TikTok is important to direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands because it allows them to showcase products, create engaging content and advertise to a wider audience. Three key takeaways: TikTok offers unique opportunities for brands to connect with customers in a fun and engaging way. DTC brands can utilize TikTok advertising options to drive traffic to their website or e-commerce platform. Incorporating social media planning tools like Plann can help DTC brands create a consistent content calendar and track their social media performance.

In this episode, we speak with Dan Bischoff and Chris Knudsen, partners of Stoic Yeti, an ad agency for DTC brands. They share their experience with the growth of Purple Mattress from a startup to a public company, including how they helped with the go-to-market strategy and scaled with paid ads. The conversation covers a wide-range of marketing topics, including: - Explore how to customize online shopping experiences - Find out why simplicity is key to conversion rates - Discover the importance of mapping out messaging throughout the customer journey

Tray Brunner is the co-founder of two seven-figure brands: Bamboo Ave and Vybe Interior. Bamboo Ave sells sustainable athleisure clothing, including shorts, t-shirts, and soon, joggers and women's clothing. Vybe Interior is a home decor brand that sells canvas art in the US and focuses on partnering with artists to bring their art to the US at affordable prices. After living in Bali for two years and growing their businesses, Tray recently moved to Austin, Texas to network, meet new people, and continue growing their brands. Trey discussed the process of starting Bamboo Ave and the importance of getting started and learning along the way. He also touched on the brand's focus on sustainability and building products for people who live intentionally. "We're trying to build products for people who just kind of are intentional about the way that they live," Trey said. "We're focusing on trying to be as sustainable as possible, but we just try to be a fun brand for people who don't live a cookie cutter life."

Kiril Kirilov is the CEO and Co-founder of Rush, a shipment tracking software designed for Shopify merchants. It automates the shipment tracking process on all fronts, so you never have to worry about losing customers again. Rush helps ecommerce sellers and agencies increase their average order value (AOV), customer lifetime value (CLTV), and lower support costs by 90%. Kiril began his career in the ecommerce space in 2008 as an eBay seller before transitioning to Amazon fulfillment in 2014. He has a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering and a Master of Business Administration in business and corporate communications. Kiril was a national track and field champion of the Balkans, having competed in the sport for 11 years. In this episode, we learn how Kiril sees merchants increase repurchase rates, the ideal post-purchase messaging, and tactics to increase customer lifetime value.

Shopify Apps are the backbone of a Shopify merchant’s revenue. And as Director of Marketing at LTV SaaS Fund, Deb Mecca oversees that marketing and growth of 10 Shopify Apps in various niches and has been in the Shopify ecosystem for 8 years. If you are a Shopify App developer or marketer, this is a unique episode that you won’t want to miss. Learn how to address (and change) negative reviews, which channels work for customer acquisition, and where there are new opportunities in the Shopify App ecosystem now!

Eric Melchor is the Personalization Ambassador at Optimonk, helping brands build personalized experiences. Optimonk helps eCommerce brands improve the end-to-end shopping experience and build customer lifetime value with personalization. Personalization has a direct tie to increased revenue and increased sales. Customers want to receive personalized experiences, yet marketers struggle to deliver on the promise of a personalized shopping experience. Eric is deep in the personalization of eCommerce marketing strategies, and shares how brands can increase their opt in rate, implement a personalization strategy, and plan for the changing marketing landscape in light of consumer privacy restrictions.

Billy Price is the co-founder of BILLY Footwear, a shoewear company that was started after suffering a spinal cord injury as a teenager. They currently are doing over seven figures in revenue with 20+ full-time employees. BILLY Footwear quickly became a prototype to fulfill Billy’s personal needs and help those like him, and is now featured in hundreds of stores like Nordstrom and Zappos.

Will Perry is the CEO+CMO of REASON Agency, an eCommerce growth consultancy. He is dedicated to accelerating growth for eCommerce businesses through 13 years of experience and REASON’s unique and unequaled optimization strategies. Will has mastered how to create a profitable funnel – between testing the right creative, messaging, audiences and follow up sequences. There are so many nuances to setting up an ad funnel that scales profitably. Will has done it countless times, and shares his expertise in detail.

Danavir Sarria is the Founder of SupplyDrop, The Email Marketing Agency 8 Figure Brands Recommend. He helps ecommerce brands drive up to 30% of their total revenue from email marketing, by using advanced strategies like high frequency email sends, objection-based creative, and quarterly email calendaring. He is a wealth of knowledge about email and Klaviyo in particular, so this was a fun conversation to get into the weeds of how to set up email marketing content calendars, how to stand out from competitive inboxes, and how to overcome customer objections.

Brian Eberman is currently the CEO of Zeenk, an actionable analytics company for e-commerce sellers. Zeenk provides companies with the forecasts, insights, and operating data they need to run their growing business across multiple sales and advertising channels. He has run multiple e-commerce companies, data analytics focused business, and has deep experience in AI and Robotics. Brian holds thirteen patents in Speech Technology, Internet Search, and Robotics along with a Ph.D., M.S., and Bachelor’s Degrees from MIT. In this convo, we discuss: - Brian’s assessment of DTC trends today, and the strategies brands are deploying to succeed in a challenging climate - How the impact of privacy changes on DTC brands has impacted advertising platforms and Acquisition costs - The importance of customer lifetime value to emerging brands, and how these brands managing and optimizing their business against this?

Tim Swindle and Scott Brown are both 8 figure entrepreneurs with experience in  launching, buying, growing and selling outdoor and board games-focused companies. And they are in the very earliest stages of launching an entirely new outdoor game: PaddleSmash. PaddleSmash is a new outdoor game that combines the best elements of Pickleball and Roundnet into a fun and easy-to-learn game. Tim and Scott share their progress in creating the concept, designing prototypes, and their progress and strategy in the earliest stages of building a brand new company, and sport! This is a fascinating conversation with experienced entrepreneurs launching an ambitious and exciting new product!

Simon Severino is the author of "Strategy Sprints" and CEO of the consulting firm Strategy Sprints and has worked with teams at Google, Roche, BMW, Crayon and more. Simon has created the Strategy Sprints® Method that doubles revenue in 90 days by getting owners out of the weeds. The focus is on working smarter, not longer. The Strategy Sprints are a blueprint to increase your effectiveness, grow your revenue and secure business resilience. Simon’s "Sprints" method shows you how to transform your business with 12 assignments or "sprints" that will make you more impactful as a business leader, grow your revenue and make your strategy execution rock. In this conversation, he introduces the concepts and some tactical ways to apply this to your business.

Anne Zuckerman is the President of Edith's, Inc, a company developed as an extension of a retail business. After her mother's passing, Anne, with the help of an engineer, developed and got the patent for Bezi Bra Discs, an intimate accessory to camouflage protrusion. Anne and her company Edith's, own the patent as well as the molds for Bezi Bra Discs, which are manufactured in the US and sold throughout the US both wholesale as well as retail direct to consumer.

Andrew Maffettone is the Founder/CEO of BlueTuskr, a full-service marketing agency for e-commerce sellers that helps brands expand their reach through robust digital strategies, targeted media-buying, and data-driven analysis. In this conversation, we talk about how to set up a marketing operation that scales, how to effectively be omnichannel, and how to capture customer data even if Amazon doesn’t want you to have it.

Jordan West is co-founder of Little & Lively, a children’s clothing brand that is one of the leading baby brands in Canada. And as Founder of ecommerce agency upGrowth Commerce, Jordan is on the bleeding edge of digital marketing strategies. With acquisition costs rising, Jordan has uncovered a new strategy – Google’s Performance Max. This was a fascinating gem to discuss, as it leverages so many data points that Google has on consumers.

Daniel is Founder at Email Composed, a leading email agency focused on helping eCommerce brands boost their revenue, customer lifetime value and engagement, by utilizing advanced email marketing strategies and automations. Daniel shares tactical approaches to extracing more revenue from email marketing, while maintaining a cutsomer experience that keeps LTV high. If you’re looking to boost your email revenue with a bigger impact and greater scale, this is a great episode to get started! Email Composed: https://www.emailcomposed.com/

Brad Hoos is CEO of The Outloud Group, a leading influencer marketing agency that works with brands like Care/Of, Keeps, KiwiCo and more. He is also the Founder of MuskOx, and DTC apparel brand. And after working with hundreds of innovative online brands, he is an expert at creating a scalable strategy to leverage influencer marketing. In this convo, we get into the details of how he creates the strategy and execution of his influencer campaigns: - What are the fundamentals that marketers should understand about influencers? - The cost structure of an influencer campaign, and how to get the highest ROI possible - What leads to an influencer campaign performing well vs poorly?

Live shopping is still in its infancy, but it is going to be very big. Live shopping events generated an estimated $5.6 billion in US sales in 2020, and projected to reach $25 billion by 2023, according to Coresight Research, a firm that specializes in retail and technology. According to McKinsey, live video shopping could contribute up to 20% of all ecommerce by 2026, if China is any indication of what is to come in the US. In this conversation, I spoke with Sarah Williams, a Shoppable Livestream Host & Producer and Brand Educator for T3 Hair Tools, a line of haircare products. As an experienced practitioner, Sarah shared her playbook for creating effective live streams: - How she prepares content and frameworks to run multiple live streams every week - How she effectively tells the brand story and product story to connect with customers - What tools and equipment she uses now, and what the beginner live streamer needs

Raul Galera is the Chief Advocate at ReferralCandy, the #1 referral program platform online. Referrals are the key for a lot of ecommerce brands, especially as acquisition costs and advertising costs continue to skyrocket. It’s why brands like Harry’s razors have gathered 100K emails in a single week. In this conversation, Raul and I dive into the strategies that ecommerce brands use to create a good (or bad) referral program. What I loved about this is that Raul is numbers driven. In fact, referral marketing is all about numbers – understanding what profit margins are, what can be offered as a discount or incentive, and how to track the contributions of your referral marketing. Referral Candy has helped over 30,000 customers since its founding a decade ago, with over $10M in annual revenue. What’s even more cool is that since then they’ve paid out over $300M in referral commissions to clients.

Do you view your customer support as a cost center or revenue driver? Depending on how you view it, there can be huge opportunities to create customer experiences that actually generate profit for your business. GQ Fu is CEO and Co-Founder of LTVplus, an outsourcing service for Direct-To-Consumer brands. GQ has created systems to scale support teams, that are available 24/7 and focused on increasing customer satisfaction, increasing sales and conversion rates. Some topics covered in this conversation: - The different stages, and methods, to scale up customer support - How to create a truly exceptional customer experience - How to incentivize customers to become ambassadors and share word of mouth