How to Turn This Brand Around, TikTok Is Developing a 'New Instagram', and More

Welcome to this issue of The DTC Insider newsletter. 👋

If you're new to our community, welcome! We'll send you weekly emails, every Wednesday, trying our best to deliver great value to your inbox.

Topics we’ll cover today:

💠 How This Brand Can Turn Around a 3-Year Revenue Plateau

💠 Is TikTok Developing a New App to Rival Instagram?

💠 Skip the Ship, Unlock Cashflow and Scale Globally in Less Time

How This Brand Can Turn Around a 3-Year Revenue Plateau

This yoga apparel brand has been in a revenue plateau for the last 3 years.

Which, as you might think, is generating a lot of frustration for them.

After they reached out to our team at BSR Digital, we ran a thorough audit and found some big reasons for that. These were the top two:

👉 No increase in AOV: It's been the same for the last 3 years 🤯

👉 Lack of new customer acquisition strategy: new customers have always represented around 50% of the total customers.

Now that we started working with this brand, here's what we plan to do to turn things around:

Client acquisition:

Some of the high-level actions we'll implement are the following:

👉 Ramp up ad spend: they've been spending the same for the last 3 years, with a good performance. So, it makes sense to scale this up.

👉 Test new channels: they've been spending only a low % of the total budget on Google. So we're planning on scaling this up as well, before testing TikTok or any other channel.

👉 Message diversification: their current ads are primarily UGC videos highlighting product benefits. That's it. So, it's key to diversify the message, by addressing their pain points, emotional benefits, and many other things that can improve performance. This is a highly-underrated way to scale. Remember that a segment of your audience will respond to a certain message, so the more variety, the more chances to trigger more people.

Boost AOV:

We've been covering this in some previous editions of the newsletter.

But I'll do a quick recap specifically for this brand, as it's really important to get this dialed in:

👉 Incentivize larger orders: we'll encourage their customers to buy more of what they bought (ie. different colors), and also combine products that typically go together by analyzing the Cart report on Shopify.

👉 Bundles: we'll likely test different options here, with products that go together, or buying 3 of the same in different colors.

👉 Free Shipping thresholds: this is a tricky one, but it's definitely worth testing.

👉 Gamified cart: ie. "You're $X away from a gift".

👉 Thank-you page offers.

👉 High-affinity products

Anything else you’d add?

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If you own or work for a DTC brand and feel frustrated by not being able to achieve your goals, feel free to book a discovery call and we'll see how we can help.

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Is TikTok Developing a New App to Rival Instagram?

TikTok is stepping up its game with reports of a forthcoming app aiming to challenge Instagram.

Hints within TikTok's code suggest a new app named "TikTok Photos" may be in the works.

Users might soon see prompts encouraging sharing still images to connect with like-minded individuals.

Why does this matter?

Marketers could gain another avenue to reach Gen Z if TikTok introduces a rival to Instagram.

How did people find out?

Developers found a welcome message teasing the arrival of "TikTok Photos".

The new app could automatically sync public photos, potentially broadening users' reach.

Btw, in case you don't remember, TikTok introduced a "photo mode" for still images in-stream back in 2022.

Recent pushes encourage more photo sharing, hinting at their potential for engagement.

Plus, Xiaohongshu's success with eCommerce in China could inspire TikTok's move as well.

ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, might aim to replicate this success in the global market.

And with potential U.S. bans looming, TikTok may fast-track its new platform's launch.

Skip the Ship, Unlock Cashflow and Scale Globally in Less Time

In today's episode of The DTC Insider podcast, Brian Roisentul interviews Izzy Rosenzweig.

He is a veteran of the DTC industry for over 10 years who gained recognition by launching his first DTC company, Browze, in 2012.

Browze, specializing in home and kitchen products, successfully delivered over 2.5 million packages worldwide.

After opening his own China-based fulfillment center to improve customer experience, Izzy recognized an opportunity to assist other ecommerce brands with direct shipping to their customers, leading to the birth of Portless.

With Portless, Izzy aims to revolutionize the e-commerce industry by massively improving cash flow and profit margins through direct fulfillment.

On this episode of The DTC Insider podcast, we discussed:

👉 Common pitfalls in DTC profitability

👉 Strategies for improving profitability through logistics

👉 Enhancing cash flow through operational efficiencies

👉 The critical role of a reliable 3PL provider

👉 Understanding Section 321 and its benefits for DTC brands

👉 Advice for brands starting manufacturing in China

👉 Simplifying international expansion with Portless

👉 Future endeavors and growth plans for Portless

🎧 Tune in to our latest episode: https://thedtcinsider.com/c/podcast

Want to check out more podcast episodes?

Here are some of the top-listened episodes:

💎 Supplement Brand Bootstrapped $10,000 and Built It Into Sales of $30 Million in Three Years with Ronak Shah

💎 LinkedIn's "Top E-Commerce Voice" Reveals The #1 Struggle for DTC Brands with Neal Goyal

💎 Jon Loomer’s Take on the Evolution of Paid Ads and The Importance of Short-form Video with Jon Loomer

💎 How Frost Buddy Went From $0 to $30M in Under 3 Years with Brock Mammoser

💎 Give Up Your Stuff, Not Your Dream with Jules Weldon and Stacey Pierce

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