📦 - Liquid Death’s Highest Bidder Is... 🥁

DTC 498 - And The Winner Is…, OOH Marketing, Outway Learnings, Increase Website Traffic Wednesday, February 21, 2024 The answer: it ain’t easy… Good morning, Walmart made headlines a few months ago when they were gunning for a piece of the ecommerce marketplace pie. Bezos wasn’t shaking in his boots quite yet, but Walmart’s newest brand to be acquired shows they’re not slowing down. The proposed acquisition of TV brand Vizio and its SmartCast Operating System would give Walmart a strategic expansion into premium in-home video advertising. Despite Walmart Connect's (Walmart’s in-house advertising platform) growth, with a 22% revenue increase in Q4 and a 30% full-year increase, Walmart's global ad business still trails behind Amazon's ad sales. Here’s what you’ll find in today’s DTC: - We speak with sock brand Outway on why simplifying is the key to scaling your business - Okay, so you’ve mastered on-screen ads… Are you ready to get inspired to take the leap to out of home? - And…here’s an easy way to increase website traffic if people are searching for your ‘brand name + discounts’ You’re reading this newsletter along with new subscribers from: Welly, Canned Wine Co, Calendar Club, and Slick Hair Company. 👋 PARTNERSHIP 🚀 The Right Team Can Make Or Break Your Brand * 💥 2024 is already proving to be a wild year. Are you confident that you have the absolute best team around you and your brand? If you feel that: - Your current agency isn’t completely focused on what actually moves the needle - They aren’t truly aligned to your ROI goals - They’re leaving your money on the table - Or maybe you’re just looking for a second option We should chat… 👇 [Pilothouse]( (DTC’s sister company) has a few spots open and are looking for 3 brands to sink their teeth into. They’re hungry problem solvers, ROAS generators, and partners in your growth, right down to your bottom line. 🤔 Sound interesting? [Chat with someone on the team now]( - no obligation. Pilothouse makes money when you do. THE RESULTS ARE IN 🪙 Coinbase Wins Highest Bidder on Liquid Death’s Advertising Auction Remember Coinbase’s iconic Super Bowl ad from 2022? Their colorful QR code bouncing around the screen garnered tons of attention both during the show and online. You may not have seen Coinbase in this year’s Super Bowl, but they’re about to be seen by millions of shoppers. 🥁🥁🥁 That’s right, Coinbase is the winner of Liquid Death’s advertising bid. The auction for advertising space on Liquid Death's packaging saw bids quickly rise to hundreds of thousands of dollars, ultimately won by Coinbase with a $500,114 bid. This bid ranks as the ninth-highest sum ever paid for an eBay item. With all said and done, Coinbase will pay roughly $1 per unit to advertise on the half a million Liquid Death cases. What will Coinbase do with their strategic business move and creative freedom? We’ll have to wait and see. 👀 PODCAST 🎧 Outway’s Taylor Fraser on Simplifying to Scale Ecommerce In this episode of the pod, we catch up with Taylor Fraser, the VP of Marketing behind the innovative sock brand [Outway.]( Taylor shares his biggest learning from 2023 is the power of simplification and returning to fundamentals in business. We discuss how Outway navigated the challenges of rapid growth in a post-pandemic landscape, the importance of cutting back on complexity, and the strategic decision to focus on what truly drives sales. In this podcast, we cover: - Why data-driven decision-making is important for improving operations and increasing profitability - The importance of team members reflecting the brand’s core values - And Amazon being an exciting growth channel for 2024 Taylor explains: “It’s a good play for us to be on Amazon and offer more Amazon-friendly items like 10 or 12 packs of our flagship Outway products. There is a 7 figure business in just that channel itself so we are harvesting demand that already exists.” 👉 You can [listen to the full episode with Taylor here](. COMMITMENT 🔓 Predictive Profit Intelligence * Getting locked into year-long unsuccessful vendor contracts can take a toll on your budget and patience. Our tip to avoid this? 👀 Choosing tools like [Black Crow who prove value upfront with a 30 day free trial]( so you can determine the ROI for your brand before you spend a dime. After that, the only commitment is a monthly contract. They integrate seamlessly with your Shopify ecosystem (no development work required) and activate predictive intelligence across your digital channels: 👇 - Meta ads: Predicts prospect and target audiences that are most likely to buy, driving the right users to your site. - Onsite: Improves your popup welcome offer conversion, increasing list growth by over 40%. - Email/SMS: Fixes your broken user identification so you can trigger more abandonment flows and decrease your CAC. Black Crow AI is so confident you’ll see ROI that they’re [offering a $100 gift card to Shopify brands earning $2M+ annually just for meeting with their team](. [Get Connected]( DID YOU KNOW? 👀 4 Types of OOH Marketing To Try You know those ads that seem to pop up everywhere you look? On benches at the park, towering over highways, even plastered on the side of your bus? That's called out-of-home (OOH) marketing. Unlike promotions on our screens, OOH marketing lives in the real world, blending seamlessly into our daily lives. These ads can employ some truly bold and creative tactics - think wacky billboards or artsy bus stop posters - designed to catch our eye as we're out and about. And they work! By inserting themselves into our daily routines, they spark conversations and engagement in a way digital media just can’t. Amid skyrocketing digital ad costs, the OOH advertising market is projected to grow to [over $40.1 billion in 2024](. For DTC brands especially, OOH represents a unique opportunity to drive brand awareness and purchasing influence beyond existing digital channels. But not any old billboard will work. You need to get creative. 🎨 Here are [four killer strategies]( to elevate your OOH marketing campaigns. Have you stepped into the world of OOH advertising yet? 🔥 [Yes, and it’s crushing!]( 👀 [We’re dipping our toes in…]( 👎 [Nope, doesn’t work for me.]( 🧰 THE TOOLKIT 💲 Imagine AI could tell you exactly how to structure your marketing budget: Q4 success means spending wisely all year. Learn the best place to spend each marketing dollar with Keen’s predictive model. [Get smart about your spend strategy with Keen](. * 🚀 Shopify sales skyrocket 10–15%+ with upsells. Yeah, seriously! And you can add upsells in minutes with OneClickUpsell. So don’t lose another dollar in free revenue — [try OneClickUpsell today]( * 📰 NEWS - Bye bye TikTok Creator Fund, hello [TikTok Creativity Program](. - As mentioned in today’s intro, [Walmart to acquire TV brand Vizio for $2.3 billion]( to build out top-of-funnel advertising capabilities. - Reddit has entered a $60M annual licensing agreement, allowing an undisclosed major AI firm [access to its user content](. - TikTok released a SMB playbook that will help brands, “Get inspired, generate video concepts, and [create content to captivate your audiences](.” SPONSOR DTC 📥 Promote your product to 160,000 digital marketing professionals DTC Newsletter + Podcast reaches a highly qualified audience of Shopify merchants, eCommerce founders, and digital marketers. [Talk to our team to learn more](. 🌐 IN THE SOCIAL SPHERE Are you getting a lot of organic searches for ‘your brand + discount’? Use this to your advantage by creating a dedicated landing page so you capture that traffic. These high intent searches mean these customers are looking to buy, they just need a lil’ nudge in the right direction. Can't view the image? [Click here]( Have you heard our latest podcasts? - 👀 [AKNF 379:]( TikTok Shop Affiliates: The Time Is Now - 🔗 Ezra Firestone on [Proactive SEO and Brand Acquisitions]( - 📈 [AKNF 377:]( Spilling our Performance Max Google Ad Secrets - ⭐ Niclas Bornling on [the Art of Brand Storytelling]( - 🚀 [AKNF 375](: ‘The Three W’s’ of Email CTR - 🥟 Eric Ji Sun Wu’s [Entrepreneurial Journey with Sobo Foods]( Don’t forget to [rate the DTC Podcast]( on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) DTC Newsletter is written by [Rebecca Knight](, [Randy Ginsburg](, and [Frances Du](. Edited by [Eric Dyck](. Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up [here](. NEED MORE DTC? 🚀 [Advertise]( in DTC Newsletter. Please note that items in this newsletter marked with * contain sponsored content. 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