I know you saw the subject line, trust me I’m stoked about today’s guest toooooo.
The President of DTC Newsletter (a newsletter revealing DTC insights for 160,000+ subscribers) and Director of Content Marketing for Pilothouse Digital, meet Eric Dyck.
From the fastest growing ad platforms right now to how YOU can takeover TikTok Shop, Eric dove headfirst into the DTC world on The Marketing Millennials Podcast.
Here’s what he had to say in his own liiiiiiightly edited words.
1. DTC Trends in 2024:
“I came from this world of performance Marketing.
I’d describe it as if you have a hammer and everything looks like a nail, meaning all opportunities look like a good case for Facebook ads.
To me, Google is the middle and bottom of the funnel, because you’re capturing intent rather than creating it through an interruptive feed (ouuu I like this take).
Whereas with Facebook and TikTok, that is top of the funnel because you’re introducing new people to your brand and converting them right away.
But I’ve been talking to more and more brands that really don’t view Facebook as top of funnel, they view it as middle or even bottom of funnel.
Once they’ve reached a certain stage they’re doing more outside of the box, top of funnel efforts like TV and PR.
There’s a lot of brands that have built themselves using social media, Facebook ads specifically. But once you get to a certain point of market penetration, it really makes sense to shift budget away from the strictly performative ad platforms and go into true top of funnel brand building awareness (YES).
Then using different tech, attribute that spend as closely as possible to quantify the halo effects that the higher funnel brand building efforts have on your lower funnel efforts.
The brands that do that well are growing faster than brands that are solely hitting the scale button on Meta.
2. 2024 is the Year of…
For brands that have plateaued or are seeing negative returns on platforms, it’s worth exploring taking bigger shots with TV (hmmm tell me more).
A theme I’m seeing across a handful of industries and brands is this stagnation of growth, so their big initiatives for 2024 are to get more efficient (efficiency is the word of 2024).
Over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, these brands I talked to felt that even to keep the same numbers, they had to do more to get the same results. They had to send more emails, spend more money, and overall be less efficient.
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2024 is the year about Marketers getting more efficient overall in their funnels, focusing on ways to maximize the value of every click.
3. The New Super Bowl Playbook:
I love what Dunkin’ Donuts did for the Super Bowl (the Dunkings 🤪).
They had their big celebrity campaign with Tom Brady and Ben Affleck, playing into the Boston raps, it CRUSHED.
But now I’m getting followed around on TikTok every 5th video with a new blooper or 20 second teaser behind the scenes from their film session.
They had these three celebrities for a day, they filmed their main commercial and then they spent another 3 hours filming a dozen other teaser videos to make more with less (the sawdust approach to content Marketing in FULL affect).
You get hit with the main narrative on the ad, and then you’re followed around with entertaining social content all the way through the weeks.
They’re extending the spot because it’s the same same characters, they paid so much for that top of funnel attention at the Super Bowl, and by extending the narrative through all of these short videos the shelf life of that investment has increased (EFFICIENT).
Uber Eats did it very well where they teased their ad, then they ran the spot during the Super Bowl, and then ran TikTok ads.
That omni-channel approach of hitting people on Twitter, while they’re on their couch watching the Super Bowl, or while they’re doomscrolling on TikTok is the new age of storytelling (retweeeeettttt).
4. The Fastest Growing Ads Platform:
Amazon ads are the fastest growing ad platform right now in terms of investment dollars pouring into it.
Amazon’s extending their ad inventory across their NFL broadcast and prime subscribers who now have commercials.
What you can do on top of funnel with Amazon ads is really interesting. I did a podcast with a mushroom coffee brand that is seeing huge top of funnel growth by going after keywords that indicate that someone is tired of the incumbent (interestinggggg).
You wouldn’t think a mushroom coffee brand would go after Folger’s audience, they’re building these campaigns where they’re being the challenger brand.
Even though it’s a totally different product, getting in the faces of people who are tired of the incumbent has been a massive growth lever.
So for 2024 I think there is an opportunity for brands to get more aggressive with the kinds of competitive keywords and spaces they’re pushing themselves into in ads.
5. TikTok Shop, What to Do:
The other thing that’s really big is the aggressiveness that TikTok Shop has come into the space on. (TikTok Shop is HUGGEEEE.)
Especially the affiliate program that they’ve created where even if you don’t have a big presence as a brand on TikTok, you can get your there and get other creators to create content about your products for an affiliate share.
The best example of this is Tabs chocolate, they blew up a few months ago on TikTok. They hacked TikTok’s affiliate program that’s now available.
They had creators sign up additional affiliate Tabs accounts and then any sales from those accounts with a specific UTM would be credited to that person.
What ensued was they had a network of like 100s of micro influencers making tabs content as secondary accounts for them (GENIUS).
It took advantage of the TikTok organic algorithm where if you make decent content, it’s one of the best places in the world to still get organic reach.
When TikTok started heating up a lot of brands felt the pressure to go in and look at it. Some have figured it out, but a lot of brands have meddled with it and backed away. If you look at usage trends, TikTok is used more than any other entertainment app at this point.
And if you look at younger people, Millennials and Gen Z that trend is even more pronounced over the years.
The TikTok affiliate program and TikTok Shop should be enough to get more brands invested into TikTok as a platform, it’s only going to grow in terms of market share over the next couple years.”
