can mobilize this budget and it's the same amount of budget, but one, you don't give up any sauce and you're inter penetrating another channel. And that other channel that you're getting distribution on is actually a higher LTV channel. Like it's like net, net, net, net win.

Rabah Rahil (20:04):

Like you're starting to really be able to combat some of this like Pearl clutching that we're seeing because of the, the macroeconomic headwinds. And then to your point to seasonality like the old joke of the best marketers are made in the summer because you actually have to be good. Like in the third and fourth quarter, it's such a bull market that the, as long as the fundamentals are, there're usually gonna do decent. Like there's a magnitude of decent to great, but you're usually not doing bad because the there's just so much purchase intent that you just get your butterfly head out and start grabbing.

Shray Joshi (20:34):

What are you guys doing Ash from? Like what we've been able to start to pull some more interesting data behind is like with digital, there's so much now mystification with, you know, all of our first party data, second party data. But what I think a lot of people forgot was that your retailer data is so rich, right? Basket, infinity data, uh, kind of competition data, uh, or competitor brand data, stuff like that. Uh, what we've actually been able to do with some of our other guys to, to drive some efficiencies is, uh, actually figure out what our basket affinity for our products are and then integrate that into our advertising, into the landing pages in some way, Hey, if you're stocking up for Memorial day and the image and the signage has, it's called our protein powder, uh, we'll have a couple of other things that might be in your basket that we know that your basket affinity has. Uh, like how are you guys up until this point using retailer data to kind of help, um, for you guys on D to C?

Ash Melwani (21:35):

No, it's a really good question. I mean the biggest thing with, and it's tough because like we just launched, so it's like, I don't have too much data to kind of back this up, but I, I think the biggest thing that we're trying to do right now is, and this might be kind of like away from the question, but like even bundling, right? So like the, the data that we're getting from like triple where it's like, you can see like the most like commonly added products together, what we're doing right now is at least testing, how do we one increase our AOV. Right. Um, and is the best way to do that through bundling or is it offering more of the same product? Right. So one of the tests that we're doing right now is, um, we're, we're doing a few talks where it's like, oh, I just got my AV hall.

Ash Melwani (22:24):

And instead of just talking about one product, we're gonna talk about 1, 2, 3, and it's like, this is really good for hair, skin and nails. This is really good for bloating. This is really good for sleeping. Right? Yeah. And then that going to a landing page, like you said, which is a collection of everything. So one, I mean, but again, it'll be based off of what the products people have been purchasing together and have, I guess also, you know, triple showing us, you know, these certain products have a higher LTV, but then also these products are being bundled together with this. So it's like, you get, you have like the, the answer right there where it's like, all right, well, put these together, showcase people, buying it a, you know, example on TikTok and then send 'em to a landing page, bundle builder quiz. And then that's probably probably the best bet to do it.

Shray Joshi (23:14):

You can also pull what your IRL bundles are through vitamin shop through GNC. Like we just ask our buyers, right. It's like, Hey, what are you seeing? People buy more and more of together? And like, what we're seeing is that like, Hey, a lot of people are actually now treating, uh, their supplements and kind of two let's call it buckets. One being their like total body wellness. And then two almost being like a gym wellness, you know, category of product. And so like we know that for us on like cage front, our total body wellness, wellness, like stacks are like our greens powder. Our glutamine for recovery are, you know, some of these like total wellness things. And like, we never thought of that until we just asked GNC, um, you know, our person there and they, you know, we're like, yep, we're just seeing, you know, these types of bundles just naturally happening now, more and more. And so we're, we're not gonna bring that into our creative.

Ash Melwani (24:06):

Is that something, do you see the similarity between like the retail and D TOC or I think retail kinda validating it,

Shray Joshi (24:15):

It gives you good seeds to test out on D TOC front. Um, I think that like, there's some, you know, stacks that you can only kind of like, there's like some form to that retail experience between like a vitamin shop and a GNC where like you also have that person that's there, that's kind of like pushing other products. Right. And kind of pushing those kind of bundles for you either through incentives because they genuinely just like the product. Um, so I think that that adds some amount of it, but, um, what we do is just, we, we just focus on like, what are the things that you guys are just naturally seeing happen versus what are your kind of like pushed on promo products? And we ask them to say like, what are you guys seeing, being pushed on promo more versus what's naturally occurring so that we can just try to use those as like little indicators to see if there's success. Sometimes we'll see some awesome, like, you know, success, but sometimes, you know, if I get an idea from somebody saying that they're, you know, starting to see like more herbal supplements, get bundled up together, um, I can use that as like an inspo point, but for some of our bundles, but, uh, that one failed for sure.

Rabah Rahil (25:22):

I've loved that. I've never heard of that. I'm, I'm super not hit to, I know what an end cap is. And that's kind of like the extent of my retail knowledge. So can you, for the kids out there, uh, asking for a friend, explain what basket affinity is?

Shray Joshi (25:36):

Yeah. So basket affinity is, uh, there's, there's a couple types of it, but the one that everyone, um, uses in our category is like, if you are in a grocery store and you have like your basket in hand, or like your cart, what are the things that you are throwing in your cart when you are buying, let's call it like an Avi protein powder? Like yeah. What are the things that, that people are buying? Are they buying more produce than normal people? Are they buying more, uh, like bars and wellness products? You know, whenever they're going to those retailers, uh, like what are those products that they're buying your products with? And it gives you a bunch of ideas of like number one, who that consumer is, right? Yeah. If you know that it's somebody that's buying, uh, let's call it a protein bar and those people are buying like a shit ton, more meat, more protein, more total kind of, uh, let's call like higher protein diet. Like, you know, how to message that. And you know who that consumer basis is versus let's call it your collagen protein powder, which might have more of a basket infinity towards like, produce towards, uh, like total wellness products. So yogurt,

Rabah Rahil (26:34):

Stuff like that,

Shray Joshi (26:35):

Something exactly. So tracking, it gives you ideas for how to market to people. Also, it gives you ideas of what brands should you be like partnering up with and doing activations with. Cause if there are, if there is a basket in affinity between two products, it's a no brainer. Um, and then it also gives you an ability to understand your competition's basket affinity and see how your basket infinity differentiates against those. And that then has to do a lot with like your marketing, your branding, your product positioning. So yeah, we use a lot of retail to indicate what we should be doing online.

Rabah Rahil (27:08):

And is there third parties or do you like if you have a, okay. Is there any third parties that you like that people should reach out to that have like a decent retail presence? Or how would you integrate this,

Shray Joshi (27:20):

That if you don't have a direct buyer relationship, which I would always say that those have been the most powerful for us. Okay. Numerator has been a awesome data source numerator. What it is is that it basically gets a couple million people's worth of surveys. Uh, and then it then kind of just is like a huge data dump on like every single retailer in America category brand. So long as the brand's doing like a significant amount of revenue, and you could understand who their demographics are age, uh, you know, gender income, uh, what they're buying, what other basket affinities that they have, and like also like media insights. So like we actually then use a lot of that data on top of that to then target when we are doing like geo targeted retail, uh, support. So like paid, we'll actually use that numerator data to then just give us the, uh, you know, kind of some of our buckets of like, who are the current consumer is who competitors' consumer is and then who our category consumer is. And then those will be the, the kind of, uh, let's call it data points that we use one with them, throwing those up into Facebook for geo targeted, paid social support.

Rabah Rahil (28:22):

That's incredible. Two more questions and then I'll stop being annoying. Um, one, do you ever use it inversely? Do you ever use DTC to inform retail?

Shray Joshi (28:32):

Yeah. Uh, I think we use a lot of the time DTC acts as a let's call it like weapon for us in retail. A lot of the times, number one, just to show a lot of like, uh, who our consumer is, cuz we just know who it is at this point, um, to then unlock like secondary displays, other displays, other promotional things, other like marketing and, you know, merchandising op like opportunities. So it's really just used there more as a weapon to get us better placement position, uh, or integrations with our retailers,

Rabah Rahil (29:04):

Amazing

Shray Joshi (29:04):

Or in the instance of, or selling in, then it helps us as shit to, with selling in, to set retailers.

Rabah Rahil (29:10):

Amazing. And then, um, the last question was when you have bundling at stores, are the products together or do people have, are, are the products categorical, so like would people have to go to different spots in the store to bundle or is the whole brand together? Does that make sense? What I'm saying?

Shray Joshi (29:28):

Like if it's in the instance of, um, like a big retail store and you're thinking about like the bundles that, that relates more to basket affinities in a big retail store. Okay. It's like, whether what's everything that they're buying and then if you are in like, let's call it like a GNC or like a, a wellness store like that they'll either have their own internal merchandise bundles that they're pushing or you'll just see that there are these like, Hey, I'm coming into the store because I have this problem and it's okay. What are the, the, what's the set of products that then gets pushed onto that consumer. And that's another type.

Rabah Rahil (29:58):

And then physically are the products by like, like for you Ash, are all your Avi products together or are they separated by category? Like your greens are in this category, your proteins are here and your collagens are here. So creating that bundle is a lot more friction. Does that make sense? What I'm saying?

Ash Melwani (30:15):

Yeah. Yeah. No, definitely. They're. I mean, sometimes it's spread out, right. So like hair, skin to nails college. Right. But then weight management will be on the other side, you know,

Rabah Rahil (30:24):

Tracking. Okay. How fasting, what a, what an interesting beast. Incredible. Okay. That's all, that's all my retail questions. I, I, I, I knew you were the retail beast, right. So I wanted to make sure I, uh, I hate this phrase, but pick your brain.

Shray Joshi (30:38):

<laugh> I hate,

Ash Melwani (30:39):

I got, I have one question on the retail side, right? How are you guys, or at least what are you guys doing on the digital end to support retail? Um, cause the bit, the one thing that we were doing is like, um, and I mentioned this a couple times on the pod where it's like, we're still pushing sales online, but we're giving awareness to our partners, like vitamin shop through the creative. Right. So it's like picking up, um, Avi at a vitamin shop, bringing it home, making a shake, explaining the benefits, this and that, but then obviously directing to the landing page. But like there's still that awareness of like, oh, I can still go and get it from vitamin shop. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. So I'm curious, like what are other strategies that might be great to kind of give, give us so that we can strategize too?

Shray Joshi (31:29):

<laugh> so on the paid social front, I think like continuously like scaling on the DDC front and just seeing where your GOs like land up is like a solid, um,

Ash Melwani (31:38):

Like just in general, just scaling up.

Shray Joshi (31:40):

Yeah. And I think, I think it's also like a reverse situation where you now also understand what cities you're doing well in. So use that as ammo to then go and unlock, um, you know, retailers in those specific areas because you're like, Hey, we're organically crushing here on D TOC where we look 10,000 times bigger than we actually are. And you know, let's call it ninety four, ninety 5% of people aren't buying when they go to our website. And so like let's, let's kind of fix up that leaky bucket and let's get them over. The, the reason that I say that in general is because, uh, what happens that, like, if you were to run, like let's call an upper funnel metric on paid social, let's call, you know, awareness or, you know, uh, anything engagement Facebook's now optimizing towards getting the, the right audience, right? It's it's just gonna go for frequency and it's gonna go for that CPM optimization.

Shray Joshi (32:32):

So like say that you were to do geo targeted, paid social for GNC. Like you're not gonna necessarily want to run a bunch of awareness ads over a specific area because it's just going for as many eyeballs as possible versus as many qualified eyeballs as possible. And that's where your D TOC conversion targeting will continue to do that thing for you where it's like, Hey, Facebook is optimizing towards finding the people that are most likely to buy versus optimizing the campaign objective for a number of eyeballs. So it's a quality of traffic situation. Um, but we then use other platforms. Like it's, it's not as sexy to say on a podcast with triple well, but, um, things like out like things like OTT, O L V uh, online video, Hulu, addressable, linear, those actually do super well for us in a lot of our mass chains, because I can guarantee eyeballs and I can guarantee geos and a certain specific frequency, and you're not able to skip a lot of those units. Right. So it forces that moment. Whereas like, if you're trying to, you know, if you're trying to blast that up on paid social, I'm just gonna swipe to the next thing. But on those things, you can, you can force time.

Ash Melwani (33:40):

Are you doing like specific videos for specific retailers or is it branded? And then just saying like, Hey, find us specific this, this and this

Shray Joshi (33:49):

Specific at like now at target now at Walmart now at this. Um, and then another thing that we're doing that's at like, absolutely crushing is we do have some paid social funnels where we work with like a blog, like account or a blog channel where it's like, got it. Let's think of like, uh, target fines, Costco fines, whole foods. Does it again, target does it again, uh, you know, mom accounts that focus on like healthy products for their kids, white listing their accounts and their journey of the new product that they found in there. Holy shit just drives through like just crushes on engagement. And we drive to a landing page that is extremely experiential focused. I think for some reason, a lot of people, when they thought about, uh, the, the retail funnel, they think about it as just being like a, let's have a cool ad that has the retailer and then drive it to a store locator. None of the three of us have probably ever used a store locator and

Ash Melwani (34:44):

It's guilty.

Shray Joshi (34:45):

<laugh> <laugh>. And so, like, I, I don't know why people are necessarily optimizing towards that. We're really optimizing on like engagement and time on page. And really just trying to like earn trust in the exact same way that you went through D TOC funnel, but introducing more validation as a way to keep engagement on page to then hopefully drive that in store, um, purchase.

Rabah Rahil (35:09):

I love that. And let's jump to questions, but I have one last one for youre. Do you ever use store visits? Do you ever mobilize company budget to run store, visit campaigns that are gonna get people to come to? Like, like for example, like Ash running, you know, store visits to the vitamin shops to buy collagen or something like that, where the economics aren't necessarily great, but they could net you like, you move more product there. So maybe you get a better relationship with the retail or there, there's kind of some knock on effects of that budget, but it's not as like the crack to the top line as a, a DTC purchase. Can you gimme some color there? Yeah.

Shray Joshi (35:45):

Efficiencies definitely happening from a paid, uh, search perspective when we're doing that. Um, okay. But from a paid social perspective, I think that it it's too like niche of a like campaign objective to really focus on like single store. Because if you think about the radius that you might need to throw in that guy, five to 10 miles, you're just hitting like a huge market for like a single store. You're probably overspending to drive an additional 10 units per store per week, maybe. Um, so we, we just hit total areas and then focus more from a retailer after that, with our targeting.

Rabah Rahil (36:19):

I love it. Uh, you guys wanna go to some questions?

Shray Joshi (36:23):

Yeah, let's do. Yep.

Ash Melwani (36:25):

All

Rabah Rahil (36:25):

Right. Fantastic. All right. Let's do quickly Shree. What's your ideal checklist when creating a landing page? What are the things you need to go? Absolutely. Ready? Where, what are the check boxes that need to be checked to make sure you want to go live and you're happy with it.

Shray Joshi (36:43):

Um, first page load speed. There's nothing worse than a landing page. That's slow or janky in any capacity. Two it's like make it so easy for my thumb and my small hand to be able to click on a CT on the top, right? Or like a sticky add to cart. Like tho those two things are like the things that have the biggest impact on our Landers right off the bat. Um, and then from there it's just a healthy amount of product offer. And social validation is what does it for us. But we're seeing that like right now from a land's perspective, the content buckets, like our Listal are still doing well, advertorial is doing well, offer pages are doing well. Uh, but the, the, the, the threads through all those guys are just like page load speed, usability, easy to add to part.

Rabah Rahil (37:27):

I love it. Ash, would you add anything?

Ash Melwani (37:30):

Uh, in addition to that, I'll probably talk more about content wise, but, um, the biggest thing for, for us is following this flow of like, alright, does the traffic feel the congruency from the ad to lane page, like on the immediate load? Right. So does the banner match the angle that's on our ad? Um, do we have an offer that people are like, all right, let me get to it and see what's going on. Um, do we address the problem that people are facing that was originally why somebody clicked on the ad? Um, does we, does we, do we have the, uh, the solution? Why are we the solution? Um, do we have a lot of social presence, right. Testimonials this and that, um, while we can, for the time being, getting away with before and afters, um, and then just, just the value props, right? 30 day money back guarantee. There's a community of 50,000 people, um, free shipping and then boom, like offer. Um, and then just going straight to checkout and just kind of making that whole experience as frictionless as possible. No popups, no chat, no nothing. Um, just you click on the ad. Boom. Here's the story. Ready to go check out.

Shray Joshi (38:42):

I have a question based on that question for Ash, um, the way with which you guys are approaching landing pages, content requires so much more innovation, creativity, flow structure, you know, volume. How are you guys looking at Landers? Is it if it's not broke, you know, don't try to fix it situation where it's like, Hey, we know these landing pages are tried and true. Are you guys trying to innovate on the experience in any capacity from a design, uh, you know, experience, you know, tech stack platform? You know, how are you guys thinking about Landers in general?

Ash Melwani (39:12):

Yeah, yeah, no, that's a great question. Um, so what I do is I will kind of look around, do some like competitor analysis. See what some of these Landers are looking like across the board, put together something on our end. Um, I'll build it out on show gun, right? I mean, show gun's great. It's easy to use for me. I'm not, I'm not a coder, I'm not a developer. I can literally drag and drop a bunch of shit and create a landing page. Right. Once I try this format, right. I, I like to keep it as formatting. So like different blocks in a specific order. So that goes through, it takes the, the consumer through a journey, right? Mm-hmm, <affirmative>, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, if I'm happy with that and it's converting, right, I'm gonna move it towards the next stage of development, which is our designer is gonna make it look branded.

Ash Melwani (39:55):

Um, and then once that's done move it to development where we're gonna build it out on an actual page on trap, where speed is the biggest factor that you're changing there. Right. So once we have those finalized versions, I think then I start making iterations on show gun, where it's like, like, I'll put it up on Twitter. Like, Hey, who's got suggestions for our page. And like, I'll just take a few of the things that I like. People are mentioning, like somebody mentioned, um, smaller buy boxes where you can see all three offers on one view. Yeah. Versus right now I have one and you scroll and then another, and you scroll. And then another. So like, those things that I feel like are big enough changes to be on like version two I'll, then go and recreate on show gun. But these like try it and true.

Ash Melwani (40:41):

I try to keep it as I try to keep that. The only thing I'll probably change is maybe the main banner just refresh the, the graphic that's there, same or same like call outs and everything. But just like if one day, you know, it's, it's more of like a purple vibe or like a pink vibe. So that like 30% of our, uh, the traffic that comes there is returning, right. There's a, there's a level of retargeting happening on top of the funnel. So those are probably the more high intent people anyways. So at least give them a, a little bit more refreshed, look on the page, you know? So, I mean, hopefully that answers your question.

Shray Joshi (41:15):

That's awesome.

Rabah Rahil (41:17):

That's awesome guys. Um, okay, sure. We'll start with you. Cause you're the retail guru, um, once you're nine figures, how do you balance retail in ACOM? Are there ways that you're kind of attributing or like, how are you understanding what's moving? What for the business?

Shray Joshi (41:34):

Yeah. I think

Shray Joshi (41:36):

You run into this like leaky bucket conversation across like all accounts retailers, D to C eCommerce. Like I think it's the same thing that a lot of like, let's call it more mature eCommerce businesses deal with, which is just like, how do we deal with leaky buckets with like cross channel, um, you know, issues, which is just like, we're constantly looking. And this is like such a shitty answer, cuz it's like super obvious, but like we have just been looking at it from like a total dollars in total dollars out. Are we building total new, uh, customers? And like, what are we seeing happen from like a total marketing efficiency ratio? So not necessarily like our D to C Mer, but like what's our total cost of sale and what is that doing to our top one? We can go much deeper into it, but yeah, like we, we're seeing a shit ton of channel, like channel swapping, right?

Shray Joshi (42:25):

Like if you're a much more mature let's call retail brand, the moment that you launch in Costco, uh, a huge amount of your consumers in a majority of your revenue is gonna be coming through there cuz you just simply got it. You know, you, you're gonna always go stock up cuz of the price. It's just so good there that like especially protein, right? Like you see that the moment that a brand goes and hits that retailer, it, it completely shifts their pricing power ability across like other accounts. So you know, that you really need to lean in on that, that channel. Um, so we're, we just constantly look at T TOC as like, how does it plug in against our, our retail business? And we know that it's gonna be the thing for like all of our new product, uh, innovation, all, you know, all the fun, new flavor launches and all that stuff, but like continue to use D TOC as a thing that is like our data hub. Um, and really then just building our LTV customer bases. Once we start to lose efficiencies on like what our row as is, we're not gonna try to pump it up just for no reason. We'll really then focus it on being like a, a big LTV profitability play and then slowly scaling up just to make sure that we're winning in the key markets that we want to and then building acquisition for where it makes sense.

Rabah Rahil (43:32):

Yeah. Spot on man. Living up to your guru, your resale name. <laugh> um, let's close one more and cause I know we're both push everybody's pushing up against a hard stop today. So, um, how are we supposed to let platforms optimize if we can't trust them? If the in platform metrics are modeled in? So of course I would put this at the end drop Obama on you guys. Um, you know, Facebook's modeling all this and so on and so forth. Uh, this is from, uh, one of my faves, Jess, a hire fire team, but, uh, Taylor had a, uh, uh, interesting tweet as well on this about estimated action rates and, or basically bear bid estimated action rates and ranking in terms of how you win auctions in the total value. So, um, you guys have any thoughts here?

Ash Melwani (44:18):

Yeah, <laugh> um, I think the biggest thing people are trying to say is like, you have to use an attribution tool or you're completely dead in the water. It's like it, Facebook is still the ad platform. It still needs to get the data back. It still needs to read that data to optimize, to push it to newer people or similar people that are purchasing, you know, there's that whole, like that feedback loop that needs to happen for Facebook to be Facebook. Okay. Attribution tools is more for the marketer to understand and validate what is happening on these platforms, right? You shouldn't live and die by it, but at least validate the, the events that are happening in platform so that you can make better informed decisions. Right. So I think Jess mentioned like, oh, a CBO kind of like does or what was, I think it was like, does does triple whale kind of like make CBO nonexistent?

Ash Melwani (45:15):

And it's like, no to a degree, because one, if you are spending, if, if a CBO is spending towards one ad asset, right. And then within that ad asset, it's spending towards two ads. Okay. In platform, does it say it's doing well? Okay. Now on, on triple does, triple say it's doing well. If the answer is yes, then you've validated the fact that Facebook is doing what it's supposed to be doing. Right. If that's not the case, then you'll have to go in and probably make a couple changes so that it is in sync, right? So you're using attribution tool to validate the results that are happening in platform. And when you can sync those two up, that's when you can win. So I don't think it necessarily stops the effectiveness of CBO. Like it's a great tool to, you know, test and showcase different angles and, and use it as a way to, to run your ads. But to say that it's, it's broken now, it's, it's, it's almost like you're just, you're just using both things to validate each other. And if, if things are online, then I think you're, you're kind of, you're good. So yeah,

Shray Joshi (46:24):

That's a pretty strong answer. What would you, what would you add? Try, um, the only, yeah, the other way that we go about validating our, you know, ad platforms to outside of things like triple well, is that, you know, Ash already had talked about this. He has a, a, a new product that's or he has a product that's blacklisted, that's running towards a landing page. That's focused on new customer acquisition. And so like, we'll be able to from like an me's perspective, just see what's going on from Facebook of like, Hey, if we're, if we're scaling up, what does new customer look like day over day on that product? Like, that's been like a really awesome directional supporting line for us. Yeah. Like, yes, there's the, all of the campaigns, the model AOV, the modeled CPAs like day, like day to day, like if I went scaled up 10%, 20%, 30%, what am I seeing from a revenues perspective on that single skew? That's always a really good source of truth for us. And like what we've also been doing to really look at channel impact, um, is really doing some of these things that we call like scale up weeks where one week will really just bring up, spend on our, you know, platforms and seeing what that does to our total funnel. So it's like the, the things that you would've been doing to test new channels, you're kind of doing those things to test your day to day, um, you know, marketing your CPA and your smart.

Rabah Rahil (47:38):

Yeah. I mean, so essentially OG incrementality testing, either turn it off or turn it up and see what, what actually like people are buying. And then you can understand those channel impact, especially if you have, uh, you know, fairly, uh, uh, consolidated architecture where you don't have a bunch of variables. It's pretty, you can get a pretty good read. Now. I, I love both of those answers. I think it's spot on. The other thing that people have to remember is like, the conversion is definitely important, but the engagement rates, a bigger function of clicks and comments and so of on platform metrics. And so yes, to get them to do the terminating event is really important, but the estimated action rate isn't just purchases or signups or whatever, the off platform metric it's actually clicks and comments. So I dunno if you guys ever seen, but like you put like a dog picture.

Rabah Rahil (48:23):

I used to run ads for company called wa and we made the mistake of putting a puppy in an ad and like, it blew all of my budget, cuz people were commenting, liking it, sharing it, all these in platform metrics got zero signups. And so like the estimated action rate, isn't just the kind of terminating event. It's also gonna be those on platform signals. Um, and so, uh, you have to be kind of careful in terms of that as well, but I think your guys' answers were a little more eloquent. Um, we're pushing up against, and I promise to get you guys off sore will go to you first, let the people know where they can follow you. How can they get more involved? Are you taking more clients this time? Yours? My friend.

Shray Joshi (49:02):

<laugh> yes, we are a couple more. And then just, you can find me on Twitter, Shree VJ, S H R a Y VJ.

Rabah Rahil (49:09):

Okay, cool. And how can they get more involved with that, your agency? Where can they reach out?

Shray Joshi (49:12):

Um, it's really just, you find me on Twitter. Find me on LinkedIn that I beautiful is the two easiest ways to, to slide in

Rabah Rahil (49:19):

Getting those DMS people and then Ash with the fancy new right. Go ahead and sign off. I see, I see you mentoring everybody. Oh, you sound

Ash Melwani (49:27):

Yeah. Mentor pass has been, has been doing really well. Um, really cool calls. So, um, if you are in need of understanding what a good creative process is for your company, how to kind of put that entire thing on autopilot from, from start to from creation ideation, to setting up ads, you know, on your guide to kind of help you maneuver that. Um, but yeah, you can find me on Twitter at, as you can find Avi at vitamin shop. If you are buy one, go check it out, send me a picture. You don't have to buy it. Just send me a picture. And um, yeah, I think that's it for me

Rabah Rahil (50:09):

Two, my favorite people. Thank you. So for taking the time, um, if you do wanna get more involved with triple, we are tri triple.com and then we're on the bird at at tri or at triple geez. I'm slipping here. Um, and then sure. Are you on Metro pass yet? We need talk to Kenny. I'm

Shray Joshi (50:24):

Not, I know. Yeah, him and I, Kenny, we're having a

Rabah Rahil (50:26):

Dance off the last time we saw each other. Oh, come here. <laugh> uh, and that should have went. I have my, you should have saying it. Jason, Jason threw me the invite and I, I just snubbed him. Unbelievable. Shout out Jason Long, let pub, um, but yeah guys, and then we also have a fantastic goes out Tuesday, Thursday called well mail. You can subscribe right on our Twitter, uh, profile. Um, and that's it. That's another episode of ad spent in the books again, Trey. Thank you so much, man. We need to get you out to Austin. We'll we'll do this in person next time. It'll be fun. It'll be a good time. Awesome. All right, guys. Thanks so much for the time, Ash. We'll see you on the flip and that's it. Everybody. If you enjoyed this episode, go tell your friends to subscribe and um, if you wanna see us in person also on.

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