Transcript
A (0:01)
Welcome back to Limited Supply, the podcast where we get deep into the tactical and strategic side of e commerce, digital marketing and building consumer brands. I'm your host, Nick Sharma. I've spent the last nine years building, scaling and investing in brands. And through this show and my weekly.
B (0:16)
Newsletter at Nick Co Email, I'm here.
A (0:19)
To share everything I've learned. The wins, the losses, the experiments, the.
B (0:23)
Tactics and the insights.
A (0:24)
All so you can unlock your next.
B (0:26)
Hundred thousand dollars in revenue.
A (0:28)
Today's episode is a good one, but before we dive in, let me tell you about our chosen sponsor for this week's episode.
B (0:35)
Think about your best friend and how they shop. It's vastly different than how you might shop online and you both should never get the same cart. Reminder emails. That's where Instant AI takes over. In just the last few weeks, Instant's rolled out AI flows for over 300 brands. The momentum is crazy and I've been talking on stage with liam at the Q4 summit and grow NY about it nonstop. Here's why it works. Instant can immediately understand who's on your site and what all they've been looking at. The discount, the copy, the imagery, the on site promotion, all of that's pulled dynamically into personal email flows. Then it sends it at the exact moment that the shopper is ready to buy. Don't let your retention email stay old and lame. Check out Instant AI and start tripling your email revenue. Grab a demo by October 31st and get 50% off your first 60 days at Instant One.
A (1:22)
Sharma. All right, welcome back to another episode of Limited Supply. I'm actually calling in from a remote location here today, which is why I've got a bit of a different background. But it is crunch time. We are right in the middle of our Q4 sprint, so I had to make sure that I got this one out. And today's episode is actually going to be a bit of a rant. It goes off of a newsletter, two newsletters I wrote over the last two weeks. So if you're subscribed to the newsletter, which is at Nick Co Email, then you may be somewhat familiar. But I just want to add a little bit more color. And really the topic of today's podcast as well as the last two newsletters stemmed from a client I was working with where there was just there was a desire to build landing pages, which I think there's always a desire. Anybody who's running any sort of ad traffic or Facebook traffic is always trying to run traffic to pages that are, you know, optimized. To handle that traffic, but there was just not any. You know, there was the desire to have it, but like the skill set and then the tools in order to make sure that these landing pages are being done properly with the right team and the right process and the right elements and the right modules and developed in the right way and qaed in the right way and tested the right way, and all done in a timeline that's respectable and in a cost that's respectable that wasn't there. And so it kind of inspired me to first just talk about why you need to have an efficient design process. And then I want to go into basically, how do you. What is that design process? Or at least what's the one that I use? Because I may not know your business, but I can tell you what I've done, and hopefully it'll help. So, you know, when I was at Hint Water, I started working there in 2017. And hint is a beverage company. It's a flavored water company. And the thing in beverage that you're always told is that it's a game about shelf space. It's all about the real estate on the shelf. The more shelf space you have as a beverage brand, the more sales you get. And your goal as a beverage brand is to basically dominate the aisle. That's why if you go down grocery stores, you'll notice Coke, Pepsi, and Keurig, which also owns Dr. Pebble, Snap, Dr. Pepper, Snapple. Those are kind of the three big players in beverage. On the, you know, snack side, you may have Frito Lay, which is Pepsi. They pretty much own the aisles, and they dominate the aisles. They play chess, right? When you're a beverage brand trying to get into a college football stadium, Coke or Pepsi already has that. You're a beverage brand trying to get into a baseball stadium. Coke or Pepsi already has it. You're trying to get into an airline. Coke or Pepsi already has it. If you've noticed, everywhere you go, it's Coke or Pepsi, right? You go to in n out, it's Coke or Pepsi. If you go on an Air Delta Airlines, it's Coke or Pepsi. And the whole thing is this concept of, like, well, in retail, it's called slotting. In stadiums and airlines, it's probably some combination of, you know, cutting big breaks for the actual costs and. And then paying some fee on top of it, sponsorship fee or whatever. But one thing I realized was when I got to Hint, and my job was basically director of performance marketing, was that I was way better at getting people to the digital shelf than any of these legacy brands, right? And online, none of these guys were competing with me in a way that, well, one, they could keep up, but two, in a way that was just competent. All of these large kind of CPG players are entirely focused so much on digital content or digital media, but they're not focused on driving any sort of digital sales. And because they're not driving any sort of digital sales, and because their digital stuff is usually managed by agencies and contractors, they have no real sort of feedback loop or, you know, practice that actually shows them what's working and what's not working. And so the biggest opportunity for me as a marketing person, you know, 20 years old at a beverage company, was to crack the code online and try to figure out how do we build feedback loops, how do we test faster, how do we gather data, how do we test different angles and messaging and creative? You know, when I would look at what these big guys are doing, I would think, wow, these guys are basically launching one campaign a quarter maybe, or one cam, you know, one big campaign for a big moment, and. And then they're letting it rip, and then they're testing, and then they're just basically analyzing what happened. Whereas, like, I can go into Facebook, put 96 pieces of creative using ad espresso into an ad set, run it, and within five grand to spend, I can get a pretty good idea of exactly which creative is actually working and which ones are not. Now, keep in mind, this is 2017. So much different than what you might be doing today on Facebook. The best part is that I could launch a test, and within a week I would know the messaging that works, the type of creative that works, the landing page that works, the offer that works. And within basically two to three weeks, I already run multiple tests, and I already know which one is working. I know that each test leads to new learnings and faster learnings gives me an edge in the market where consumer attention is gold, right? The website is the storefront, and I can redesign that storefront however I want. But the faster that I decide to experiment and the faster I discover what resonates with customers and what doesn't, I'm going to validate that. Speed is the strategy for me. And it was so obvious. I remember going to BevNet in 2018 and hearing from somebody that hint was one of the most advanced direct consumer businesses that existed. This was literally a year after. But it was all just about testing and learning and optimizing and not being romantic about what didn't work or what did work, but rather just using the data to go forward. The other thing was every time we would design stuff, we would actually not just design them by graphic designers, we would be designing them with designers who understood performance marketing and optimization and UX and visual identity and how to handle cold traffic versus warm traffic. What are the types of things you have to educate them on? Whether it's different benefits or value props or the hierarchy of those things in that order so that you don't confuse somebody. But most designers are not conversion focused designers and most brands who hire designers to help them with web projects are not necessarily hiring conversion focused designers to do those because they're not as easy or as accessible. You know, when I was building Sharma Brands, which we now sold to Lunar Solar, the one of the hardest roles to hire was really good, talented web designers who understood everything from design and messaging and tone of voice and ux, but also how to think about conversion and customer journey. And you know, one of the things that I realized when I was working with this brand that I mentioned at the beginning last week or two weeks ago was that when we had hired the designer, it was more of like a software UI designer for a B2B company. It was not necessarily a designer that understood how to handle a website, let alone a consumer brand website, let alone a consumer brand website that is, you know, a nine figure brand, let alone one that is also selling direct to consumer online. So all of those things put together, you sort of need to have a conversion focused design, sorry, conversion focused designer. Because no matter how much, you know, input you can give or things you can change on top, if your fundamentals don't have that kind of DNA or that thinking in it as it's being designed, it becomes very obvious to the end consumer who's basically shopping that page. Now the other thing kind of leading off of that is your designers. They need to have an understanding of how to read data and how to understand what is essentially going on as a result of the work that they're creating. So in this case we're talking about designers, but I actually think this applies to all creators. So whether you're a copywriter, whether you're a graphic designer working on static ads, whether you're a video editor making videos, whether you're a content creator, internally or externally, you should have analytics to what the creative is that you're putting out. When you can see the feedback, when the creatives can see the feedback, they're going to digest it differently than your analytical brain or your ab testing Brain or your Excel brain might. And they're going to pick up on things that can actually make this much better. In addition to that, if you can ever give them things like, you know, for example, hey, this landing page drove a bunch of questions. We should take these questions in, internalize them, answer them, and then put them in the content so they get answered before somebody has them. Any of that kind of stuff always helps. Now, the last thing before I get into kind of my process is I just want to go through the five question framework, which I've always used. And this is basically the five questions I always ask. And essentially the way I like to do it is basically answer these five questions over and over and over again. So, you know, any good landing page, I always think of a good landing page. It's like a red carpet where you're walking Kim Kardashian down the aisle or down the carpet and you near her are the assistant. So it's on you to have all the answers at all times, you know, basically ready to go. Right? So that said, the way I like to build, the easiest way to build landing pages for me is just answer these five questions in as many different ways and modules and content displays and graphics as possible. The first one is what is the product? So don't assume your visitor magically knows what it is. You have to tell them very clearly and very simply what you're selling, because a confused person will never convert. The next one is why does this exist? What gap in the market or customer pain point are you addressing here? You want to basically answer what does this brand deserve to exist at every touch point? How will it benefit me? So this is pretty. This is probably the most important one. This essentially tells your customer this is exactly how you're going to benefit when you consume or use or take or buy this product. It's not value props. It's not that this is a nonstick pan. It's not that this is Teflon fee free. It's that you can use less oil when you cook because it's nonstick. It's that it's easier to clean and put away because it's nonstick. You understand how it's benefits versus value props. Fourth one is how fast do I get it? A lot of performance marketing brands do this one. Well, it basically says like how, how many days till the order ships? When is the order going to be delivered? You know, there's apps like Pretty Damn Quick that exist that help you do this, but sometimes just as simple as adding that messaging near your cta, your add to cart button, or your buy now button, or even in the checkout itself about when the order shipping, when it's going to arrive. You know, I always have this thing I like to do too where in my shipping rules, shipping rules are just like named by whoever, your admin or your ops person. You can just change that to be like, you know, VIP shipping in parentheses ships in 24 hours. That's going to get a higher conversion, obviously. And then the last one is why should I trust this brand? So how do I know that this brand is legit and that this, that this product is going to live up to its promises? This is where all of the social proof comes in, whether it's customer reviews, testimonials, press logos, endorsements, trust badges, awards, certifications, etc. Etc. Etc. Now these are all kind of the thoughts that come to mind as I get toward the process of how I build landing pages. But one quick thought before we get into that is that your design process as a brand in order to build landing pages quickly is a competitive moat. If you look at some of the fastest scaling supplement brands, whether it's Groons or Create or Armor or Cowboy, Colostrum, whatever it is, ima. I mean all these brands are examples of companies that have been built off the back of Facebook ads. And how well by perfecting their messaging, their angle, which could be seen as the same thing, they're creative and then their offer. And when I say offer, I essentially mean anything that is basically in a post, click, post, ad, click, experience. So when you click the ad, you get to the website, you get to a landing page. All these brands I just mentioned are all running landing pages and multiple variations of landing pages. You'll see that they have some similarities. Like if you go to Groons or Armor, you'll see they have some similarities, but for the most part they're pretty much all running their own landing pages. IM eight when we built that site, we built it as a conversion machine. So majority of that traffic actually goes to PDPs and converts pretty well. But all that said, there's, there's a, like the ability for you to build really high quality landing pages in short amounts of time and to have an idea Monday and get something live by Thursday or Friday is going to be a moat. It's the reason why some of these brands have been able to become category leaders within, you know, a year or two. It's because they're so fast at doing it. They're so good at doing it, they've got a process down and it allows them to get ahead. Okay, so I'm going to talk about.