Google Won’t Phase Out Third-Party Cookies

Your weekly dose of best practices for building a successful DTC brand.

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The DTC Insider
July 24, 2024

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Welcome to this issue of The DTC Insider newsletter. 👋

We strive to deliver the latest growth marketing news and trends in the DTC space straight to your inbox every Wednesday.

Topics we’ll cover today:

💠 What Successful DTC Brands Have in Common
💠 Google Won’t Phase Out Third-Party Cookies
💠 How This Brand is Empowering Lives Through Athleisure

What Successful DTC Brands Have in Common

I've interviewed over 100 successful DTC founders and directors on my podcast, and these are some common elements I found:

💎 Offer a product their customers actually want
🤝 Clear values and unique value propositions
💰 Know their numbers very well
😜 Have a unique personality
🤯 Create a WOW customer experience
📦 Forecast inventory to avoid overstocking or running out
🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Awesome team, with the right headcount
🤓 Leverage a similar tech stack

Let's go through each of them:

💎 OFFER A PRODUCT THEIR CUSTOMERS ACTUALLY WANT

This sounds straightforward, but it's not.

Many times, brands need to release a batch of products and make improvements, leveraging customer feedback, before producing more and scaling their business.

Sounds logical, right?

Yet many companies don't operate this way.

Which leads to offering products nobody really wants.

🤝 CLEAR CORE VALUES AND UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITIONS (UVPs)

First off, if you haven't read the book Traction, go read it to better understand this concept and why it matters.

Why should a company have core values?

They'll help you, among other things, with:

  1. New hires: you'll get a better idea on what questions to ask, and whether the candidate is a good or bad fit for the company.

  2. Your team: you'd want to build a team aligned with your core values and company culture. So defining them will give you more tools to assess if someone is not a good fit for your company after all.

  3. Clients & vendors: these two also need to be aligned with your values.

Btw, some people I've interviewed had their core values written on the wall.

That's how important this is to them.

What about UVPs?

It's basically what makes you different from your competition.

Maybe it's better fabrics, a faster/better service, sustainability, or something different that makes you stand out and become a better choice for the consumers.

💰 KNOW THEIR NUMBERS VERY WELL

Although this may not be perfect, I can almost guarantee that they keep track of more metrics, more often, and more accurately than non-successful brands.

😜 HAVE A UNIQUE PERSONALITY

Let's be honest: Many companies offer products that are also available from other brands.

And one of the ways to stand out is by having a unique personality.

Take this example:

The typical men's underwear brands use models to showcase their products and content on social media.

Yet, this brand I interviewed a few months ago, took a disruptive approach.

The four founders are the face of the brand.

In fact, they first tested models, and this works best.

Why?

People feel a deeper connection when the brand is "more human".

Plus, they are fun and create funny content on social media, that makes people engaged.

🤯 CREATE A WOW CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

I discussed this with a former Disney executive focused on "Disnifying" the customer experience.

That means, mapping out your processes and adding a "wow" factor.

Let's see a few examples in the DTC space:

A founder told me he personally calls their customers to ask how they feel about their products.

Some others send them personalized, hand-written, thank-you notes. A different one in each order.

Other brands select a group of VIP customers and give them products away to test & give feedback to improve it before its public release.

Finally, some brands even ask their loyal customers (or even their fan base) what products they'd like to see next, and they go ahead and create the top-voted ones.

📦 FORECAST INVENTORY TO AVOID OVERSTOCKING OR RUNNING OUT

An 8-figure company I've recently interviewed said they didn't properly forecast their inventory for Q4 2022 and ran out of stock too soon.

Causing a huge impact on sales, as you can imagine.

On the flip side, some brands order way more inventory than they can sell with their sales & marketing strategies, among other factors, causing cashflow issues.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 AWESOME TEAM, WITH THE RIGHT HEADCOUNT

Having the right people, in the right seats, is very important for brands.

The book I mentioned above, Traction, talks about this in-depth.

Having the right headcount is equally important.

If you overhire, you'll end up hurting your bottom line.

🤓 LEVERAGE A SIMILAR TECH STACK

Most successful brands I've interviewed use a similar tech stack for different purposes.

Here's the list I've put together:

KnoCommerce: for post-purchase surveys
Tapcart: for building a mobile app
Rebuy / AfterSell: to capture repeat purchases
Recharge: for subscriptions
JudgeMe / Okendo: for Shopify reviews and more
Aftership / Malomo: improving the order tracking experience
Twik: product catalog sorting tool through AI
Klaviyo / Sendlane: for email marketing
Attentive / Postscript: for SMS
Zipify/AfterSell: Up/Cross-sells
Replo (YC S21) / Shogun / GemPages: landing pages
Archive: UGC Gathering
Triple Whale / Northbeam: analytics
Gorgias: for customer support
FlexReturns: for returns
Numeral: Tax Compliance
Finaloop: P&L + Bookkeeping
Parker: Credit Card
Retention: email list growth
Viralsweep: for giveaways

Google Won’t Phase Out Third-Party Cookies

Yep...that's right.

After more than four years of promising to do so, Google won't deprecate third-party cookies.

They'll introduce a new experience in Chrome, instead.

This whole thing suggests Google is trying to balance privacy concerns with the needs of the ad industry and its own business model.

It's still unclear what they'll implement in replacement, but at least we know they won't get rid of cookies.

Hey Apple...don't you want to do the same with iOS14? Advertisers wouldn't be mad if you rolled it back. 😅

How This Brand is Empowering Lives Through Athleisure

Are you obsessed with attribution to track what works?

There's a better way (and less frustrating!). 💡

😇 In a perfect world, consumers buy after 1 touchpoint.

😬 In the real world, there are multiple ones.

Is it okay to try to understand how many purchases come from each source? 🤔

Definitely.

Is that data going to be accurate?

No. 😱

Why?

👉 The massive loss of data after iOS14.

👉 Which touchpoint is responsible for the purchase?

👉 Data on the ad platforms is statistically modeled, and attribution platforms are not that accurate either.

However, there are many other things brands could be doing. 💡

Want to know which ones?

I discussed it at length with Ryan Berg at The Aruna Project on this episode of The DTC Insider podcast.

Check it out!

We discussed:

👉 Current struggles faced by brands
👉 Ongoing impact of 2023 manufacturing issues into 2024
👉 Challenges with customer acquisition and attribution
👉 Corporate gifting: big companies purchasing products
👉 Successful retention strategies and loyalty program
👉 Storytelling challenges for Aruna Project
👉 Key metrics and their evolution as the company grew
👉 Focus areas within the company
👉 Leveraging both short and long-form content in marketing strategies
👉 Future plans for Aruna Project

🎧 Tune in!

Have you heard these top-listened episodes?

💎 Navigating Growth Beyond Your Niche with Podium Nutrition’s CMO

Also Happening in the DTC space:

Work for a DTC Brand?

Do you own or work for a DTC brand and are feeling a bit stuck in your brand's growth journey?

You’re not alone. It’s 2024 and brands need something different to keep growing.

At BSR Digital, we understand that, and that’s the main reason our clients see anywhere from 36% to 77% increase in revenue and profit within the first 6 months of working with us.

If you're ready to shake things up and turbocharge your growth, let's chat!

Book a discovery call with us, and let's brainstorm some game-changing ideas together.

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