What Nobody Tells You About Black Friday

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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.

Now I’m back from sunny Mexico 🇲🇽. Had an amazing time with friends and family.

Topics we’ll cover today:

💠 Do You Have a Great Product?
💠 What Nobody Tells You About Black Friday
💠 Navigating DTC with a Medical Brand

Do You Have a Great Product?

Having a great product is key to success.

But nobody tells you HOW to make sure you do.

I've interviewed hundreds of brands on The DTC Insider podcast, and here's how many of them validated product-market fit.

📢 SELL IT OFFLINE

There are some benefits of selling your product offline that you don't get online.

A few of them are:

➝ Interacting with your customers

➝ Seeing what they care about your products

➝ Listening to their questions and suggestions

Then, you can use these learnings to improve your products and marketing.

Check out what the folks at FTL are doing.

🎁 GIVE IT AWAY

Some brands give away new product releases to VIP customers.

Others run giveaways or contests.

An example of brand doing this is Manmade.

👫 ASK YOUR COMMUNITY

If you have a community (ie. on a Facebook Group, Slack, or email list), use it.

Ask them what they'd want to see next.

It's what 8-figure brands like Obvi, Frost Buddy, and Look Fabulous Forever do.

🧪 BUILD A GROUP OF "TESTERS"

Some brands create a select group of customers willing to test their products before releasing them.

One brand I recall discussing this with is F-stop.

They said this was key to improving products with features they had never thought of.

🤫 BLIND-TEST IT

I love this one.

Bask Suncare blind-tested their product 63 times.

Why not 62 or 64?

Because it was then when the vast majority of people chose them over their competitors. 👏

Have you ever done any of this to make sure you have a great product?

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IN PARTNERSHIP WITH STACK INFLUENCE

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Top Amazon brands like Magic Spoon, Unilever, and MaryRuth Organics have been able to get to #1 page positioning on Amazon and increase their monthly revenue as high as 13X in as little as 2 months.

🤑 Pay influencers only with products (stop negotiating fees)

🚀 Increase external traffic Amazon sales (get to top page rankings)

📸 Get full rights image/video UGC (build your brand with authentic content)

🤖 100% automated management (don’t lift a finger to get influencer collabs at scale)

Don't believe it? Check out the results from the Blueland Micro Influencer campaign which generated a 13X ROI scaling up influencers on Amazon. After successfully raising investment on Shark Tank Blueland turned to Stack Influence to boost their Amazon sales and become a top-selling listing using Micro Influencer marketing.

Increase your Amazon listings ranking for targeted keywords before Oct Prime Day is upon us!

What Nobody Tells You About Black Friday

For most DTC businesses, Black Friday is a very big deal.

However, there's something nobody talks about.

Oftentimes, right after Black Friday, many brands not only see a huge increase in sales...

...but also a very high number of returns & exchanges.

Why do people decide to either return or exchange products?

The main reasons are:

👉 Quality issues

👉 Product doesn't match picture or description

👉 Wrong size or fit

👉 Gift exchanges

👉 Defective or damaged product

👉 Wrong product shipped

👉 Late delivery

👉 Uncomfortable or unusable

As every brand should know many of these are likely to happen, it's better to be prepared beforehand and try to do something about it.

Reducing returns & exchanges:

👉 Detailed product descriptions: provide comprehensive and accurate product descriptions, including size charts, dimensions, and specifications, to set clear expectations for customers.

👉 High-quality product images: use high-resolution images that showcase the product from multiple angles and in different contexts to give customers a realistic view.

👉 Customer reviews and ratings: encourage customers to leave reviews and ratings to provide social proof and help potential buyers make informed decisions. Ideally, the reviews include pictures of the product.

👉 Size guides: offer size guides with detailed measurements and fitting advice for clothing and apparel items.

👉 Clear return and exchange policies: have a transparent and easy-to-understand return policy displayed prominently on your website.

👉 Live chat and customer support: provide responsive customer support channels, such as live chat, to address customer questions and concerns in real-time.

👉 Product videos: create product demonstration videos to showcase the product's features, benefits, and usage.

👉 Quality control: implement quality control measures to minimize the likelihood of sending out defective or damaged products.

👉 Personalized recommendations: use customer data to make personalized product recommendations, increasing the likelihood of customers finding items they genuinely like.

👉 Offer virtual fitting rooms or augmented reality: if applicable, implement virtual fitting rooms or augmented reality features that allow customers to visualize how products will look on them.

By implementing these strategies, you can reduce the number of returns and exchanges, improve customer satisfaction, and streamline your e-commerce operations.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH CHARGEFLOW

Is your business protected against fraud this BFCM?

While most DTC merchants and operators focus on optimizing their conversion strategies for BFCM, they often overlook their fraud protection strategy.

Mastercard reported a 35% increase in eCommerce fraud during last year's BFCM period and a yearly loss of $48 billion to fraud.

Don't underestimate the importance of fraud prevention; download "The Ultimate Fraud Prevention Checklist for BFC”,  and in just 40 minutes, you’ll ensure your business is primed to protect its bottom line profit.

Navigating DTC with a Medical Brand

The ultimate way to "protect" your business from competition?

In this episode of The DTC Insider podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mathieu Mireault of Dermadry.

He mentioned this interesting concept: the MOAT, but that wasn't all we talked about...

Check this one out!

We discussed:

👉 What it’s like to be a medical company in the DTC space
👉 Achieving the first $1M in sales and scaling beyond
👉 Moving beyond Facebook as the brand's growth driver
👉 YouTube growth and building a following
👉 Focusing on increasing profit and how they’re doing it
👉 What’s next for DermaDry?
👉 Overcoming the challenge of marketing to an audience with a rarely-discussed condition
👉 The evolution of acquisition channels and key metrics measured over time

🎧 Tune in to our latest episode >

More episodes our listeners love:

💎 IQBAR’s Journey to 10,000 Locations And $50 Million with Will Nitze

💎 The Secret Sauce Behind BattlBox's Success with John Roman

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

💎 Unlocking 9-Figure Growth: The Blueprint That Transformed Two Brands with Brett Swensen

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

Work for a DTC Brand?

Can’t scale your ad campaigns without seeing a dip in performance?

At BSR Digital, we have over 10 years of experience doing 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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