Hey. Hope you're having a great week. We launched our holiday collection today; check it out and please buy one.
One thing I'm trying to do is get much better at talking to customers. In the next year, I want to become customer-obsessed and creator-obsessed. I'm all about trying to simplify our business into the simplest frameworks possible. I tweeted about it here.
I'm essentially trying to ask what are the big rocks we can focus on that it would be hard to fail if we did them well.
Things like making brand search go up, increasing our awareness, handing out x samples, improving our EMV, etc.
And two things I think would make it unreasonable to fail would be to become customer-obsessed and for us to become creator-obsessed. I can talk about being creator first in another one; just reply if you want me to. Today I am going to talk about our plans to be more customer-obsessed.
I simply want to get better at talking to customers. Or people. Customers and not customers. In DTC, we get so much data. But I think there is a ton of subjectivity and qualitative analysis there.
We can see all of our performance metrics, test creative, and have learnings about whar worked and what did not work.
But what I find missing is the why. And that is what I think we should be acting more on. I want to answer things like:
1. What products should we produce?
2. Why did this product launch go well and why didn't this one?
3. What is confusing about our website or digital product experience?
4. What messaging resonates and why?
Here are a few things I am planning, or already doing, to make this happen:
1. We have a FB group of 80,000 people. We regularly post in there and cherry-pick insights. But I want to formalize it . I'm going to offer a small section fo them to join a "Customer Advisory Panel". I'm on a few SAAS panels like this and they are great. I find SAAS companies are actually a million times better at this than DTC brands.
2. I'm also going to create an influencer/ creator panel. I find that creators are some of the best people to talk to because they are super aware of the online chatter about your brand and they are also super aware of the competitive landscape. They know how people feel about your brand, they know which brands are hot, and they get sent a bunch so they know how things are perceived and positioned. I highly recommend getting 10-15 of your best, most loyal creators together in a small group. Send them products early as you are working on them, get their feedback, and just have an avenue to communicate freely with them. This is what we are working on.
3. AI has made customer feedback much easier. There are a bunch of tools for AI listening, research, etc. It's now easier than ever to analyze data and sentiment in your reviews, tools like Gigbrain to scan Reddit subreddits, and more. One tool I've been loving is Listenlabs. This is not sponsored; it's just one of my favorite things. It's a cool way to automate and speed up talking to customers or potential audiences. It's like a typeform with video questions built it. The AI can ask follow up questions based on what they said; so it feels like a real conversation. And you can automate audience recruitment at a pretty low cost. I use it weekly at this point. I can create a study, select participants, and get some data back in under an hour. It then uses AI to analyze all the responses, sort the data, and give insights. I'ts been a mind-blowingly cool tool. If you dont have the budget for something like that, I'd do a lot of typeform surveys; export a CSV and pop it into Chatgpt and have a convo with it.
4. We can and should definitely use our stores better. There's probably a wealth of info and insights we are sitting on.
But I think the two thigns I am most excited about are the customer insights panel and the creator panel.
It's really simple, but I think if we make most of our decisions based on "what does our customer think about this?", we'll do pretty well.
Partner Of The Week - You know I'm a big fan of Partnership ads. We work with Superbloom and the Superaffiliate team and ae big fans as well. So I'm excited to share a brand new report they put together on Partnership Ad trends. Millions are being left on the table with Meta Partnership Ads. Not because the format doesn't work, but because operational infrastructure cannot keep up. As a Meta integration partner, Superfiliate surveyed 24 fast-growing D2C brands representing over $300 million in annual Partnership Ad spend. They wanted to understand what will unlock the next wave of growth for creator-led advertising. They shared all their findings and trends in this brand new report here. Read it to learn what trends are arising, what most teams are saying are their biggest bottlenecks, and more. Check it out here.
Hope you have a great weekend!
Cody